I thank Stephen Sondheim for making his Williams College student reports available to me. I thank Linda Hall, archives assistant at Williams College, for her inestimable help in researching this article.Google Scholar

1 Sondheim went on to enrol in Music 104 in spring semester 1950, completing Music 103, Music 104 and the Honors programme in Music successfully. Information about Robert Barrow in this article comes from papers and press releases contained in the Robert George Barrow file of the Williams College archives.Google Scholar

2 Williams College Bulletin (March 1956), 146.Google Scholar

3 This description appeared in the Williams College Bulletin from 1937 to 1946, with the exception of 1943 and 1944.Google Scholar

4 See Forte, Allen, ‘Paul Hindemith's Contribution to Music Theory in the United States’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 27 (1998), 62–79 (pp. 69–70).Google Scholar

5 Williams College Bulletin (December 1943), 94; (December 1944), 51.Google Scholar

6 Sondheim: ‘I liked playing the piano part of the first movement of the Rachmaninoff C minor [concerto, op. 18], which I played in high school, toured, and gave recitals in Pennsylvania.’ He also played Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy and Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, the latter ‘entirely for my own pleasure'. Personal correspondence, 20 November 2001.Google Scholar

7 Not until the 1967–8 Bulletin did the following appear: ‘It is expected that music majors will participate in at least one department sponsored performance group during their junior and senior years’ (p. 153). New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner may reminisce about singing with Sondheim in the Williams College Glee Club, but Sondheim declares that he never sang in the Glee Club, nor was he required to participate in any organized music ensemble while he was a music major at Williams.Google Scholar

8 Sondheim: ‘As for the Piano Sonata … it's never been performed. And of course I knew how difficult it was – I was writing theoretically rather than practically.‘ Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.Google Scholar

9 Personal correspondence with Sondheim, 19 January 2001, and with Linda Hall, 2 February 2001.Google Scholar

10 See my review of the composition and Sheffer's arrangement, ‘The Concertino: When the Music Got Lost’, Sondheim Review, 8/1 (summer 2001), 33. In his programme notes Sheffer mistakenly identified the Concertino as Sondheim's senior thesis. More recently (12 April 2002), the presenter of a US National Public Radio broadcast introduced a recording of Sheffer's performance with the statement that ‘when [Sondheim] was in college, he wrote a sonata for two pianos as his senior thesis’.Google Scholar

11 This description of the sketch is based on an observation of a photocopy of the sketch and corroboration from Sondheim.Google Scholar

12 I acknowledge the cooperation of the copyright-holder in allowing me to quote, here and in Examples 3–6, 8, 10, 11, 13–18, 20–7, 29–31 and 33, from the piano sonata by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © (renewed) by Rilting Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.Google Scholar

13 Stephen Sondheim, ‘Notes and Comment on Aaron Copland with Special Reference to his Suite, Music for the Theatre’ (unpublished paper, 1950), 5. This paper is now housed at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin (hereafter ‘Wisconsin'). See also Steve Swayne, ‘Music for the Theatre, the Young Copland, and the Younger Sondheim’, American Music, 20/1 (spring 2002), 80–101.Google Scholar

14 For an analysis and history of Music for the Theatre, see Starr, Larry, ‘The Voice of Solitary Contemplation: Copland's Music for the Theatre Viewed as a Journey of Self-Discovery’, American Music (forthcoming), and Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (Urbana and Chicago, 2000), 128–34.Google Scholar

15 The best and most widely available analysis of Sweeney Todd is found in Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey (Oxford, 1990), 319–54. Sondheim had engaged in motivic writing prior to Sweeney Todd, as can be clearly seen in Anyone Can Whistle (1964). But when asked whether he was a ‘motivic-oriented composer, one who builds a melody and an entire score out of small and motivic components’, Sondheim responded: ‘I started to put my toe in the water … with Pacific Overtures. Then, it sprang full flower in Sweeney.’ See Swayne, Steven Robert, ‘Hearing Sondheim's Voices’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 344; pp. 331–49 reproduce the author's 1998 interview with Stephen Sondheim.Google Scholar

16 Sondheim: ‘I never studied Prokofiev's piano sonatas and I didn't become familiar with them until after college. The only Prokofiev pieces I might have been in contact with as part of my piano playing career [was] when I was 15–16 years old. I have a memory of the Visions Fugitives, but that [and] the Love for Three Oranges “March,” which I played on the piano, are the only Prokofiev I think I ever came into immediate contact with.’ Personal correspondence, 21 March 2001. In this context, ‘study’ suggests preparation for public performance.Google Scholar

17 See note 16. The similarities between Sondheim's second theme (first movement) and the second theme of Prokofiev's one-movement Sonata no. 3 in A minor, op. 28, are particularly suggestive. In the Prokofiev, the tenor line traces a descending–ascending tetrachord, 8–7–6–5 of the C major sonority in the first bar but 9–8–7–6 of the D minor sonority in the third bar. Like the Ravel and the Sondheim, the Prokofiev presents the second theme in the relative key (here, C major) and recapitulates it in the tonic key without shifting the pitch classes.Google Scholar

18 Although Prokofiev did not use the term martellato, there is percussive writing in the Visions fugitives, especially nos. 14 and 19. The term martellato appears three times in György Sándor's edition of Prokofiev's Third Sonata – twice in the development and once in the coda – but this edition did not appear until 1966, and earlier versions of the sonata do not use the term.Google Scholar

19 Stephen Banfield, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor, 1993) (hereafter SBM), 99 and 292.Google Scholar

20 ‘Color and Light’, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim © 1984 Rilting Music, Inc. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.Google Scholar

21 Note how Sondheim demarcated the development and the recapitulation with a double barline; the same demarcation separates the exposition from the development.Google Scholar

22 See Banfield's discussion of ‘Someone in a Tree’ (SBM, 267–71), where he speaks of Sondheim's ‘additive’ and ‘permutational’ techniques in this song and, by implication, Sondheim's other extended songs (see p. 358 for other examples).Google Scholar

23 Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.Google Scholar

24 For the USA and Canada: ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Words and music by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright © 1971 by Range Road Music Inc., Quartet Music Inc. and Rilting Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Herald Square Music Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.Google Scholar

For the world excluding the USA and Canada: ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ – Stephen Sondheim. © 1971 Range Road Music Inc., Quartet Music Inc., Rilting Music, Inc. and Burthen Music Company, Inc. All rights administered by Herald Square Music Inc. Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.Google Scholar

25 See Table 4, note a, for an explanation of the bar-numbering in this movement.Google Scholar

26 See SBM, 22.Google Scholar

27 While it is most likely a contrapuntal happenstance rather than a deliberate derivation, the alto voice in this figure could be construed as an augmentation of the d material in the second theme of this movement.Google Scholar

28 Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.Google Scholar

29 SBM, 19. Banfield refers to the piece as a three-movement sonata, giving the impression of a completed work rather than a projected conception.Google Scholar

30 Alain Frogley, ‘Vaughan Williams, Ralph’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edn, online version), accessed 12 March 2001; David Neumeyer, The Music of Paul Hindemith (New Haven, CT, 1986), 4. Not everyone shared Hindemith's enthusiasm for Kurth's notion of linear counterpoint; Schoenberg dismissed it as ‘nonsense’ and ‘imitation-imitation’. See Schoenberg, Arnold, ‘Linear Counterpoint’ and ‘Linear Counterpoint: Linear Polyphony’, Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (Berkeley, 1975), 289–97.Google Scholar

31 David Neumeyer, ‘Hindemith and his American Critics: A Postmodern View’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 27 (1998), 218–34 (p. 229).Google Scholar

32 See Dorfman, Joseph, ‘Counterpoint-Sonata Form’, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 19 (1990), 55–67, where Dorfman discusses, among other pieces, Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata: ‘the introduction of counterpoint into all sections of the sonata movement – exposition, development and recapitulation – in effect created a new and unique structure, which we shall call counterpoint-sonata form’ (p. 55).Google Scholar

33 Sondheim: ‘You might be interested to know … that I played the score of Forum for Lenny and he criticized it because of its having “arbitrary” wrong notes, by which he meant (among other things) the tritones. You might also be interested to know that his use of the tritone throughout West Side Story hadn't occurred to him until I pointed it out.‘ Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.Google Scholar

34 ‘In memory of her son, the late Hubbard Hutchinson ‘17, Mrs Eva Hutchinson, of Columbus, Ohio, provided in her will for an annual scholarship of $3,000, to be awarded to that member of the graduating class at Williams “most talented in creative work in music, writing, or painting”. The award, which will be known as the Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Scholarship, is nearly twice the amount of any previous Williams scholarship and ranks with the highest in the United States. The winner of this award, who will be chosen by a committee consisting of the head of the fine arts department, a member of the English department, and the faculty member in charge of music, will receive the grant for the two years following his graduation, with no restrictions upon its use. “He shall be entirely free to study, travel, or loaf, as he may see fit,” the terms of the award state. In addition, he may apply for a year's renewal at the end of two years, which may be granted at the discretion of the college authorities.’ ‘New Scholarships’, Williams Alumni Review, 32/3 (February 1940), 76–7. The 1951 college prospectus lists Sondheim as the recipient of the 1950 scholarship.Google Scholar

35 See Tommasini, Anthony, ‘Finding Still More Life in a “Dead” Idiom’ [profile of Milton Babbitt], New York Times (16 October 1996), H39 and passim; Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life (New York, 1998), 85–7; SBM, 20–6; Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co. (2nd edn, updated, New York, 1989), 6–7.Google Scholar

36 In December 1997, I contacted the archivists at Williams College and asked for a photocopy of the sonata. I was informed that all theses required the permission of the author for photocopying and that the archivist would be in touch with me. The following month, I received a letter from Stephen Sondheim, dated 20 January 1998, informing me of his decision not to permit a photocopy of the sonata to be sent to me. When I was finally able to view the sonata at Williams in September 2000, it had a 3“ x 5” card appended to it: ‘Note: Stephen Sondheim has refused requests to duplicate his thesis and presumably will continue to do so. See 1/22/98 correspondence in “Theses” folder.‘Google Scholar

37 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 35. ‘Much praise went to co-authors Steve Sondheim and T. S. Horton for an extremely successful and entertaining production.‘ 1948 Gul (College Yearbook), 122.Google Scholar

38 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 35.Google Scholar

39 ‘The sophomores … came out with the news that they were sponsoring a dance on the weekend of March 19… . This was the same weekend that Cap & Bells was presenting its second production of the year, All That Glitters, a musical written by Steve Sondheim. Both the dance and the musical were resounding successes, and as everyone expected, there was a slight snowfall.‘ 1949 Gul (College Yearbook), 73.Google Scholar

40 Perrin, Edwin N., ‘All That Glitters Shiner for Cap and Bells, Cast’, Williams Record (23 March 1949), 4. I thank W. Anthony Sheppard at Williams College for making me aware of this review.Google Scholar

41 Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 79.Google Scholar

42 ‘The AMT Committee felt we ought to get familiar with the classics by going to see their Agamemnon, and Steve Sondheim was supervising a group of amateurs in the production of another Masse musical, following Maxwell Anderson's axe of his HIGH TOR adaptation.‘ 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 90.Google Scholar

43 ‘Cap and Bells sponsored and enginered [sic] Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, William Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands, and a student written musical, while the AMT Committee launched the season with Faust (Part I) in connection with the world wide celebration of Goethe's two hundredth birthday.‘ 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 127. See also Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 82–3.Google Scholar

44 In the 1950 Gul, Sondheim received votes from his peers in a number of categories: Most Versatile, 22 (3rd place); Most Brilliant, 14 (6th); Most Likely to Succeed, 29 (4th); Done Most for Williams, 4 (last); Most Original, 32 (2nd).Google Scholar

45 See SBM, 16–19, for discussion of the music of Phinney's Rainbow, All That Glitters and High Tor.Google Scholar

46 ‘Lovely’, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. © 1962 (renewed) Burthen Music Company, Inc. (ASCAP). All rights administered by Chappell & Co. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.Google Scholar

47 Stephen Sondheim, Bequest (unfinished novel), 10 (at Wisconsin).Google Scholar

48 Swayne, ‘Hearing Sondheim's Voices’, 345.Google Scholar

49 Ibid.Google Scholar

50 Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, Podvizhnoy kontrapunkt strogogo pis'ma [Convertible counterpoint in the strict style] (Leipzig and Moscow, 1909; Eng. trans., 1962).Google Scholar

51 As quoted in David Francis Butler Cannata, ‘Rachmaninoff's Changing View of Symphonic Structure’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1993), 33.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 51.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., 97; see also 98, 101, 104, 191 and 198–201.Google Scholar

54 See above, note 6.Google Scholar

55 Rachmaninov also used the term martellato in the Variations on a Theme of Chopin, op. 22 (see Variation 10), and in the third movement of the revised version of the Fourth Concerto, op. 40 (see four bars before Figure 47, where the term is spelt martelato). This information comes courtesy of David F. B. Cannata, who added that ‘the term is indeed unusual’ in Rachmaninov (private correspondence).Google Scholar

56 Anthony Tommasini, ‘A Little Classical Music from Sondheim's Youth’ [review of the Concertino], New York Times (17 May 2001), B5. For more on Sondheim's choice of The Four Temperaments as a significant work, see Swayne, Steve, ‘Sondheim's “Hindemith Phase”‘, unpublished paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Society of American Music, Lexington, Kentucky, 7 March 2002.Google Scholar

57 ‘Witch's Lament’, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. © 1998 Rilting Music Inc. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.Google Scholar

58 In speaking of influences on Hindemith, Forte mentions, among others, ‘August Halm and, perhaps more important, Ernst Kurth, whose psychological approach – as well as his notion of “linear counterpoint” – was very influential upon Hindemith's generation’ (p. 64). And of Hindemith, Aaron Copland said: ‘He wrote a kind of linear counterpoint that infused new life into ancient contrapuntal procedures.‘ Aaron Copland, Our New Music: Leading Composers in Europe and America (New York, 1941), 111, as quoted in Neumeyer, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 27 (1998), 227.Google Scholar

59 Stephen Banfield, ‘Sondheim, Stephen (Joshua)’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), 450–2 (p. 451). In discussing ‘Pretty Little Picture’ from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Banfield wrote: ‘This song is close to Milhaud's style, itself only a few steps away from that of one of Sondheim's primary mentors, Copland’ (SBM, 106).Google Scholar

60 Swayne, ‘Hearing Sondheim's Voices’, 331.Google Scholar

61 See above, note 13.Google Scholar

62 Personal correspondence, 21 March 2001.Google Scholar

63 Personal correspondence, 12 June 2001.Google Scholar

64 See Table 1. The comments are taken from the composition theses of Robert Kelton Goss, David Gregg Niven (both class of 1957) and Robert J. Stern (class of 1960), respectively.Google Scholar

65 Charles Michener and others, ‘Words and Music – by Sondheim’, Newsweek, 81/17 (23 April 1973), 61.Google Scholar

66 For the time being, Sondheim is maintaining his stand not to publish the sonata. ‘I fear the lost second movement will never be found and, despite your ingenuity in filling it out, it's simply not what I would have written. Please forgive me.‘ Personal correspondence, 26 June 2001.Google Scholar

67 Winton Dean, ‘Bizet, Georges’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), ii, 749–63 (p. 751).Google Scholar