Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who reshaped the American musical theatre with his intelligent, intricately rhymed lyrics, has died, his representative confirmed to CBS News.
Sondheim influenced several generations of theatre songwriters, particularly with such landmark musicals as “Company,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd,” which are considered among his best work. His most famous ballad, “Send in the Clowns,” has been recorded hundreds of times, including by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins.
The artist refused to repeat himself, finding inspiration for his shows in such diverse subjects as an Ingmar Bergman movie (“A Little Night Music”), the opening of Japan to the West (“Pacific Overtures”), French painter Georges Seurat (“Sunday in the Park With George”), Grimm’s fairy tales (“Into the Woods”) and even the killers of American presidents (“Assassins”), among others.
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“The theater 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,” producer Cameron Mackintosh wrote in tribute.
A film version of “West Side Story,” its second adaptation to the big screen, is set to hit theaters on December 10. A revival of his 1970 musical “Company” is set to open December 9 after being postponed from March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. And Sondheim had a voice-only cameo in Lin Manuel Miranda’s film version of “Tick, Tick … Boom,” released earlier this month, in which he is played by Bradley Whitford.
Six of Sondheim’s musicals won Tony Awards for best score, and he also received a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday in the Park”), an Academy Award (for the song “Sooner or Later” from the film “Dick Tracy”), five Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
