Stephen Sondheim dies aged 91

Stephen Sondheim pushed the notion of the ‘musical’ to a darker place and was never afraid to tackle unusual topics, with Company, Follies and Sweeney Todd considered some of his best work. In fact, he was credited with reinventing the musical and scored his first big hit with West Side Story, a modern take on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Last week, the musical theatre giant passed away, aged 91, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Sondheim received eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Lawrence Olivier Award and in 2015, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Of course, there’s also a theatre named after him on both Broadway and London’s West End.

Born into a Jewish family in New York, Sondheim credited his interest in theatre to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine, and counted Oscar Hammerstein II as a surrogate father figure, who influenced him profoundly and nourished his love of theatre.

Sondheim has said that one of the most important lessons he learnt from Hammerstein was that when writing lyrics, “the whole point is to underwrite, not overwrite, because music is so rich an art itself”.

Sondheim found joy in language, often playing word games with his many audiences, and while many of his lyrics showed a dramatic edge, he enjoyed having fun with words. “The opposite of left is right, the opposite of right is wrong, so anyone who is left is wrong, right?” he wrote in Anyone Can Whistle.

Tributes have flowed from the entertainment industry and beyond, with many saying his influence will continue to reach far and wide, with Andrew Lloyd Webber tweeting, “Farewell Steve, the musical theatre giant of our times, an inspiration not just to two but to three generations. Your contribution to theatre will never be equalled.”

The Tony Awards official Twitter account said: “he left us with so many words, but none enough for this post. Goodbye old pal. Thank you, Stephen Sondheim, for so much brilliance in the theatre and sharing your music with us all.”

Producer Cameron Mackintosh wrote: “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.”

“Art is infinite. It has no beginning and no end,” Sonheim once said. Indeed, his art is infinite, having shaped generations of musicals already and with many more to come.