SOURCE: Lewis, David H. “The Roads He Didn't Take.” In Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, pp. 108-19. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2002.

In the following essay, Lewis traces Sondheim's development as a writer and composer.

One of the great ironies of musical theatre evolution was the strange sad saga of Oscar Hammerstein's prodigious protege, Stephen Sondheim, who would spend a life virtually deconstructing the populist notions of dramatic craft for which his great mentor had stood. Sondheim staged his futile revolution in a succession of increasingly independent works of abstract texture and fringe appeal. Not without precedent, his act of mutiny paid homage to the emerging “concept musical,” a form favoring the exploration of ideas over character-driven narrative, which Hammerstein and Rodgers had pioneered in Allegro.

Sondheim's misleading genius for lyric writing would dazzle a growing legion of fans for whom he became a refuge from...