Stephen Sondheim
 Manuscripts and Papers Acquired by Library of Congress

Around 5,000 items including manuscripts, music and lyric drafts, recordings, notebooks and scrapbooks of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim have been acquired by the Library of Congress.

The materials range from hundreds of music and lyric sketches of his well-known works to drafts of songs that were cut from shows or never made it to a production’s first rehearsal. There are notes about characters who would ultimately sing his compositions as well as multiple iterations of nearly each finished work, providing an evolutionary road map of inspiration.

It also contains manuscripts for some of Sondheim’s shows including Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, as well as lesser-known plays and screenplays. There are also dozens of personal scrapbooks that hold programs, clippings, and opening night telegrams.

Highlight include:

• 40 pages of lyric sketches for A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd with lists of more than 150 possible professions and types of people who could have been baked into pies written in the margins
• a one-page inner monologue that Sondheim wrote as subtext for the character Desirée for when she sings Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music
• lyrics for a reprise of Side by Side by Side that never made it into Company, the musical for which Sondheim won his first Tony Awards as a composer and lyricist
• drafts of variations on the lyrics to I’m Still Here from Follies and Putting It Together from Sunday in the Park with George that Sondheim wrote for Barbra Streisand at her request
• a spiral music book titled Notes and Ideas documenting some of his musical efforts while a student at Williams College
• three boxes of specialty songs, such as the birthday songs he wrote for friends Leonard Bernstein and Harold Prince
• manuscripts for Here We Are (working title: Buñuel, based on director Luis Buñuel’s films), the show Sondheim was crafting when he died