Stephen Sondheim, the Jewish lyricist and composer who redefined the American musical through a monumental canon of influential and innovative theatrical works, has died at 91.<\/b>
\n( JTA) \u2014 Stephen Sondheim, the Jewish lyricist and composer who redefined the American musical through a monumental canon of influential and innovative theatrical works, has died at 91. He died suddenly Friday after enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with friends at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, The New York Times reported. Sondheim\u2019s stunning debut came writing the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein\u2019s score for \u201cWest Side Story\u201d in 1957, at age 27. Sondheim was born to Jewish parents in New York City but raised without any formal Jewish background, to the extent that he once said Bernstein had to explain to him how to pronounce the words \u201cYom Kippur.\u201d Sondheim\u2019s other well-known musicals include \u201cInto the Woods,\u201d \u201cSweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,\u201d \u201cFollies,\u201d \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d and \u201cSunday in the Park With George.\u201d Many of them were not smash hits immediately, as he avoided traditional Broadway formulas that would immediately draw audiences. Instead, he crafted musicals that dealt with subjects that had not received treatments on mainstream stages: loneliness, despair and the artistic temperament. There was the young man who is terrified of emotional commitment in \u201cCompany\u201d (1970); the family torn apart by emotional dishonesty in \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d (1973); the vicious serial killer in \u201cSweeney Todd\u201d (1979); and the artist in the midst of conceiving a masterpiece in \u201cSunday in the Park with George\u201d (1984). \u201cInto the Woods,\u201d a mashup of characters from multiple fairy tales, won several Tony Awards in 1987. Revivals staged years after often did better than original runs, but he is often cited as one of the 20th century\u2019s most influential theater writers. Sondheim \u2014 who did not entertain a romantic partnership until he was 60 \u2014 also often wrote about loneliness and whether the capacity to create a longterm relationship was possible. \u201cSend In the Clowns,\u201d a signature song from \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d that Frank Sinatra recorded a popular version of, remains a famous lamentation about bad timing when it comes to love. \u201cIsn\u2019t it rich?\u201d sings the character Desiree. \u201cAre we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, You in mid-air?\u201d Sondheim hated when his fans and biographers attempted to examine his life to understand his music, but it was an irresistible enterprise. Born into a wealthy family in New York that ran a dressmaking company, his father left him and his mother when Sondheim was 10 years old, and his mother heaped on him hateful scorn, once telling him that her greatest regret was that he was born at all. He found mentorship and a father figure in his teen years in a family friend, Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyricist of Jewish descent who had heralded an earlier revolution in the American musical, leading its transition in the 1920s from lighthearted reviews to novelistic treatments of major issues. Hammerstein plotted out a four-step training for Sondheim while he was still in high school: Adapt a good play into a musical, adapt a flawed play into a musical, adapt a musical from another literary form, write your own musical. Sondheim stuck assiduously to the course and at 22 began auditioning songs around New York. A producer, Lemuel Ayers, commissioned Sondheim to write songs for a musical he was producing, but Ayers died before it could be staged. Sondheim\u2019s skills nonetheless became known in Broadway circles and at age 25, he was asked to come on board and write the lyrics for a musical Bernstein was planning based on \u201cRomeo and Juliet.\u201d That became \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d and Sondheim\u2019s skill at weaving doom and despair into romance was immediately evident in the signature song, \u201cSomewhere\u201d: \u201cThere\u2019s a place for us\/ Somewhere a place for us\/Peace and quiet and open air\/Wait for us somewhere.\u201d Sondheim was a generous interview, speaking to journalists and even critics at length, and lacerating himself for years about lyrics he believed post-facto were misconceived. He hated that the big, emotive note in \u201cSomewhere\u201d was the \u201ca\u201d in \u201cThere\u2019s a place for us.\u201d Sondheim earned multiple honors besides his many Tony\u2019s, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. He settled into a comfortable elder statesman status late in life, traveling into New York this year to see revivals of his musicals, and living with his husband, Jeffrey Romley, whom he married in 2017 and who survives him.<\/p>\n