Some fun stuff
- Amanda Riddell
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- Dec 19, 2023
- 1 min read
Well, I gather that people are interested in how Sondheim influenced me.
I wish that he'd lived long enough to hear me sing my song cycle, but I put the scores on my YouTube channel in 2021, so he might have seen those.
When I was on acid walking around Wellington, I had this vision of him as like an old gnome that was curious about my ideas.
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His message to me from the tape wasn't about copying him; I think that my Double Indemnity score has a musical language that is distinct from his.
The message was, oddly enough, about how to conjure the muse; that's something that he often said he didn't believe in, yet the advice that he gave to me was all about that.
People are contradictory. 🤣
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Despite that, his worldview is something that I spent a lot of time attempting to understand, even though it's not quite mine.
It's certainly the most complete of any of those major songwriters, with the possible exception of his mentor, Hammerstein.
The other thing that's immediately obvious is that I'm also quite gifted at mimicry and pastiche, and I've made a few attempts to pastiche Sondheim: The Girl That I Nearly Married from my Double Indemnity score was an attempt to write a 'jewish' sound, and that came out like a pastiche. There are some songs from my song cycle that have a Sondheim-esque energy: Reverie in particular is one that I think is a continuation of his musical language. It's not like he ever used feathered beaming, but that's something that composers from my generation are far more familiar with, particularly those with similar conservatory-style training.