Dvarg
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Andy on SteveFrom this interview:
| Quote: | Before we meet, waspish friends had urged me to ask Lloyd Webber about Stephen Sondheim, the legendary American composer whose hits include West Side Story.
According to one report, Sondheim finally approached Andrew Lloyd Webber in friendship at a party a few years ago. Lloyd Webber said to him: "There is not a line of your music I wish I had written."
What drives him mad is the critical reverence shown to Sondheim, which has not in the past been accorded to him.
I take a breath and ask: "So what about Stephen Sondheim?"
He looks so reproachful that I am immediately sorry. Then he shrugs: "There is a book just out called Sondheim And Lloyd Webber - indepth comparisons. I think it is fairly pointless. Sondheim is a different animal. Our public overlaps, but one of the real differences is that Sondheim wouldn't sit down every Sunday and put on the chart show as I do.
"What people can't understand - though maybe they can now after Maria - is that I have such a love of pop that I can write Starlight Express. What appalls the Sondheim-type critic is that the next piece I write is a Requiem Mass. I can't be pigeon-holed, that is what drives people crazy." |
I wonder what this anecdote is supposed to mean:
According to one report, Sondheim finally approached Andrew Lloyd Webber in friendship at a party a few years ago. Lloyd Webber said to him: "There is not a line of your music I wish I had written."
Is it a friendly remark among collegues? Or a bitchy attack? I suppose it depends on the context, and I choose to interpret it as a friendly remark.
Besides, his Requiem was written twenty years ago. These days, "the next piece" he writes is yet another crappy show, like TBG and TWIW. What appalls and drives this Sondheim-type critic crazy is that his late shows lack coherent dramaturgy and have crappy lyrics- which makes him just too easy to pidgeon-hole. It doesn't matter how intensely hummably tunes he achieves to compose, the shows remain bad.
I miss the ALW of the early days, when he actually was inventive.
Thoughts?
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