“To Me, Teaching Is a Sacred Profession...”

[STEPHEN SONDHEIM, spoken]
To me, teaching is a sacred profession. My life was shaped by teachers. First by a Latin teacher in prep school. Then by a man called Robert Barrow who taught music at Williams College and made me a musician. And then my postgraduate studies with Milton Babbitt. And then of course my collaborators. And I suppose, above all, Oscar, who taught me virtually everything I know about songwriting, and a good deal about life.

Just before he died, he gave me a picture of himself, and I asked him to inscribe it. Which is sort of odd, becausе he was a surrogate father to mе. It's like asking your father to inscribe a picture. And he thought for a minute, and he was clearly a little embarrassed. And then he got a smile on his face, like the cat had just eaten the cream. And he wrote something. And when he left the room I looked at it, and it said "For Stevie, my friend and teacher." That's a measure of Oscar. He was a remarkable fellow.