A Purple Summer: Notes on the Lyrics of Spring Awakening

In February 1999, Steven Sater conceived the radical notion of creating a rock musical from Frank Wedekind's notorious Symbolist drama, Frühlings 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 this groundbreaking, m...