Tuesday, July 31, 2018 5:21 PM There’s something about Sondheim. Listening to The Sun Won’t Set. From A Little Night Music. (Wait for the end of the sickly sweet :30 intro) Somehow the chipper...
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
5:21 PM
There’s something about Sondheim. Listening to The Sun Won’t Set. From A Little Night Music. (Wait for the end of the sickly sweet :30 intro) Somehow the chipper for-middle-class 19th century British picnic party atmosphere blends with Sondheim’s music into a gestalt that is its own thing. Indescribable. At once an airy little thing, timeless. I can’t describe it.
You know that it’s just the music as you know there’s going to be sarcastic lyric ...perpetual sunset is rather an unsettling thing. But it transcends this all the more for having heard it many occasions in the past. It has its own special smell of nostalgia that is completely fabricated in a magical way. Where does it come from?
8 o’clock. Twilight. 9 o’clock. Twilight. This surreal narrative goes perfectly with the endless 3/4 time signature. It corrals sounds, notes, intervals, which are stretched and more in this classical format, all whimsical, sarcastic, and clever.
In this music, the chords, the sweet dissonances of Sondheim, this special reality of time comes through like nothing else. The singing voices are in perfect harmony, brassy broadway voices that take delight or disgust at what they are singing, none of it subtle, but so beautiful. To me, the only thing that comes close to producing this effect is the orchestration of George Martin in his work for the Beatles.
Hell, how can one 3 minute recording produce such a sublime effect?
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
5:21 PM
There’s something about Sondheim. Listening to The Sun Won’t Set. From A Little Night Music. (Wait for the end of the sickly sweet :30 intro) Somehow the chipper for-middle-class 19th century British picnic party atmosphere blends with Sondheim’s music into a gestalt that is its own thing. Indescribable. At once an airy little thing, timeless. I can’t describe it.
You know that it’s just the music as you know there’s going to be sarcastic lyric ...perpetual sunset is rather an unsettling thing. But it transcends this all the more for having heard it many occasions in the past. It has its own special smell of nostalgia that is completely fabricated in a magical way. Where does it come from?
8 o’clock. Twilight. 9 o’clock. Twilight. This surreal narrative goes perfectly with the endless 3/4 time signature. It corrals sounds, notes, intervals, which are stretched and more in this classical format, all whimsical, sarcastic, and clever.
In this music, the chords, the sweet dissonances of Sondheim, this special reality of time comes through like nothing else. The singing voices are in perfect harmony, brassy broadway voices that take delight or disgust at what they are singing, none of it subtle, but so beautiful. To me, the only thing that comes close to producing this effect is the orchestration of George Martin in his work for the Beatles.
Hell, how can one 3 minute recording produce such a sublime effect?
Well, Sondheim.