Sondheim's lyric ancestors are Oscar Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Noël Coward, and W. S. Gilbert. He may lack Porter's and Coward's nonchalant gaiety, irreverent fun, and rueful melancholy, and Hammerstein's compassion and rugged simplicity, but he is more than their equal (and Gilbert's) in verbal felicity. Sondheim's wit is mordant, intellectual, edgy rather than funny, the hard-hitting repartee of contemporary New York. (p. 309)

Sondheim incorporates disparate styles [of other composers] … into a style purely his own. Furthermore, he shapes each score to an individual sound that belongs to that show alone.

In Company, Sondheim forged a style of pop influenced by rock that captured the staccato beat of Manhattan; the pastiche music of Follies is a valentine to his great Broadway predecessors; and A Little Night Music is a wormwood operetta, entirely composed of variants of the Viennese waltz.

Pacific Overtures, a turning point in Sondheim's career, discarded...