Somewhere (song) Somewhere (song) "Somewhere", sometimes referred to as "Somewhere (There's a Place for Us)" or simply "There's a Place for Us", is a song from the 1957 Broadway musical "West Side Story" that was made into a film in 1961. The music is composed by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and takes a phrase from the slow movement of Beethoven's 'Emperor' Piano Concerto, which forms the start of the melody,(actually is a quote from the cello and bass line in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, 17 bars from the end.) and also a longer phrase from the main theme of
Stephen Sondheim not lend itself to musicalization, they began writing the musical version. The project had many problems, Rodgers' alcoholism among them; Sondheim, calling it the one project he regretted, then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics. He asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical. Inspired by a "New York Times" article about a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls, it was entitled "The Girl Upstairs" (and would later become "Follies"). In 1966, Sondheim semi-anonymously provided lyrics for "The Boy From...," a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema"