Made of flecks of light and dark

Imagine one person writing musicals and never really repeating ideas.  A musical based on a Bergman film, and another on a penny-dreadful legend, then a painter on the edge of the Impressionists' circle, plus a music box of presidential assassins, and a blending of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and Perrault with all the gory parts intact - and that would be less than half of the output of this one person. All shows which can be watched repeatedly, because they are so dense with ideas, that each renewed viewing would reveal something else missed.

I was introduced to the music of Stephen Sondheim in a gentle and, at the time, comprehensive way, via an award-winning show featuring his songs up until the mid-1970s entitled Side by Side by Sondheim.  It featured a dazzling catalogue of his work in partnership with New York giants such as Leonard Bernstein and Sammy Cohn, and songs written on his own, mostly for musicals, with the occasional cabaret number or something heard faintly in a movie soundtrack.  All relentlessly clever: complicated rhyme schemes, mordant, wicked wit, and heartbreak.

And this was before he produced several more decades of thought-provoking theatre, with songs that are fiendishly difficult to sing without being difficult to hear.

It was a week ago Friday when I heard the news about his death, and like others, I was suspended in disbelief, even though the man was 91.  It was about 3 in the afternoon, and I waited for confirmation from other news sites -- even though the first word came from the New York Times.

A tune played relentlessly in my head, and the next day, it became evident that I was not alone.  In Times Square, with huge screens flashing advertisements behind them, a hastily assembled choir made up of members of current Broadway shows sang the song.  In Central Park, another massed choir gathered by the Bethesda Angel and sang the song.

The video version  I'm choosing is from a BBC Proms concert from 2010, celebrating Sondheim's 80th year.  The song is "Sunday" from my favourite Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George.  It got sung a lot in 2010, and will probably be sung repeatedly in the coming year. 

 And I will hear something different, every time.