Sondheim's Thanksgivings

Muscular gratitude: paradox, proportion, and persistence

I’d like to propose a toast.

Not to the ladies who lunch, nor to to the usual Thanksgiving fare of comfort and abundance, but instead to the kind of muscular gratitude modeled time and time again in Sondheim’s work: precise, unsentimental, and earned. Today, let’s trace three routes through that ethic: paradox in Company; moment & measure in Anyone Can W…