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'variety and vitality' SONDHEIM continued from page 9 registered National Historic Landmark, The MacDowell Colony was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997. Over 2,200 people gathered at the MacDowell Colony on Medal Day, which was open to the public for the festivities and celebration. Following the award ceremony, they enjoyed a picnic lunch, and open studio tours, hosted by MacDowell artists-in-residence. Sondheim addressed the crowd during the medal ceremony, stating that he was "not only humbled and privileged, but astonished" at being in the same company as others who have won the Edward MacDowell Medal. He joked about being the third oldest recipient, behind Chuck Jones and Georgia O'Keeffe and then noted that awards for a body of work "come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you that what you've been doing is worth the doing, and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing." The Edward MacDowell Medal Selection Committee included New York magazine Writerat-Large Frank Rich, chairman, composer and author Mary Rodgers Guettel, director and playwright James Lapine, and MacDowell Colony Chairman and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Sondheim: 'I'm a collaborator' The following is a transcript of Stephen Sondheim's acceptance speech after being awarded the 54th Edward MacDowell Medal on Aug. 11, 2013 in Peterborough, NH. I 've read some of the acceptance speeches by other Medalists and almost every one of them said that they were humbled and privileged to be in the august company of the other Medalists. I'm not only humbled and privileged, I'm astonished to be in the company of the other Medalists. I'm even more astonished to be the third oldest recipient – only Georgia O'Keeffe and Chuck Jones were humbled and privileged later than I. The difference, of course, is that my birth certificate is merely a convenience – I'm actually just over 25 and the most promising songwriter on the block. That's the trouble with Awards for a body of work. They always come at both a good time and a wrong time: good because they tell you that what you've been doing was worth the doing, and wrong because they ought to come when you're young and excited and hungry for 10 PAN PIPES Fall 2013 sai-national.org assurance that what you're doing is worth the doing. One of the problems of getting Awards when you're established is that you start to believe your notices. Too much recognition can curb the appetite and venerability can kill it. Not if you're Picasso or Stravinsky, of course — nothing could slow them down. But to live that long and still be that hungry to explore and keep exploring is what separates the geniuses from the gifted. Still, although I may be among the oldest of the Medalists, I take genuine pride in being the first to represent the former runt of the arts: musical comedy. Yes, I mean musical comedy, not musical theater. Musical comedy became musical theater only recently — "recently" in the larger scheme of things, meaning over the last few decades. The transformation became certified when Institutions of Higher Learning began offering courses in the subject. And I don't mean those hyper-contemporary institutions, which offer such specialized subjects as contract bridge and water-skiing (I kid you not, my halfbrother went to one). No, I mean respectable, not to say venerable, centers of education like Yale and Princeton and Dartmouth and Northwestern, which not only offer courses but have entire departments devoted to musical theater. The geniuses of musical comedy like Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and the Gershwins (to them, Porgy and Bess was an opera, not a musical) would probably have chuckled or even guffawed at the notion of their product being taken so seriously. It was Oscar Hammerstein, of course, who kick-started the whole thing, first with Jerome Kern and Show Boat and subsequently with Richard Rodgers and Oklahoma!, Carousel and the like. By the time he got finished with it, musical comedy had become musical theater. It got further refined by the next generation: Lerner and Loewe and Frank Loesser in particular. But it was my generation— writers like Bock and Harnick and Kander and Ebb — who turned it into what is now considered an art form — enough of an art form to be included in college curriculums, at any rate. And there are many

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