Beschreibung:

SONDHEIM, Stephen Joshua (1930-), Composer. Autograph manuscript signed ("Stephen Sondheim"), the first page of his piano-vocal score for the song "Send in the Clowns," from the musical A Little Night Music (1973). 1 full page, comprising 6 bars on three systems, in pencil. Titled at top "Send in the Clowns," with the name of the character "(Desiree)" who sings it, and with the title "Night Music" at top left corner, signed at top right. Full text underlay for the vocal line ("Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air. Send in the clowns..." The musical A Little Night Music was a collaboration between Sondheim, Harold Prince and Arthur Laurents. Loosely based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Bight , it premiered at the Shubert Theatre in New York. The song "Send in the Clowns" was one of 14 musical numbers contributed by Sondheim, and was one of the last he composed. Sung by the character Desiree Armfeldt, an actress, while she savors bittersweet recollections of the missed chances in her love life, it has remained Sondheim's best-known song. As Harold Prince recalled "We were doing a run-through for an invited audience at the Shubert, and we met early in the morning and Steve delivered the song. very apologetically . He said 'I don't know what I think of this,' and then muttered to me 'Sounds like a piano bar song.' And he played it and we adored it...[Sondheim] always suspected it was too pretty, too easy to remember, too whatever. It's certainly one of his biggest successes" (quoted in M. Secrest, Stephen Sondheim , New York, 1998, p.251). The show ran for over 600 performances, received 12 Tony nominations and won 6, including best musical. Manuscripts of Sondheim are very rarely encountered on the market. Provenance : Donated by the composer to a charity auction in the 1970s - The present owner.