I told you.

Do you doubt that music is a mood selection device? Let’s test it.
Below is Barbra Streisand singing Send In The Clowns. Go ahead and
start the video now, then scroll on down and read while Barbra is singing.

Send in the Clowns is a ballad from Act II of Stephen Sondheim’s play, 
A Little Night Music 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 again after so long, she finds that he is now in an unconsummated marriage with a much younger woman. (In other words, he and his young bride have never had sex. Just sayin’.) Desirée proposes marriage to rescue him from this situation, but he declines, citing his dedication to his bride. Reacting to his rejection, Desirée sings Send in the Clowns.

These are the opening lines,

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.

This is a painting by James Christensen that Wizzo claims to be a perfect representation of him and Princess Pennie, the girl to whom he has been deliriously happily married for 35 years.

Send in the Clowns is later reprised as a victorious coda after Fredrik’s young wife runs away with his son – that’s right, the bitch runs away with his son – and Fredrik is finally free to accept Desirée’s offer.

Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

Isn’t it rich? 
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.

Send in the clowns.

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.

Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I’d stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours.
Making my entrance again with my usual flair.
Sure of my lines.
No one is there.

Don’t you love a farce?
My fault I fear,
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry my dear!

But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Quick, send in the clowns.

What a surprise!
Who could foresee?
I’d come to feel about you
What you felt about me?

Why only now, when I see
That you’ve drifted away?
What a surprise…
What a cliche…

Isn’t it rich, isn’t it queer,
Losing my timing this late in my career?
And where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.

Don’t bother, they’re here.

 

Wizzo is always saying, “The chronological 3 steps in writing well are:

1. How to End.
2. Where to Begin.
3. What to leave out.”

Evidently, Stephen Sondheim agrees:
“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.'”

From An Interview with Stephen Sondheim, broadcast live from the New York City Opera during the production of A Little Night Music.