In Act 1 of Sunday in the Park with George, art critic Jules mocks the work of painter Georges Seurat, accusing it of displaying “…density / without intensity.”
Many of the issues ascribed to the artists in Sondheim’s work (whether their medium is visual, musical, or other) seem in some way autobiographical. In this case, critics have sometimes noted that Sondheim’s lyrics can become so dense — both in terms of richness of meaning and in sheer number of words and language tricks — that they take the audience out of the moment and become about him as lyricist, rather than the character’s dramatic and emotional expression.
In this entry I’ll offer two examples of Sondheim at his wordy best and challenge anyone to be unable to appreciate the intensity that comes with the verbal density of these lyrics.
The first is the classic example: Amy’s pre-wedding jitter song, “Not Getting Married Today” from Company. Amy and Paul’s wedding vocalist has sung the opening strains of a slow, hymn-like tribute to marriage; Paul joins in with a similarly reverent verse, ending with “Today is for Amy, / my happily soon to be wife.”
Then the song takes off as Amy sings:
Pardon me, is everybody here? Because if everybody’s here,
I want to thank you all for coming to the wedding,
I’d appreciate your going even more, I mean you must have
lots of better things to do, and not a word of this to Paul,
remember Paul, you know, the man I’m gonna marry, but I’m not,
because I wouldn’t ruin anyone as wonderful as he is–
Thank you all
For the gifts and the flowers,
Thank you all,
Now it’s back to the showers,
Don’t tell Paul,
But I’m not getting married today.
Considered a technical tour de force for a singing actress, the song contains several more of these lyric outbursts, each intensifying the manic state of fear in which Amy finds herself. The nervous energy expressed through this song provides a clear parallel to main character Bobby’s own trepidation about marriage, indicating that even (or especially) those on the verge of lifelong commitment can find themselves more than a little jittery.
I’ll concede that in the final verse, the lyric does get dangerously close to wordplay for its own sake, as Amy uses a literary reference to explain her feelings of impending entrapment: “Why / Watch me die / Like Eliza on the ice? / Look, perhaps / I’ll collapse, / in the apse / right before you all.” Though the Uncle Tom’s Cabin reference may fly by too quickly, and the word apse might cause confusion or be mistaken for “abs,” Sondheim uses a catalog of references to literature to terrific effect in A Little Night Music.
Frederick Eggerman, a middle-aged lawyer and widower, has recently married Anne, much younger, and “unfortunately, still a virgin.” He plans his next attempt at seduction in “Now,” a song that is full of literary references that support a masterful combination of self-deprecation and intellectual grandstanding.
Tellingly, he considers the possibility of reading a story to Anne as they settle into bed:
Although she gets restive,
Perhaps I could read.
In view of her penchant
For something romantic,
De Sade is too trenchant
And Dickens too frantic,
And Stendhal would ruin
The plan of attack,
As there isn’t much blue
in The Red and the Black.
De Maupassant’s candour
Would cause her dismay,
The Brontes are grander
But not very gay,
Her taste is much blander,
I’m sorry to say,
But is Hans Christian Ander-
Sen ever risque?
It may be possible to dismiss this passage as little more than a clever exercise, an attempt to cram as many authors as possible into as small as space as possible, as if Cole Porter, not Sondheim, were musicalizing Bergman.
But the logic in Frederick’s choices, beginning with the raunchy de Sade, traveling though the canon of popular European literature, and finally ending at the oddly (in)approrpriate author of children’s tales, is both endearing and ridiculous. The list reinforces the notion of Anne being both a child-figure and object of sexual desire for aging Frederick, who initially establishes his laughable pragmatism earlier in the song: “Now, as the sweet imbecilities / Tumble so lavishly / Onto her lap, / Now, there are two possibilities: / A, I could ravish her, / B, I could nap.”
Like Amy in “Not Getting Married Today,” Frederick is caught up in a sea of thoughts when all he wants to do his act. And considering the relationship between their situations (a woman wanting to run from the altar for fear of what marriage will bring and a man trying to decide how to approach his wife for sex months after they were married), it’s fitting that Sondheim supplies them amply with the lyricist’s only tool for expressing frustration and confusion: words, words, words.
Next Sunday’s appreciation of Sondheim will be courtesy of Laurie Nobilette, guest blogging about her favorite Sondhiem lyric, Gypsy’s “Gotta Get a Gimmick.”
Other entries in this series:
# 3: Lyrics as conversation and dialogue
# 2: Lyrics as expression of character and dramatic theme
# 1: Lyrics as expression of complexity
