Sideways440

How the Music Spoils Sweeney Todd (and why that's a good thing) (Patreon)

Published:

2019-10-30 05:12:39

Imported:

2026-06

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It's finally here!

After many, many, many, many months of people asking me for something Sondheim related and/or more musical stuff, I finally broke into the Sondheim collection.

And in complete honesty, this was kind of a frustrating video to make.
Not because it was particularly difficult, or that it had anything go wrong or anything, but because there's just SO. MUCH. STUFF. in this musical!

I was *constantly* having to cut things from the script, I still really didn't talk about anything related to the second act, and it was still 22 minutes long!

It might be worth revisiting at a later date, who knows.

But for now, I'm really, really happy with it.

And as always,

Thank you all for your continued support

I literally could not do this without you

Happy Halloween :)

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How the Music Spoils Sweeney Todd (and why that's a good thing)

Attend the tale of the Dies Irae Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sideways440 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/sideways440 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Sideways440 Sources/Links: This blog post has most (if not all) of the instances of the Dies Irae: http://dropera.blogspot.com/2014/09/sondheims-craft-manipulating-song-of.html Another great article about the characterization in Sweeney Todd, also some Dies Irae: https://www.fromscoretostage.com/single-post/2018/02/03/The-Unraveling-of-Sweeney-Todd Sondheim's breakdown of Epiphany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozg_OrLmLU4 Sondheim discussing using just a single idea and developing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKZGIwZvexw Into The Hoods's Sweeney Todd breakdown (I HIGHLY recommend watching this): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBUyWQGukoM&list=PL-iYD1AIXnw7SsANUNUUrRTFry4oIw2ru Musicals w/ Cheese's Epiphany breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10GLzxApHC4 Kevin Lynch's Epiphany breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1arcmXIuQ5A TheDetectiveSteve's review of Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiBhF3vWK_4 Bobby Burns's review of Burton's adaptation of Sweeney Todd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMkcGRSBZI4 Full discussion of Sweeney Todd that I completely forgot to credit in the video (sorry!) by Musicals w/Cheese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeusGBWLGo Sondheim discussing the Dies Irae and Sweeney's musical identity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpIPfv78scI An amazing dissertation on Sweeney Todd (It's where I read about how there are 15 leitmotifs, and that 13 are directly related to the Dies Irae): https://uh-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/10657/1150/YANAWAY-THESIS-2015.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Another amazing thesis that collected several critical leitmotifs from Sweeney Todd, also, naturally, discusses the inclusion of the Dies Irae at length: http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/7688/1/Peter%20Manning%20THESIS.pdf And the third thesis that I looked at in preparation for this video that corroborated everything else that I had read: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.467.6926&rep=rep1&type=pdf Dies Irae Excerpt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrHJTvMfXvw Live Epiphany Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quctDawu_bo Finally, "Sondheim on Music" by Mark Eden Horowitz I can't recommend this book enough, it's such a fun read.