First I should explain my choice of title:  why Weill?…why Sondheim?…and why the question mark?  Well, the question mark simply expresses my own doubts as to whether the journey I am about to trace is a wholly valid one.  With these two creative geniuses we are not really comparing like with like.  Although both were classically trained, one came to the Broadway musical largely due to the turbulence of the time; whilst the other was virtually “born” into the Broadway tradition that he was later to subvert.

Weill was an established “serious” composer whose early musical style reflected both the Expressionism of Berg and the neoclassicism of Stravinsky.  Both these avant-garde composers had absorbed the sound world of early jazz (amongst other “exotic” elements)  and this was a ball that kept rolling throughout the 20`s, 30`s and 40`s.  When black American jazz musicians – Duke Ellington amongst them – visited Berlin in the late 1920`s they caused an immediate cultural impact, shocking the bourgeois with their “primitive”, raw sound.  This “jungle” sound was to quickly lead to a far mellower tone by the end of the 1930`s, perhaps making it more palatable to the white middle-class.  But it was jazz in its most raw, in-your-face form that most left its mark on Weill.  Like many intellectuals, he simply respected – even envied - its honesty, seeing in it an antedote to the hypocrisy implicit in European nostalgia, which of course he also felt.   Perhaps one could draw a comparison with Sondheim here, for much of his work betrays an acute awareness of the dangers of nostalgia (Follies; Merrily We Roll Along).

But we must never lose sight of the fact that musical theatre is a highly collaborative art-form.  This is where the singling out of two great individuals is problematic.  They can only exercise their talents if somebody else places their faith (and money) in them.  Of course the situation for Weill in his “Weimar” period with Brecht was a world away from the ultra-commercial sphere of Broadway.  How much did he take with him from his Berlin years?  This is not an easy question to answer and it continues to be a subject of debate as to whether Weill “sold out” when he crossed the Atlantic.  But much of what he left behind – his work with Brecht – would eventually find its own way to the Broadway stage, most notably in the form of Cabaret and Chicago.  So another reason for doubting the premise of this article:  John Kander and Fred Ebb, perhaps the worthiest inheriters of the Brecht-Weill mantel.

Stephen Sondheim, on the other hand, was far more interested in character development than in Brechtian alienation.  Essentially the source of what Sondheim is about can be gleaned from the “bench scene” in Rodgers and Hammerstein`s Carousel, where Billy Bigelow undergoes an internal drama, an epiphany during the course of an extended song which is the crux of the whole show.  It was a model that Sondheim would develop extensively in Sweeny Todd, where the barber makes the psychological jump from desiring revenge on an individual to a manic compulsion to mass murder! 

Actually if one takes Lady in the Dark, on which Kurt Weill collaborated with Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin, what else is the show but one long epipathy?  The song “My Ship” is the thread running throughout the entire play and of course it does develop dramatically in the sense that Liza eventually gets to finish the song and bring about a sense of closure within herself.  Another example where a song gains meaning from being repeated is “Send in the Clowns” in A Little Night Music.  The first time it is sung by Desiree at a moment where, left alone by the oblivious Frederik, her mask slips to reveal a lonely, disappointed middle-aged woman who has just let the man she loves slip between her fingers.  One scene later, everything has changed.  The answer to “Send in the Clowns” is “…don`t bother, they`re here”:  both Frederik and Desiree have played out their “farce” and realize that happiness has right been under their noses all the time.

But it was Follies and Company that most of all took up where Lady in the Dark left off.  Follies is perhaps the most obvious, particularly in the separation between present and past, reality and dream.  With Lady in the Dark the separation is marked simply by the restriction of music to the dream sequences, whereas past and present are juxtaposed in quite complex ways in Follies.  Sam Mendes` production of Company constructed this kind of dimension which, I understand, was not in the original version.  By making each scene take place as though in Bobby`s head, it gave an otherwise vacant character the opportunity to undergo an emotional journey not dissimilar to Liza Elliott.

A lesser-known but equally important show on which Weill collaborated was Love Life.  The focus of attention is on a married couple, who remain ageless as time travels through certain periods in American history.  These two elements – marriage and historical perspective – were each to figure strongly in Sondheim`s collaborations.  John Weidman, with whom he worked on Pacific Overtures and Assassins (as well as the work currently in progress, Bounce) all take an interest in American history and, like Cabaret, how historical events impinge on the life of the individual.   Inevitably this brings us back to Brecht.  In some respects both the elements of psychology in Lady in the Dark and the transportation in  Love Life of the personal sphere through a set of political vignettes harks back to the Marxist cantata Seven Deadly Sins.  There Brecht presented a personality split into two, Anna 1 and Anna 2, and made them undergo a sort of Pilgrim`s Progress through the capitalist nightmare.  Weill`s music contains certain motifs which do crop up in Lady in the Dark, so perhaps the comparison is not as fanciful as it seems.  What makes Weill such a hero for me is his willingness to be the quiet innovator in whatever circumstance he finds himself, to submit all his incredible talent to the art of collaboration.  Not everything he did was wonderful, but he was a true professional.

As a composer-lyricist, Sondheim is unique.  In his songs both music and lyrics seem to spring from the same creative impulse.  There is no sense of a lyric having been “shoe-horned” in; and the song always seems to grow seamlessly out of the preceding dialogue, making the change from speaking to singing quite natural.  These of course are very different talents from those of Weill, but artistic integrity and meticulous concern for detail is certainly common to both.