Stephen Sondheim has been awarded the 2017 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award — making him the first composer-lyricist to win it.

The prize is given annually to a “critically acclaimed writer whose body of work helps us understand and interpret the human condition,” according to PEN America’s news release. While the prize has mostly gone to novelists, including Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison, Mr. Sondheim has made an undeniable impact on the last 60 years of culture by writing musicals including “West Side Story,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Company.”

And the precedent for giving a literary award to a musical artist was strengthened last year, when Bob Dylan accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“Stephen Sondheim has really given voice to complex aspects of the human spirit: to nuance, to psychology, to inner voices,” Andrew Solomon, president of PEN America, said in a phone interview. “His work points to the significance of living a moral life, and that’s never felt more urgent than right now.”