A Difficult Tool

An unlocked interview with Stephen Sondheim.

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser The stage for Sondheim's Side by Side. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. "Most Broadway musicals I have seen courtesy of comped tickets or evenings out with my parents," writes Kevin Champoux in a piece we recently published online. "All those I've attended of my own volition have been written in some capacity by Stephen Sondheim, who is about as intellectually prudent a favorite as one can have while still being wearily unoriginal." This week, we've unlocked our Art of the Musical interview with Sondheim, which was published in issue no. 142 of the Review. INTERVIEWS The Art of the Musical No. 1 Stephen Sondheim INTERVIEWER You've said, "I've always thought of lyric-writing as a craft rather than an art, largely a matter of sweat and time. Music is more challenging, more interesting, and more rewarding." Do you still feel that way? SONDHEIM Sure. Because music's abstract and it's fun and it lives in you. Language is terrific, but the English language is a difficult tool to work with. Two of the hardest words in the language to rhyme are life and love. Of all words! In Italian, easy. But not English. Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. From issue no. 142 (Spring 1997) To read more from issue no. 142, including an interview with Sam Shepard, why not subscribe? You'll receive four print issues a year plus unlimited digital access to our seventy-two-year archive. Copyright © 2026 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe, if you must.