Stephen Sondheim: A Life
By Meryle Secrest
Alfred A. Knopf, $30
ISBN 0679448179

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For over four decades, Stephen Sondheim has been the most innovative composer-lyricist in the American musical theater. He first gained renown as the lyricist for West Side Story in 1956. Since then, he has not only written words and music for such Broadway hits as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, but he has led the way in redefining the musical show, experimenting with daring themes and approaches. While it is true that only one of his songs, "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music, has become a major popular hit, audiences throughout the world have hailed him as the premier musical dramatist of his time.

How did it happen? In her insightful and readable Stephen Sondheim: A Life, noted biographer Meryle Secrest explores the man and his achievements. Drawing on extensive interviews with Sondheim, his friends, and colleagues, she has brought vividly to life a person who says he is difficult to describe because "I just don't have an awful lot of colors."

Although he received little attention or affection from his parents, their divorce shattered his world. His intense interest in music, games, and conundrum dates from that moment of their divorce when, as Sondheim said "nothing made sense anymore." Secrest writes, "If the puzzle was the metaphor, art was the solution, because of its equally crucial emphasis upon structure and form. Music became charged with meaning only when it could make order out of chaos, and this goal became the leitmotif of his life."

From early on, Sondheim was determined to be "the best on Broadway." He was fortunate to develop relationships with Oscar Hammerstein, Arthur Laurents, and, most importantly, producer-director Hal Prince, who helped him achieve his goal.

Sondheim is remarkably honest and forthright, a trait regarded as one of his most admirable by friends. He discusses his "very late blooming" homosexuality, as well as his 25 years of psychoanalysis with a doctor whose particular interest was the relationship between creativity and neurosis.

The biographer traces the musical influences on Sondheim's work and also shows how his life influenced his art. It seemed, Secrest writes, "his ability to create a world of his own imaginings had saved him when life was at its bleakest. If his themes were somber--the essential loneliness of the human condition and the death of illusion--in the end it was his ability to metamorphose his private anguish into something outside of himself that had saved him."

This excellent, absorbing biography of an extraordinarily talented, true American original should be of interest to a very large audience.

Roger Bishop is a monthly contributor to BookPage.