Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber: The New Musical (The ^AGreat Songwriters)

I found this a disappointing book about why Sondheim's 15-day academic and unmemorable wonders are better than Lloyd-Webber's 15-year masterpieces, by a nationalistic American. The book does make a few interesting points with some glaring errors - the Eiffel tower is reportedly much smaller than I remember from a month ago. The bias got the better of me by the last chapter and I could not bring myself to finish it.

This could have been a really interesting comparison, and there are some nice touches in this book, but ultimately the author skirts the most interesting questions in favor of some tired cliches.Other reviewers on this page have carped about Lloyd Webber's name. If they're referring to the hyphen, they should have read a little more carefully. He explains his use of the hyphen in a footnote on the bottom of page 49.On the positive side, Citron solves the task of the dual biography pretty well. One of the big problems in writing a book comparing two composers born 18 years apart is the use of time. Obviously, you have to tell the stories chronologically, you can't spend too much time on one of them without switching to the other, and then at some point, the issue of what each of them is working on simultaneously becomes interesting, so a constant 18 year delay would be off-putting. Somehow Citron manages to bring their narratives together around Harold Prince, and chronologically ties the two stories around the time when Prince went from Sondheim's Sweeney to Lloyd Webber's Evita. Before that, we're hearing about the shows on a weird time warp, and after that, it's fairly chronological. This is a neat touch, and Hal Prince is actually the main thing the two have in common.I found a pretty egregious example of plagiarism in the book, around a topic that gets short shrift in the book; musical analysis. On page 360, Citron cribs an 88 word passage from Joseph Swain's book The Broadway Musical, A Critical And Musical Survey (Oxford, 1990) Incredibly, even though the book he's borrowing from is by the same publisher, Citron doesn't credit the idea to its originator, nor does Swain's book even appear in the Bibliography. It's an unlikely and original idea he's stealing; comparing Lloyd Webber's dramatically random repeats of melody to Renaissance Contrafacta, which he wrongly pluralizes contrafactums later in the chapter. It doesn't call into question Citron's research, which appears to be fairly exhaustive, but it makes one wonder whether the book isn't just a collection of anecdotes, ideas and stories from other sources, hepfully cobbled into a collection for the curious.Theatre fans have often put these two giants of music theatre against one another, a position neither has publicly taken. The conventional wisdom about the two is that Lloyd Webber is the consummate melodist, and that his detractors really only envy his popularity from the comfort of their ivory towers, and that Sondheim is an abstruse intellectual whose music is mired in boring repetitive structures that are incomprehensible to the public, but which are feted and admired by pointy heads who want to feel smart. Citron falls into these old cliches time and time again, missing the far more interesting issues to be probed.For example, the portrait Citron paints of Lloyd Webber is one of a man utterly at the mercy of his lyricists and librettists for what happens on the stage, and there are a number of swipes (deservedly) taken at Sir Andrew's compositional technique, his supposed plagiarism (which is ironic, considering the source), and his orchestrational deficiencies. Any examination of Lloyd Webber's work must ask questions of how these qualities play into his work as a whole. The best Citron can come up with is to compare him to Richard Rodgers, which is an attractive thought until one remembers that Rodgers was not at the mercy of any lyricist or librettist, although he could usually command the best. In fact, Rodgers wrote music and lyrics for No Strings. And Rodgers knew harmony, melody, and the power of a reprise to do dramatic work, not just to sell a tune. It would be foolish to say that Lloyd Webber doesn't know what he's doing, but a full picture needs to address his foibles as craft issues, not merely as the carping of the intellectuals. Can you be a great musical theatre composer without caring which lyrics your tune gets assigned to? Maybe so.Sondheim doesn't fare much better. Citron says at the end of the book that Sondheim started in the Hammerstein "heart-on-the-sleeve tradition", then abandoned it for the "honesty of ambivalence" I'm not sure what he means by "heart-on-the-sleeve" Is he referring to West Side? or Gypsy? or Saturday Night? None of those seem sentimental. (except for lyrics that Lenny probably wrote) What Sondheim got from Hammerstein was not treacly Americana, but the integration of material and story, and he learned it so well that he wrote what the story and his methodology demanded, whether the audience liked it or not. This question of whether the structural and dramatic integrity is enough to make a masterpiece without popularity is an important issue Citron isn't bothering with.This reader would like to see somebody tackle the Sondheim/Lloyd Webber duality along more serious lines, because the answer to the questions these men pose writes the next 25 years of musical theatre. Sadly, we won't find it here.

"Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber: The New Musical" by Stephen Citron is what seems to be erronius blogging from a man who knows damned little about the art of theatre and even less about music or lyric writing. To even consider comparing these two men is an act or cruelty to SIr Andrew, a waste of time to Sondheim and a joke all around to the rest of us. These two theatre writers do not share an audience, and aty first one believes he is reading about that will compare and contrast. Sadly, no. Andrew Looyd Weber wrote only two musicals worth seeing and their succes was a resuslt of librettist and lyriacist Tim Rice. Sitting through "Phantom of the Opera" provided the audience with many moments of entertainkment, i.e. each set change and then the cute "Find The Phantom" game as various scale paid actors were costumed as Crawford and placed throughout the theatre- even once at the top of the procenium. The music- like all of Loyd Weber's music, is recylced hit or miss trash. To him a half step modulation is enough development.Just like most of the concepts in this book. There is virtually no legitimate research here and neither composer was directly interviewed by the author; one has to wonder how he was able to get his book into the hands of an agent in the first place;.As for Sondheim, every single show he has ever written- even those for which he was "only" lyricist, has remained strongly on the revival list- something that only Loyd Weber's "Jesus Christ Superstar" has done (again, folks, thanks goes to Tim Rice) but rather than discussing the merits of "Night Music" and "Passion" in regard to winning best musical (A catagory that is indeed eronius and largely political for it's ability to finance a road company tour) Let's pass over that and look at theTony Awards for 1984 which Stephen Citron failed to discuss at all. "Cats" won Best Musical that year and "Sunday In The Park With George" did not. It is true that Cats is a show that has little substance- if any at all- and is "cool" for it's lighting and sets where "Sunday" is a brilliant work that requires a great deal of intelligent listening from it's audience. But to add to the humiliation of Lloyd Weber (who really no longer excists- anyone else notice?) came six months later when "Sunday In The Park With George" became the fourth musical in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (since then, "Rent" became the fifth.) This Pulitzer made a fool of the Antoinette Perry Committee, all supporters of "Cats" and sadly, Andrew Loyd Weber, who's sucess is based on commercailism and not artin three hundred years, People will still be flocking to the theatres to see the works of Stephen Somndheim (including the musical here is currently writing at the age orf 82) where Loyd Weber will have been forgotten and not even remembered as much as Antonio Salieri.Sadly, Stephen Citron's book is not likely to go into a second printing. Had this book been a Master's Thesis we'd have another 30 credit Bachelor's plus out there. Don;t bother with this book. The author doesn;t even know the difference been duple and triple time, doesn;t understand myusical or character devlopment and never once4 used the word "motif."

I found the book fascinating, as it is filled with interesting details and tidbits about these two men and their shows. It is especially useful because it focuses on the music, often showing musical examples and shedding light on things like melodic teeming and form. The other two reviews stated that Lloyd Webber's name was misspelled. Apparently, they didn't read carefully enough because it explains the reasoning for this deliberate decision is because when Lloyd Webber was knighted he chose to hyphenate his name. The book tends to favor Sondheim, but is full of interesting information about both of them and each of their shows. I can't promise that is 100% free of factual errors, but it is still a must have for anyone looking for in-depth information on these two great men.

The book helped me greatly with a paper I had to write. Very interesting insight into the two great's minds!

I found this a disappointing book about why Sondheim's 15-day academic and unmemorable wonders are better than Lloyd-Webber's 15-year masterpieces, by a nationalistic American. The book does make a few interesting points with some glaring errors - the Eiffel tower is reportedly much smaller than I remember from a month ago. The bias got the better of me by the last chapter and I could not bring myself to finish it.