A Purple Summer: Notes on the Lyrics of Spring Awakening

(Applause Books). In February 1999, Steven Sater conceived the radical notion of creating a rock musical from Frank Wedekind's notorious Symbolist drama, Fruhlings Erwachen , and he enlisted his friend and writing partner Duncan Sheik in the enterprise. That night, Sater came home and began writing the first lyric of Spring Awakening : "Mama Who Bore Me" a lyric which still stands, verbatim, just as he first wrote it. Ten years later, in the wake of the enormous international success of thi...