"Being Alive" by Stephen Sondheim, 1

       In the film Six by Sondheim the composer/lyricist says when he was 15, he learned from Oscar Hammerstein directly the most important single thing about lyric-writing for a musical:  the lyric had to have a beginning, middle, and end; it had to develop; the character singing needed to be in a different place when the song finished than when it began.

       I think it's a marvel of language the way Sondheim does it in "Being Alive," one of the six songs of the documentary's title.

       Tomorrow:  The Lyrics