Sondheim's Papers Go to Library of Congress

The announcement on June 25 that the papers of composer Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021, were coming to the Library of Congress (LOC) marked the culmination of a courtship that began over three decades ago. In 1993, Mark Horowitz, a senior music specialist at LOC, hosted Sondheim at the Library for a show-and-tell of treasures from its collections. Horowitz recalls how, when they got to George Gershwin’s manuscript for Porgy and Bess, the last item on display, “That’s when he started to cry.”

Following that meeting, Horowitz tells the Washington Post, “He said he was going to change his will…. [and] sent me a letter… about his papers coming to the Library.” Three months ago, LOC began to receive boxes containing nearly 5,000 items. Beginning on July 1, selections of music and lyrics will be on public view; later this summer notebooks, letters, notes, sheet music, and more will be accessible.

“When it comes to theater makers in America in the last century, he’s the Shakespeare,” said Matthew Gardiner, the artistic director of Arlington’s Signature Theatre, which is known for its productions of the eight-time Tony winner’s musicals.

Among the treasures in the collection are the program for By George, a musical Sondheim wrote in high school, and many documents from more celebrated works that demonstrate his creative process. The 40 pages of potential rhymes for the song “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, for example, have a special appeal for professionals like Gardiner, who has directed or choreographed productions of works such as Passion and Sunday in the Park With George, Sondheim’s only Pulitzer Prize winner.

“I’m staggered and stunned by how bloody much effort he put into everything,” Horowitz tells a reporter. “He’ll have a finished song… and then there’ll be 20 pages of typescripts of the lyrics…. It’s always, ‘What can I do to make this better?’ And it’s impossible to make that better!” Sondheim’s works are so frequently revived, he continues, “because he’s done what all great artists do, which is capture the way we think and feel about things.” His words and music interpret our thoughts and emotions in a way, concludes Horowitz, that “makes them universal in a way that they hadn’t been before.”

MSN

Stephen Sondheim was Musical America's 2000 Composer of the Year