top of page

About Stephen Sondheim Personally

 

Sondheim grew up as socioeconomically upper-middle class. His father had to remain in the garment district making dresses to sustain their lifestyle, but they had enough money to send Sondheim to a private boarding school and college. He also had enough money to learn how to play the piano from a very young age. His family strongly encouraged arts opportunities, and he felt a pull to music due to his father also being musically inclined. His father was a self-taught, mediocre pianist who inspired Sondheim. After his parents' divorce and the loss of his father, Sondheim was left to figure out his taste in music on his own. He never received any religious upbringing but still found himself modest, or at least preferred his art as such in his early years as marked by his shock and disdain towards the 1968 musical Hair. It seems as though he has abandoned his previous modesty in the arts with his 1994 musical Passion. Sondheim does not speak of spirituality or politics because his whole life has been devoted to art, so not much else is known of his personal life. [4,5,6]

Sondheim on discovering who he is as a playwright and his process when asked about Assassins:

          "I've discovered over a period of years that essentially I'm a playwright who writes with song, and that playwrights are actors. And what I do is act. So what I'll do [later today] is: I'll go upstairs, and I'll get back into the character of Wilson Mizner, and I'll start singing to myself. It'ss take me a while to make that transition, because it's been a couple of days since I've been Wilson, but I'll get upstairs, and I'll be Wilson " (1). [6]

bottom of page