Sondheim's weaker lyrics/rhymes- Page 6

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:15pm

I hate this thread and everyone in it.

Except for themysteriousgrowl.




just kidding...

carry on folks...

[indytallguy]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:27pm

I, too, like the "content just to survive" and appreciate PJ suggesting people try to improve upon the original.

But "content just to survive" doesn't make me conjure up an image of people sitting in their living room and knitting the way 105 does as a lyric. And that seems important given the setup in the previous stanza.

What I like about this thread is people are just tossing out lyrics that don't work well for them, that they find less compelling, or that confuse them a bit. I don't see any of that as saying "Sondheim Sucks".

Updated On: 12/30/13 at 06:27 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:42pm

Personally, I have no problem with Prospero's actions because it's always seemed clear to me that he always intended to forgive everyone and rejoin the world (like Dolly Levi). I'd need to revisit the text to remember why this is how I've always seen it, but there you are.

But if it is "always clear", then there is no recognition or reversal, which is precisely what I said in the first place. Thank you.

"It's all in the text" is what everyone who loves the language of THE TEMPEST always says. Funny how nobody can ever actually diagram the play. Fine. Enjoy the pretty words. As long as I don't have to go.

As for "career", PJ, I was accused of criticizing without supporting my argument. So I repeated my support.

You and newintown can't have it both ways: you can't both claim we don't support our criticism and then knock us for doing so when we do. (Obviously, you can still disagree.)

(And for the record: I have no problem with "one hundred and five"; I was merely speculating as to why it might sound strange to some ears. I don't even have a huge problem with "career"; I just don't think it's the best choice for that line.)

"Career" was a common verb in the early 20th century? Where? We're talking about a woman who worked as a stripper instead of finishing high school.

Updated On: 12/30/13 at 06:42 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 6:46pm

indytallguy, you are right. I think Stephen Sondheim is the greatest lyricist in the history of the English language. I think that's been obvious in my past posts and I see no reason to say it again every page or two.

***

AND we're having an earthquake here in Palm Springs…

(Pause.)

Seems to be a minor one...

***

Back on topic, I think it should be obvious that everyone (with that one exception) in this thread is a Sondheim fan. If we weren't, we wouldn't be pulling obscure lyric lines out of our hats! Updated On: 12/30/13 at 06:46 PM

[indytallguy]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 7:10pm

"indytallguy, you are right. I think Stephen Sondheim is the greatest lyricist in the history of the English language. I think that's been obvious in my past posts and I see no reason to say it again every page or two. "

I hope nothing I've written suggests you need to say it again. Quite frankly, I don't care if ppl in the thread are Sondheim fans or not so long as the questions they raise about his lyrics are thoughtful ones.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 7:36pm

Oh, gosh, no, Indy. I was just emphatically agreeing with your post.

(The "I don't need to say it again" was directed at others, who know perfectly well how much I admire Sondheim.)

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 7:55pm

Funny how nobody can ever actually diagram the play.

Diagram the play?

I would rather have my tongue beaten waifer thin and then stapled to the ground with a croquet hoop.

[tom2000a]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 8:33pm

Again. I started this thread and I think Sondheim is the best, one of the best, perhaps the best... writer of lyrics ever. That being said, I think the Raisins and Liaisons Rhyme is just a bad rhyme. You can say he meant to make a bad rhyme on purpose, but I think that is a little crazy. He thought he was being clever, but it just doesn't work. It's forced... and it starts with "What once was a sumptuous feast is now just Figs..." That sentence is so clumsy and forced just so he could show how clever he was to eventually get to the word raisin.

Sondheim is a genius. This is just a clunker that somehow got through. I'm sorry. I am not buying any other option I have heard so far, but I will keep an open mind.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:09pm

I'm not saying you are wrong, tom. But I will say that because I am not an expert on how words are pronounced by different classes in European English, I always accepted the raisins/liaisons as some sort of "Europeanism".

"Liaisons" as a song is an interesting contrast to "I'm Still Here". I learned all sort of words from Madame Armfeldt when I was 20, but I accept that because of her background there is no vocabulary she couldn't know. Carlotta herself admits she is more "street smart" thanks to her wealth of experience than she is formally educated.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:18pm

Diagram the play?

I would rather have my tongue beaten waifer thin and then stapled to the ground with a croquet hoop.

Enough with the phony anti-intellectualism, joey! Playwrights diagram their work and that of others all the time. So do directors, dramaturgs and even actors in large roles (though the latter rightly tend to view the play through the eyes of the character they play). Hell, even costume designers diagram plays so that their costume plot coincides with the action of the play.

So stop acting like I've suggested some sort of airy-fairy lit-crit exercise.

My point is that THE TEMPEST is so full of beautiful language, and even some excellent scenes, that the casual viewer doesn't even notice that the play doesn't quite make sense. The problem is structure (or lack thereof) in the folios that survive and isn't apparent without a little analysis.

None of which is to suggest Shakespeare is anything but the greatest playwright of the English language and, without question, my intellectual superior (which is why I brought up THE TEMPEST in the first place).

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:32pm

Um, I don't mean to be an ass about this, but check out the Oxford English Dictionary pronunciation of liaison. It actually rhymes with raisin rather precisely.


http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/liaison


(American dictionaries use the second pronunciation from the link above.)

Updated On: 12/30/13 at 09:32 PM

[GoSmileLaughCryClap]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:37pm

This has turned into a wonderful dumping ground for every Sondheim lover's raised eyebrow at that rare lyric that doesn't seem to sit just right. For them.

Now mine was actually written as an atmospheric second act scene change. It certainly is atmospheric, as well as subtle, scented and, well, unintelligible. If it's hard to pick apart after repeated hearings on CD, imagine what it sounded like on stage for the first time.

And with all of Sondheim's insistence on clearness of intent and impact, this is surely a fog of impressionism more opaque than anything in Sunday in the Park. But it is beautiful. Oh, and all those words below roll out in one minute and eight seconds.

MRS. NORDSTROM:
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
It's very good for practicing self-control,
It's very good for morals, but bad for morale.
It's very bad.
It can lead to going quite mad.
It's very good for reserve and learning to do what one should.
It's very good.
Perpetual anticipation's a delicate art,
Playing a role,
Aching to start,
Keeping control
While falling apart.
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.

MRS. SEGSTROM:
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
It's very good for practicing self-control,
It's very good for morals, but bad for morale.
It's too unnerving.
It's very good, though, to have things to contemplate.
Perpetual anticipation's a delicate art,
Aching to start,
Keeping control
While falling apart.
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.

MRS. ANDERSSEN:
Perpetual anticipation is good for the soul
But it's bad for the heart.
It's very good, though, to learn to wait.
Perpetual anticipation's a delicate art,
Keeping control
While falling apart.
Perpetual anticipation is bad for the heart.

[jasonf]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:43pm

This was some thread to read through.

I just wanted to add in here words from Sondheim (I believe he said it in Six by Sondheim, and I'm SURE it was in one of his two lyric books somewhere) - and I'm paraphrasing, but...
Lyric writing is not like poetry. The listener has to get it in the moment as opposed to poetry that can be reviewed and analyzed. If a listener can't get it in the moment, then the lyric is lost and can set the listener off.

In that context, does it matter if he used "career" or "careen"? If it scans, I'd argue that it doesn't matter at all. "Career" actually SOUNDS better than careen in that context.

The one lyric that always stood out to me, pointed out by a college professor I had, was in Little Priest:
"Here's a politician so oily
He's served on doily
Have one.
Put it on a bun
Well you never know if he's going to run"

Politicians at that time in England apparently didn't run for office - they stood for office. Minor complaint, but ever since my prof pointed that out the lyric has rubbed me the wrong way.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:44pm

I admit I knew "Perpetual Anticipation" from the LP before I saw the show, but I think Sondheim constructs his canon very carefully, so that the key lines ARE comprehensible on first hearing in the theater. (Of course you are right that NOBODY gets everything!)

Most importantly the title line keeps surging to the forefront so that the listener gets that much, if nothing else.

In my experience, obviously.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 9:58pm

jason, as the poster before you demonstrated, Sondheim himself doesn't always follow the rule about making lyrics immediately comprehensible. Foolish consistency and all that. But I think it's a principle he follows in the major numbers.

I think we've established that "careen" is not a proper substitute for "career" and, for the record, I don't think that line is some sort of crime against nature. But we were asked to list Sondheim lyrics that fall short and that was the first that came to my mind. The issue isn't whether the audience can hear it, but whether they understand it (probably, in context) and whether the character would say it (probably not).

I hesitate to explode a bomb in this thread, but if I were to really criticize Sondheim I would pick on "No One Is Alone". I've heard that song hundreds of times and in dozens of productions and I still don't know what Cinderella is saying. I also think INTO THE WOODS contains some of his best work, but the songs toward the end get so abstract, I've never seen an audience that didn't squirm restlessly through the last 20 minutes of Act II.

[tom2000a]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 10:14pm

Thank you Gaveston...I really hate to beat a dead horse.. But...Even if Liaisons does rhyme with Raisins the whole sentence of lyrics is a stretch. It's like he looked in a rhyming dictionary and saw the two words rhymed...and then he made a giant leap, a huge stretch of the imagination, to connect the two.

"What once was a sumptuous feast
Is figs.
No--not even figs--raisins!
Ah, liaisons!"

It's awful.

Updated On: 12/30/13 at 10:14 PM

[binau]

Posted: 12/30/13 at 10:19pm

I think that lyric is funny - and the song is funny! I think it is hilarious that Sondheim was able to transition from figs to raisons to liaisons. But to each their own.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 12:04am

Enough with the phony anti-intellectualism, joey!

I am hardly phony. And I am hardly anti-intellectual. I love intellectuals. I am, on occasion, mistaken for one.

I despise most academics, however.

Most academics presume to be intellectuals, but they are usually merely pedants.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 1:09am

^^^^Well, play analysis has been around since Aristotle, at least, in and outside of the academy. So why are you carrying on like somebody put vinegar in your gruel?

(As a matter of fact, academics almost universally love THE TEMPEST. It is I, as a person with a practical background in theater, who finds it lacking.)

***

tom, I see your point. It's the getting to the raisins/liaisons to which you object. It has never bothered me, but I have no objective defense of it.

Updated On: 12/31/13 at 01:09 AM

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 7:48am

Full disclosure – part of the reason my ear has always tripped over the lyric is this: I knew the song long before I saw the show and, due to the phrasing of it, thought it meant, “That’s okay for some people (out) of one hundred and five (people),” and thought it was a reference to something in the show’s book that I was missing. I still think it’s grammatically weird for what it does mean, and Gaveston is astute at pointing out why – he uses “one hundred and five” instead of the more common “a hundred and five.” It always sounded to me like she’s talking about a subset of 105 actual people. I have no problem with Sondheim using an age component as part of the image/idea; I just think he does it clumsily here and would prefer a smoother lyric that travels in a different line of thought.

Now I’m done with this lyric. I made my case, and I’m very happy with the discussion that came out of it, so thanks to you all, and especially PJ.

**************

I love “Then you career from career to career.”

In seven short words, you feel the exhaustion of a whole life spent moving from one thing to the next, and it’s the repetition of that specific word that gets you there. Just the sound of it – careeeeer. Ugh. And if the singer languishes in that word a little each time, even better.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 7:56am

jasonf, that is an excellent catch by your prof, and he's absolutely correct. "Run for office" was an American English idiom in the mid-1800s. That's the sort of linguisitic detail Sondheim typically doesn't muck up.

[artscallion]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 8:07am

tom200a, Sondheim has said that a rhyming dictionary, along with his pencil and yellow pad, are the main tools he uses in writing lyrics. So that well could be how he arrived at raisins/liaisons.

Though I do like the line and find it clever. In my experience, the actress singing it usually shows a self awareness about the awkwardness of the rhyme and pronounces it laisins in order to force the rhyme. It's ususally done in a humorous way similar to the line in Wicked's "Popular". Galinda pronounces it pop-u-ler throughout the song, but comes to a point where it has to rhyme with "are" so she sings pop-u-ler then corrects herself to "lar"

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 8:13am

Like the way Stritch did it. Oy.

Really, her whole performance. Oy.

[artscallion]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 8:28am

Don't get me started on that.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/31/13 at 12:06pm

This just popped up, and I had heard it but never seen it.

If you've never seen or heard Blossom Dearie before, she was a jazz pianist with a tiny little voice. Decidedly an acquired taste, like a rare liqueur that must only be sipped.


Blossom Dearie sings 'The Ladies Who Lunch'