I’ve been saving this video but I don’t know why I’ve saved it so long. I came across it several months ago and it’s been taking up a tab in my web browser ever since, waiting for me to embed it in a blog post.

Well, the time has come. 

Here is Professor Dominic Broomfield-McHugh in a lecture recorded on 17th October 2024 at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, London. Everything you ever wanted to know about the Stephen Sondheim song “Send in the Clowns” and maybe some things you didn’t.

No, really, it’s an excellent lecture, and I enjoyed it tremendously although, as with everything Sondheimian, I disagreed with a point or two, here and there.

From the description:

This lecture examines ‘Send in the Clowns’, probably the most commercially successful song written by the revered Stephen Sondheim. Yet it confounds the expectations of a showstopper by being written for an actress of limited singing ability, the late Glynis Johns. This lecture reflects on how it works in the context the musical A Little Night Music and explores how it came to be covered by major singers including Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins and Sarah Vaughan. How has a song of limited vocal range and abstract lyrics become such a favourite?