Rhyme, of course, was only one weapon in his armoury. There is comic wordplay. The girls in Sunday in the Park with George sing of their two soldier suitors: “The one on the left is right for me so one on the right is left for you.” There’s also alliteration and assonance aplenty. (“Today I woke too weak to walk”, “The sand and the sea and the stars and the sky/ And the sound of a soft little satisfied sigh”, both from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.)

But, for me the most moving are the non-rhymed, runic utterances, predominantly monosyllabic. It’s a trick he learnt from Hammerstein. “When you walk through a storm hold your head up high” is nothing but single-syllable words. As are “Not a day goes by” (Merrily We Roll Along) “Tell me not to go, say it to me, tell me not to go” (Sunday in the Park) and “It takes a lot of men to make a gun” (Assassins).

Here is a pearl he once shared with me; that rhymes are most effective when the spellings are different. So, fellow Sondheim fans, where are these pairs from… Fresher/pressure, swans/bronze, colonel/journal, companion/d’Artagnan, pinnacle/cynical?*

And here, to conclude, is a wonderfully life-affirming lyric (complete with trademark internal rhyme) from his perforce unfinished musical based on the films of Buñuel. The piece is still on Steve’s piano in the bright and airy Connecticut house where he lived, and a few days ago, died.

If it isn’t the sun it’s the birdsong
If it isn’t the air it’s the view.
I’m completely undone
By the endless abundance of life,
Aren’t you?

* The answers are
1 and 2. Sunday in the Park with George; 3. Passion; 4. Wise Guys;
5. Do I Hear a Waltz?