Name that tune
Sir: In his praise of Sondheim, Gerald Kaufman (‘A brand new Sondheim musical’, 6 December) narrows the field by comparing him with other composer-lyricists and then widens it with his conclusion that Sondheim’s work is ‘worth x times as much as anything else by anybody else’. I find with Sondheim that his words are witty but his music is forgettable when compared with, say, Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lloyd Webber. I wonder how many of your readers reaching this point in this letter could pause and actually name and hum the music of any of his songs apart from ‘Send in the Clowns’.
Kaufman also seemed to be impressed that Road Show is ‘almost through-composed’. Lloyd Webber has been doing this in full for the past three decades.
John Littlewood
Farnham, Surrey
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