Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd': The Case for the Defence

Author(s): Carey Blyton

Source: Tempo, New Series, No. 149 (Jun., 1984), pp. 19-26
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/945080 .
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SONDHEIM'S 'SWEENEY TODD'
The Case for the Defence
Carey Blyton
As BOTH LYRICIST AND
COMPOSER,
Stephen
Sondheim has
proved
to be the most
original
and innovative force on
Broadway
since the late
I950's,
when he first
attracted attention as the
lyricist
for some of the
songs
in Leonard Bernstein's West
Side
Story (1957), including
'Maria' and
'Tonight'.
Few
composers
for the musical
stage
have such a record of success as Sondheim. In addition to these
lyrics
for
Bernstein,
he also wrote all the
lyrics
forJule
Styne's Gypsy (1959); then,
as
composer
as well as
lyricist,
he wrote a number of musicals over the next two decades: A
Funny
Thing Happened
on the
Way
to the Forum
(1962), Anyone
Can Whistle
(1964), Company
(1970),
Follies
(197I),
A Little
Night
Music
(I973),
Pacific
Overtures
(1976), Sweeney
Todd
(1979),
and
Merrily
We Roll
Along (198I).
From
Anyone
Can Whistle
onwards,
Sondheim has
pushed
the frontiers of the
Broadway
musical further and further
outwards,
exploring harmonically
and
structurally
in a series of
highly original
works,
of which
Sweeney
Todd is the most
remarkable. After its
opening
in New
York,
many
of the audience considered the
work to be an
opera,
not a musical. Sondheim himself had said beforehand: 'I had
wanted to write a ballad
opera,
and here it
is,
with 26 numbers'. Harold
Prince,
the
producer
with whom Sondheim has worked
fruitfully
for the
past
14 years,
had
referred to the work as 'music theatre'. The
printed programme
called the
piece
a
'musical thriller'. After detailed
study, perhaps
all one can
say
is that is is not a musical
in the
generally accepted meaning
of the
word,
i.e. a
Broadway
'show'.
The work is based on a
play by
the British
playwright Christopher
Bond,
adapted by Hugh
Wheeler. Between
them,
they
made a
powerful
and dramatic
story
out of what had hitherto
been,
in numerous
previous
versions,
no more than a Grand
Guignol
melodrama with cardboard characters.
Sweeney
Todd is
given
a
strong
reason for his
appalling
anti-social activities:
revenge. Transported
for life
by
a
wily
and devious
Judge Turpin,
who lusts after Todd's beautiful
young
wife
Lucy,
he
manages
to
escape
from down-under and returns
swearing vengeance
for all his
wrongs
at the hands of the
judge
and his
obsequious
beadle,
Bamford.
Todd takes
up
residence once more in the
barbershop
above Mrs. Lovett's
pie-shop
in Fleet Street. Mrs.
Lovett,
a widow who still remembers the 'beautiful
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TEMPO
barber' with more than a little
affection,
does not
recognize
Todd at
first,
but when she
does
so,
she tells him that his
wife,
Lucy,
is
dead,
and that his beautiful
young
daughter, Johanna,
is now
living
with
Judge Turpin
as his ward. The
Judge
has
developed
an
all-consuming
lust for the
daughter.
Romantic interest is
provided by
a
young
sailor,
Anthony,
who has saved Todd from
drowning
when their
ship
was
wrecked on its return to
England
from Australia. Todd's
plan
is
quite simple:
he
intends to kill
theJudge
and the Beadle for the
wrongs they
have done to him and his
family.
But because
things
do not
go according
to
plan straightaway,
Todd is forced
to
practise
on 'less honourable throats'. . . and his desire for
revenge
and his madness
grow.
So the
story
is
simple
and
powerful,
with excellent dramatic
shape,
and
many
opportunities
for a
composer
to write
very many
different kinds of music: Sondheim
rises without fail to each
challenge
of the
libretto, and,
as one writer
put
it: '
"Sweeny
Todd" rushes hell-bent
through mounting
dissonances to a
shattering
finish.'1
As the work
begins,
with its
harshly
dissonant music
'played'
on
stage by
a small
pipe organ (though actually
in the
pit by
a Hammond
organ),
and as
Sweeney
Todd
makes an
unnerving
and sudden
appearance
from out of his own
open grave,
we
know we are not in for some
cosy
family
entertainment
along
the lines of The
King
and
I or The Sound
of
Music. The chorus
sings
the violent and
harmonically
disorientated
'Ballad of
Sweeney
Todd'
(whose
second half is based on the 'Dies
Irae'),
and then the
events of Todd's dark and sinister life are re-enacted before our
eyes
(and
ears).
The
work's
uncompromising
drama,
which deals with the less attractive
aspects
of the
human
psyche-deceit,
lust, violence, murder,
etc.-places
it
unequivocally
in the
same area as the Brecht/Weill collaborations like
Mahagonny
and The Seven
Deadly
Sins.
Virtually
all the
apparently conflicting descriptions-ballad opera, opera,
music
theatre-seem
justified:
there are
very
few lines of the libretto which are not
sung
or
spoken
over musical
accompaniment.
Those lines which are
spoken
without
any
music,
like Mrs. Lovett's
hoarse,
whispered:
'So it is
you, Benjamin
Barker!',
when
she
finally recognizes
Todd,
are
electrifyingly
effective-Sondheim
clearly
knows the
dramatic effectiveness of silence. The chorus is used both in the normal 'musical'
manner
(here,
as London
townspeople)
and-a
purely operatic
device-as a Greek
chorus,
commenting
on the action at intervals
throughout
the work: the
all-important
'Ballad of
Sweeney
Todd'
occurs,
either in full or in
part,
seven
times,
with
differing
words: its first
appearance gives
the whole tenor of the
ensuing
work: 'Attend the tale
of
Sweeney
Todd/His
skin was
pale
and his
eye
was
odd/He shaved the faces of
gentlemen/Who
never thereafter were heard of
again'.
From a
purely
musical
point
of
view,
the most
interesting thing
about
Sweeney
Todd is that Sondheim reveals in it that he is
very
much aware of what has been
going
on in 'serious' music since the turn of the
century.
His harmonic
language
is
frequently
highly
dissonant,
and
many passages
show
clearly
identifiable models. The
handling
of the choral lines
(for
three
tenors),
in the
3rd
statement of'The Ballad of
Sweeney
Todd',
is
very
reminiscent of the
writing
for male voices in 'The
Family'
sections of Weill's The Seven
Deadly
Sins. Other
parts
remind one of Britten's vocal
writing
in
early
works like Let's Make an
Opera.
Orchestral
passages
owe a debt here
and there to such diverse
composers
as
Stravinsky ('No
Place like
London', b.256
et
seq.),
Bliss
('Green
Finch and Linnet
Bird'-especially
bb.
50-54),
and Sousa
(the
piccolo counterpoints
in 'Pirelli's Miracle
Elixir'),
to name
just
a few.
1
TV
Times, 31 July
1980.
20
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'SWEENEY TODD'
However,
like all
good composers,
Sondheim has taken what he
requires
for his
own
expressive
ends from the sound-worlds of other
composers,
and
adapted
them in
such a
way
that
they
end
up
as
sounding highly original:
echt-Sondheim,
in fact.
Any
hint of
plagiarism
is
finally dispelled by Jonathan
Tunick's
always
effective and
imaginative
orchestrations,
arrived at after consultation with the
composer.
These use
a
28-piece
orchestra
comprising
I.I.
I.I. (with
the usual
doublings)-
I.2.3.o-Perc.-Harp-Organ--4.4.2.2.I,
an ensemble
giving
an infinite
variety
of
timbres and orchestral
'weights'.
The libretto afforded Sondheim a number of
opportunities
for
pastiche,
which he
seized to
great
effect.
(He
had
already
shown a real flair for
pastiche
in
previous
works,
c.f. the brilliant G & S
'patter song', sung by
the British
Admiral,
in
Pacific Overtures.)
The 'Parlor
Songs', sung by
Beadle
Bamford,
accompanying
himself on the
harmonium,
are
amusing copies of'ye
olde
Englishe
ballad',
and the
I8th-century
minuet in 'Poor
Thing'
is
effective,
despite
its
brevity.
The musical
digs
at Verdi and
Puccini in 'Pirelli's Miracle
Elixir',
a virtuoso
song
for a
very high
Italian
tenor,
are
both clever and
witty.
These
pastiches give
further evidence of Sondheim's awareness
of music outside that of the
Broadway
musical and its traditions.
Perhaps
of the
greatest
interest to musicians is the actual harmonic
language
that
Sondheim
employs
at certain
times,
often
harshly
dissonant, and,
at
times,
clearly
bitonal. Ex.
I,
taken from 'The Ballad of
Sweeney
Todd'
(first statement),
shows how
Sondheim achieves the musical
equivalent
of Todd's cut-throat razor about its
grisly
business
'floating
across the throats of
hypocrites':
Ex. I
Ad
Lh
3
nJr
slJ ie
d
ntrM
1
And what if none of their
souls were saved?
They
went to their Mak- er im -
pec-ca-bly
shavedd
(
*
^- -
E
,
qv
I I
.)
VLS
r T
r
r~ I 7 r r rrr rr r rrrr- r
r -r
rfr
%47-
'
._L--
-4
.
Ps
4
4
' '~
Ex.
2,
from the same
song,
is a
good example
of some of the choral
writing,
which would no doubt
stump many
a chorus
singer
in a
repertoire
musical,
while
Ex.
3
is an
example
of
bitonality resulting
in a texture-and an emotional
impact-reminiscent
of
parts
of
Berg's
Wozzeck.
Sondheim's vocal
writing
is
wonderfully
fluid,
the
underlaying following
the
stresses and internal
rhythms
of the words
very closely.
A
good example (Ex. 4)
comes from 'No Place like
London',
where the metre
changes restlessly:
21
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TEMPO
Ex. 2
(J.
=c120)
1 f
'~"
k
130
f,- 1 -1.
1: 4 ) qS. : l
|Swee -
ney!
Swee -
ney!
Swee -
B. y ) F
P
*
|
f
if
|
f-
-
f'
|
ff;'
f _ ff
ft- f
'' > >> >>> >> >>>>i
W.W., Tpts.
>- Ss.
Hn.,Vlns.,Vlas.
Tpts.| j:t
__
+ Organ
'
s
t
tA.
~
#_ I
-
_
ney!
iB..y
'r-- T-- - -
I P
\lll#
nlf ^
if
rfi frrrfrrr
^'
,
J
III
I
I I> I> I> > > IL> I I> > I> I I
i a M Bsn. lc.(pizz.) *,i t._
,
>
-
( gpff ~r c.* '`q
IF
4* * kJ. 9)
(Strs.)
>
; >
Ex.
3
Strs.
Organ
Xylo.
Tpts.
Hn.
Presto (= 11-2).
Tpts.
^ ^^^^^^^^(^^1^_^
(Hn.)
'
V '
I
L- ,
_
W
f
L6
L. t , L , L_ . L _
k
, L._ . L
f
Organ
Ped.
Ex. 4
F2151 SWEENEY TODD
6
Meno mosso,^ mp
t4^^c?~1 TIi-uT-]
IIjI
.
i
IL?8
-W
;
There was a bar-ber and his wife, And she was beau-
ti-ful,_
20
'- ih b r ad hs wif, Ie ws hs ren ad If A fool-ish bar-ber and his wife, She was his rea-son and his life,
22
Tb.?
s.(-R)
,
p , VcI rF
I af
I
r V
I
m)fP
6J
-
J b
J
6 6
a)
> >
-I,
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'SWEENEY TODD' 23
B^ 1
$ .
KJ?
g!.
I$r
r
i F,i?
. 6-
P
1t
And she was
beau-ti-ful,_ And she was vir
-
tu-ous,_
J
2251J
And he was na- ive.
Similar
examples
of
constantly shifting
metres occur it
many songs,
most
notably
in Mrs. Lovett's 'Worst Pies in
London',
where the dislocations in the metre
give emphasis
to her
attempts
to swat and
thump
the flies that
plague
her as she kneads
dough:
4/4 2/4 4/4 3/4 5/4 3/4 4/4 3/4 5/4 3/4 5/4 4/4
etc. We are a
long way away
from the sound of hills alive with music.
Occasionally,
the American roots of
Sondheim's music become
apparent
in the
syncopations
in such
songs
as
Anthony's
'Ah,
Miss'
(note
the
rhythm
of the Charleston in the
accompaniment):
Ex.
5
a
tempo
Look at me look at me miss, oh look at me please oh, Fa vor me fa - vor me with
your
pa tempo
l)^-
t^
C^r- f
f
A! f_
glance.
Ah, miss,
6$
8
J-
r
r I
As his own
lyricist,
Sondheim is able to arrive at the
precise
words he
requires
to
marry
to the music he has in
mind,
and we are
constantly
reminded of his brilliant
way
with words
by many
felicitous and
witty
lines.
Perhaps
the most
outstanding, among
many
excellent
songs,
is 'A Little
Priest',
the
marvellously
black
ending
to Act
I,
where Mrs. Lovett is
tempting Sweeney
Todd to
sample
different
pies,
each flavoured
by
a different
profession:
TODD
Anything
that's lean.
MRS. LOVETT
Well, then,
if
you're
British and
loyal,
You
might enjoy Royal
Marine.
(TODD
makes a
face)
Anyway,
it's clean
Though,
of
course,
it tastes of wherever it's been.
And later:
MRS. LOVETT
Since marine doesn't
appeal
to
you,
how about rear admiral?
TODD
Too
Salty.
I
prefer general.
MRS. LOVETT
With or without his
privates?
'With' is extra.
TODD chortles)
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TEMPO
If
anything gives
full
weight
to the
description
of the work as an
opera,
it is the
way
in which the music is unified and
given
dramatic cohesion from
song
to
song,
and
from act to
act,
by
a host of technical means:
(I)
canon
(2)
the derivation of
accompanimental figures
in one
song
from the music of
another
(3)
the
interjection
of
previously
heard music into the
on-going, foreground
music
(4)
the use of orchestral
solos,
derived from
previously
heard
songs,
in the
accompaniment
of other
songs (the possibilities
for
irony
here are not
missed)
(5)
the use of the 'Dies Irae'
(within
'The Ballad of
Sweeney Todd')
in various
guises throughout
the whole work
(6)
the use of
previously
heard music with new
words,
sung
either
by
the same
character,
or
by
a different one
(7)
the use of
pregnant
melodic/harmonic
fragments
or
motifs,
which occur at
salient
points
in the drama
(with
all their associations from
previous
occasions)
(8) polyphonic
ensembles for the main
protagonists,
in a
truly operatic
fashion,
the voices
singing simultaneously fragments
of music
they
had
sung
previously
(9)
the use of the chimes of
Big
Ben
(the
'London
Connection') throughout
the
work, in various
(and
sometimes
highly dissonant)
harmonizations
(Io)
the use of an
ear-piercing factory
whistle at the
point
of most
(but
not
all)
the
murders: this was an idea of the
producer,
Harold
Prince,
and the use of this
at the start of the work is one of the most
genuinely shocking
moments in
the theatre
All in
all,
the work is so
tightly
knit and
unified,
both
musically
and
dramatically,
and
examples
of the above technical means are so
numerous,
that it would be
impossible,
within the
scope
of a short
article,
to list them all.
However,
a few
examples may give
some idea of the hand of a master craftsman of the theatre at work.
When
Anthony
asks the
Beggar
Woman who the
young
woman is that lives in
Judge Turpin's
house,
we
hear,
as an oboe solo marked
triste,
a minor variant of
Johanna's song,
'Green Finch and Linnet Bird'.
During Judge Turpin's song,
'Mea
Culpa'-a truly
horrendous musical
representation
of an old man's lust for a
young
woman-we hear the minuet
again.
This first
appeared during
Mrs. Lovett's account of
Judge Turpin's rape
of Todd's
young
wife,
Lucy,
at the masked
ball, just after Mrs. Lovett had
recognized
the
'stranger' (Todd). ('Of
course when she
goes
there,
poor thing, poor thing/They're
having
this ball all in
masks').
The minuet is in fact a clue to the
Beggar
Woman's
identity, being
the tune of her
raunchy song
in the
opening
scene,
when she offers
herself for
money
to Todd and
Anthony.
Sweeney
Todd's
'My
Friends',
sung
to his cut-throat razors
nestling
in their
velvet-lined
box,
which Mrs. Lovett has
kept
from the old
days-possibly
the most
chilling
'love
song'
ever written-is heard
again during
the duet between
Sweeney
Todd and
Judge Turpin, 'Pretty
Women'. The main motif of
'My
Friends' is an
inversion of the
figure
that
accompanies
'The Ballad of
Sweeney
Todd',
and in this
song,
Todd's
promise
to his 'friends'
('Friends,
you
shall
drip
rubies. You'll soon
drip
precious rubies')
seems near to fulfilment.
During
this same
song,
Todd hums a
variant of the Beadle's
song,
'Ladies in Their
Sensitivities',
which he
picks up
from the
24
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'SWEENEY TODD'
Judge
as he
prepares
to shave
him,
while a derivative of this same
song
is heard in the
accompaniment
as a
triplet figure
in the woodwind.
Johanna's
music from 'He means
to
marry
me on
Monday'
also makes a
fleeting appearance.
The now famous
'Epiphany', sung by
Todd,
contains
many
references to
previously
heard material: Mrs. Lovett's
'Wait',
Todd's own 'There's a hole in the
world like a
great
black
pit',
and the 'Dies
Irae',
among
others. This
song
also has the
Ivesian effect of a full orchestral tutti
suddenly stopping
to leave a
'foreign' harmony,
pianissimo,
held on
by
the
high strings (cf
Ives's Decoration
Day).
The
following
two
melodic/harmonic motifs are also
important,
and occur at
various times
throughout
the work
(Exx.
6 and
7):
Ex.6
Ex.
7
(Sweeney
Todd's 'madness
motif,
heard whenever he is either
brooding
or
murderously
inclined. It is also
the melodic and harmonic basis of such
passages
as the
conspiracy during
'God,
That's
Good!')
Act II is shorter than Act I
(8
numbers
compared
to
I8):
it is also denser and more
musically
unified than Act
I,
with
many fragments
from
previously
heard music
making fleeting appearances, frequently
in
contrapuntal
combinations with
themselves,
or with new material.
Perhaps
the most
interesting-and
the most
'contemporary'-is
the 'Final
Scene',
where Mrs. Lovett
sings,
with new
words,
music
from her Act I
song,
'Poor
Thing', against Sweeney
Todd's
slow-moving
lament,
sung
after he realizes that the
'Beggar
Woman' he has
just
killed is in fact
Lucy,
his
wife,
whom he
thought
had died
long ago. (The
lament is in fact derived from the
'Epiphany';
its
original genesis going right
back to the
Beggar
Woman's motif when
she asks tor 'Alms!' at the
beginning
of the
work.) (Ex. 8)-there
are shades
here,
perhaps,
of Britten's Church
Parables,
with the
pitting together
of different
tempi.
Ex.8
A
(Largo
(J= 40))
MRS. LOVETT
(No, no, not) lied at all..
No,
I ne- ver lied. Said she took the poi
A~l
,v.
i~~~~~i!wSWEENEY
TODD
Lu
-
cy...
I(8)J-7
L;J
JT
-a
j J i
-son, she did, Ne - ver said that she died. Poor
thing.
l
':~(,
)-
.o,I've cme
I've come
25
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
26 TEMPO
I P4(R)v
I
she lived but it left her weak in the head. All she did for months was
just
lie there in bed.
IAAw
.
.1. - -. I
home a
gain.
2W% J
L -tl-
*18 \r J J m
J1lh al'Rli .
1
Shouldve been in
hos-pi
-
tal, wound
up
in Bed-lam in-stead. Poor
thing.
Bet-ter
you
should
|^,[~bl2.
-- c O.
n.
-
-#.
Lu -
cy
Oh,
my
(God!)
Sweeney
Todd ran for
only
about five months in its London
production
at the
Theatre
Royal, Drury
Lane. A number of reasons have been
given
for this: it was too
'English'
a
story
for the
English
to
accept
from
Americans;
the
story
was
simply
too
grisly
for
comfort;
there were not
enough
'hummable tunes' in the
piece. Perhaps
the
reason is
simpler
and,
paradoxically,
not obvious: it was heard
by
the
wrong
audience.
The work is an
opera,
and,
as
such,
it did
extraordinarily
well to run as
long
as it
did-most
operas
have to be content with
just
a few
performances
in
any
one season
(and
few new ones
get revived).
Because it is an
opera,
and a
very powerful
and 'difficult' one at
that,
it needs to be
presented by
an
opera company
like the
English
National
Opera
or the Welsh
National
Opera. Opera
audiences are
clearly prepared
to
accept
much
'tougher'
stories for musical treatments than those which
normally support
musicals: one
only
has to think of Salome and Wozzeck to realize this. A
really good production
of
Sweeney
Todd
by
a
professional opera company
would
give
the work the chance in
England
that it
clearly
deserves.
Sweeney
Todd is available as follows:
2
I2"
LPs
(or
double
cassette)
from That's
Entertainment, 43
The
Market,
Covent
Garden,
London
WC2,
price ?15.99.
Vocal Score from
Chappell
& Co.
Ltd., 129
Park
Street,
London
WI,
price ?45 (Vocal
Selection:
?6.95).
Libretto
(cased)
from Samuel French
Ltd.,
26
Southampton
Street,
London
WC2,
price ?7.50.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Mr.
Skip Humphries,
Head of Music
Services,
London Weekend Television
Ltd.,
for the loan of the
piano
conductor score of this work used in the
preparation
of the edition of LWT's
'South Bank Show' devoted to
Sweeney
Todd-The Demon Barber
of
Fleet
Street,
transmitted on
28/7/1980.
All music
quoted
is ?
1979
Revelation Music
Publishing Corp.
and
Rilting
Music Inc. A
Tommy
Valando
Publication.
Reprinted by special permission.
This content downloaded from 203.78.9.149 on Thu, 22 May 2014 13:50:47 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions