Stephen Sondheim: West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959), with Collaborators Jerome Robbins and Arthur Laurents

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Hecht
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Arthur Laurents

West Side Story by Arthur Laurents

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-363
Author(s):  
E. Teresa Choate
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Arthur Laurents

Dance in the Broadway Musicals of Shakespeare

2019 ◽  
pp. 302-326
Author(s):  
Ray Miller
Keyword(s):  
Musical Theater ◽  
Leonard Bernstein ◽  
West Side ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Broadway Musicals ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Shakespeare’s plays have served as inspiration for a score of Broadway musicals. These musicals have contributed to the development of the musical theater libretto from a loose collection of sketches to an integrated “book musical” that equally values text, music, design, directing, and dance. While many are familiar with some of the most popular hits from those shows—including “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from the Cole Porter’s musical, Kiss Me, Kate, or the balcony scene song, “Maria,” from the Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim collaboration, West Side Story, the contribution of choreographers and dancers to the translation of Shakespeare-inspired music, text, and scenography to the musical theater stage has not received due scholarly attention. This chapter considers the partnership between text and dance in selected Broadway musicals that have been based on the works of Shakespeare, focusing on choreography for musicals by George Balanchine, Hanya Holm, and Jerome Robbins.

Sondheim's ‘Sweeney Todd’—The Case for the Defence

Tempo ◽  
1984 ◽  
pp. 19-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carey Blyton
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Anyone Can Whistle ◽  
The Way

As both lyricist and composer, Stephen Sondheim has proved to be the most original and innovative force on Broadway since the late 1950's, when he first attracted attention as the lyricist for some of the songs in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957), including ‘Maria’ and ‘Tonight’. Few composers for the musical stage have such a record of success as Sondheim. In addition to these lyrics for Bernstein, he also wrote all the lyrics for Jule Styne's Gypsy (1959); then, as composer as well as lyricist, he wrote a number of musicals over the next two decades: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Merrily We Roll Along (1981).

WEST SIDE STORY 1981

1981 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Weber
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story

Historical Sound-Film Presentation and the Closed-Curtain Roadshow Overture

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Ben Winters
Keyword(s):  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
West Side ◽  
Sound Film ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Film Presentation ◽  
Historically Informed Performance ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines historical presentational practices of sound film and, specifically, the extra music added to roadshow versions of films between the 1930s and 1960s—including Gone with the Wind, West Side Story, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It argues that such added music—which included overtures, intermission, entr’acte, and exit music—when combined with controlled theatrical lighting and use of the curtain, might have prompted a number of different cinematic listening experiences among audiences. It suggests that an understanding of these historical presentational practices might call into question comfortable assumptions about the nature of sound-film ontology and the relationship between cinema as “Text” and cinema as “Event”—issues that resonate with the discourse surrounding historically informed performance (HIP) practice in musicology.

West Side Story

On Sondheim ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 37-43
Author(s):  
Ethan Mordden
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story

The Maestro Pivots

Dearest Lenny ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 56-60
Author(s):  
Mari Yoshihara
Keyword(s):  
Music Industry ◽  
American Music ◽  
European Market ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
West Side ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
New Phase

With the arrival of Harry Kraut, Leonard Bernstein’s company Amberson entered a new phase of corporate enterprises that extended the maestro’s reach even further across the globe. Ironically, the enormous commercial success of West Side Story, the most American of Bernstein’s works, began to cause problems with some stakeholders, and Bernstein began to gradually pivot to the European market for publishing, recording, and films and videos. Bernstein joined the roster of the recording artists of Deutsche Grammophon upon the end of the contract with Columbia Records. The pivot exemplified the changes in the American music industry in the 1970s which made it increasingly challenging even for a musician of Bernstein’s caliber to conduct business in a way that was true to his artistic goals, economically sustainable, and culturally meaningful to a wide audience.

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