Follies - The Complete Collection: Vocal Selections
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music
Follies - The Complete Collection: Vocal Selections Details
(Vocal Selections). This unprecedented collection contains all of the songs from Follies : from the 1971 Broadway production, the 1987 London revival, and the original production of this beloved Stephen Sondheim musical. Includes 34 songs in all, and a foreword by Sondheim himself! Includes: Ah, but Underneath * Ah, Paris! * All Things Bright and Beautiful * Beautiful Girls * Bring on the Girls * Broadway Baby * Buddy's Blues (The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues) * Can That Boy Foxtrot! * Could I Leave You? * Country House (1987) * Don't Look at Me * I'm Still Here * In Buddy's Eyes * It Wasn't Meant to Happen * Little White House/Who Could Be Blue? * Live, Laugh, Love * Losing My Mind * Loveland * Loveland (1987) * Make the Most of Your Music (1987) * One More Kiss * Pleasant Little Kingdom * Rain on the Roof * The Right Girl * The Road You Didn't Take * The Story of Lucy and Jessie * That Old Piano Roll * Too Many Mornings * Uptown, Downtown * Waiting for the Girls Upstairs * Who's That Woman? * The World's Full of Girls * You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through.
Reviews
"Follies" opened at the Winter Garden theatre after previews in Boston in 1970 quickly on the tail of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Company", which ran succesfully two blocks away as "Follies" confused changed and touched the souls of Broadway. No one could know, in 1970, that it would become a famous classic and would remain as fresh as "West Side Story" forty years later. But it has. This is not a recording; know that. What this remarkable book is is the complete vocal score from the original production and then every song that was written and cut or subsequently written for other productions. Sondheim says today that the original production is the definitive production but he has always been generous with his material where the creativity of others is involved. "Follies" is a musical with a tiny book (James Goldman, " A Lion In Winter") but a book that is as tasty and refined as a Mingus melody. Brevity is a skill much harder to make than the long winded. Sondheim mines his songs from a librettists work which is part of how his work always feels seamless and his unsung librettists rarely get the credit they deserve. His "mining" works and in this musical he has displayed his virtuaosity as a genuis song writer in a way that no other Broadway show has done. Every single song is written in the style of a classic theatre composer from betwen the first and second world wars which was when The Follies performed at this theatre every year. Tonight they are meeting for a reuinion and party and tomorrow the theatre is to be demolished by a wrecking ball to make space for a parking lot. Because of these pastiche songs they never grow stale; the swongs as well as the sets and costumes pressing on the nostalgia just a little to remind us that Nostalgia is memory and memory colors events to make the pleasant burn brighter and the bitter to fade. We have four central characters, two couples, who have a history that goes back many years. We learn of the regrets, how they've settled and how each and every one of them is forced to face the reality of their lives. At the same time, "Follies" is a Requiem for the style of theatre that it celebrates. In 1970, as Jerry Herman became superfluous, Lerner and Lowe were finished and both Rodgers and Hammerstein were dead, this master work played oppostie shows like "Pippin", "Godspell" and "Two Gentleman of Verona". Kander and Ebb continued to create quality (Chicago) It can safely be said that Sondheim and Goldman knew well in advance what they wanted to say. Every song is here: All three of Phyllis' "lucy and Jessie" songs- and Lucy and Jessie is indeed the best; The Cameron Macntosh finale on which the four principals and the company perform on a set that is a massive piano keyboard (hence the music ofRachmoninoff and "Make The Most of Your Music".) The Prologue, the Overture,and the remarkable "too Many Mormoings". "Follies" must NOT be performed with an intermission and despite the many productions that have included one (interval coctail, t-shirt and program sales are important to the business of theatre so a one act musical is rare) Buit an intermission in this musical breaks a nostalgic "spell" in which the audience is quite invested by the time so many subsequent productions attempt to insert an intermission. Music written to attempt to accomodate and interval is in this book. "I'm Still here" is in it's original key- a master work list song of American history that Sondheim composed in one night at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston (two blocks away from where he would write "Send In the Clowns" fifteen months later.) "Losing My mind" is here in it's original key, though Sondheim wrote it in E Major- all of the keys are as they appeared for the original cast. "Can that boy Ffffoxtrot", the predesscor of "I'm Still Here" is here and we learn quickly that the premise is hysterical but once you've heard it, there is no where to go. "I'm Still Here" stopped the show. "Broadway Baby" which gave Ethel Shutte one final standing ovation at the apron is here and if you understand the show well then you know that it must be sung by an elderly woman who sings out of desperation. Not an exuberant and excited youth. The music of the ghosts of the four characters is all here, from the remarkable "You';re Gonna Love Tomorrow" to it's predessor "Little White house/ Who could be Blue". In short, this book costs substantially less than the actual vocal score yet GIVES you the vocal score, along with an additional 75 pages of now famous and legendary music.None of the notes have been alterred, accompani,ments are as he wrote them. Sondheim never recycled his music from show to show as most theatre composers do (Jerry Herman used the very same song in Mame and Hello Dolly with "We Need a little Christmas" and "It Takes a Woman") But even the sainted Leonard Bernstein would go to the files for material. Chunks of cuts from "Candide" turned up in the score for "West Side Story" and bits of cuts from "West Side Story" turned up in his "Chichester Psalms (Movement two is the original Jet Song) As a result, Sondheim's files remain intact and, like no other composer in history, his cut songs have attracted a vast audience. If you're a fan of Sondheim, or this show or if you've an interest in American Musical Theatre, this book is a must. Yes, it's difficult. Both in regard to singiung and playing. But as every performer knows, there is nothing more satisfying than nailing a piece by Sondheim. Buy this book. Tell 'em Dave sent you and there is no one in the business who has studied the work of Stephen Sondheim more thoroughly than Dave.
