“I try to write songs that are necessary.” An interview with the legendary composer Stephen Sondheim, conducted over the last five years of his life.
It’s not about that. It’s about the actual lyric. It’s not even about the context. Unless I have a need for a song called “Not While I’m Around,” it doesn’t matter who the characters are. Well, God knows the history of musical theatre is filled with tunes that went from one place to another. But to do that you’re admitting that your well is running dry, which I think is psychologically not good. And don’t think I haven’t been very close to that edge of that well, man—particularly these days.
But also culturally. In “Company,” you brought news to people about the culture that they were currently living in. If you’re trying to establish a musical mood, I’ll go and noodle at the piano, just noodle, and sometimes come up with something in the way of figure or a harmonic progression that seems like it’s the right. If I know what the song is going to be—quite often it will start with either a title or an idea that can be compressed into a few words, but they tend to come together at the same time.
I talk to myself this way! I am a trained musician. I’ve always been interested in what Milton Babbitt called tonicization—what other people call modulation. But what he says, which is actually a little bit more accurate—he’s saying, “You’ve gotta tonicize something new.” So here you are in the tonic of A major, and now you’re going to the tonic of A-flat.