Ambivalence in Music - Essay Example

American Musical Theater Group A Ambivalence in Stephen Sondheim’s works Stephen Sondheim, one of the most famousAmerican composers, has creations that have for ages attracted different reactions from his audiences. In a general derivation, his compositions have attracted praise such as being witty, overly creative, elegant, sophisticated, and in the context important to this essay, much ambivalence. The following sections will discuss some of his compositions and highlight the aspect of ambivalence in them while citing specific lyrics, which support that it indeed exists in his works. In definition, ambivalence is termed as the state of including contradictory ideologies or in other terms, having mixed feelings about a particular thing or person. In Sondheim’s (most) songs which portray ambivalence for instance, he applied it to matters relationships and love. To do this, he contradicts the accustomed notion that love is meant to lead to happy marriages, and that men and women had specific roles. In his ambivalence portrayal, these stereotyped ideologies are overlooked, and is in these contradictions that the ambivalence arises. The first instance where ambivalence is evident is in his piece, Into the Woods, and is created by Cinderella at the scene where she escapes from the festival in three successive nights. The following lyric shows the evidence: Mother said to be good, / Father said be nice That was always their advice The above lyrics demonstrate that Cinderella’s parents had mixed expectations of her in that while her father expected of her niceness, the mother went for goodness. However, the lyrics go on to portray of her as being entangled in their tug of expectations as she at one point questions why she should bother about being good when no one notices it. She therefore gets into a mixed feeling of whether she should abandon her mother’s goodness and take up being nice. What’s the good of being good/ If everyone is blind Always leaving you behind? The other portrayal of ambivalence is in his Company piece which uses the events encountered in love relationships to bring out the aspect of the simultaneous happy and regretful human nature. The following lyrics support this: You hold her, thinking, “I’m not alone.” You’re still alone… You always are what you always were, Which has nothing to do with- all to do with her. These lyrics seek to suggest that as humans, we always have two conflicting (mixed) perceptions towards things. As they read, Sondheim is saying (about the man) that for him, having a girl is both a happy and confusing thing. The happiness being in that the man has a girl, and the regretful or confusing bit being that she may someday drift away. As such, one is left in a dilemma, thus ambivalence, in that should they be happy or regretful that the relationship exists? Finally, an additional display of ambivalence is evident in his musical, Anyone Can Whistle which overturns the ancient stereotyping of household chores to women. This is evident in the following excerpt: A woman’s place is in the home, A woman’s place is on the shelf. And home is where he hangs her hat, And that is where she hangs himself (Gordon, 2014). The ambivalence in this case emerges, especially in the two last two lines were, “he” and “her” are alternated to refer to the hat’s possession, and in the last war “she” and “himself” are intertwined to refer to the hanging. This is sufficient to support that Sondheim intentionally created the ambivalence so as to try and alter the notions that one gender can be inferior to the other, or that there are specific roles assigned to either gender. Group B Building masks in Passing Strange In the musical Passing Strange, Everyday I Build a Mask by Stew reflects to the overall theme of the performance. From the notion of building the mask, the interpretation can be derived from the musical in that the “Youth” in the show seeks to find the “Real” during the transition from childhood into adulthood. During this period, the Youth gets exposed to different contexts of life ranging from hedonism, religion, domesticity, and politics and through all these, has to adhere to what they demand of him, and that is where the “mask” ideology comes in. Through the use of many rock songs, the show furthers this idea when the Youth travels across regions such as Berlin, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles, all in the name of seeking to explore the “best-fitting” musical genre. During the entire exploration, the Youth has to “try out” new ideas and musical demands so as to fit into the genre, and this is another type of building a mask. The idea of the mask can be compared to everyday life, as supported by Work the Wound in the musical. Part of the lyrics read: Everyday I build a mask Up to the task Another song you see I leave behind the rhyme and verse To this extent, the idea of the mask appears in the third line. By stating that “I leave behind the rhyme and verse”, the narrator seemingly implies that the artist seen on stage with the song is not the actual person known. In other words, the songwriter “creates” the song which is made up of rhymes and verses, and in that, they have a different life separate from what audiences see on stage. The following extract furthers this revelation: But what about me? ‘Cause I’m cursed to entertain The crowd laughs too soon And all I have is my pain The statement about being “cursed to entertain” could translate to that the performing artist is behind an artificial mask, that is, behind the curse which is a mask. The “mask” in this case concealing pain, as the lyric reads “all I have is my pain.” At the end of this song, the lyric concludes: Hey, that’s how the song goes But the problem is that it never stops (“Work the Wound”, 2014). From this, one can sufficiently conclude that “the song” refers to the creation or existence of masks, and in implying that “the problem is it never stops”, we find the fact that the idea of building masks is not going away. References Gordon, J. (2014). Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook. Routledge. “Work the Wound Lyrics.” (2014). All Musicals. Accessed on 19 May, 2014 from http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/passingstrange/workthewound.htm Read More