Monday, April 11, 2011

Someone in a tree

Yer damn right I bought the new Stephen Sondheim book, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981), with attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes. From which we learn, among many other things:
When I'm asked to name my favorite song of those I've written, an understandable but unanswerable request, I often proffer this one. I like the swing and relentlessness of the music and the poetic Orientalism of the lyric, but what I love is its ambition, its attempt to collapse past, present and future into one packaged song form... Suffice it to say that this song comes the closest to the heart of Pacific Overtures: historical narrative as written by a Japanese who's seen a lot of American musicals.


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