The Anatomy of a Recording:

Sweeney Todd, Track by Track

The original-cast recording of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (book by Hugh Wheeler) was originally released as a double LP, and subsequently as a double CD, which I remastered myself. Each version consists of the same 29 tracks, each one shaped to create a recording that aspires to tell the musical’s story as effectively as the stage production did.

Track 1: Prelude: “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd … “

The prelude is several minutes long onstage, but is significantly abridged on the recording. In both versions it ends suddenly, interrupted by the loudest possible factory whistle as a segue into “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” sung by the full company.

The first words heard in the show, “Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” are deliberately antiquated and strongly alliterative, with three “T” sounds in the first four beats. The song is sung by a nameless chorus which is both disengaged and menacing, with the terror heightened by high orchestral squeals added by orchestrator Jonathan Tunick. Sondheim sets the words “Swing your razor wide, Sweeney,” to the tune of the 13th-century Gregorian chant “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath”), though this version of the tune is rather upbeat. Sondheim will return to this tune throughout the show. Near the end of the track, Sweeney Todd (Len Cariou) makes his first appearance.

This opening track defines the show as a play within a play, with a chorus that, in the style of Greek tragedy, breaks the fourth wall to admit that the audience is seeing a play (“What happened then—well, that’s the play/and he wouldn’t want us to give it away”) in order to explain the meaning of the story. Sondheim will return to this device several more times, including in the final track.

Track 2: “No Place Like London.”

Here we meet three of the most important characters in the “radio play”: the young sailor Anthony (Victor Garber), the Beggar Woman (Merle Louise) and Todd himself, as they sing their first solos. For the recording we abbreviated the intervening dialogue, which establishes the friendship between the two men. The Beggar Woman literally walks through the scene, unrecognized by Todd, and stereo is used to define her passage, as she seems to walk toward and then away from her microphone as she enters and leaves the scene. We added a chink of coins as Anthony gives her some money.

Track 3: “The Barber and His Wife.”

Todd’s exposition relates the backstory Todd’s exposition relates the backstory of himself, his wife Lucy and Judge Turpin, as he understands it. We will subsequently learn that he doesn’t know the whole story. After the song and a brief dialogue, Anthony leaves the stage.

Track 4: “The Worst Pies in London.”

Todd enters Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop and meets its owner (Angela Lansbury), who sings the show’s first comic song. It’s an incredibly difficult one, but in her first take Angela made it sound almost easy. I then asked her to sing it even faster than she did onstage, which she did very effectively. I thanked her, and she asked if she could please do it again. To my amazement, she sang it even better the next time!

Track 5: “Poor Thing.”

In this scene Mrs. Lovett recognizes Todd as her former tenant, the long-absent barber Benjamin Barker, whose wife, Lucy, was raped by Judge Turpin many years ago. The scene posed a challenge specific to the recording. As Mrs. Lovett recounts the story of what happened during the party at Turpin’s house, a string trio at stage right plays a minuet which will emerge as Lucy’s leitmotiv. The challenge was to let the listener hear what the theater audience can see: that, for the purposes of this song, these are not members of the pit orchestra but onstage musicians hired for the party. For the recording I reseated those three players separately from the rest of the orchestra, as far as possible from the rest of the violins, which were on the left. In mixing the song I kept their reverberation higher than I normally would, to convey a sense of distance—these musicians are not playing in the pie shop, but only in Mrs. Lovett’s memory of what she was told about a long-ago night.

As Todd cries out in anguish, “Would no one have mercy on her?” Mrs. Lovett says, “So it is you, Benjamin Barker!” Onstage Angela spoke the line with some emphasis, and it was followed by a dialogue which we chose not to include on the recording.

Track 6: “My Friends.”

Track 6 picks up at the end of that dialogue, as Mrs. Lovett remembers Barker’s razors in their case; she has kept it for him all these years, and now she fetches it and gives it to him. For the recording we condensed this to one line: As she gazes upon the razors with awe, she says, “My, them handles is chased silver, ain’t they?” The trimming of the dialogue created a problem, however: Angela had spoken her lines as she did them onstage, but in putting the recording together I realized that, without the cut dialogue, the segue from her excited delivery of “So it is you, Benjamin Barker” to the quiet wonderment of the next line was awkward—too rapid a change of tone.

I called her and explained the situation, and Angela agreed to come back to the studio solely to do a fresh reading of her first line, one in which the quiet sense of awe in her second line was already apparent. Pro that she was, Angela needed only one take to recalibrate her delivery perfectly.

This song starts out quiet and intense, as Todd takes his razors back in his hand, but quickly escalates to a dramatic ending, with Todd vowing vengeance on his enemies as Mrs. Lovett hovers behind him, singing of her fully reawakened attraction to the once-young barber. These two consecutive songs, a study in cause and effect, set the main plot of the story in motion.

Track 7: “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: Lift Your Razor High, Sweeney! … ”

The show’s first reprise brings the “Greek chorus” back to repeat the opening number with different lyrics, including “Lift your razor high” on the “Dies Irae” section and the warning that “He never forgot and he never forgave.” The orchestra segues into an imitation of the chirping of birds, establishing the theme of the next song.

Track 8: “Green Finch and Linnet Bird.”

This song, which introduces Johanna (Sarah Rice), ward of Judge Turpin, establishes the metaphor of Johanna as a bird (most often a bird in a cage) that will follow her through the show. Onstage a bird seller comes to Turpin’s mansion and talks with Johanna, who is above him on her balcony. For the recording we omitted the bird-seller. Onstage the audience can see that Anthony comes along, sees her, hears her song and is instantly smitten—but on the recording we could not indicate his entrance until the next track, when he begins to sing to her.

Track 9: “Ah, Miss.”

In this song Anthony pleads with this unknown “Miss” to look at him and give him a chance. Lost in thought as she gazes over the rooftops of London, she doesn’t notice him until the end of his song, but finally their voices blend, each singing different lyrics, and their eyes meet. The Beggar Woman enters, sees Anthony and asks for alms. You can hear the chink of the coins as he hands them to her. As Johanna disappears from view, Anthony asks the Beggar Woman who the young lady is. She tells him that it’s the house of Judge Turpin and his lovely ward, Johanna, before warning Anthony not to pursue her.

Track 10: “Johanna.”

Anthony’s unabashedly romantic ballad, which includes the passionate lines “I feel you, Johanna … I’ll steal you, Johanna,” sets another key element of the plot in motion. Victor Garber sang it beautifully.

This is the first of the show’s three songs titled “Johanna,” and in previews it was immediately followed by the second, a masturbatory solo for Judge Turpin as he spies on his ward. Director Hal Prince thought that it was asking a little too much of an audience already dealing with a show the likes of which they had never seen; Steve and Hugh had fewer qualms on those grounds, but agreed to cut the song because they sensed that the audience focus had been away from Todd for too long. However, we all agreed that it should be included on the recording, in which exactly what the judge is doing as he sings is less apparent. For the continuity of our “radio play,” we agreed to move the song to a later position in the show. It is Track 16 on the recording.

Track 11: “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir.”

St. Dunstan’s Marketplace is the setting for a crowd scene in which Tobias (Ken Jennings) beats the drum for his master, Signor Adolfo Pirelli, vendor of a miracle cures for baldness and a master of speedy hair-cutting and tooth-pulling. To create the sense of a large outdoor setting, I placed Toby and the crowd in the center, and Todd and Mrs. Lovett, when they enter, on the far left, very close to the mikes. Todd determines that the “miracle elixir” is nothing but “piss with ink.”

Track 12: “The Contest.”

Pirelli (Joaquin Romaguera) enters, and he and Todd face off in first a shaving contest and then a tooth-pulling contest, both of which Todd wins handily. Todd retains his position at the far left; Pirelli is in the center, and the Beadle, when he enters to judge the contest, is at the far right. We abbreviated the stage dialogue for the recording, but restored the entire second half of the scene, which was cut from the show during previews.
This track is more than five minutes long, the longest so far on this recording. It is followed by the recording’s shortest track.

Track 13: “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: Sweeney Pondered and Sweeney Planned … ”

This reprise is sung by only a few voices at first, but soon moves from left to right and fills the entire stage—captured, naturally, via stereo. Although it is only 31 seconds long, the track builds to a huge climax and serves to segue us out of St. Dunstan’s and into Todd’s apartment above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop.

Track 14: “Wait.”

A moment of calm. Mrs. Lovett soothes the anxious Todd, who is impatient to kill the Beadle and Judge Turpin. After her calming song, a large amount of drama takes place in the stage version, but is omitted from the recording. Anthony tells Todd and Mrs. Lovett that he loves Johanna, whom the lecherous Judge Turpin keeps locked up. She has dropped a key out her window, so that Anthony can rescue her. Todd and Mrs. Lovett advise Anthony to bring Johanna to Todd’s home. Pirelli and Tobias enter; Mrs. Lovett takes Toby downstairs, leaving the two men alone. Pirelli has come to blackmail Todd, whose razors he recognized during the contest, because he had briefly worked for Benjamin Barker 15 years earlier. In response, Todd kills Pirelli. (This is the first of two murders that, because they don’t take place during musical numbers, are not recreated on the recording.)

Track 15: “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: His Hands Were Quick, His Fingers Strong … ”

Another reprise, this time sung by a trio of male voices. The last lquatrain, “See your razor gleam, Sweeney, / feel how well it fits / as it floats across the throats / of hypocrites,” provides a fortuitous lead-in to Judge Turpin’s repositioned solo.

Track 16: “Johanna.”

This song, in which Judge Turpin (Edmund Lyndeck) flagellates himself into a frenzy as he spies on Johanna and eventually determines to marry her, is hard to listen to without squirming, and to watch it onstage was even more difficult. A serendipitous result of the song being moved from Track 11 to Track 16 is that its payoff leads very naturally into the next track.

Track 17: “Kiss Me!”

This duet for Anthony and Johanna is a wonderful exercise in musicalizing hysteria, aided and abetted by a great, skittery orchestration from Tunick. Sondheim’s vocal counterpoint is far more sophisticated than is usually the case on Broadway. Anthony has proposed that they run away and get married. Johanna enthusiastically agrees.

Track 18: “Ladies in Their Sensitivities.”

The recording inserts a short dialogue between the Beadle (Jack Eric Williams) and Turpin, recounting Turpin’s plans to marry Johanna, leading into the song in which the Beadle suggests to Turpin that Johanna would be more responsive to his overtures if he got a fresh shave. The middle portion of this track returns to Anthony and Johanna, as they plan their elopement and fervently embrace. Sondheim brings the Beadle and Turpin into a final, four-voice ensemble that is Sondheim at his most inventive.

Track 19: “Pretty Women.”

In a moment of great theater, the scene is filled with menace as Sweeney shaves Judge Turpin and we wait for him to slit the judge’s throat. The music is the loveliest of duets as the two men agree on the beauties of womankind. (It is worth noting that this is not the first time Sondheim has extolled women. He also wrote “Pretty Lady” for Pacific Overtures and “Beautiful Girls” for Follies.)

The irony does not escape us: For all the beauty of the music, we know that one is a rapist and the other a murderer. For the recording we added an entry bell and running feet to signal the unanticipated arrival of Anthony, which disrupts Todd’s careful plan. We hear the judge’s footsteps as he storms out, furiously vowing to lock Johanna away where Anthony will never find her.

Track 20: “Epiphany.”

Todd kicks Anthony out, and we added footsteps to capture both Anthony’s departure and Mrs. Lovett’s entrance from her shop below. As Todd resolves that, from this moment on, he will slit the throats of anyone and everyone who gets in his way (“They all deserve to die!”), Tunick’s orchestrations, particularly his use of timpani and brass, underline the scene’s swelling menace. Instead of another crashing chord, however, we chose to end the track with a soft string chord which gently tails off into the final number of the first act.

Track 21: “A Little Priest.”

A short dialogue about how best to dispose of Pirelli’s body leads into this duet. (In the stage version Todd and Mrs. Lovett also discuss what to do with Toby, who has been left on their hands after Pirelli’s death; we felt that it wasn’t needed on the recording.) Angela and Len performed the duet just as they did in the theater, with only the most minimal adjustments. This is Sondheim at his cleverest and most macabre. As Todd and Lovett list the various kinds of people they mean to kill and turn into meat pies, they make a game out of it and then turn it into a rhyming contest, ultimately won by Mrs. Lovett. They agree that they will serve anyone to anyone at all. All of this is set to an innocuous, lilting waltz. The music is joyous and the words are very shocking and very funny.

Act II

Track 22: “God, That’s Good!”

Act II of Sweeney Todd is characterized by fewer, longer numbers—scenes, rather than songs. “God, That’s Good!” runs 6:23. The scene is Mrs. Lovett’s outdoor eating garden, where she is in a frenzy, running herself ragged to serve a teeming crowd of guests. We hear her travel from one area of the stage to the other, each time she leaves the eating garden at the left to confer with Todd in his room on the right. Toby is back at work as a barker, this time promoting her pies instead of Pirelli’s elixir, while Todd is impatiently awaiting the arrival of his custom-built barber chair.

The possibilities for creative recording techniques are displayed throughout: the outdoor spiel from Toby, the large crowd that keeps singing “God, that’s good!” and then Todd finally getting his chair. As he tests it, we hear for the first time the sound of the chair unfolding as a solid object (not yet a body!) slides down the chute and lands in the basement. Todd and Mrs. Lovett rehearse their plan to turn murder into fast food, with him pounding the floor to alert her whenever he’s sending a new, freshly killed corpse down to the ovens. As in “A Little Priest,” this orgy of murder and cannibalism is enriched by cheery, upbeat music.

Track 23: “Johanna.”

Another very long scene, running 5:29. This one encompasses most of the show’s major characters, and is played in many spatial areas: Downstage center, Anthony paces in the streets, singing to Johanna, whom he can’t find; very deep upstage, Johanna sings from the insane asylum where Turpin has had her imprisoned; at far right is Todd’s barbershop, now featuring his terrifying new chair; and at left, wandering near and far, the Beggar Woman walks, extremely agitated and raving about great danger.

Each location is separately defined by stereo, with Anthony up close and immediate, Johanna heard at a distance and the Beggar Woman going in and out as she moves around the stage. As each new customer (soon to be a victim) enters the barbershop at right, we hear the tinkle of a doorbell and footsteps coming up the stairs. Todd sings a pensive “Johanna” as he shaves each client—and then the metallic sound of the chair, and the sound of the body (Jay Saks) sliding along the chute and audibly plopping down into Mrs. Lovett’s bakehouse reminds us that, as Todd sings, he’s killing people.

The scene ends with nothing resolved. Johanna is still in the asylum, Anthony can’t find her and Todd is no closer to his objectives of finding Johanna and killing the judge. As the song ends, we hear Anthony slowly disappearing into the distance, as the orchestra holds a suspended chord.

In my live lectures I use this track to demonstrate how much can be done with sound alone to define even a very complex scene, turning a Broadway recording into a radio play.

Track 24: “By the Sea.”

This duet is the first of three short tracks before the final sequence, which will run more than 13 minutes. It offers a bit of comic relief as Mrs. Lovett dreams of an idyllic life with Todd … “in a year or so,” once all the murders have been taken care of. Here as onstage, Todd acquiesces to her fantasies; during previews, however, Todd reacted with acerbic asides—“the woman’s mad.” This version, in which he plays along, is funny. It gives Angela a chance to be charming and amusing, and it gives the audience a break before the plotting begins anew.

Track 25: “Wigmaker Sequence”/“The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: Sweeney’d Waited Too Long Before … “/”The Letter”

This track, which is divided into three parts, offers a lot of plot set to music.

In the first part, a dialogue between Anthony and Todd sets up a plan to rescue Johanna from the madhouse. Todd advises him that wigmakers get their hair from the asylum inmates and that, if Anthony poses as a wigmaker, he can gain entrance to the asylum and rescue Johanna. It takes a while to teach Anthony (to the tune of the lead-in to “Pretty Women”) what he needs to know about wigmaking (Anthony is a slow learner). Both their voices are located in the left speaker.

In the second part, a quintet of mixed voices sings ominously about Todd’s evil ways, underpinning the fact that, as the audience knows but Anthony doesn’t, Todd doesn’t simply want to rescue Johanna—he wants to use her as bait to lure Judge Turpin to his death. I miked these voices at the center, to indicate that they aren’t in the same space as Todd and Anthony. Then we return briefly to Todd instructing Anthony to bring Johanna to him that evening—“I shall guard her while you hire the chaise to Plymouth.” Anthony thankfully agrees, and hurries off.

In the third part, “The Letter,” Todd—at his most flattering and seductive—writes to Judge Turpin, telling him that, if he will come to Todd’s shop that night, he will be able to thwart Anthony’s plan and reclaim Johanna for himself. In a brilliant touch, however, it isn’t Todd who sings the song! As he sits silently writing, the text of the letter is sung by the quintet. Onstage his signature, “Your obedient, humble servant; Sweeney Todd,” was sung by one of the singers. It occurred to me that, for the recording, it would be highly expressive if Todd himself sang those last two words. Steve agreed, so that’s the way we did it.

Track 26: “Not While I’m Around.”

This is a solo for Tobias, in which he tries to convince Mrs. Lovett that Todd is evil, while Mrs. Lovett—who knows perfectly well who and what Todd is—humors him. Above and beyond the context of the lyrics, however, the music is very beautiful. As the song fleshes out Toby’s character, it also soothes and embraces the audience the way Mrs. Lovett is soothing to Toby. Structurally it couldn’t have come at a better time, allowing the audience to relax a little before the plot events begin hurtling the story toward its conclusion.

The recording doesn’t reveal that, during the song, Toby sees Mrs. Lovett with Pirelli’s purse, which he recognizes. However, Steve included this information in the libretto which was included with the album. Realizing that Toby already suspects Todd and will soon figure out what became of Pirelli, Mrs. Lovett takes Toby to the basement and shows him how to grind meat for the pies. She locks him in and hurries back upstairs to warn Todd.

Track 27: “Parlor Songs.”

Beadle Bamford visits Mrs. Lovett. Left alone for a moment, he goes to her harmonium, finds a song he likes (“Sweet Polly Plunkett”) and begins to sing. Mrs. Lovett enters, and he tells her that her neighbors are complaining about a stink from her chimney, so he wants to inspect the bakehouse. To distract him, she urges him to sing another song, this one about the bells in the Tower of Bray. A fine opportunity for the recording to have Toby singing very enthusiastically from deep down below. If ever a moment was made for a “radio play,” this was it. Ultimately all three are singing the song. I mixed it so that his voice is heard as from a distance, while the Beadle and Mrs. Lovett are immediately at hand.

Onstage, what happened next was the arrival of Todd. Anxious to avert discovery by getting the Beadle out of the way, Mrs. Lovett suggests that he get a shave before inspecting the bakehouse. The Beadle agrees, and Sweeney kills him. We discussed the viability of including this extended dialogue-only sequence on the recording, but decided that it would slow the musical progression to the show’s powerful climax, and omitted it. However, the chorus informs us of the murder: “In Sweeney’s ledger the entries matched: / A Beadle arrived, and a Beadle dispatched.”

Onstage there’s business that is germane to the show, as Toby samples a pie and finds first a hair and then a fingernail—then is frightened out of his wits when the Beadle’s corpse suddenly emerges from the chute. Upstairs Mrs. Lovett warns Todd that Tobias has guessed what’s going on and must be dealt with, but Todd is fixated on killing Judge Turpin. We omitted all this from the recording, but again Steve describes it in the printed libretto.

Track 28: “Final Sequence.”

After a respite for the somewhat lighter songs on tracks 26 and 27, the plot comes roaring back in all its grimness. The show ends with an extended sequence of horror and catharsis lasting more than 13 minutes, by the end of which Todd, Mrs. Lovett, the Judge and the Beggar Woman are all dead, and the full tragedy of the story has been laid bare.

It begins with another reprise of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” screwed to fever pitch. We omitted a confrontation between Anthony, Johanna and the depraved proprietor of the asylum, Mr. Fogg (whom Johanna kills), because it doesn’t advance the plot meaningfully, and we wanted to keep the momentum going as the ballad is disrupted by the repeated blasts of the factory whistle, screaming, hysteria and the lunatics in the asylum singing “City on Fire” as Anthony and Johanna flee.

Out of all this noise and drama, we cut to a quiet-but-sinister moment in the basement of the bakehouse, as Todd and Mrs. Lovett try to coax the traumatized Toby out of hiding with snatches of “Not While I’m Around” … in order to kill him. The Beggar Woman wanders through, looking for the Beadle, and Anthony and Johanna arrive at the shop, with Johanna disguised in boy’s clothes to escape notice by policemen who would be searching for the girl who escaped from Fogg’s. After a brief dialogue and reprise of “Ah, Miss,” Anthony leaves her, explaining that Todd is his friend and will protect her, and goes to fetch a coach. As the Beggar Woman approaches the shop, Johanna hides in the same trunk that concealed Pirelli’s body.

The Beggar Woman enters the barbershop and looks vaguely around. A beautiful but unsettling instrumental sequence takes us to a great musical clue, as the Beggar Woman’s ravings turn the word “Beadle” into “Deedle” in a lullaby sung to the same tune that we heard earlier, played by the string trio in the flashback to the rape of Lucy. The audience may pick up on this clue, but Todd, who suddenly comes in, razor in hand, doesn’t. She seems to recognize him, but he hears the approaching Judge Turpin call to him and, seeing her only as an obstacle to his plan, slits her throat and sends her body down to the cellar.

The Judge enters, convinced by Todd’s letter that Johanna will soon be there. Anxious to look his best, he settles into Todd’s chair, and then he and Todd reprise “Pretty Women” until Todd reveals himself as the long-hidden Benjamin Barker and, to the shriek of the factory whistle, kills the Judge and sends his body plummeting to its inevitable thud in the bakehouse.

Todd’s musings over his triumph are disrupted by Mrs. Lovett’s scream from downstairs, as the chorus sings another brief reprise of the “Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Our recording had to omit Todd’s almost-murder of Johanna, which happens in the middle of this sequence. Remembering Tobias in the basement, Todd exits, and Johanna emerges, terrified, from the trunk. Todd returns for his razor, to find himself confronted by what he thinks is a young man come for a shave. He pushes Johanna into the chair and is about to slit her throat when Mrs. Lovett screams from below, and the factory whistle blows. Todd runs out, and Johanna makes her escape.

Mrs. Lovett has recognized the dead Beggar Woman, and is struggling to get her into the oven as Todd rushes in. We hear the squeaking of the oven door, but in the light from the oven Todd at last recognizes the dead woman as Lucy, his long-lost wife. Heartbreakingly beautiful music underscores his words as he reels … and then realizes that Mrs. Lovett has known the secret all along. As the horror of the tragedy sinks in to Todd, I bring Mrs. Lovett’s increasingly frantic justifications and rationalizations down in the mix so that they’re essentially an obbligato, not unlike Anne’s prattling in A Little Night Music. Seemingly accepting her explanations, Todd rises and moves toward Mrs. Lovett, sweeping her into a wild dance to the tune of “A Little Priest”—one that ends when he flings her into the oven to the accompaniment of an orchestral crescendo.

The musical climax drops to a muted murmur as Todd, his bloodlust finally sated, sings a mournful reprise of “The Barber and His Wife.” It is at this point that Tobias finally emerges. Onstage he picks up Todd’s fallen razor and slits his throat; but on the recording, because a throat-cutting isn’t audible, we cut the reference to the razor and instead he pushes Todd into the oven, to the accompaniment of a final blast from the factory whistle.

Track 29: “Epilogue: The Ballad of Sweeney Todd: Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd … “

We have reached the end of the story, and only three of its characters have survived: the three youngest, Tobias, Johanna and Anthony. They are the first who sing in the epilogue, a final reprise of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”—but not in character, because we’re back in the framing sequence, singing directly to the audience. audience. The Beggar Woman, Judge, Pirelli and the Beadle (Todd’s most prominent victims) join in next. The chorus builds to a frantic climax as Todd and Mrs. Lovett (or, rather, the actors playing them) reappear to offer the reassuring moral of the story. As Todd sings, “To seek revenge may lead to hell” … but Sondheim isn’t content with that tidy lesson, and gives Mrs. Lovett the final word: “But everyone does it, and seldom as well … as Sweeney.” The company joins in with a very forceful “As Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet … Street!”
The epilogue, and the show, end with a series of three aggressive, 12-note phrases and a final 10-note coda descending to a final crashing chord, which fades to silence as this extraordinary show ends.