Here We Are: Exit Music
Our first recorded taste of the final Sondheim musical
1962: The White House is occupied by the youngest president ever elected, an Irish Catholic by the name of John F. Kennedy. The year’s highest-charting single is Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender,” a tale of relationship woe told using almost exclusively four chords. And on October 4, the first original cast recording to feature music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim is released.
2024: The White House is occupied by the oldest president ever elected, an Irish Catholic by the name of Joseph R. Biden. The year’s highest-charting single (so far) is Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season,” a tale of relationship woe told using almost exclusively four chords. And on May 17, the final original cast recording to feature music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim will be released.
“Everything’s different, nothing’s changed.” I wonder who wrote that…
Here We Are premiered off-Broadway in October of last year. It is Sondheim’s final musical, based on two Luis Buñuel films (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel), and with a book by David Ives. At the time of writing (early May 2024), Sondheim’s last score remains a mystery to anyone not lucky enough to be present for the show’s initial run at The Shed. If you are reading this before May 17, these are the last days in which a Sondheim show remains unreleased in audio format. It’s quite a thing to consider.
On April 26, Concord Theatricals Recordings released the Here We Are’s “Exit Music” to all major streaming platforms—and as a video, which you can watch below. For those of us who did not see the show off-Broadway, it is hard to overstate the significance of this three-minute clip: it is our first taste of Sondheim’s final work.
With this in mind, it seemed an interesting idea to jot down some initial thoughts on “Exit Music,” prior to having any knowledge of the score that precedes it. It might be fun to return to these first impressions later, once the music and lyrics of Here We Are are as familiar as those of any other Sondheim show. For now, here is some of what these three minutes of music, heard in isolation, sparked for me. If you haven’t yet listened to “Exit Music” yourself, perhaps take the opportunity to do so now. The video is just below the next paragraph.
One other note: there’s a fair bit of music-specific language in this post. I never want any writing on The Sondheim Hub to exclude people for whom some of the more esoteric terminology and jargon of music can feel alienating. I will always keep this in mind when veering into that territory—but please do let me know if anything is ever unclear. Okay! Here We Are? Here we go…
After an introductory few bars, the first melodic motif we hear is a charming one, a twisty little five-note figure that I felt sure sounded familiar from somewhere. It took a few listens, but then it clicked: it’s a melodic fragment from Merrily We Roll Along. Specifically, it is a motif we hear Gussie sing in both “The Blob - Part I” and “Growing Up - Reprise.” In the latter number, the words Sondheim sets to this tune are, “You hate the delay, but after today, you’ll be on your way…” Now, the only knowledge I have of Here We Are’s plot at present is a brief outline of each Buñuel film—but, given that Act II would seem to involve characters unable to leave a dinner party, I like the idea that there is a motivic link to a previous Sondheim lyric whose meaning might very well ring true. Or it might ring hollow, for all I know…
One other tiny observation about that first motif: it spells out the first five notes of the dies irae chant—yes, that musical phrase which so famously permeates the score of Sweeney Todd. The idea of any conscious connection here is almost certainly for the birds, but it’s pleasing to consider the possibility of these sorts of things nonetheless.
In the following passage of “Exit Music,” beginning at 00:34, a quirky new melody is introduced. It appears first on the bassoon, fabulously played by Patricia Wang. The line in “Seventy-Six Trombones” (from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man) about “each bassoon having his big fat say” has always struck me as more than a little unfair to this extraordinary instrument. Here, Wang—together, of course, with orchestrator Jonathan Tunick—shows us just how nimble the bassoon can be, how characterful, agile, and light on its feet it so frequently is.
And this jaunty new tune, to my ear at least, seems to have echoes of Merrily too. See if you can call to mind the melody for the words “Some roads are soft and some are bumpy” in Merrily’s titular opening number (or click those lyrics to hear them now), a melodic figure which recurs in several of the show’s transitions. Now have a look at it alongside this bassoon phrase:
The specific notes may be different, but the shape and rhythmic spine of the phrase is the same. Neat, right? And there is something touching about the fact that Merrily in particular is the show that Here We Are seems most musically evocative of so far. After all, where have we heard those three titular words before?
We're opening doors
Singing, "Here we are!"
We're filling up days on a dime
That faraway shore's looking not too far
We're following every star—
There's not enough time!
Reading that lyric again just now made me catch my breath. “Opening Doors” crystallizes so much, doesn’t it? And, as we find ourselves beginning to pore over the first and only Sondheim work to premiere posthumously, the final line of that particular passage seems to resonate just that little bit more.
Back to “Exit Music.” In the next section, beginning at 1:08, Lino Gomez’s alto saxophone presents us with a deliciously seductive new theme. It is unmistakably Sondheim-y, in a way that is quite hard to put your finger on at first— but I think that it might have something to do with scale degrees. Less music theory-oriented folk, don’t panic! Think of The Sound of Music, and do, re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti. These are scale degrees one through seven, with one being do, and so on. Sondheim absolutely loves spending time with scale degrees seven and six—or ti and la—in that order. Think of the accompanimental figure which underpins “Agony” in Into the Woods: tiii ti, laaa do, tiii ti, laaa la, and so on. Think too of the opening phrase of “Johanna,” in Sweeney Todd. “I feel YOU, JohanNA…” Then turn your mind to the concluding “Hold me…” of “With So Little To Be Sure Of” (Anyone Can Whistle), and then the main accompanimental riff of Another Hundred People (Company), which emphasizes these same two notes as a kind of call and response between octaves.
There are countless other examples too, but suffice it to say that Sondheim scores really like to melodically emphasize this ti and la. And so, it would appear, does this one. Here’s the beginning of the saxophone melody:
There’s that characteristic seven-falling-to-six, ti-falling-to-la again. Unmistakably Sondheim. And watch this section back one more time, starting at 1:08. Focus your eyes this time on trumpeter Hugo Moreno as the saxophone melody begins—he’s at the back of the shot. There’s the most beautifully timed smile as Gomez continues to play. Utterly lovely. I often wish we routinely had filmed footage of every cast album being recorded, just like this one. Concord Theatricals Recordings seems to be particularly good at this; there are some terrific moments captured in their recent Into the Woods recording in particular. Let’s hope we get more glimpses inside the recording studio when Here We Are is released in full.
The saxophone-led section of “Exit Music” culminates in a magnificent statement of a chord I can only ever hear as a “James Bond chord”: a minor triad with a major seventh and ninth added. This chord is very, very close to the chord that dominates so much of Sweeney Todd. Remove the ninth and switch around the four remaining notes, and you have that characteristic Sweeney chord: a third-inversion minor-major seventh, for those who like those sorts of labels.
The couple of linking bars between this section and the next (at 1:45) remind me, slightly absurdly, of the theme tune from classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. But then perhaps it’s not such an absurd connection: neither its setting nor its cohort of characters seem a million miles away from those of the two Buñuel films.
And then that horn theme begins… Sondheim is so good at this: propelling us ever-further forward, often at breakneck pace, and then hitting the brakes and opening up the harmonic floodgates. It’s like sinking into a deep bath. Sondheim often cited Ravel and Rachmaninoff as key influences on his own musical language, but rarely have I felt their presence—Ravel’s in particular—as keenly as in this passage of “Exit Music.” It is overtly, gorgeously French.
A final thought about this final section, and this one really might be a stretch. The first horn motif (played with such exquisite feeling by Priscilla Rinehart) bears a certain resemblance to another moment from Merrily—in this case, the chorus of “Our Time.” Look at the shape of each phrase, the contour of each line:
Again, this is almost certainly not a conscious connection on Sondheim’s part, but it is a nice idea to conjure with all the same. It is moving, too, to consider the possibility that the very last theme we hear in the Exit Music of Sondheim’s final show, intentionally or not, makes a little nod towards his own paean to youth, optimism, and boundless possibility.
It’s a strange thing to consider, the last ever original cast recording of a Sondheim musical. Luckily for us, though, any feeling of finality is held at bay when we stand back and consider the sheer breadth and depth of his output. Sondheim’s work will never lose its seemingly limitless capacity to surprise, provoke, entertain and challenge with each fresh listen. And that’s the wonderful thing about great art, isn’t it? It only gets better and stronger and deeper and nearer, and simpler and freer and richer and clearer…
The original cast recording of Here We Are is released on May 17 2024 by Concord Theatricals Recordings, and can be preordered by clicking here.