I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked beautiful and poignant songs like Send in the Clowns. Till now I had no idea what the title actually meant (the song was written by Stephen Sondheim for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music) so I decided to find out more information from Wikipedia. Here it is.
Send in the Clowns is…
a ballad from Act II in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life. Among other things, she looks back on an affair years earlier with the lawyer Fredrik. Meeting him after so long, she finds that he is now in an unconsummated marriage with a much younger woman. Desirée proposes marriage to rescue him from this situation, but he declines, citing his dedication to his bride. Reacting to his rejection, Desirée sings this song. The song is later reprised as a coda after Fredrik’s young wife runs away with his son, and Fredrik is finally free to accept Desirée’s offer.
Sondheim created the song specifically for the actress Glynis Johns who created the role of Desirée on Broadway. The song is written in four verses and a bridge, using a complex triple meter. It became Sondheim’s most popular song after Judy Collins recorded it in 1975. Subsequently, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, Tiger Lillies and many other famous artists have recorded the song, and it became a jazz standard.
The "clowns" in the title do not refer to circus clowns. Instead, they symbolize fools, as Sondheim explained in a 1990 interview:
I get a lot of letters over the years asking what the title means and what the song’s about; I never thought it would be in any way esoteric. I wanted to use theatrical imagery in the song, because she’s an actress, but it’s not supposed to be a ‘circus’…. [I]t’s a theater reference meaning ‘if the show isn’t going well, let’s send in the clowns’; in other words, ‘let’s do the jokes.’ I always want to know, when I’m writing a song, what the end is going to be, so ‘Send in the Clowns’ didn’t settle in until I got the notion, ‘Don’t bother, they’re here’ which means that ‘We are the fools.’In a 2008 interview, Sondheim further clarified:
As I think of it now, the song could have been called ‘Send in the Fools.’ I knew I was writing a song in which Desirée is saying, ‘aren’t we foolish’ or ‘aren’t we fools’? Well, a synonym for fools is clowns, but ‘Send in the Fools’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I hope you enjoy watching my video, just as much as I enjoyed playing it.
