Stephen Sondheim, the Leonardo Da Vinci of Musical Theatre, Signs Off

Uncertainty is the key to life; if a person knows the path he is treading, it is death—that was Stephen Sondheim’s mantra, the iconic master craftsman of the American musical, who died at 91 on Friday. “You have to work on something that makes you uncertain—something that makes you doubt yourself. If you know where you’re going, you’ve gone, as the poet says. And that’s death,” the titan of musical theatre, who turned the unlikeliest of subjects into entertainment landmarks, had said in 2017.

The legendary composer and lyricist, who died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, had come out as gay at 40. He is survived by his husband Jeffrey Scott Romley, whom he married in 2017.

During his illustrious career of more than 60 years, Sondheim co-created Broadway theatre classics like West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods—which were box-office hits—earning him an Oscar, a Pulitzer, eight Grammy Awards, eight Tony Awards, a Kennedy Center honour and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the ‘80s and ’90s, Sondheim wrote a musical about French pointillist painter Georges Seurat, Sunday in the Park with George (1984), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His 1990 song Sooner or Later for the movie Dick Tracy earned him the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1991.

The lyricist, songwriter and conceptual artist, an incomparable creative force in modern American theatre, raised the status of the musical by exploring adult relationships in all their complexity. Sondheim was excellent at expressing romantic longing and loss in songs like Send in the Clowns (from A Little Night Music), Losing My Mind (from Follies) and Somewhere (from West Side Story).

Though his work was sometimes criticised as glib, Sondheim explored new dimensions of the musical, which was often considered comforting and unadventurous family entertainment till his arrival. Follies and Company, which received rapturous revivals in London in 2017 and 2018 respectively, provided bittersweet accounts of love and life, according to The Guardian.

Unlike many musical-theatre creators who either specialise as a composer or a lyricist, he excelled at both. After establishing himself on Broadway, he assumed control of music and lyrics in his shows. “For many theatre lovers, there are musicals, then there are Sondheim musicals,” wrote Garry Nunn in The Guardian. “The latter is a category of its own because with Sondheim, every single word, every rhyme has been laboured over to the point that it’s mellifluous and articulate (if a little garrulous).”

In 2010, Sondheim said that the joy of the theatre touched audiences. “I’m interested in the theatre because I’m interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise, I would be in concert music. I’d be in another kind of profession. I love the theatre as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry—just making them feel—is paramount to me, he told NPR’s Fresh Air.

Sondheim’s works were of astonishing range: the updated Romeo and Juliet romance of West Side Story (for which he wrote the lyrics), the travails of a modern group of friends and lovers in Company and even the woes of presidential murderers (and attempted murderers) in Assassins, His song lyrics, whether defiant (Rose’s Turn), sad (Send in the Clowns) or ominous (Children Will Listen) and simply clever (Ah, but Underneath) were the gold standard of the theatre art.

“What’s funny about Steve’s songs is you think, ‘Oh, this is about something’, and then you start working on it, and you go, ‘No, it’s about SOMETHING’,” actress Bernadette Peters, one of Sondheim’s leading interpreters, told ABC News in 2010. “It goes even deeper than you imagined.”

Sondheim was only 27 when his first big hit West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957 and ran for more than 700 performances. A 1961 film version won 10 Oscars. The musical, which relocated Romeo and Juliet to the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side, was conceived by Jerome Robbins with a book by Arthur Laurents and music by Leonard Bernstein.

Sondheim’s loss triggered a flood of tributes. Andrew Lloyd Webber called him “the musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations [whose] contribution to theatre will never be equalled”. Cameron Mackintosh said: “The theatre has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky. But the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim will still be here as his legendary songs and shows will be performed for evermore.”

Some of the many people who’ve performed Sondheim’s work or been moved by it flooded social media with tributes. “Thank the Lord that Sondheim lived to be 91 years old so he had the time to write such wonderful music and GREAT lyrics!” Barbra Streisand wrote. “May he Rest In Peace.”

“Perhaps not since April 23rd of 1616 has theater lost such a revolutionary voice,” actor Josh Gad wrote. “Thank you Mr. Sondheim for your Demon Barber, some Night Music, a Sunday in the Park, Company, fun at a Forum, a trip Into the Woods and telling us a West Side Story. RIP.” Actor Aaron Tviet wrote: “Thank you for everything Mr Sondheim. Speechless. We are so lucky to have what you’ve given the world.”