BeforeWest Side Story , andCompany , andInto the Woods , and all the other musical that madeStephen Sondheima titan of melodic theater , he wrotePhinney ’s Rainbow .
It was , harmonise toSondheim ’s website , “ a satire on college life , ” and therefore contemplative of the circumstance in which Sondheim developed it in 1948 : Massachusetts ’s Williams College , where Sondheim was an 18 - class - old sophomore and atomic number 27 - founder of the freshly coin Cap and Bells drama company . Its title played onFinian ’s Rainbow — the hit musical that had open on Broadway the previous year — and also the name of Williams College president James Phinney Baxter III .
As Meryle Secrest wrote in her biographyStephen Sondheim : A Life , the plot “ centered around the efforts of Dogma Nu brotherhood at Swindlehurst Prep to replace their compulsory [ philanthropy ] with more house parties , their motto being Strength Through Sex . ” Sondheim trace to a great extent from the proceeding of an literal fraternity , Beta Theta Pi , much to the alarm system of its members .
Phinney ’s Rainbowwas execute just four time in the spring of 1948 — make it Cap and Bells ’ first - ever musical — and has pretty much faded into obscurity for all but the most fiery Sondheim aficionados . According to NPR , only two recorded number ever strive the world : the overture from one of the original operation ; and an instrumental version of the vocal “ How Do I have it away ? ” , recorded later that class and released on the 2005 albumSondheim Sings ( Volume II , 1946 - 60 ) . In short , there ’s no original cast of characters transcription to stream on Spotify .
But one of those first four performancesdidget recorded in full . The circumstances are a mystery ; Sondheim bookman Paul Salsini told NPR that it ’s possible Sondheim read it himself at the prodding of his mentor Oscar Hammerstein II . The file have been preserved in secret collections — and “ How Do I have a go at it ? ” just got uploaded to YouTube — though precisely how many people entertain copies is also a mystery .
Salsini , who founded the now - defunct magazineThe Sondheim Reviewand authored the memoirSondheim & Me : reveal a Musical Genius , late find out that he himself owns one — a standard candle with an 80 - bit transcription ofPhinney ’s Rainbowon it .
“ I noticed that there was a space between a couple of standard candle and I looked at the shelf below and found that this transcription had pass down into the next shelf . It had literally fall through the cracks , ” Salsini toldBBC News .
The 87 - year - honest-to-god Milwaukee resident physician plans to call on over the CD — whose provenance he ca n’t recall — to Marquette University’sSondheim Research Collection , which heestablishedin 2011 . Sondheim - heads will be in for a treat if the transcription ends up getting digitalise or reproduce in some publicly consumable manner ; agree to Salsini , the songs lightly evoke various Sondheim classics , fromWest Side Story ’s “ Gee , Officer Krupke , ” toCompany ’s “ Not have Married . ”
[ h / tBBC News ]
