Stephen Sondheim is a genius and I soar with his musicals. From his "Weekend in the Country" {watching little things grow} to those most tasty of fresh meat pies, he is craftsman par excellence.  And - yes - I would buy a hat from him.

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Stephen Sondheim Talks About His New Book, 'Look, I Made a Hat'

by Malcolm Jones

The acclaimed Broadway composer talks about his new book, ‘Look, I Made a Hat,’ the difficulties of getting a show produced, the expectations of audiences, and how he puts it all together when writing a score.

Stephen Sondheim, American musical theater’s most trailblazing composer, has just published the second volume of his collected lyrics, Look, I Made a Hat, which includes all the musicals since 1981 (the Pulitzer Prize–winning Sunday in the Park With George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion, and Road Show) as well as songs for television, movies, and special occasions. Like the first volume, Finishing the Hat, this one includes Sondheim’s copious annotations, which wonderfully illuminate the songwriter’s craft.

Craft? Not art? We’ll get to the art. For now, craft is enough, because goodness knows there’s enough of it in Look, I Made a Hat. (The titles of both books, for those who came in late, come from the lyric “Finishing the Hat,” from Sunday in the Park With George. The song is about making art. “Look, I made a hat” is the song’s penultimate line. The kicker is the last line: “Where there never was a hat.”) Seen on the page, stripped of music, the lyrics can be seen for what they are: lines assembled—mortised is more like it—with grace and wit that is almost never obtrusive. Sometimes they’re clever, sometimes they’re funny, but never in the obtrusive way of a Cole Porter lyric. Sondheim’s words serve Sondheim’s songs, which in their turn serve the musicals of which they are a part.

This is craftsmanship of a very high order, but craftsmanship it is, because you can parse it, take it apart like a fine watch and see how it all fits together. Where the craft turns into art is in moments such as the second act of Sunday in the Park With George, where slowly and subtly a musical that has been delighting your brain suddenly turns your heart upside down. How exactly Sondheim and his librettist James Lapine achieve this transformation is not obvious. But that’s where the art comes in.

Ethan Levitas

Sometimes the art comes in more obviously. In Act II of Into the Woods, the Baker’s Wife has a tryst with Cinderella’s Prince, an experience that leaves her meditating on the either/or-ness of experience: “Must it all be either less or more,/ Either plain or grand?/ Is it always ‘or’?/ Is it never ‘and’? … Oh, if life were made of moments,/ Even now and then a bad one--!/ But if life were only moments,/ Then you’d never know you’d had one. … Let the moment go./ Don’t forget it for a moment, though./ Just remembering you had an ‘and,’ when you’re back to ‘or,’ / Makes the ‘or’ mean more than it did before.”

(more)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/20/stephen-sondheim-on-his-collection-of-lyrics-song-writing.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=culture_cheatsheet&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bculture_cheatsheet&utm_term=The%20Yes%20List

(Weekend in the Country)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZutBlUXUDI&feature=related