"Another Hundred People"
Stephen Sondheim as scientist
“When I was 11 years old, I met Oscar Hammerstein, and he became a surrogate father, and I just wanted to do what he did. And he was a songwriter for the theater, so I became a songwriter for the theater. If he was a geologist, I would have become a geologist,” Stephen Sondheim told the New York Times in a June 2008 interview. In 1995, he gave a similar line to CBS: “I’ve often said that if he’d been an archeologist, I’d been an archeologist.”
Sondheim made these statements to illustrate how much Hammerstein influenced his career. Hammerstein was a mentor and father figure, the man who kickstarted Sondheim’s journey in theater. But, with these claims, Sondheim did something else, too: By mentioning geologists and archeologists, he paralleled his actual theatrical career with a hypothetical scientific career.
And, even though he pursued a career in theater, I think Sondheim was still a sort of scientist.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” Like science, art can be a means to systematically observe the world, exposing its structure and behavior. Science is a path to understanding some Truth about our world. Art can be the same.
In so many of his shows, Sondheim exposes that Truth; through his characters and songs, he creates a systematic study of people and their world. Take, for example, the song “Another Hundred People” from Sondheim’s 1970 musical Company.
Company is about Bobby, a 35-year-old bachelor. The show, which lacks a linear narrative, is composed of disparate scenes where Bobby interacts with his married friends and girlfriends. In the show’s fifth scene, Bobby talks with each of his girlfriends while one of them, Marta, sings “Another Hundred People.” This song illustrates how Sondheim and bookwriter George Furth used Company to construct arguments about modern life that paralleled those set forth by contemporary scientists, such as the thinking sociologist David Riesman laid out in his 1950 book The Lonely Crowd.
The Lonely Crowd, according to Riesman, is about “‘social character,’ the patterned uniformities of learned response that distinguish men of different … groups.” The book argues that, despite postwar prosperity, the traditional American ethos of self-reliant independence was weakening, and as a result, America was becoming a nation of anxious, over-socialized individuals. Riesman identified a lack of individualism as the core problem. He described how the “inner-directed” American character type was being supplanted by an “other-directed” type. Historian Wilson McClay wrote: “The oxymoron [in the book’s title] captured many of the more troubling features of the corporatized, bureaucratized, suburbanized, and homogenized white-collar America that had emerged … after World War II.”
Sondheim said Company is about “the increasing difficulty of making emotional connections in an increasingly dehumanized society … it’s the lonely crowd syndrome,” likely a reference to Riesman’s book. And this is illustrated in “Another Hundred People.” The song begins: “Another hundred people just got off of the train / and came up through the ground / While another hundred people just got off of the bus.” A few lines later: “It’s a city of strangers–– / Some come to work, some to play–– / A city of strangers–– / Some come to stare, some to stay.”
The song is about “the drifting of rushed life, the endless progression of events” in New York City, according to original orchestrator Jonathan Tunick. It musicalizes “the lonely crowd syndrome.” In the song, hundreds of strangers exhibit simultaneous conformity and separation. Theater scholar Joanne Gordon says the song displays “the parallels between Bobby’s dogged isolation and the loneliness of the city,” attributing Bobby’s solitude to his New York environment––just as Riesman claimed an other-directed personality was more common in larger cities like New York. In the song, Marta sings: “Will you pick me up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go? / Did you get my message, ‘cause I looked in vain?” These questions, always asked and never answered, convey a sense of other-directedness; the speaker is looking to others for guidance.
The song’s music furthers the lyrical message by imitating the actions of urbanites passing each other without engaging. In the song, there are two ostinatos of different lengths that run against each other. Whenever the song begins to repeat, a rising countermelody enters and then slowly fades away, like a missed connection in “a city of strangers.” Riesman wrote of the loss of autonomy, individualism, and true connection that came with modern life. Sondheim captures this sentiment in “Another Hundred People,” bringing a theatricality to Riesman’s argument and demonstrating the tension between city and individual in both lyric and music.
At the end of this scene, Marta tells Bobby: “If you’re really part of this city, relaxed, cool and in the whole flow of it, your ass is like this,” making a large circle with her forefingers and thumb. She continues: “If you’re just living here, runnin’ around uptight, not really part of this city, your ass is like this,” tightening the circle to a fist. Bobby, she says, is the latter. In Lonely Crowd, Riesman explained how American citizens—particularly middle-class men—were characterized by “passivity and joylessness,” created by living in a “time of disenchantment” (postwar America). According to Marta, Bobby epitomizes this “passivity and joylessness.” He is “just living” and “not really part of this city.” Sondheim himself described Bobby as “empty,” “cold,” and a “cipher,” all adjectives that echo Riesman’s classification of American citizens. Later, in the show’s penultimate scene, Bobby says: “My age group is a very uptight age group.” Bobby identifies the truth in Marta’s comment and, by extension, Riesman’s diagnosis; the city’s uptightness is a part of not only him but also his entire generation. The entire lonely crowd.
This week, a gender-swapped revival of Company opens on Broadway. In the new staging, while PJ (a gender-swapped Marta) sings “Another Hundred People,” the ensemble bustles around the stage on cellphones, looking down, faces lit up by smartphone screens. In his final interview before his passing, Sondheim talked about this new staging, mentioning how the song was originally written as a solo for Marta, not as a group number; in the interview, he told the revival’s director Marianne Elliott: “I don’t know exactly why you wanted a group number [for “Hundred People”], but it’s nice to have one there.” Elliott explained her thinking: “I wanted it to look like Bobbie (the gender-swapped Bobby) was being taken through the streets and the alleys and the corners and the highs and the lows of New York, and also, through, possibly even, an app. So it has connotations of her walking, but also connotations of her going through a dating app.”
Thus, Elliott modernizes the idea of the lonely crowd. The lonely crowd is no longer linked to postwar other-directedness; now, it arises from technology. The phenomenon is still alive, but its cause has morphed and Elliott’s smartphone-filled staging exhibits this change. The city of strangers is now built by apps instead of by postwar anxieties.
In his final interview, Sondheim said of the song: “This is New York’s solo.” Staged in 1970 or 2021, the same lyrics tell equally insightful stories about life in New York City. In other words, Sondheim’s song continues to speak to the now.
I think it does so because Sondheim’s work is, in part, scientific. Both art and science strive to unearth a Truth about the world by looking closely and analyzing deeply. In “Another Hundred People,” Marta––perhaps as a vehicle for Sondheim himself––observes New York City. Through these observations, she exposes the structure and behavior of the world, just as a scientist does. She exposes the physical movement of New Yorkers out of trains and off of buses. She exposes the uptight behavior and isolated actions of New Yorkers. She is a scientist giving us a systematic study of the world.
At the end of Company, Bobby asks himself a question about marriage: “What do you get?” I think we can co-opt this question as the question Sondheim is asking us with each of his songs: What do YOU get? What do you get from systematically observing the structure and behavior of the world around you?
You get to learn something––about yourself and the world.
I’ve certainly gotten to learn many things from Sondheim’s careful observations. The above analysis of “Another Hundred People” is excerpted from an article I wrote, which has its roots in one of my graduate school essays (one of two essays I wrote on science in Sondheim). Today, I’m known among friends and family as a Sondheim fan, but for so long, I was dismissive of his work. It wasn’t until a friend encouraged me to read his libretti, listen to his music, and watch his show recordings that I first came to appreciate Sondheim. It was through this self-study of Sondheim that I fell in love with his oeuvre.
He has given me songs to express my feelings. His music has, in turn, become a way for me to make sense of both myself and the wider world. His work has nuanced my understanding of art and science, demonstrating how the artistic can be scientific. He has shown me the power of musical theater as a cultural force, as a storytelling medium, and as a vehicle for expression. His shows have become a part of my identity, both as a scholar and as a person––so much so that every time I exit Penn Station, the lyrics to “Another Hundred People” start running through my head.
Another hundred people just got off of the train…
It’s a city of strangers, some come to work, some to play…
So, to answer Bobby’s question, that is what I get. And I’m so grateful for it.
Notes:
This analysis of “Another Hundred People” is adapted from my article on Company.
The New York Times published a very comprehensive obituary on Sondheim and his life.
Sondheim’s interview with Marianne Elliott on the Company revival was conducted less than a week before his passing.
There have been so many brilliant tributes to Sondheim, his work, and his legacy. Some of my favorites:
Helena Fitzgerald’s is particularly wonderful.
I also love Mark Harris’ piece.
Isaac Butler’s provides a nice look at Sondheim as puzzle master.
I also like Sophie Gibson’s, which discusses Sondheim and ambiguity.
Beyond his work, Sondheim also shaped American theater as a mentor. The New York Times outlines his influence as “encourager-in-chief.” Or, watch the movie tick, tick… BOOM!, which (in part) illustrates Sondheim’s mentorship of Rent composer-lyricist Jonathan Larson.