Authentic genius is never recognized until the genius is dead, so the saying goes, but Stephen Sondheim is proving it a lie. At forty-three he has composed the music and/or lyrics for only (!) eight Broadway shows and one television special, yet practically everybody who knows or cares anything about the subject regards him as already the most important force in American theater music since Cole Porter. His songs are witty, sardonic, intelligent, brilliantly structured, and, above all, courageous. If there's a tired old rule to be broken, he breaks it. If there's a bright new idea kicking around, he has it. And since the whole rollicking history of Broadway musicals is seemingly at his talented fingertips, when a new chord must be struck, he strikes it. All of which explains why the opening of a new show by Stephen Sondheim automatically becomes an Event.

The event at hand, the composer's latest contribution to the great tradition, is a dazzling tour de force called A Little Night Music. It is his most ambitiously conceived and richly creative work to date…. (p. 94)

Like the arcane games and puzzles Sondheim reportedly collects as a hobby, his songs are not made up of mere surfaces, their inner workings as exposed as the contents of an open-faced sandwich. They are rather like fine watches, and just as functional. They often literally take the place of dramatic scenes, with the dialogue being sung instead of spoken. And, to serve the needs of drama, they need to take many forms. The score of Night Music, for example, contains patter songs, contrapuntal duets and trios, a quartet, and even a dramatic double quintet to puzzle through…. Even when the music is least hummable—hummability isn't everything—your attention is held, waiting to pounce on the clue that will lead you into the meaning of the next song. My own favorite is Send In the Clowns, a ripely over-the-hill sigh … that throbs with worldly wisdom. And I have never heard a better set of lyrics than those for Liaisons, a lament croaked with sad regret by … an old duenna who longs for the dear dead days when people had taste and style. "Where," [she asks] … ruefully, "is style? Where is skill? Where is forethought? Where's discretion of the heart, or passion in the art, where's craft?" Stephen Sondheim is of course answering all these questions before we've even had a chance to let them soak in. His is the style that is happening today in theater music; he is where the craft is. His work renews my faith that whatever temporarily ails that "fabulous invalid" called Broadway, it is not terminal, and the patient will move on not only to recovery, but to better health than ever. As a matter of fact, I feel a lot better myself. Sondheim has taken the musical and dramatic values of such great predecessors as [Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter] and catapulted them into the turbulent Seventies. His music has enriched my life, and it's a tonic I fully endorse for anybody who is as fed up as I am with the clutter and clatter that is passing itself off as music these days. (pp. 94-5)