Time and second hearings always tell with a Sondheim score, but this one, its atypically muted Jonathan Tunick orchestrations included, makes the mildest first impression of them all.

This has the effect of giving "Company" a split personality that only the incandescent Sondheim score renders irrelevant.

On some level, every Sondheim score pays homage to older genres and styles of musical theater.

In 2004 the show was performed in the Netherlands, and a Dutch language recording was released-one of the few translations of a Sondheim score.

With the elegant orchestrations, "Saturday Night" sounded like a grown-up Sondheim score.

He said he hoped that the series would give the lie to the notion that "you can't come out of the theater humming a Sondheim score."

In much the same way, the characters in "Merrily We Roll Along" march, heads up, through the fine Sondheim score to their predestined fates.

The Sondheim score is both intricate and lyrical, but spare and clean of dramatic line, almost stark.

Brilliant as these songs can be individually, they never cohere into a fully realized score that builds in cumulative effect the way most of the later Sondheim scores do.

Furthermore, the Sondheim score, which sounds simple enough on CD, rarely stays in the same key or time signature for more than a few measures at a clip.