Stephen Sondheim, who was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal in August, discussed the award and much more on PBS NewsHour last night. While at The MacDowell Colony in Petersborough, New Hampshire, to receive the award last month, the composer spoke with Jeffrey Brown, NewsHour's chief correspondent for arts, culture, and society, about the honor and the danger of resting on one's laurels. It is a topic, in fact, that Sondheim addressed in his acceptance speech.

"That’s the trouble with awards for a body of work," Sondheim said in the speech, as cited in the NewsHour report. "They always come at both a good time and a wrong time. Good because they tell you what you’ve been doing was worth the doing and wrong because they ought to come when you’re young and excited and hungry for assurance that what you’re doing is worth the doing."

Brown also spoke with writer Frank Rich, the former New York Times theater critic, who was the chairman of the Edward MacDowell Medal Selection Committee and introduced Sondheim at the ceremony.

"I'd argue that he single-handedly has kept the modern musical theater in a serious place," Rich tells Brown. "It could have gone in a way where it could've just petered out or just been all frivolous, lowest common denominator. Sondheim kept the path of saying, 'You can do Sweeney Todd; you can do Pacific Overtures; you can do Sunday in the Park with George."

Watch the PBS NewsHour feature below. For more on Stephen Sondheim's Edward MacDowell award celebration, read the coverage in last month's Nonesuch Journal.