Sweeney Todd: A Lesson in Musical Motifs

A demon barber, a quirky pie maker, and an impeccably structured show.

A road trip calls for Broadway soundtracks, and this past weekend I set out to drive to Kentucky with my bandmates. When I asked them if they would be down to listen to Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, they rejoiced. Both of my bandmates (here on referred to as Emily and Michela) are actors and musical theater nerds, and I quickly realized I’d be getting a masterclass in Sweeney Todd as we listened.

Normally I listen along with a synopsis of the show and the lyrics in front of me, but this week I had two hands on a steering wheel and two commentators guiding me through the show. They would pause before a song and explain context and take notes for me as we listened along.

Overall, it was one of my favorite listening experiences yet, if not for the show, then just for the company I had while listening.

As we unpacked Sweeney, I quickly learned that this show has some distinctly Sondheim elements while also being a major departure from his usual style. While Sweeney is darker than Follies or Company, I do enjoy that Stephen always wrote stories that feel, on some level, larger than life. Sweeney Todd is absolutely epic, and Stephen elevates the story with music to make it feel dramatic, scary, and most of all, very exciting.

Before I get started on the songs, let’s talk about how Sweeney Todd came to be.

If you don’t know, now you know:

Sweeney Todd, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler, has layers of source material. The story of the musical is based on the 1970 play by Christopher Bond, but the character of Sweeney Todd dates back to the 1850s when the story and character was a part of Victorian fiction called penny dreadfuls.

Stephen saw the Christopher Bond play and felt as through he could musicalize the story, giving it new life. Stephen felt that the music would create more dramatic stakes and make us feel like Sweeney was a force to be reckoned with. Sweeney has more songs than most musicals, and I found in my listening that Stephen forged ground for so many pieces of sung-through musical structure that we now hear all of the time. In particular, the use of leitmotifs in this show is practically unparalleled.

While Stephen was sure about the show, Hal Prince, his long-time directing partner, was apprehensive about the story because it lacked structural innovation. Hal eventually found conceptual innovation in Sweeney Todd by making the show parallel the Industrial Revolution. While Stephen originally wanted the production to be small, intimate, and scary, Hal wanted a big spectacle show to show off his directing skills. Because Stephen wanted to work with Hal more than he wanted an intimate show, the pair merged their vision in the 1979 production.

Regardless of the scope of the show, the original production was a hit. Winning Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score, Hal and Stephen added another feather to their caps with this incredible musical.

With some background out of the way, let’s talk about the tunes.

The breakdown:

Sweeney Todd begins with “Prelude: The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: 'Attend The Tale of Sweeney Todd,” where out of the gate we get these incredible creepy organ sounds and whining strings. Throughout this whole score I was in awe of the orchestrations. It’s incredible the way Stephen voices all the parts of the score to feel so grandiose and so dramatic. This score would just not hit as hard on just a piano.

As the song goes on, I told Emily and Michela, “Wow, Stephen really is asking so much of these sopranos.” I quickly understood that the soprano tracks in this show are no joke. To any soprano who has been in this show, thank you for your service, and are you okay?

One of my favorite things an opening number can do is deliver a song that is entirely about the central character, while also giving this central character a delayed entrance. Think of “Alexander Hamilton” and the way that Alexander is spoken about from the first line in the show, yet he doesn’t get his big entrance until the end of the track. This way of framing the protagonist makes the anticipation build through the whole number and then delivers an incredible release when we finally meet them.

After the Prologue, we then move into “No Place Like London” and “The Barber and His Wife.” These songs let us hear from Anthony and Sweeney, who have just gotten off a boat and have arrived back in London. We also meet the Beggar Woman, who we will later learn is perhaps the most significant character in the show. This song introduces multiple key motifs, including the Beggar Woman’s theme and the London theme. It also introduces what I found to be one of the most fascinating elements of the show, which is the mistaken identity device. Almost all of the plot points in the show revolve around mistaken identities or hidden identities, and it made me feel at first that I was watching a sort of Shakespearean comedy, a la Twelfth Night or As You Like It. Of course, I later learned this show is not a comedy, but a tragedy, as tragic as Macbeth and as bloody as Titus Andronicus.

Next we hear “The Worst Pies In London,” where Angela Lansbury gets to chew the scenery and establish herself as our new favorite character. Evidently Angela was skeptical about playing Lovett because she didn’t want to be a secondary character, but anyone who knows Angela knows that she will steal any stage she is on. This song is exceptional, although I do find Angela’s dialect makes it harder for me to appreciate Sondheim’s delightful wordplay.

We then get the backstory of Todd’s wife and what has happened in his absence in “Poor Thing.” The “poor thing” motif is one of my favorites, and I adore how the musical material is developed in this piece.

As I discuss motifs, I must mention that this show not only reuses musical material, but redefines it. It is not merely a recapitulation of information, but a transformation of themes. Stephen spoke about this in an interview with the New Yorker, saying:

“Sweeney Todd is a very good example of that: the utilization of themes over and over again, but developed, not repeating. Very few people writing do this kind of thing. I learned all of these compositional principles from [Milton] Babbitt. What it amounts to is, music exists in time, so how do you make it cohere? And that’s just as true with a three-minute song as it is with an hour-and-a-half opera, you know? I remember, we analyzed Mozart’s Thirty-ninth to see how he held it together. Why is this one symphony? We’re talking about different movements, so it isn’t like he’s using the same tune, and yet there’s a coherence.”

The idea of “developed, not repeating,” is fascinating to me, because I think this is the primary reason writers should be utilizing motifs! One of my favorite usages of a motif is in Hamilton when in “Non-Stop” Alexander throws Eliza’s motif back in her face, singing “look around, look around, at how lucky we are to be alive right now,” as he leaves her in the dust to go work in the continental congress. Motifs are fine when it is just musical material reused, but they are at their most powerful when they are redefined and transformed by the character to mean something new or reveal something new about the material.

Next, we get what I feel is Todd’s first major moment of identity reclamation and character development in “My Friends.” Listening to Sweeney and his blades, I felt that this resembled George Seurat and his paintbrushes. There are so many good lines in this song, such as Lovett’s “silver’s good enough for me sir,” and Todd’s “at last my arm is complete again.” So simple, yet so evocative!

This song is also what I would refer to as a “back door” song, a term that was given to me by Wicked book writer Winnie Holzman. A back door song is a tune in which a character appears to be singing about one thing (say, finishing a hat in a painting) but is actually singing about something much deeper under the surface (losing the love of his life). While on the surface “My Friends” is about Todd and his knives, it is truly about his need for revenge. This is the song where I understand Todd’s super objective and begin to truly root for him.

We then hear “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: 'Lift Your Razor High, Sweeney!” While I feel the return of the Ballad of Sweeney is important and visceral when in the space of the theatre, I felt these were some of my more boring moments in listening to the soundtrack. I reiterate, not everything is meant to be listened to.

Track 8 brings us “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” one of the only songs I knew going into this listen. This song continues to be just okay for me. It does a good job of establishing Johanna as a sort of Rapunzel-in-the-tower type, and though I do believe the melodic line to to be beautiful, the range that this character sings in can be a little grating for me sometimes. I think part of it is that we really lose Johanna’s diction when she has to sing so high, and as a singer I understand that once we surpass a certain note range in the voice, our jaw has to drop so the notes can come out, and vowels get modified and all of that lovely singing technique stuff. It feels like perhaps with the right music direction we could get more diction out of an actor, but it feels like an uphill battle with the notes on the page.

I will say that Johanna’s vocal range throughout the show sets her apart from everyone else and makes her frantic headspace all the more clear. As she sings about a bird, she truly sounds like one.

I thought that the next track, “Ah, Miss” was one of the hook-iest songs yet. I loved the rhythmic drive of “look at me, look at me” and I felt that this gave Anthony great power on stage. At the end, I turned around to my bandmates and screamed, “but does she look at him?!”

I continued to be invested in Johanna and Anthony’s arc through the iconic tune, “Johanna,” which is basically just “Maria” from West Side Story (which Stephen wrote two decades earlier). I will say that this tune is so lovely, and one of the joys of this Substack is hearing songs that I know but revisiting them within the context of the musical. A line like “even now I’m at your window” made so much more sense within the show (which, duh), but it just made the song all the more powerful.

A song like “Johanna” also asserts the classic musical theatre idea of love at first sight (it reminded me so much of “In My Life” and Cosette and Marius’ meeting). While love at first sight may be far-fetched, when you get a song as good as “Johanna,” you start to believe it can happen.

Next comes “Pirelli’s Magic Elixir,” which was fine. The character of Pirelli feels like a mix of Ali Hakim from Oklahoma and Aldolpho from The Drowsy Chaperone. While this song is in some ways just comedic relief, I do feel that after the emotional height “Johanna” we are ready for a breath of fresh air. We go straight into “The Contest,” which mimics “Farmer Refuted” in the way that it establishes the protagonist as having the upper hand and makes us trust and root for them.

Coming back to the orchestrations, I love the syncopated horns in these tunes and the way the rhythm builds anticipation. I was just talking about syncopated horns in my Follies Substack — I’m beginning to think it’s one of Stephen’s superpowers!

We next arrive "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: ‘Sweeney Pondered and Sweeney Planned,” which yet again I found to be fine. There is something nice about returning to our musical home of the ballad theme, although none of these stuck out majorly to me.

While the ballad didn’t capture my heart, I did absolutely love “Wait.” This was one of my favorite tracks in the show and made me continue to fall for Lovett. I loved lines as simple and funny as “it’s only Tuesday,” and this entire song made me think hard about the way that Lovett claims her power. Though she appears to be domestic and lovely, there is a certain Lady M quality to her, in the way she speaks to Sweeney and works to manipulate him. Of course, we later learn that she is a massive manipulator, but I love how carefully those leads are buried here.

We then get, you guessed it, another ballad. "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: ‘His Hands Were Quick, His Fingers Strong.” These transitional pieces have to be electric on stage and really let the ensemble shine, but by this point I was thinking, “oh great, Ballad part 847293.”

Track 16 brings us to “Johanna,” a track sung by the judge about how he has feelings for his ward. This song is both incredible and amazing, and the conversation that it brought up in the car fascinated me. The girls in the band were talking about how despicable the judge is and how the song makes them uncomfortable, and as I listened, I felt that though, yes, the character is deplorable and the song gives him stage time, that the judge being a truly evil character is the reason why the show works.

We must understand that though Sweeney Todd does terrible things, he is not the villain. We empathize with Sweeney, and we root for him, and we can only root for Sweeney as the hero if we feel there is a worthy opponent. “Johanna” personalized Sweeney’s anger for me - I felt that while I had previously sympathized with his pain in losing his wife and daughter, here I became personally angry. Sweeney’s want for revenge became mine.

Dramaturgically, it’s fantastic.

We then hear “Kiss Me,” another major hit of the show. When I heard “we fly tonight,” I continued to appreciate the development (not repetition) of the flight motif. Johanna wants to fly, and Anthony is bent on letting her. I also love the way that Johanna is bouncing off the walls here and it is juxtaposed with Anthony’s calm, cool, “I have a plan.” I ship Anthony and Johanna hard.

While “Kiss Me” delivered, I didn’t love “Ladies and Their Sensitivities.” I felt as though the judge’s “Johanna” already established him as such a villain that I didn’t really need all the preamble of this song with the Beedle. I do understand that this song is accomplishing a lot for the plot, switching back and forth between scenes, but wasn’t a standout in my listening.

One thing this song did bring up for me, however, was the device of multiple characters singing different things at the same time. There are points in this song in which we are just listening to a wall of sound where one melodic line is indistinguishable from the next. It made me think of a piece of Will Reynolds wisdom about this — the idea that sometimes it is more important for us to understand that there is a shared experience between the characters and to feel that in the music, rather than to understand every word the characters are saying. There is a time and place for everything!

In “Pretty Women,” Sweeney talks to the judge in his barber shop. I love the lyric that Sweeney sings about the shave — “the closest I ever gave.” This song is so suspenseful and I love how Sweeney’s casual whistle contrasts his dark emotional life. The music so perfectly moves with Sweeney’s emotions, mimicking the uncapping and capping of anger.

Speaking of anger, we next hear Sweeney’s big song, “Epiphany.” This is such a highlight. I love how we hear the words “vengeance” and “salvation” in the same sentence, and how Sweeney throws the “Wait” theme back at Lovett. It’s motif development, and it’s incredible! This song has such a lovely arc, and it makes me feel truly terrified of Sweeney. I am with Lovett in feeling like he is out of control, and I know we are reaching the end of act one as we chew on this delicious emotional climax, topped off with Todd’s maniacal, evil laugh.

This isn't the end of act one though - we finally cruise to the end with “A Little Priest,” a song where Lovett and Sweeney hatch a plan to murder people and turn them into pies.Musically, I love that this song is a waltz. Waltzes are emotional tunes, and though this isn’t a traditional love song, these two characters sharing an objective is as close as they will get to love.

This song returns to the dark comedic tone that runs through so much of the show, and though it isn’t delivering a powerful emotional punch in the same was as “Epiphany,” I have thoughts on why this makes a good act closer.

I have been in dramaturgy for my show, The Waiting, with my writing partner Maria and dramaturg é boylan. We have been talking about how in the two act structure of the musical, the act one closer must promise a premise that will require an entire act to unpack. Something so massive that we simply must take a break before diving in. While Sweeney’s emotional climax is exciting, the murderous pie shop and the teaming up of our main two characters is something that I truly felt we would need a whole act to unpack. How will they get caught? Will they murder the judge? I have so many questions!

After we took a brief intermission to stop for gas and snacks, we dove back into the show. Act two begins with “God, That’s Good!” This song is led mostly by Tobias, who is a gem of act two. Tobias gives me Gavroche vibes, and I think that the breath of fresh air that is usually promised to us by act two openers is perfectly executed in this song.

We then return to A plot with the “Johanna Quartet,” which accomplishes a lot of plot in one song. We also get the return of the Beggar Woman here, which I loved. Her theme is so haunting and this character has such wonderful payoff. When we know the ending of the show we can understand why she is here, but I love that even without the knowledge of the ending, I already was appreciative of the ways that this character subtly pushes the plot forward, be it telling Anthony that the girl’s name is Johanna, or yelling about the stench coming out of the pie shop.

While there are so many wonderful tunes in this show, my favorite goes to “By The Sea.” I was talking earlier about how Lovett claims her power and how she searches for control in her (and Todd’s) life, and this song is a perfect encapsulation of the way that Lovett sells domestic bliss on the surface, but underneath is trying to sell Todd on a life with her hands on the steering wheel.

I love the melody of this song too. The melodic line of “by the sea” is incredibly crafted — the song is in the key of A, meaning that the note A will be our tonic and feel like our melodic home. The line “by the sea” is melodically ascending, but instead of landing all the way at A, it falls just short and lands on G#, the leading tone of the scale. This makes the song feel musically like it is reaching and not quite landing, just as Lovett’s pitch to Sweeney is reaching for a future that is out of her grasp. It’s such a perfect mirror of the music and her emotional life.

Speaking of emotionally charged songs, we get “Not While I’m Around.” Immediately I thought that this song gives the vibes of “No One Is Alone” from Into The Woods. I enjoyed the idea of an innocent character singing this song to a very not-innocent character, and the way that Tobias wants to protect Lovett when Tobias is the one that actually needs protecting. A charming tune.

Next, we hear the “Wigmaker Sequence"/"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: '...Sweeney'd Waited Too Long Before,” which was another song that in the context of seeing the show would be great but was not super interesting on the soundtrack. Ballad part 292758239235 and all that.

Speaking of skip tracks, I also felt that “Parlor Songs” fell short for me. After all the action of act one and the anticipation of our final conflict, I was ready to get on with it.

The finale was delivered impeccably, though, and it was well worth the wait. In “Final Sequence,” we get a return and final development of all of our favorite themes, whether it’s Lovett singing “not while I’m around” back to Tobias while looking for him in the sewers, or the way that “look at me” and the London themes come back. This is the moment where we feel the show will end in a tragedy, with the mistaken identities not leading to a wedding, but rather, a bloodbath.

Of course, the biggest reveal of the show is when we learn that the Beggar Woman is actually Lucy, Todd’s wife, and that Lovett has been hiding this information from him because she wanted a life with Sweeney.

The mistaken identity plot line thickens!!!

Sweeney’s final moments with Miss Lovett are incredible as he first lures her in with the promise of forgiveness before throwing her in the oven (their waltz returns, but creepy now)! Todd’s delicious revenge is short-lived though, when he, too, is murdered.

At the end, there is nothing but bodies. Sweeney has gotten the revenge he sought, but at what cost?

The Final Ballad delivers the entire cast revisiting the Ballad theme, and this was my favorite one. It felt like the strings of the musical were tied perfectly into a bow, and the idea that we all seek revenge in some way or another was threaded through perfectly.

Some parting wisdom:

From start to finish, the structure of Sweeney Todd was one of the most perfectly developed and crafted musicals I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to know. It balances all of the character’s plot lines and you relish in watching how they intersect. There is a balance of comedy and drama, joy and fear, and tunes that you can take with you in the rest of your day.

My bandmate Emily was talking about Sweeney and why she loves it, and she said, “I just don’t think there’s anything like it.” While I don’t know every musical that’s ever been made (that is why we’re here, after all), I can say that I agree with Emily. I’ve never heard of a musical quite like Sweeney Todd, and I believe that so many musicals we have come to love in the past few decades stand on the shoulders of this epic story.

I’m so glad Sondheim adapted this dark play and set a precedent for how dense a musical can be and the subject matters they can cover. As always, we can thank Stephen and Hal for forging new ground in the art form. May we all be so brave.

As I continue listening, this show will set the bar for the usage of musical motifs and structure — and the bar is high.

Speaking of more Substack content:

Next week, I’ll be working in Kentucky and will be leaning into the theme, listening to Floyd Collins.

I can’t wait to be in my home state and listening to a show set here.

More to come soon, and happy listening!