116. REQUIEM FOR STEVE

Oh, no! I heard Annabelle scream. I was washing up their dishes after dinner, but her scream cut through the sound of the running water and the dim sound of the CBS news on the television. Such a drama queen, I thought. I wonder what Thatch or Stella did to piss her off.

Daddy! Daddy! That was Thatch. I felt a sharp sting on my calf. I looked down, Thatch was climbing my leg.

Thatch! I yelled. Ouch! Thatch, that hurts, baby! What’s wrong?

Annabelle! It’s Annabelle! Come quick! 

He ran back to the living area. I set the dish I was washing back in the sink, turned off the water, and grabbed a paper towel to dry my hands. I walked into the living area to find Annabelle lying on the floor in front of the TV. Thatch and Stella stood over her.

What’s happened? I asked as I lowered myself to the floor. Annabelle? Annabelle?

We were playing, Thatch told me, and the TV guy said something. She looked at the TV, screamed, and fell over. I think she’s dead.

What was on the TV? I asked. It’s just the news. Annabelle? Baby? As I was stroking her head, she gave a snort, and jumped to her feet. Then she burst into tears and climbed onto my lap. 

Annabelle? I asked, Are you okay?

Didn’t you hear?

I heard you scream. Then Thatch came running for me. What happened? What scared you?

I wasn’t scared. I was shocked. The news said that Stephen Sondheim has died.

What? Are you sure? I was shocked.

Yes, she said. It was on the news. Norah O’Donnell just announced it. Oh, this is so sad.

I made some mental calculations. He was . . . ninety-one. I suddenly remembered standing in a pay phone on Sixth Avenue around 48th Street. 1983 or 84? I wondered. A friend had just told me Steve had been hospitalized, and I took a break from work at the time to run to a pay phone to call his office and ask Patricia Sinnott, his offoice manager, what had happened, because I was concerned. He’d already had one heart attack, and I was scared that he was dying. He had become a good acquaintance – I hate to call him a friend; I was too often tongue-tied around him – and he had been very kind and generous to me. 

Well, I told Annabelle as I fought back my own tears, he lived a very full and long life. I’m sorry he’s died. Now there’s no going back, I thought as I rose. I’ve got to finish your dishes, I said as I headed back to the kitchen.

Steve’s dead, I thought as I turned the hot water tap in the sink. I began to weep as I picked up the bowl I had been washing.

We had met through my work with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus. Playwright Arthur Laurents was on the Chorus’ board of directors, and he had pushed Stephen Sondheim to work with them. The Chorus was in – what? – their second year, maybe, and I had begun writing choral arrangements for them. In the spring of 1981, I think, the Chorus’ music director, Gary Miller, had called me at The Drama Book Shop to ask me what I was doing on Friday afternoon around 3:00. Working here, I said.

Can you get off early? he asked.

Maybe, I replied cautiously. Why?

We’re going to visit Stephen Sondheim.

I about dropped the phone. I was going with Gary Miller to meet The Stephen Sondheim? Since I had arrived in New York in June 1979, Sweeney Todd had come my biggest obsession, and I had obsessed over many musicals in my thirty-five years, but throughout the 1970s they had mostly been Sondheim shows, particularly Follies.

Gary met me at The Drama Book Shop and we taxied to East 49th Street. When Stephen Sondheim opened the door and invited us in, I thought I would swoon there on the stoop. After we were settled, Gary and Mr. Sondheim (Call me Steve, he told me, and he’s been Steve ever since) gossiped about Larry Kert’s latest cabaret act (He likes to flirt with the audience, Steve said, so he’s better at cabaret than acting) and other mutual friends. He agreed to my writing a medley of little-known songs, gave me his number, and told me to call his office manager Patricia Sinnott to get whatever songs I wanted. Gary and I left, riding the crosstown bus back to the west side and kvelling over how it went. Several weeks later, we returned to East 49th to show Steve the sketch of my medley.

We went to a piano and Steve asked me to play it. I knew my playing was lousy and that trying to play in front of a good pianist would make my playing lousier, so I admitted I was not a great pianist. Okay, I’ll play it, he said. I remember little about that now, but I remembered he loved my first transition from the first song to the second, and he hated the end of the medley. It’s bitonal, he explained, and you’ve misinterpreted it. Once he’d explained it, I got it. I told him I’d fix it, and I revised it when I wrote out the copy for the Chorus to use.

The concert was at Alice Tully Hall in June, 1981, and Steve came to a rehearsal to hear it about a week before the concert. I had written a half-tone transposition up for the last section of “There Won’t Be Trumpets,” and when it occurred, Steve sidled up to me and whispered in my ear, I hate it when arrangers do that, but in your case I’ll make an exception. I think that’s the moment I stopped being afraid of Steve Sondheim, and I considered him a friend for the next five years or so.

We never had any sort of a falling-out. Instead, we drifted apart. I nominated Sunday in the Park with George for the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and it won in April 1985. I was invited to a huge party at Steve’s to celebrate the show’s 100th performance, and things changed after that. He fired Patricia as his office manager, and her replacement always made me feel that getting to Steve was much like getting into to Fort Knox. As a consequence, I stopped calling. Then I disliked his next two shows, Into the Woods and Passion; not the scores, I disliked the shows, and that closed the doors. I knew if I said anything negative to him about them I was ostracized forever. So, I concentrated on my work for the Chorus, work with John McGlinn, and some work with the Gershwins, the Kurt Weill Foundation, and the Cole Porter Trust.

In 1989, the Chorus did an all-Sondheim evening, much of it my arrangements, and I ran into Steve backstage after the concert. He threw his arms about me and gave me a huge, gi-normous hug. I was going to tell the audience that the page-turner at the piano was responsible for my Pulitzer Prize, he told me, but between the applause, photographers, flowers, and all, I forgot. I’m sorry.

That’s fine, I told him. They don’t need to know. It’s your award.

I was happy that the friendship still seemed to be there, and for the next thirty years I never made any public acknowledgement of my participation in that Pulitzer win.

I should have never dropped that opportunity to keep the friendship going, but I did. In 1992, I orchestrated Assassins, a show I loved, for the Signature Theatre in DC, but I never heard from him. Then, In 1994, with the release of the “Unsung Sondheim” album, I got a very kind note for my orchestrations, and that was my last communication with Steve until I ran into him in 2007 at City Center, after the last performance of Gypsy starring Patti Lupone. I was heading backstage with my friend Jose, and he was heading for the bar and closing party. He walked with a cane, and I believe the lady with him was a nurse. Steve! It’s Larry Moore! I said to him. He paused for a moment, stuck out his hand, and said, Good to see you, and kept right on going. On the way backstage, I rather cynically said to Jose, I wonder if he even remembers who I am.

I finished weeping over the sink, dried my eyes, set the cats’ bowls to dry, turned off the water and the kitchen light, and walked into the living area.

Aha! Annabelle told Thatch. Look! He’s been crying, too.

No, Annabelle, I’ve been mourning lost opportunities and burned bridges.

Burned bridges? What does that even mean? Thatch, does he ever make sense?

Thatch looked at me for a moment. I think it does, Annabelle, I think so.

You’re just kissing up. Well, Stephen Sondheim can’t write the score for my musical now, and that is sad.

Don’t be sad, Annabelle, Thatch told her. You’ll find a composer.

No, it’s sad for him that he never met me! He’s never written for a cat before. I could have made him really famous.

©2021, Larry Moore