For 15 years on Broadway, between 1956 and 1970, the lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who has died aged 99, and his composer partner Jerry Bock were at the centre of an interim golden period between the heyday of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the advent of Stephen Sondheim as a fully fledged composer/lyricist.
Their most notable shows, She Loves Me (1963) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964), remain classic examples of the romantic, yet socially observant, beautifully crafted and spiritually impassioned Broadway musical at its best. The first was a quiet success, elevated in recent years to cult status; the second, a schmaltzy, dramatic celebration of displaced Jews in tsarist Russia, and the longest-running show of any kind on Broadway (eight years) at that time.
