Overview

• The collection encompasses nearly 5,000 items from notebooks and scrapbooks to early song drafts for Company, Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd
• Senior music specialist Mark Horowitz secured Sondheim’s promise to donate his papers in 1993, a cache that miraculously survived a 1995 office fire and arrived at the Library in March
• Visitors over 16 with valid ID can request access to the composer’s manuscripts and lyrics from July 1, with letters and other materials becoming accessible later this summer
• The acquisition expands the Library’s Broadway holdings alongside archives of Leonard Bernstein, Oscar Hammerstein II and Neil Simon in its Capitol Hill research collections
• Documents reveal Sondheim’s relentless revision process, from lyric sketches for Barbra Streisand adaptations to a song submitted for a 1970s public TV contest