William Finn, Broadway composer known for Tony Award-winning 'Falsettos,' dies at 73

USA Today

08-04-2025

William Finn, Broadway composer known for Tony Award-winning 'Falsettos,' dies at 73
Theater composer and lyricist William Finn, best known for his work on the Tony Award-winning musical "Falsettos," has died. He was 73.
The acclaimed playwright died Monday following a battle with pneumonia, Finn's literary agent, Ron Gwiazda, confirmed to USA TODAY on Tuesday.
He made his off-Broadway debut in 1979 with the one-act musical "In Trousers," a loosely autobiographical piece about a man named Marvin who struggles with his queer sexuality. The show spawned two sequels, 1981's "March of the Falsettos" and 1990's "Falsettoland."
Finn graduated to Broadway in 1989 with the musical "Dangerous Games," for which he composed the lyrics alongside Argentinian arranger Ástor Piazzolla. His breakthrough came three years later with 1992's "Falsettos," a sung-through musical that combines the stories of "March of the Falsettos" and "Falsettoland."
The emotional musical, which takes inspiration from the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, won Finn a pair of Tony Awards for best original score and best book of a musical.
"I hope it's a show that will rise above the horribleness of the time," Finn told the Lincoln Center Theater in 2016. "Do you not want to see 'Angels in America' again because it's about a horrible time?"
Finn's other works include "The Sisters Rosensweig," "A New Brain," "Love's Fire" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the latter of which was nominated for best original score at the 2005 Tony Awards.
The playwright's final show, "The Royal Family of Broadway," premiered in 2018 at the Barrington Stage Company in Finn's home state of Massachusetts. The musical was an adaptation of the 1927 play "The Royal Family" by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber.
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'I like to write songs that tell you the story of a life in three or four minutes'
In February 1952, Finn was born in Boston to Jason and Barbara Finn, and the Jewish couple raised him in the neighboring town of Natick, Massachusetts. Finn developed an early love for the world of musical theater, dancing around his family's living room to the Frank Loesser-penned "Guys and Dolls."
"I was always interested in the theater and just gravitated there," Finn previously told The Cultural Critic. "And I was always smart, so my parents figured I wasn't doing anything stupid, and they were supportive. I must have been an obnoxious child, always singing and always — well, dancing is not the word. Moving is more accurate."
During his adolescence, Finn took up the guitar after receiving the instrument as a gift for his bar mitzvah, per The Cultural Critic. Inspired by folk singer-songwriters such as Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel, the self-taught musician began writing his own songs and later learned the piano.
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Finn honed his craft as a theatrical composer while attending Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he wrote three musicals and studied the work of college alumnus and Broadway icon Stephen Sondheim, according to his interview with the Lincoln Center Theater.
"When I began to get personal, my songs got better," Finn told The Cultural Critic. "I like to write songs that tell you the story of a life in three or four minutes, where a panoply of emotions is expressed, and also where real craft is demonstrated."