SOURCE: Van Leer, David. “Putting It Together: Sondheim and the Broadway Musical.” Raritan 7, no. 2 (fall 1987): 113-28.

In the following essay, Van Leer elucidates the reasons for the mixed critical and popular reaction to Sondheim's musicals.

It may be hard these days to care much one way or the other about the Broadway musical, but people care passionately about Stephen Sondheim. Both ways. By most accounts he is the finest lyricist and composer now writing for the American musical theater. He has received more Tony awards than any composer. His last production—Sunday in the Park with George—won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, one of the few ever given to a musical. Perhaps more to the point in the commercial world of song writing, Barbra Streisand's highly successful Broadway Album used Sondheim songs or lyrics in seven of its eleven selections. And at the recent Grammy Awards, in...