Stephen Sondheim Collection Acquired by Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has acquired the manuscripts, music and lyric drafts, recordings, notebooks, and scrapbooks of composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.

The collection includes approximately 5,000 items documenting Sondheim’s creative life. Highlights include:

• A one-page inner monologue that Sondheim wrote as subtext for the character Desirée for when she sings “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music.”
• Lyrics for a reprise of “Side by Side by Side” that never made it into “Company,” the musical for which Sondheim won his first Tony Awards as a composer and lyricist.
• 40 pages of lyric sketches for “A Little Priest” from “Sweeney Todd,” with lists of more than 150 possible professions and types of people who could have been baked into pies written in the margins.
• Drafts of variations on the lyrics to “I’m Still Here” from “Follies” and “Putting It Together” from Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday in the Park with George” that Sondheim wrote for Barbra Streisand at her request.
• A spiral music book titled “Notes and Ideas,” documenting some of his musical efforts while a student at Williams College.
• Three boxes of specialty songs, such as the birthday songs he wrote for friends Leonard Bernstein, Harold Prince and others.
• Manuscripts for “Here We Are” (working title: “Buñeul,” based on director Luis Buñeul’s films), the show Sondheim was crafting when he died.

The collection also contains scrapbooks that hold programs, clippings, opening night telegrams, and more.

Sondheim made his first donation to the Library in 1995, his vast record collection of approximately 13,000 albums. The collection of classical and contemporary music was accompanied by a hand-typed card catalog.

The music and lyrics in the Sondheim collection will be available in the Performing Arts Reading Room by July 1, with the remainder of the papers, as well as a complete finding aid, available later in summer 2025.