[jbauer24]

What makes his music hard for you? And what do you think is his hardest and easiest score?

[ByeByeBirdieFan89]

It's hard musically and lyrically for many reasons. His melodies and rhythms are VERY complex. And his lyrics and rhymes are not easy to remember.

Easiest score: I don't think he has an easy one. But I'd say ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.

Hardest score: It's between A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday In The Park With George.

[Patrick]

he's not that hard, but you have to consider his music to be like lines, and Hamlet is harder to memorize than, say, Wicked or RENT, they're nt catchy, so they wont come easily

Easiest Score: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum The male parts in Sweeney Todd

Hardest Score: SitPwG, Lovett and Johanna in Sweeney Todd

[Sweeney Hyde]

I highly disagree to saying that the male parts in Sweeney Todd are easy. Have you ever tried to sing Epiphany with just the piano part with you? The Ladies in Their Sensitivites/Kiss Me quartet isn't exactly a walk in the park either.

[Salome]

hardest:
Someone in a TREE
god thats good
mst of sunday in the park with george
Franklin Shepard INC.
Your Fault
kISS mE/lADIES IN THEIR sENSITIVITIES

ALNM is not all that hard. its pretty straightforward musically.(except lyrically "Millers Song")

[kiwitechgirl]

[biancacom333]

a lot of times his enterances are very tricky to count, it will be very rapid piano underscoring and you just need to know where to come in on the right beat.

for some reason his lyrics are very hard to learn....i've messed up lyrics of his and i'm usuallly good about not doing that

sometime he doesn't give you your note in the orchestrations and it comes out of no where, so it's very easy to sing the wrong note, it's almost like he leads you to think he's going somewhere else...

sometimes his music is not very lyric, so it sounds like ur just kind of talking sometimes, and if you are not right on, it can sound like ur just singing flat...

ummm he has lots of patter songs

he does all of this so the actor has to learn his music completely and study it.

[Pounce]

[Salome]

[Patrick]

[Cake_in_Song]

Because I'm too distracted by how amazing he is.

[the_bakers_wife]

I think the reason that I find Sondheim difficult is because the accompanist is never (or hardly ever) playing what the vocalist is singing. The melodies have strange jumps that cause a singer to switch registers very quickly and only the properly trained can really pull his songs off.

Easiest score? Maybe "...Forum"?
Most Difficult? Oh, "Sunday In The Park With George" or "Sweeney Todd".

[actionjaxson91]

hardest:

Sweeney Todd

easiest:

probably Into the Woods

[Mara]

Sondheim is a bitch to play.
It's incredibly complex, intricate music, with unpredictable chord changes.
The left and right hands on the piano are sometimes playing completely different rhythms.
Often there are no hints of the singing line in the accompaniment.
As an accompanist, it's so terrifying to be handed Sondheim to sightread.

[Salome]

[Sweeney Hyde]

[the_bakers_wife]

um, yeah. Into The Woods is a quite difficult for a vocalist. Forum, not so much.

[The REAL Ciaron]

[blue wind]

the first song i ever heard of sondheim (and actually knew what it was and who it was by) was the prologue of into the woods. my friend showed it to me. at the end of the song i was just sitting on my couch with my mouth hanging open! i couldn't believe how crazy it was!

[Pannic]

Assassins sounds pretty easy, from what I've heard. The only part that sounds particularly difficult is Zangara. That play is written more for singing actors than acting singers. The only male characters in that play that I think I'd actually be unable to play are the Balladeer and Zangara.

As for Forum, I've looked at "Comedy Tonight" and "Bring me My Bride." The only reason I have any trouble with them is because of the higher notes, as I am both new to singing and a bass. A good singer would have no trouble, and I don't imagine the others being any harder.

The harder pieces? Sweeney Todd is demanding, starting with vocal ranges, such as in the title role, Beadle Bamford, and Tobias Ragg (is Ken Jennings the ONLY one who didn't have to use falsetto?). And with Follies, I tried to sing "The Right Girl" by sight, after playing the melody on the piano. I couldn't. Not because of range, but because I got lost very, very quickly.

[postmodern-mango-salsa]

probably because from what I've seen, it's very rare that the note is in the piano part....

Easiest: compared to some other music, there is no easy Sondheim.... lol.
Hardest: Hmm. That's a tough one. Sweeney, Sunday in the Park, or some of Little Night Music.

[Vertigo50]

What makes it hard is that his melodies are never predictable, and always unpredictable. They never go where you think they will. It's what makes them so good. Also, ranges are usually at extremes. He doesn't like to write in the middle. If he's writing for a tenor, he's going to write it high. That's what tenors are for. If he's writing for a baritone, he's going to write a lot in the meaty low range, and probably push the high range too, just for fun. All the emotional stuff happens in the extremes of your range. Singers who are used to singing stuff in the "middle ranges" where everything is comfortable are constantly frustrated by Sondheim.

Also, you get almost no help from the accompaniment. Many musical theatre songs have the orchestra (or piano) playing your melody at the same time you're singing it. What the hell is the point of that? Why even bother singing it then, the violins are already doing it for you.

Sondheim treats the voice as the most important instrument in the whole arrangement. He isolates it and accompanies it. When you perform a Sondheim song with a piano, it is like a duet. The vocal part wouldn't work without the piano part, and vice versa.

This is why people say "Sondheim doesn't write melodies". What they really mean (but are too stupid to put into words) is that you can't take a Sondheim melody, play some chords under it, and sing it without it sounding wrong. You can do that with a lot of broadway standards, but you can't do that with Sondheim. His songs ARE the accompaniment, and the ARE the melody. There is no separating them.

So, after you've tackled all the technical problems, learned all the right notes, and all the right words, it's easy right?

Nope. Every song is also a riddle. There is a specific reason why he used this word instead of that one, this rhyme instead of that. There's a joke in there that you won't notice until the 70th time you sing it, and then you'll add a look that will make it funny.

Here's an example:
"My Friends" from Sweeney Todd. It has a very hypnotic accompaniment, where there is a constant repeated pattern up high, while the bass notes hit on unpredictable beats. This is to create a feeling that Sweeney is mesmerized and hypnotized, while a little unsettled. Virtually nothing in the accompaniment give the singer any idea of his melody, and the bass notes coming on strange beats can make you feel like you're off-count. And that's just the first layer.

Sondheim has said that he put the beginning bars in the lower register for a specific reason. He wanted a quiet sound at the beginning. He intentionally put lots of "s" sounds, to make it more like a whisper, as Sweeney is whispering to his razors. Then, as the melody goes higher, you start to open up, as Sweeney's emotions begin to swell. Then the song gets more intense as you go into a melodic figure that is even MORE difficult to hit, as it goes to very unpredictable chords that sound atonal until you hear the resolution that shows you where it is going.

Sound easy? Mainly what I'm getting at is that the songs are very technically difficult to learn, both in timing and pitch. Then the lyrics and style add another layer, and while you're trying to remember all that stuff, you have to remember to act with a lot of emotion at the same time, because ALL the emotion of the shows happens in the songs.

And this is why so many of us have an eternal love affair with Sondheim. You can never really finish a Sondheim song. There is always more you can find in it. There is always another way to interpret that line. There is always more emotion to be uncovered.

[Dvarg]

[Salome]

I almost forgot the single hardest sondheim song to perform...

the opening of Company!

[Vertigo50]

Oh, and I didn't even mention BREATHING!

I was singing through "Finishing the Hat" last night, and I forgot that parts of it are a breathing nightmare! A lot of the phrases are about 16 bars long, with hardly any place to take a breath.

By the way, in case the original poster or anyone is wondering whether Sondheim does this on purpose, whether he is trying to make the songs hard, I really don't think so. I think he gets an idea of what he wants to do, and he just WILL NOT compromise it. He doesn't care if the key is tough, he doesn't care if the notes are hard to find, and he doesn't care if there is no place to breathe. He is writing it exactly how he wants it to sound, and that's how it will be. I don't mean to say that he's stubborn or detached or anything, but I'm sure numerous songs have been watered-down because they had to simplify them for poor singers, or change the key for someone with limited range. Sondheim just won't have his music compromised.

Personally, I think that's the way to go. It would be like telling Beethoven that he can't write his symphony that way because some beginner violinists might not be able to play it.

[Dvarg]

[sallydurant]