Color photographs and drawings by John Napier.

    His career has spanned more than half a century, his lyrics have become synonymous with musical theater and popular culture, and in Finishing the Hat—titled after perhaps his most autobiographical song, from Sunday in the Park with George—Sondheim has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he is giving readers a rare personal look into his life as well as his remarkable productions.Along with the lyrics for all of his musicals from 1954 to 1981—including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd—Sondheim treats us to never-before-published songs from each show, songs that were cut or discarded before seeing the light of day. He discusses his relationship with his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his collaborations with extraordinary talents such as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Angela Lansbury, Harold Prince and a panoply of others. The anecdotes—filled with history, pointed observations and intimate details—transport us back to a time when theater was a major pillar of American culture. Best of all, Sondheim appraises his work and dissects his lyrics, as well as those of others, offering unparalleled insights into songwriting that will be studied by fans and aspiring songwriters for years to come. Accompanying Sondheim’s sparkling writing are behind-the-scenes photographs from each production, along with handwritten music and lyrics from the songwriter’s personal collection. Penetrating and surprising, poignant, funny and sometimes provocative, Finishing the Hat is not only an informative look at the art and craft of lyric writing, it is a history of the theater that belongs on the same literary shelf as Moss Hart’s Act One and Arthur Miller’s Timebends. It is also a book that will leave you humming the final bars of Merrily We Roll Along, while eagerly anticipating the next volume, which begins with the opening lines of Sunday in the Park with George.

    Piano duet arrangements of eight beautiful favorites from Les Mis: Bring Him Home * Castle on a Cloud * Do You Hear the People Sing? * A Heart Full of Love * I Dreamed a Dream * In My Life * On My Own * Stars.

    Now you can learn to play 100 classic songs as your playing develops through the course. The book includes: · Complete lyrics and chords to 100 songs by artists such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel, Jeff Buckley, Crowded House, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon, Nirvana and many more. · 10 songs for each stage of the Beginner’s Course, building up from easy three-chord songs through to more advanced tunes. · Tuition notes for each song by Justin advising you on strumming patterns and chord changes, with diagrams to illustrate all the chord shapes you need. Completely revised and updated, this really is the ultimate beginner’s songbook!

    Two girls quite accidentally crossed paths: one, pretty and popular; the other smart and . . . green. The story of how these two unlikely friends became Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West has made for the most spellbinding musical in years: WickedWicked: The Grimmerie is the behind-the-scenes story of the hit that has captivated Broadway—and now the world. Designed to resemble the ancient book of spells that changes Ozian history, Wicked: The Grimmerie includes profiles of the cast and creative team, the complete, illustrated lyrics to all the songs, and more than 200 full-color photographs. Packed with thrillifying details, Wicked: The Grimmerie is also full of bonus features that will delight fans of the show, from an Ozian Glossararium and an Oz travelogue to a step-by-step look at how Elphaba gets green. No need for innuendo or outuendo: This is a must-have for Wicked fans of all ages.

    Sweeping all major theater awards, including the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for drama, as well as four 1996 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score for a Musical, Rent captures the heart and spirit of a generation, refleting it onstage through the emotion of its stirring words and music, and the energy of its young cast. Now, for the first time, Rent comes to life on the page -- through vivid color photographs, the full libretto, and an utterly compelling behind-the-scenes oral history of the show's creation. Here is the exclusive and absolutely complete companion to Rent, told in the voices of the extraordinary talent behind its success: the actors, the director, the producers, and the librettist and composer himself, Jonathan Larson, whose sudden death, on the eve of the first performance, has made Rent's life-affirming message all the more poignant.

    This is the lavishly illustrated, definitive account of The Phantom of the Opera, tracing the Phantom legend from its origins in historical fact through Gaston Leroux's heartrending classic novel and other artistic incarnations to the present day and Andrew Lloyd Webber's incredibly successful musical.

    It is the story of the embrace of risk and substance. In so doing, Chris Jones makes the point that the theatre thrived by finally figuring out how to embrace the bold statement and insert itself into the national conversation - only to find out in 2016 that a hefty sector of the American public had not been listening to what it had to say.Chris Jones was in the theatres when and where it mattered. He takes readers from the moment when Tony Kushner's angel crashed (quite literally) through the ceiling of prejudice and religious intolerance to the triumph of Hamilton, with the coda of the Broadway cast addressing a new Republican vice-president from the stage. That complex performance - at once indicative of the theatre's new clout and its inability to fully change American society for the better - is the final scene of the book.

    Focusing primarily on six shows, Passion, Assassins, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, and Pacific Overtures, Sondheim talks about his approaches to musicalizing characters and dramatic moments; how motifs and thematic material are created and used; how musical components like harmony, melody, and rhythm reflect character; the structuring of a score; the use of pastiche; and the practical aspects of collaboration. In addition, the book includes Sondheim's list of "Songs I wish I'd Written," his reasons behind some of those choices, and the messages he received from composers and lyricists whose songs were included on the list. An exhaustive Songlisting and a Discography follow, cataloging commercial recordings of Sondheim songs, vocal ranges, and publishing information for his songs and scores.

    This book is a Piano/Vocal Selections book, in standard piano vocal format with the melody in the piano part. It features a special section of color photos from the production, a note from composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, and these fantastic tunes: As Long as You're Mine Dancing Through Life Defying Gravity For Good I Couldn't Be Happier I'm Not That Girl No Good Deed No One Mourns the Wicked One Short Day Popular What Is This Feeling? The Wizard and I Wonderful

    Scores include all instrumental parts (even drums!), guitar, and bass in both notation and guitar tab, plus chords, and complete lyrics. 212 songs. 1,136 pages, hardcover in deluxe slip case.

    The lifetime work of Professor Alexander Schmidt of Königsberg, this book has long been the indispensable companion for every person seriously interested in Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and prose of any sort, or English literature. It is really two important books in one.Schmidt’s set contains every single word that Shakespeare used, not simply words that have changed their meaning since the seventeenth century, but every word in all the accepted plays and the poems. Covering both quartos and folios, it carefully distinguishes between shades of meaning for each word and provides exact definitions, plus governing phrases and locations, down to the numbered line of the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare. There is no other word dictionary comparable to this work.Even more useful to the general reader, however, is the incredible wealth of exact quotations. Arranged under the words of the quotation itself (hence no need to consult confusing subject classifications) are more than 50,000 exact quotations. Each is precisely located, so that you can easily refer back to the plays or poems themselves, if you wish context.Other features helpful to the scholar are appendixes on basic grammatical observations, a glossary of provincialisms, a list of words and sentences taken from foreign languages, a list of words that form the latter part of word-combinations. This third edition features a supplement with new findings.

    Songs include: Heaven on Their Minds * Everything's Alright * Hosanna * Pilate's Dream * I Don't Know How to Love Him * The Last Supper * I Only Want to Say (Gethsemane) * King Herod's Song * Superstar.

    This beautiful collection is the product of years of full-time research by a team of British and American scholars and represents the most thorough examination ever undertaken of the nature and authority of Shakespeare's work. The editors reconsidered every detail of the text in the light of modern scholarship and they thoroughly re-examined the earliest printed versions of the plays, firmly establishing the canon and chronological order of composition. All stage directions have been reconsidered in light of original staging, and many new directions for essential action have been added. This superb volume also features a brief introduction to each work as well as an illuminating General Introduction. Finally, the editors have added a wealth of secondary material, including an essay on language, a list of contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, an index of Shakespearean characters, a glossary, a consolidated bibliography, and an index of first lines of the Sonnets.Compiled by the world's leading authorities, packed with information, and attractively designed, The Oxford Shakespeare is the gold standard of Shakespearean anthologies.

    This new edition contains the updated book and lyrics from the smash Broadway production starring Neil Patrick Harris of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s landmark American musical.