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The hand of fate dealt Stephen Sondheim a lonely, neglected childhood, but not without compensating.
Sondheim, a shy, artistic child, found a surrogate family in the home of his friend Jimmy Hammerstein, whose father was Oscar Hammerstein II — half of the immortal Rodgers and Hammerstein songwriting team.
So began a famous and fruitful apprenticeship in which Hammerstein bluntly assessed the adolescent Sondheim's first songwriting attempts as hopeless, then spent years showing him the secrets of musical theater.
The insight provided by that bit of personal history helps explain why Sondheim — perhaps the most important musical theater artist of the past half-century — will be in Salt Lake City on Tuesday for an onstage conversation at Kingsbury Hall. He's passing on what he knows. And though the show is open to the public, Sondheim is especially interested in talking to the theater students in the audience.
"Teaching is a sacred profession to me, and I'll take any chance I get to speak about my craft," Sondheim said, noting that he invariably learns something from hearing experts talk about their work, no matter how distantly related to his own.
"I'm fascinated to read about how to raise cattle," he said, "how it's done — how any craft is practiced by someone who knows the craft."
It's the reason he wrote the book Finishing the Hat, a collection of lyrics written between 1954 and 1981, annotated with explanations and anecdotes. "I wrote the book not just to collect lyrics, but to talk about the craft of them almost like a textbook — though I hope not as dry as a textbook," he said.
No worries there. Sondheim's first attempt at prose is an auspicious one; the book is a lively read for anyone interested in the stage. Its title is borrowed from a song in "Sunday in the Park With George" that might have been written about Sondheim himself, though it wasn't.
The song talks about what happens when you trance out, when you are writing or painting or composing, or anything, and you just lose the world. "It's about the obsession of an artist with his work," Sondheim said.
"It became a metaphor for writing, for the creative act that excludes the outside world," he said. "Anybody who's ever created anything knows what this syndrome is. It's a song I'm particularly fond of."
He has many to choose from — more than 500 are copyrighted. And Sondheim is hard at work on a follow-up book comprising lyrics written from 1982 onward, titled Look, I Made a Hat, an 80-year-old artist's metaphor for completion of his canon.
That's a lot of talk about lyrics coming from a man who maintains that he prefers composing music.
"Music is much more fun to write," Sondheim said. "Lyrics are extremely difficult. It's a lot of sweat work, and quite often unsatisfactory because you never get it quite right.
"If you are stuck while writing a piece of music, at least you can wander over the piano keys and have a good time. There are so many infinite ways to blend notes, make melodies and make harmonies. But though the English language is very flexible, it is not infinitely flexible. If you need a three-syllable word that means 'car,' how many choices do you have?"
Sondheim's appearance at Kingsbury Hall, which is also 80 this year, will be in the form of an onstage discussion with Nancy Melich, former Salt Lake Tribune theater critic and Utah Shakespeare Festival's literary seminar director.
Melich said the chance to interview Sondheim was an unfulfilled wish during her years covering theater. "He has wonderfully engaging stories about the wide variety of people he has known," Melich said. "My biggest challenge will be to occasionally look out at the audience and remember they are present — that it's not just the two of us."
Before the public discussion, selected students from the University of Utah's music and theater departments will have a private audience with Sondheim. At the evening's end, singers from the U.'s opera program will serenade the master craftsman with "Children Will Listen," just the right song from Sondheim's "Into the Woods."
Isn't it rich?
Stephen Sondheim, widely considered the most important musical theater figure of the past half-century, will speak of his career, creative process and life in the theater during an onstage conversation with Nancy Melich, former Tribune theater critic who is the literary seminar director at Utah Shakespeare Festival.
When • Tuesday, Feb. 1, at 7:30 p.m.
Where • Kingsbury Hall, 1575 E. Presidents Circle, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $75 for VIP seating and reception; $20.50-$39.50 for adults; $3.50-$20.50 for U. students with ID. Call 801-581-7100 or visit http://www.kingsburyhall.org.