Sondheim Puzzlers

Compiled by Daryl Wallis

So, you think you know your Sondheim trivia? You think you know just about everything there is to know about the man and his works, do you? This is the place for you. Before you go on too much longer here, make sure you're ready to buckle down and spend some time, for if you are to succeed with these, you will have to rely on more than you're keen sense of Sondheim trivia to allow you to prevail in the end!

The PIT in the PIT Game

You are the Musical Director for an impending production of Putting it Together (the listserve revised version!). The Director has informed you that the first rehearsal is now scheduled for tomorrow afternoon to work on the first two songs that the newly appointed orchestrator will hopefully have ready by then. You are told to contact the singers that are required for rehearsal and to arrange the seating in the pit for the musicians. The problem is that you don't know which two songs are to be rehearsed, and what instruments the orchestrator has chosen to use in the band. Meanwhile the orchestrator's phone is off the hook as charts are furiously written out. Your only clue is a hastily dispatched E-mail message that arrives later that day-

To: Musical Director PIT
From: Sob In Art Arranging Services
Subject: PIT in the Pit

I have opted for a band with 10 musicians and they are divided amongst the
instrumental families thus-

        Strings         1
        Woodwind        1
        Keyboard        3
        Percussion      5

I understand from the Director that the pit is quite wide but not very deep
so you will have to arrange the musicians side by side in the correct order
from left to right in the pit so that they will all fit. Just remember that
due to the complexities of some of my arrangements I took the opportunity
where necessary to have more than one musician playing an identical or
similar instrument, and in that acoustic space you'll have to keep the
untuned percussion on the outside of the tuned percussion, and as always,
the Strings section on the right of the Woodwind section.

As it happens (!) all of the instruments in the band can be found in the
lyrics of Sondheim songs. And in a further striking coincidence (!!) when
the titles of the songs from which the instruments derive are ordered in
the same manner as their seating arrangement, a pattern is formed that
tells you the title of the two songs we will rehearse tomorrow!

Anyways, enough of these games, here are the details. The band consists of
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At this point a modem crash corrupted all of the remaining message. You now have to deduce:

(A) The instruments that make up the band,
(B) The seating arrangement in the pit and
(C) The two Sondheim songs to be rehearsed tomorrow.

The success of this production now rests on your shoulders.....

All done? Check the answers!