The Phonetics of Fascism

How does Sondheim temporarily turn us into monsters?

I recently wrote a blogpost about phonetics in lyric-writing, and another about the musical Assassins… so I thought I’d combine the two, and write about phonetics in the lyrics of Assassins!

(I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds.)

One of the great songs from the show is called “The Ballad of Booth”. If you haven’t listened to it, you’re missing out. It’s extraordinary. And in writing it, Sondheim set himself a challenge: how to depict John Wilkes Booth simultaneously as a racist murderer (as we see him) and a selfless, tyrant-slaying patriot (as he sees himself).

His solution is ingenious. For several minutes, we encounter Booth from the outside. The Balladeer attacks him as a raving narcissist and failing actor. But then Booth takes over the song. His music is stirring, nostalgic. The lyric is heroic and gentle.

And then it rises to an awful climax where Booth, in uttering a vile racist word, abruptly reveals his true colours.

It’s shocking. It’s meant to be. But what’s shocking isn’t just the force of the word, or the suddenness of the emotional reversal, but our realisation that we were momentarily wrapped up in Booth’s perverted worldview. Sondheim lulls the listener into accepting harmless-sounding premises, then brutally shows how they lead to an evil conclusion.

How does he manage it?

There are plenty of musical answers: the hymnlike chords, the crescendo, the sweeping orchestrations. And there are plenty of lyrical ones: the bucolic imagery, the swiftness of the mood-swing.

But Sondheim is also a master of phonetics – i.e. not just what the words say, but how the words sound. So let’s unpack some of his phonetic genius.

            The (Relevant Bit of the) Lyric 

How the end doesn't mean that it's over,
How surrender is not the end…
Tell 'em:

How the country is not what it was,
Where there's blood on the clover.
How the nation can never again
Be the hope that it was.
How the bruises may never be healed,
How the wounds are forever,
How we gave up the field
But we still wouldn't yield,
How the union can never recover
From that vulgar
High and mighty

*******-lover!

Never—!
Never. Never. Never. 
No, the country is not what it was...

Damn my soul if you must
Let my body turn to dust
Let it mingle with the ashes of the country
Let them curse me to hell
Leave it to history to tell:
What I did, I did well
And I did it for my country.

Let them cry, "Dirty traitor!"
They will understand it later—
The country is not what it was...

             What About It?

A quick general point. Some consonants are harsh, particularly labiodentals (D, T). Some are mellifluous, like fricatives (including V, F, SH, ZH), nasals (M, N, NG) and liquids (L, R).

Look at how Sondheim exploits this fact – the soothing liquids (healed/field/yield), nasals (surrender, end, never, again), and fricatives (over/clover, forever/never, recover). Read the lyric aloud to hear its silkiness. There’s hardly a prominent labiodental – aside from the bittersweet country – until high-and-mighty, which signals Booth’s descent into racist rage.

Notice, also, how the racist word follows a succession of -ver rhymes: over, clover, forever, never, recover. Only the vowels change. The endings are “feminine” – i.e. the final syllable is unstressed – so each rhyme fades gently away rather than being landed on. And the racist word is part of the rhyme scheme: we’re lulled by the softness of clover, forever, recover, and subsequently shocked by ******-lover.

In other words, the racism is inseparable from the twisted sense of patriotism.

It’s the climax, but not the end. Sondheim follows it up with more -ver rhymes: Never, never, never, never. (Reminiscent of King Lear?) And then we’re back in the warm phonetic bath of liquids (hell/tell/well), nasals (mingle, country), and fricatives (dust, must, ashes).

The only time we leave the bath is when Booth anticipates the response he’ll receive (“Dirty traitor!”). Each of the four syllables begins with a labiodental; the actor can spit out the words. So, in his own eyes, Booth is not only a gentleman, but a martyr — martyred by a benighted, vulgar world.

            So What?

 Lyric-writing – obviously – should never be academic. Sondheim didn’t sit down and consciously try to fill his lyric with particular phonemes. He just had a wonderful ear, and used it to match the lyric, the music and the mood.

 Still, he clearly knew plenty about phonetics. On the famous opening line of Sweeney Todd, he writes:

“The alliteration on the first, second and fourth accented beats of ‘Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd’ is not only a microcosm of the AABA form of the song itself, but in its very formality gives the line a sinister feeling, especially with the sepulchral accompaniment that rumbles underneath it. If all of that seems like the kind of academic hyperanalysis which regularly shows up in studies of literary forms, I can assure you that even if the audience is not consciously aware of such specific details, they are affected by them.”

We’re affected in this song too – not only by what Booth says, but how he says it. Aided by the nostalgic music, he paints a picture of a warm, gentle “Southland”. He’s effective partly because his lyrics themselves sound warm and gentle. But then, out of this same sonic world, obeying the same soothing rhyme scheme, his violent prejudice reveals itself, embodied in a single wicked word.

It’s shocking because it’s unexpected. It’s ingenious because it reflects how racism permeates the seemingly warm worldview.

What can we lyricists learn?

Perhaps not too much. Only that Sondheim was an extraordinary writer (hardly a hot take), who paid close attention not just to what his lyrics said, but also how they sounded. And that the sound of lyrics should influence, and be influenced by, the sound of music. And that all aspects of a song are always (inescapably) interconnected.