Stephen Sondheim’s Birthday Prayer for Leonard Bernstein’s 44th birthday

The document on record shows both Stephen Sondheim’s handwriting of the song and Bernstein’s handwriting of the solution. I asked Andrew Parr if he could tease the two apart, so others could try to solve on their own. Andrew told me he tried to match the original notation as closely as possible, including the incomplete measures (mm. 14 and 20). He did not try to override the defaults for stem directions in Musescore, accounting for the majority of discrepancies.

The two pages of sheet music also came with rules (as annotated below by Andrew Parr):

“One line per clef per four bars:” Each line of music consists of four bars (or measures). The notes in these four bars form one line of the prayer. Clef signs are caligraphy-like symbols at the far left of every line, but they can be ignored when solving.

“Rests between words:” Rests are symbols that indicate silence in music. Rests are used to indicate spaces between words in the poem.

“Visual equivalents are the same letters:” Notes are drawn on lines and spaces of the staff. Every line and space represents a different letter of the alphabet. The letters assigned to lines and spaces are the same on the treble clef staff and the bass clef staff.

“Enharmonics are not the same letter:” Only musicians would understand this. Laypeople won’t be concerned with this. Note to musicians: the letters traditionally assigned to lines and spaces by the treble and bass clefs are not necessarily correct for this puzzle. Also, enharmonics are not the same letter (e.g. the letter represented by D flat is not the same letter represented by C sharp).

“Phrase marks to be ignored. Ditto dynamics, accents, etc.:” Like a cryptic crossword clue, where punctuation is given for surface meaning, any expressive notation in this score is not a part of the puzzle.

If you are ready to try it yourself, you can download it from here: Birthday Prayer

And if you are ready for the solution, please go here.