Send in the Clowns

Thinking they should search for something more difficult is kind of mean, like criticizing someone who craves comfort food. Besides, this song was actually quite daring. Yet despite all this complexity, the song is lovely and restful. That world, mostly imaginary I guess, where irony was usually served with a dollop of politeness, is long gone. Just ask Manafort and Gates. Your timing is spot on, John. You must be an Urban Milwaukee member to leave a comment.

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Subscribe Daily Email Update. This ad will close automatically in 15 seconds. Sondheim tells the story:. The lyric style is the concert performance, and this style emphasizes the sweetness of the melody and the poetry of the lyrics. Most performances are in concert, so they emphasize the beauty of the melody and lyrics.

Sondheim teaches both dramatic and lyric performers several important elements for an accurate rendition: She is both angry and sad, and both must be seen in the performance. Two important examples are the contrast between the lines, "Quick, send in the clowns" and "Well, maybe next year.

Sondheim himself apologizes for flaws in his composition. For example, in the line, "Well, maybe next year," the melodic emphasis is on the word year but the dramatic emphasis must be on the word next:. The word "next" is important: Maybe next year I'll do something right in my life. This is a place where the lyric and the music aren't as apposite as they might be, because the important word is "next", and yet the accented word is "year". That's my fault, but [something the performer must] overcome.

Another example arises from Sondheim's roots as a speaker of American rather than British English: The line "Don't you love farce? Sondheim agrees that "[i]t's an awkward moment in the lyric, but that v and that f should be separated. In the line of the fourth verse, "I thought that you'd want what I want. Sorry, my dear," the performer must communicate the connection between the "want" and the "sorry". The musical and the song debuted on Broadway in The song became popular with theater audiences but had not become a pop hit. Sondheim explained how the song became a hit:.

First of all, it wasn't a hit for two years.

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I mean, the first person to sing it was Bobby Short , who happened to see the show in Boston, and it was exactly his kind of song: He's a cabaret entertainer. And then my memory is that Judy Collins picked it up, but she recorded it in England; Sinatra heard it and recorded it. And between the two of them, they made it a hit. Gordon Jenkins arranged the song. It was also released as a single.

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It remained on the Billboard Hot for 11 weeks in , reaching Number In , Sondheim added a verse for Barbra Streisand to use in her concert performances [14] and recording, which was included on The Broadway Album. In , her version reached No. The song appears on over records by hundreds of performers in a variety of arrangements. The drum corps Santa Clara Vanguard performed an arrangement of this song as part of their musical program in , when the corps won its second DCI World Championship.

Originally arranged by Gail Royer, the song is still played by the brass on special occasions. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This article is about the song by Stephen Sondheim. For other uses, see Send In the Clowns disambiguation. A Little Night Music. Live from Lincoln Center.

The New York Times. Reconciling the Comic and the Sublime".