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

0:00 you know when you think about it when you set aside all the blood and gore and violence and cannibalism and assault and trying to get this video through without getting it too monetized and violence and blood and gore and blood Sweeney Todd is really a story about family and considering how tis the season to be spooky and that a whole bunch of you have wanted me to talk about something Sondheim related I figured what better than the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and there's something really cool about this musical the internal musical structures in this score are so well thought out that you can actually figure out what's gonna happen in a story just by paying attention to the music check it out and what better place to start than the beginning alright so right off the bat we're getting some critical information here so if it isn't apparent

0:46 yet I'm going off the 2007 Tim Burton film adaptation which when all of a sudden done is a really really like ridiculously good film adaptation of a stage musical if you don't believe me you can find videos by the detective Steve and Bobby burns in the description below that agree with me that this is a really good adaptation but as with all adaptations some things get cut and in this case it's the opening number in a stage version of Sweeney Todd we aren't treated to this strawberry jam blood and play-doh sausage we have the whole cast on stage singing to the audience about the story of Sweeney Todd and it's kinda like this fourth wall break but not really except it kind of is Burton decided to cut all that and honestly unless you have some kind of Jiminy Cricket or the merchants from Aladdin or some other framing device to help explain that quasi narration then just cutting it is a good move but check it out right here when we get the title screen we hear this

1:32 in the original stage production we get the lyrics swing your razor wide Sweeney hold it to the skies but of course this melody is the deus array now if you don't know what the dear serious hi i'm sideways welcome to the channel i like to talk about music until it hurts grab some snacks and a drink because it's gonna get complicated but okay if you don't know the DEA's areas and don't worry here's the TLDR once upon a time there's this guy called Jesus and he died but there were a bunch of people who really liked Jesus and they would sing songs to him even though he was dead and one of these songs was called the dias Erie which translates to the day of wrath and it was all about

2:18 how Jesus loves everybody so much that one day he's going to come back to earth and kill everyone in order to have the world's greatest slumber party but only half of everybody gets invited the other half gets permanent detention cut forward about a thousand and a half years and this alpha stoner by the name of hector berlioz wrote a symphony that told the story of this artist who was also a stoner and loved this girl but she didn't know he existed and then he died and went to hell because of course he did but in a symphony in order to communicate that that main character had died Berlioz used the deus Erie and ever since then composers have used this melody to represent death and music and that has been no more apparent than in film here's a montage of examples that I'm copying and pasting from an older video because I'm lazy like that

3:06 [Music] kill him [Music] so before it even really starts in earnest we've already got the central theme of the show it's gonna have something to do with Sweeney and death and without looking too hard into it based on the lyrics you can guess that his razors are gonna be involved in some way - but listen to this part well in the stage version there are people singing over this and the line they sing is attend the tale of Sweeney Todd if you pay attention to the end of that the tale of Sweeney Todd Park once again that's the Dia's array in fact if

3:52 you would get really poetic about it the swing your rays are wide it takes the first few notes of the DIA Siri and just to be clear here this is just the first eight notes of the DIA Siri it actually goes on for another eight minutes but that's not the part that gets referenced anyway so the swing your razor wide uses the first few notes of the des eerie while the attend the tale of Sweeney Todd uses the end of that phrase in a way you could argue that you know that his story begins and ends with death okay so we got death and it's associated with Sweeney and his razor is great but the musical proper starts and we have our first number we're introduced to Anthony awesome and no there's no oh no can we get another take no that's it that's what we're working with oh crap all right well here's our lead

4:39 so this is Sweeney to be completely honest Johnny Depp isn't bad in this role I just think that his delivery and literally this first line isn't the strongest and honestly Johnny Depp is starting to feel like one of those actors who always plays themselves you know like whenever you see Tom Hanks or Patrick Stewart on screen you don't really see the character you just see Tom Hanks and Patrick Stewart I kind of got that while watching this film it just felt like Jack Sparrow Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka we're singing about murder which I guess kind of helped the overall tone of the film anyway so even though Anthony opens the number it's really a solo for Sweeney Todd and it serves as a great establishing number to introduce us to his backstory his motivations and why he's here great moving on we rush through the streets of London and we hear a bunch of music that sounds kind of familiar [Music] and there's one little musical gesture

5:25 here that I want to draw attention to this is something that Sondheim himself called Sweeney's madness motif in Sondheim on music by Mark Eden Horowitz which is basically just a giant interview about a bunch of Sondheim's works and you should definitely check it out if you're Sondheim fan anyway yeah in that book he calls it Sweden's madness motif but he also calls it the Stravinsky motif because it reminds him mr. Vince key anyway anyway so we're rushing through the streets of London familiar music Sweeney's madness motif and we're introduced to mrs. Lovett and hey so I think mrs. Lovett's gonna die and I'm not just saying that because I've seen this a whole bunch of times but check it out listen really listen so this is her light motif it's the musical idea that represents mrs. Lovett in this story and we hear it come back every once in a

6:25 while but listen really really closely it might actually be easier to see this part right here it's actually these notes from the Diaz array upside down see so we kind of see her light motif branded with this ancient chant that has come to represent death it's kind of metal but it almost directly relates to what happens to her by the end of the film so after being introduced to mrs. Lovett in the worst pies in London the plot moves along with mrs. Lovett telling us about what happened to Sweeney's wife in poor thing yay exposition so following poor thing and discovering what happened to Sweeney's wife Sweeney returns to his old shop and were introduced to his razors and hold on nope wait yep it's pretty much confirmed now Sweeney's gonna kill people with those razors as if the lyrics and the opening weren't obvious enough listen to this line again once again that's the deus array these

7:14 are my friends is the first few notes of the Diaz array upside down speaking of which once you get to the end of this tune were greeted with the greatest line in all of musical history followed by an unmistakable reference to the Deus era with that swing your razor wide melody we've seen the murderer and the murder weapons come together his arm is complete again death and killing is only a matter of time and a score is screaming it at our faces so you might have picked up on a pattern here the Diaz array the musical representation of death it's cluing us in on what happens Sweeney's all about killing and death so it shows up all over the place mrs. Lovett does the whole cannibalism pie thing and ends up dying in the end so

8:00 her light motif has the Dia's eerie in it as well obviously the razor's will have some kind of death Dias eerie association and when Sweeney's resolved to killing the judge we get that big statement of the dia Syria again at every twist and turn we hear that death theme which works fine as a storytelling device but it also clues as soon as to what's happening from Sweeney's perspective he's surrounded by death on all sides he sees and hears it everywhere even when he isn't actively thinking about it it's clawing at a subconscious okay so let's continue moving forward so after my friends were introduced to Joanna's singing her own solo greenfinch and Linnet bird and okay so I think at this point it might be fair to say that this is Sweeney's daughter listen to that flute line so look Joanna's got this whole bird motif thing

8:47 going on not just musical motif but like bird trapped in a cage motif the song is about birds being trapped in a cage she's singing to a bird in a cage she's shot next to a bird in a cage she's framed so the window looks like it's a cage she's a bird in a cage great and in general a lot of people have this natural association between flutes and birdsong because well flutes are like the orchestral instrument that sounds closest to birds it's more or less hypertrophy if used flutes to represent the bird in Peter in the wolf but there's only one other part of this musical where we hear flutes like that right here when we learn about what happened to Lucy Sweeney's wife in fact Tim Burton even frames the street in the same way just to hammer home what we're hearing so really everything's kind of

9:32 pointing to us figuring out that this is Sweeney's daughter but also pay attention to Joanna's theme right here [Music] right here on this Nightingale Blackbird that's just a cut from the DIA serie again but Johanna doesn't die her life is filled with death everyone around her dies but she doesn't die by the end of the film and she doesn't kill anyone either except that she does in a stage musical she ends up killing the guy that runs the asylum but that was changed in the Burton film but since death is a part of her original story we find it lurking in her theme following Joanna's theme we get Anthony's theme which confusingly is Johanna and you can kind of see how it's sort of a reference to the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet

10:18 but not really and for the first time in the show there are no references to the deus Irae at least i can't find any and i can't find anyone else trying to argue that there's a connection to the d s ehre here as well this is a respite from the death theme and it's coming from the character who rescues Johanna from this lethal environment he doesn't kill anyone and he doesn't end up dead by the end of the story we know that Anthony's gonna live and we know he isn't gonna kill anyone because the deus era isn't a part of his theme but right before we get Anthony singing about Joanna Anthony learns her name from this beggar woman and okay so yeah that's Sweeney's wife and again I don't just know that because I've watched this a whole bunch listen there's only one other place where we hear those violins it's when Lucy goes to the judges frat party in

11:07 the flashback during poor thing so yeah joanna is Sweeney's daughter and this beggar woman is Sweeney's wife Lucy we're barely half an hour into the show or at least the film and it's already pretty clear to see where the pieces are and what's gonna happen it's basically spoiled to twist at the end and you can extrapolate what's going to happen moving forward these musical structures are pretty systematic just look at Toby and Senor Pirelli both of them have a reference to the D s area as well this part in Toby's line that's just the DZ recut and dry and Toby ends up with the final kill of the show so it makes sense for this death motif to appear in his theme and this part the Pirelli Singh's

11:52 there's just so much stepwise motion that you're just bound to find some kind of little musical reference to the DEA's eerie and sure enough there it is and of course he's Sweeney's first kill so everything is the DEA's eerie it's everywhere it's in the walls it's in the streets it's in the toilet it's everywhere and that's the one thing you always hear about when you look into Sweeney Todd it's how everything has the D s area in it there are countless papers and sources and all kinds of voices trying to break down where the D s area appears and how I found one paper that cites a book that I didn't get my hands on that mentions that out of 15 independent light motifs in Sweeney Todd 13 of them are in some way derived or linked to the D s array the paper then goes on to talk about how various scholars have different names for different light motifs so that doesn't get confusing at all with almost no effort you can find countless websites

12:38 and articles and blogs talking about where and how various fragments of the DSE reappear in the melodies of this musical there's a YouTube channel called into the hoods that's one of the most comprehensive breakdowns of this musical especially with concern to how the DLC reappears and it is 17 parts long and he never made it past act 1 and this in essence is kind of a musical expression of what's going on in Sweeney Todd's head it's his musical madness he's surrounded by death on all fronts but what's even more amazing is that this was all completely intentional utilizing a small idea and developing it over time is something that Sondheim himself brought up right here while talking about Sweeney Todd because if you can take I got this idea and I got this idea I got it now I'm gonna build a score

13:23 don't have to invent very do you take this one and you turn it upside down and it's a new tomb you take this one you take the harmonies and say instead of major let's make it minor and suddenly it's a new song you take this one and everyone says oh see how we held the sword together and I thought it would be useful to take the D AC adapter and use it as the basis of Sweeney's music because he's a man who's in love with death you know and even if you can't here are all these super subtle references to this ancient chant of death you can still get a sense for it even if you don't know what the D s area is let alone that it's the musical representation of death you've still probably been exposed to it over the years and in ways that would draw some kind of subconscious Association even if

14:09 you don't realize that this music is probably having an effect on you take it from Sondheim himself and it gave me a start and gave me an atmosphere because I've always found the da CRE both moving and upsetting at the same time it scares me and it moves me so in the process of creating this extraordinarily detailed score yeah if you look close enough you might be able to figure out the story before it happens but at the same time this whole structure unlocks an unparalleled potential for musical storytelling and ideas Airy permeating the fabric of the story is a great example you can really feel how Sweeney is just faced with death at every turn it's almost like he has no escape but that's not all we get here check it out

14:55 so Sweeney's figured out how to get the judge to show up but he's impatient he wants to kill the judge now but mrs. Lovett ends up calming him down with wait lady blue white I've been thinking boy listen right there that Sweeney's madness light motif in Celeste normally we hear that motif in these frantic strings but nope right here we get in the Celeste which for those of you who aren't know that's the sugarplum fairy instrument it's about as unthreatening as you can get but that madness motif which while we're here feels like some kind of mutant permutation of that DSE ray it has that stepwise motion and all those similar shapes but that madness sound haunts the

15:42 background of this scene so we basically get mrs. Lovett singing a quasi lullaby to keep Sweeney calm and although it's stopping him from immediately going on a rampage we can hear that it's doing nothing to quell the madness brewing in the background we can hear the same whispers of death that he can and we know that he's still dealing with this festering obsession with killing he's just a little calmer in the moment and now take a listen to pretty women [Music] reading likely Brazilian right off the bat you can see how these musical structures that the judge is singing are of course also inspired by the Diaz array it's just this part upside down which makes sense the judge dies in the end but Sweeney was the one that started

16:27 this pretty women line Sweeney is revealing his intentions in the music all while trying to keep the judge none the wiser and the judge plays along with no idea of what Sweeney's up to but before all this happens we have this incredibly tense moment where it looks like Sweeney's gonna kill the judge but doesn't and why is it so tense it's because we're hearing my friends again the song he sung when he first discovered his razors and committed himself to killing the judge a song which let me remind you is based completely on the Deus ARA we already know what he's expecting to do with the razors and by this point in the show we've already seen him kill someone so there's really nothing stopping him from getting the job done and hearing the

17:13 music from the solo where he's saying his lethal intent to his murder weapons is what makes this moment so brutally suspenseful but all of that is nothing compared to epiphany now they're a bunch of other people who have broken this tune down it's really the let it go or defying gravity of Sweeney Todd so if you want a more detailed breakdown I've left links to musicals with cheese and Kevin Lynch's videos down below and there's even a clip out there of Sondheim himself dismantling what went into this tune and hopefully I can give this a fresh perspective but it's just such a great example of paying off on all this amazing musical infrastructure that Sondheim built up throughout the show but this tune is the one that everyone remembers it's when Sweeney decides to kill everyone everywhere all the time and it begins right after Anthony interrupts Sweeney and the judge gets away so he's furious and he feels like he's never gonna see his daughter again and breaks into this number and we

17:59 get some of Sweeney's madness motif he's about to snap it's been building for the whole show and this is the last straw [Music] mrs. lovin interjects with some weight she's trying to calm Sweeney down the way she did before but instead of that calming Celeste the madness motif comes back in those panic strings she wasn't able to get to him and we can see that Sweeney is completely unhinged we go back to there's no place like London reminding us all why Sweeney came back in the first place [Music] and right before we hear the line they

18:45 all deserve to die listen to what we get in the base it's kind of hard to pick up yeah you guessed it it's the DIA serie again but it's not just the DIA serie it's arguably the most complete instance of the Diaz area we here in the entire show not only that but in this case the Diaz area is literally acting as a driving force it's keeping the momentum pushing the music forward it's acting like the foundation for everything Sweeney is going through at this point killing people and death is the only thing motivating Sweeney we aren't hearing the Diaz area like hidden whispers coated in other people's music we aren't hearing it the background on the streets following Sweeney Todd around now it's clear and fundamental we all know what his intentions are beyond that this is also just a really great

19:30 number and exposes how this is a really great adaptation by Burton on stage this is supposed to be another fourth wall break where Sweeney starts threatening members of the audience and the choice to walk around a frozen in time London is a really great interpretation of that but aside from that we can hear Sweeney rapidly switching between musical ideas demonstrating how he's completely unfocused and descending into madness one second it's complete psychotic rage and the next he's singing about Joanna but that melody switches to this one right here [Music] it's actually halfway in between arms arms which represents the bigger woman Lucy his still-living wife and Joanna's greenfinch and Linnet bird it's a really powerful moment where we can see hear and feel that Sweeney is thinking about everything he thinks he's lost and that

20:16 the only thing left for him is to answer all the calls of the Dia's area we've been hearing throughout the show and just kill everyone that frantic swapping between musical motifs while still singing about killing people demonstrates the internal torment he's going through he's torn he's completely losing it it's an epiphany that everyone deserves to die all of those hidden statements of the Dia's Erie bubbled to the surface he's completely overwhelmed by what happened to him and he breaks and none of that none of these incredible moments of musical storytelling could have happened without this intensely detailed musical structure we wouldn't be able to read his mind when Lovitz trying to calm him down this scene wouldn't be nearly as tense without understanding all the different versions of death waiting for the judge along with a specific deus eariy derived light motif for Sweeney's raisers and we wouldn't have the same visceral reaction

21:03 to Sweeney finally snapping and committing to killing everyone so does the music spoil Sweeney Todd sure maybe if you really want to look at it like that but you have to break through that surface and see what's really going on underneath and understand that deeper story being told by the music sure if you aren't paying super close attention then yeah maybe it just sets the tone really really well but as soon as you look a little closer you find a labyrinth of beautiful musical structures waiting to expose the deeper understanding of Sweeney Todd you know it's kind of like a pie on the surface it might not look all that different from the rest but as soon as you break it open you might be surprised by what you find happy Halloween thanks for watching I'd like to be called my patrons for making sweet as possible with a very special thank you

21:49 to Alex Kolakowski Clarke tan DJ now Anandi doctor whoa Emmet husband Hayden Elsa Jordan Adams Caron Rosa now Meyer and John Tatar and pray Locke and Who am I also extra special shout out for everybody who suggested I talk about Sondheim I love Sweeney Todd it was tons of fun going through it if you like to just out here be sure to LIKE and subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on Twitter for stupid music jokes and on Twitch if you want to come hang out and talk about music and if you really like what I'm doing consider supporting the channel on patreon that's like out for now thanks for watching [Music]