Remembering Stephen Sondheim through his timeless songs

The career of Stephen Sondheim, the celebrated Broadway songwriter who died Nov. 26 at the age of 91, spanned decades and included 20 major productions, including forays into television and film. Here are some of the songs from those productions, highlighting a genius that was evident from a jarringly early age (even if critics took a while to catch on) for mixing longing and ambivalence into clever, spiky, dependably unexpected lyrics.

“Something’s Coming” (From “West Side Story,” 1957)

If this were a list of Leonard Bernstein songs, “Maria” or “Tonight” or “Somewhere” might easily take this spot. But it fell upon Sondheim to depict the inchoate yearnings of a street youth, played by Larry Kert, and offer a plausible glimpse into a mind barely able to glimpse it himself. Sondheim spent the next 60-plus years grumbling about the quality of his “West Side Story” lyrics: the unintelligible passages, the too-clever-by-half internal rhymes. We should all be so flawed.

“Rose’s Turn” (From “Gypsy,” 1959)

How to pick just one song from what many consider is the greatest musical ever? None other than Cole Porter gasped at one of Sondheim’s lyrics in “Together, Wherever We Go,” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” earned the 29-year-old a spot in Bartlett’s book of quotations. But it is Ethel Merman’s absolute tour de force — one that, owing to composer Jule Styne’s previous engagement one fateful night, Sondheim largely willed into being at a rehearsal piano — that gave the clearest example of what lay ahead.

“Getting Married Today” (From “Company,” 1970)

Possibly the greatest artistic hot streak of the 20th century (take note of the dates on this and the next two entries) began with this quasi-Brechtian look at marriage through the eyes of 35-year-old Bobby, who — maybe, sort of, kind of

— wants no part of it. This anxiety-drenched patter song from one of his friends doesn’t do much to allay Bobby’s fears. In the process, the already highbar of Sondheim’s lyrical virtuosity vaulted several notes higher.

“The Road You Didn’t Take”

(From “Follies,” 1971)

The word “ambivalence” typically surfaces in a discussion of Sondheim and his themes, with “Company” as Exhibit A. (That score includes the song “Sorry-Grateful.”) But while the “Follies” score is chockablock with such barn

burners as “Broadway Baby” and “I’m Still Here,” along with the piercing “Losing My Mind,” this character study sublimely lays the groundwork for the misgivings to come. And its final two lines — “The Ben I’ll never be/Who remembers him?” — should hang in a museum.

“Send in the Clowns” (From “A Little Night Music,” 1973)

The haunting “Every Day a Little Death” and the virtuosic triptych of lust that is “Now/Soon/Later” would be career-defining works for just about anyone else. But

any time Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins and Barbra Streisand and Judi Dench and Krusty the Clown of “The Simpsons” can agree on anything, let alone a bittersweet rumination on lost love with an oscillating time signature, the choice is obvious.

“A Little Priest” (From “Sweeney Todd,” 1979)

Seconds before this song, the titular “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” has morphed from a revenge seeker into an indiscriminate psychopath in the bruising aria “Epiphany.” Only one song remains before intermission. How could the tension possibly heighten even further? It can’t, and so Sondheim (and book writer Hugh Wheeler) instead puncture it with an uproarious one-liner from Sweeney’s murderous counterpart, Mrs. Lovett, followed by a ghoulish list song — possibly the greatest of Act I finales — in which the two make macabre sport of listing the various individuals they plan to grind into meat pies.

“On the Steps of the Palace” (From “Into the Woods,” 1987)

So many of the most astonishing moments in Sondheim’s lyrics come from decisions made then and there. Perhaps the most beguiling is this number, in which Cinderella turns the act of leaving her glass slipper behind into a conscious choice. Sondheim credited his “Woods” book writer, James Lapine, for the idea, but the sparkling execution is his alone.

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES Stephen Sondheim (center left) leads crew and cast in a round of applause at a final dress rehearsal for “Sunday in the Park with George" at New York’s Studio 54 in 2008.