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Sullivan, Arthur, Sir, 1842-1900We have 3 books for this author.
 Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (May 13, 1842 – November 22, 1900) was an English composer best known for his operatic collaborations with librettist W. S. Gilbert, including the still-popular H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 orchestral works, eight choral or oratorio works, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.[1] Apart from his comic operas with Gilbert, Sullivan is best known for some of his hymns and parlour songs, including "Onward Christian Soldiers", "The Absent-Minded Beggar", and "The Lost Chord". However, his most critically praised pieces include his Irish Symphony, his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, his Overture di Ballo, The Martyr of Antioch, The Golden Legend, and, of the Savoy Operas, The Yeomen of the Guard. Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, was initially successful but has been little heard since his death. Life and careerBeginnings
Sullivan was born in Lambeth, now part of London.[2] His father, Thomas Sullivan, was a military bandmaster from Ireland, based for some years at the Royal Military Academy which lies between Sandhurst in Berkshire and Camberley (formerly Cambridgetown) in Surrey, and here Arthur became proficient with all the instruments in the band by age eight.[3] His mother was of Italian descent. Following a stay at private school in Bayswater, he was admitted to the choir of the Chapel Royal, attending its school in Cheyne Walk and soon becoming a soloist.[4] While there, he began to compose anthems and songs.[5] His earliest published composition was a song called "O Israel", which was published by Novello in 1855.[6] In 1856, he received the first Mendelssohn Prize and went to study at the Royal Academy of Music until 1858.[7] He then continued his studies at Leipzig, Germany, at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre where he also took up conducting and where he met his friend Carl Rosa.[8] There, he was influenced by Felix Mendelssohn's musical style.[9] Sullivan credited his Leipzig period with tremendous musical growth. His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a set of incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest.[10] Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London, and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer.[11] Sullivan's early major works were those typically expected of a serious composer. In 1866, he premiered the Irish Symphony (though he may have completed it by 1863) and the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, his only works in each genre.[12] In the same year, his Overture in C (In Memoriam), written in grief shortly after the death of his father, was a commission from the Norwich Festival, and during his lifetime it was one of his most successful works for orchestra.[13] His single most successful work for orchestra,[14] the Overture di Ballo, satisfied a commission from the Birmingham Festival in 1870.[15] 
His long association with works for the voice began early. Significant commissions for chorus and orchestra included The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864);[16] an oratorio, The Prodigal Son (Three Choirs Festival, 1869);[17] a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea (Opening of the London International Exhibition, 1871);[18] the Festival Te Deum (Crystal Palace, 1872);[19] and another oratorio, The Light of the World (Birmingham Festival, 1873).[20] His only song cycle came during this period: The Window; or, The Songs of the Wrens (1871), to a text of eleven poems by Tennyson.[21] 
Sullivan's affinity for theatrical works also began early. During a stint as organist at Covent Garden, he composed his first ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864) and had his first experience of opera, which was directed there by Sir Michael Costa.[22] In the nineteenth century, straight plays were often accompanied by live incidental music, and Sullivan composed play scores on numerous occasions. Early examples included The Merchant of Venice (Prince's Theatre, Manchester, 1871);[23] The Merry Wives of Windsor (Gaiety Theatre, London, 1874);[24] and Henry VIII (Theatre Royal, Manchester, 1877).[25] His earlier Tempest incidental music, although adaptable for this purpose, was originally composed for the concert hall. These commissions were not sufficient to keep Sullivan afloat.[8] He worked as a church organist,[26] gave singing and piano lessons and composed some 72 hymns, most of them in the period 1861–75. The most famous of these are "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872, lyrics by Sabine Baring-Gould) and "Nearer, my God, to Thee" (the "Propior Deo" version).[27] He also turned out over 80 popular songs and parlour ballads – again, most of them written before the late 1870s.[28] His first popular song was "Orpheus with his Lute" and a popular part song was "Oh! hush thee, my babie."[6] The best known of his songs is "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter), written in sorrow at the death of his brother Fred, who had premiered the roles of Apollo in Thespis and The Learned Judge in Trial by Jury.[8] In the autumn of 1867, he travelled with George Grove to Vienna, returning with a treasure-trove of rescued Schubert scores, including the music to Rosamunde.[29] First operasSullivan's first attempt at opera, The Sapphire Necklace (1863–64, libretto by Henry F. Chorley) was not produced, and is now lost, although the overture and two songs from the work were separately published.[30] His first surviving opera, Cox and Box (1866), was originally written for a private performance.[8] It then received charity performances in both London and Manchester, and it was later produced at the Gallery of Illustration, where it ran for an extremely successful 264 performances. A freelance journalist named W. S. Gilbert, writing on behalf of a humour magazine called Fun, pronounced the score superior to F. C. Burnand's libretto.[31] The first Sullivan-Burnand collaboration was sufficiently successful to spawn a two-act opera, The Contrabandista (1867; revised and expanded as The Chieftain in 1894), which did not achieve great popularity.[32] The collaboration with Gilbert
In 1871, John Hollingshead commissioned Sullivan to work with W. S. Gilbert to create the burlesque Thespis for the Gaiety Theatre. Conceived specifically as a Christmas entertainment, it ran through to Easter 1872. The work was produced rather quickly, after which Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways,[33] with the exception of two parlour ballads in late 1874 and early 1875.[34] In 1875, theatre manager Richard D'Oyly Carte needed a short piece to fill out a bill with Offenbach's La Périchole for the Royalty Theatre. Remembering Thespis, Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan, and the result was the one-act comic opera Trial by Jury. The success of this piece launched Gilbert and Sullivan on their famous partnership, which produced an additional twelve comic operas.[35] However, Sullivan was not yet exclusively hitched to Gilbert. Soon after the successful opening of Trial, Sullivan wrote The Zoo, another one-act comic opera, with a libretto by B. C. Stephenson.[36] But the new work was not a big hit, and Sullivan collaborated on operas only with Gilbert for the next 15 years. 
Sullivan's next opera with Gilbert, The Sorcerer (1877), was a success by the standards of the day,[37] but H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon.[38] Indeed, Pinafore was so successful that over a hundred unauthorised productions sprang up in America alone. Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American performance copyrights over their operas, without success.[39] Pinafore was followed by another hit, The Pirates of Penzance in (1879), and then Patience (1881). Later in 1881, Patience transferred to the new Savoy Theatre, where the remaining Gilbert and Sullivan joint works were produced, as a result of which they are sometimes known as the "Savoy Operas."[40] Iolanthe (1882) was the first of their works to premiere at the new theatre.[41] In 1883, during the run of Iolanthe, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music.[42] The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as a composer of comic opera — that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or grand opera.[43] Sullivan too, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert as unimportant, beneath his skills, and also repetitious. Furthermore, he was unhappy that he had to simplify his music to ensure that Gilbert's words could be heard. But paradoxically, just before the production of Iolanthe, Sullivan had signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte, compelling him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.[44] Having agreed to this, Sullivan suddenly felt trapped.[45] 
Princess Ida (1884, the duo's only three-act, blank verse work) was noticeably less successful than its predecessors, although Sullivan's score was praised.[46] With box office receipts lagging, Carte gave the contractual six months' notice for a new opera.[47] Gilbert proposed a libretto in which the plot depended on the agency of a magic lozenge. Sullivan pronounced it overly mechanical and too similar to their earlier work and sought to leave the partnership.[48] The impasse was finally resolved when Gilbert proposed a plot that did not depend on any supernatural device. The result was Gilbert and Sullivan's most successful work, The Mikado (1885).[49] Ruddygore (1887, renamed Ruddigore) followed. It had a respectable nine-month run, but by Gilbert and Sullivan's standards, it was not a great success. When Gilbert again proposed a version of the "lozenge" plot for their next opera, Sullivan reiterated his desire to leave the partnership. Finally, Gilbert proposed a comparatively serious opera, which Sullivan immediately accepted. Although not a grand opera, The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) provided Sullivan with the opportunity to write his most ambitious score to date. After Yeomen and another brief impasse over the choice of a subject, Gilbert offered a scenario set in Venice, The Gondoliers (1889). This was their last great success together. The partnership suffered a serious breach during the run of The Gondoliers, when Gilbert questioned Carte over the cost of new carpeting for the Savoy lobby. Sullivan, who was already planning a grand opera, Ivanhoe, under Carte's management at another theatre, considered the dispute petty and sided with Carte. The resulting quarrel took several years to work out. Sullivan would collaborate with Gilbert twice more, on Utopia Limited (1893) and The Grand Duke (1896), but they were unable to recreate the success of their earlier collaborations. Serious music from 1875 to 1890During the years of Sullivan's most successful work with Gilbert, his career as a conductor and educator continued in parallel.[50] Between 1875 and 1890, however, Sullivan wrote only two substantial compositions that were not comic opera, and both were oratorios for the triennial Leeds Festival, for which Sullivan was appointed conductor starting in 1880. For the 1880 Leeds Festival, Sullivan was commissioned to write a sacred choral work. For a source text, Sullivan settled on Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life of Saint Margaret the Virgin. Sullivan found the poem unwieldy for his purposes. His operatic collaborator, W. S. Gilbert, adapted the text, altering Milman's metrical scheme in three of the work's sixteen numbers, and advising on selected abridgements in many of the others. Described as "A Sacred Musical Drama," The Martyr of Antioch had a successful premiere on the morning of October 15, 1880. As thanks for Gilbert's help, Sullivan presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup. Gilbert replied, "Pray believe that of the many substantial advantages that have resulted to me from our association, this last is, and always will be, the most highly prized." Sullivan dedicated the work to the Princess of Wales. In 1886, Sullivan once again supplied a large-scale choral work for the Leeds Festival, this time selecting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Golden Legend to set as an oratorio of the same title. Outside of the comic operas with Gilbert, this oratorio was Sullivan's most successful large-scale work. It was performed hundreds of times in Sullivan's lifetime, and at one point the composer even declared a moratorium on its performance, fearing that the work would become over-exposed.[8] It remained in the repertory until about the 1920s, but since then it has been seldom performed. Recent Sullivan scholarship and the first professional recording in 2001 have revived interest in the work. Later worksIn the late 1880s, Sullivan resumed composing incidental music to plays, producing Macbeth (1888) for the Lyceum Theatre, with Henry Irving in the title role; Tennyson's The Foresters (1892) for Daly's Theatre in New York; and J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur (1895), again at the Lyceum. As early as 1883, Sullivan was under pressure from the musical establishment to write a grand opera, but he did not finally get around to it until 1891. The composer asked Gilbert to supply the libretto, but the latter declined, saying that in grand opera the librettist's role is subordinate to that of the composer. Sullivan turned, instead, to Julian Sturgis, who was recommended by Gilbert. Ivanhoe, based on Sir Walter Scott's novel, opened at Carte's new Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891. Although the opera itself was a success, running for an unprecedented 155 performances, it passed into virtual obscurity after the opera house failed.[8] It was, as critic Hermann Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!"[51] Sullivan did not seriously consider writing grand opera again.  Apart from Ivanhoe, Sullivan collaborated with no other librettists besides Gilbert from 1875 until their partnership collapsed following The Gondoliers. Richard D'Oyly Carte still had the Savoy Theatre to run, and he turned to other librettists to provide material for new comic operas by Sullivan, while scheduling Gilbert & Sullivan revivals and works by other composers when no Sullivan work was available. Sullivan's first comic opera after the break-up with Gilbert, Haddon Hall (1892, libretto by Sydney Grundy), enjoyed a modest success. Although still comic, the tone and style of the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with Gilbert. After another Gilbert opera (Utopia Limited, 1893), Sullivan teamed up again with his old partner, F. C. Burnand. The Chieftain (1894), a heavily revised version of their earlier two-act opera, The Contrabandista, flopped. After The Grand Duke (1896) also failed, Gilbert and Sullivan were finished working together for good. In May 1897, Sullivan's full-length ballet, Victoria and Merrie England, opened at the Alhambra Theatre to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The work's seven scenes portrayed events from English history. Its six-month run was considered a great success. The Beauty Stone (1898, libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr) was another opera more serious than Sullivan or the Savoy were accustomed to, and it failed miserably. Finally, in The Rose of Persia (1899, libretto by Basil Hood), Sullivan returned to his comic roots, producing his most successful full-length opera apart from Gilbert. Another opera with Hood quickly went into preparation.[8] Death and honours
Sullivan, who had suffered from ill health throughout his life, succumbed to pneumonia at the age of 58 at his flat in London on November 22, 1900. He left his last opera, The Emerald Isle, to be completed by Edward German. His Te Deum for the end of the Boer War was performed posthumously. A monument in the composer's memory was erected in the Victoria Embankment Gardens (London) and is inscribed with W. S. Gilbert's words from The Yeomen of the Guard: "Is life a boon? If so, it must befall that Death, whene'er he call, must call too soon". Sullivan wished to be buried in Brompton Cemetery with his parents and brother, but, by order of the Queen, he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.[8] In addition to his knighthood, honours awarded to Sullivan in his lifetime included Doctor in Music, honoris causâ, by the Universities of Cambridge (1876) and Oxford (1879); Chevallier, Legion of Honour, France (1878); The Order of the Medjidieh, by the Sultan of Turkey (1888); and Membership in the Royal Victoria Order.[6] Personal lifeAlthough Sullivan never married, he had many love affairs. His first serious affair was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845–1882). Precisely when it began is uncertain, but Sullivan and his friend, Frederic Clay, were frequent visitors at the Scott Russell home beginning in 1864, and by 1866 the affair was in full bloom. Rachel's parents did not approve of a possible union to a young composer with uncertain financial prospects. After Rachel's mother discovered the relationship in 1867, the two continued to see each other covertly. At some point in 1868, Sullivan started a simultaneous affair with Rachel's sister Louise (1841–1878). He eventually cooled on both girls, and the affairs were over by 1870. Some two hundred love letters from the two girls have survived. They are excerpted in detail in Wolfson (1984). 
Sullivan's longest love affair was with an American, Mary Frances ("Fanny") Ronalds née Carter, born August 23, 1839, a woman three years Sullivan's senior. He met her in Paris around 1867, and the affair began in earnest at some point not long after she moved to London permanently around 1870–1. A contemporary account described Fanny Ronalds this way: "Her face was perfectly divine in its loveliness, her features small and exquisitely regular. Her hair was a dark shade of brown – châtain foncé [deep chestnut] – and very abundant... a lovely woman, with the most generous smile one could possibly imagine, and the most beautiful teeth."[52] Fanny was separated from her husband, but she was never divorced. Social conventions of the time compelled Sullivan and Fanny to keep their relationship private. In his diaries, he would refer to her as "Mrs. Ronalds" when he saw her in a public setting, but "L. W." (for "Little Woman") or "D. H." (possibly "Dear Heart") when they were alone together, often with a number in parentheses indicating the number of sexual acts completed.[53] It is thought that Fanny was pregnant, or believed herself pregnant, on at least two occasions,[54] and procured an abortion on at least one occasion. In the 1999 biographical film Topsy-Turvy, Sullivan and Fanny discuss an abortion at around the time of the production of The Mikado. Sullivan had a roving eye, and the diary records the occasional quarrel when his other liaisons were discovered, but he always returned to Fanny. She was a constant companion (and was well known for performing some of Sullivan's songs) up to the time of Sullivan's death, but around 1889 or 1890, the sexual relationship seems to have ended. He started to refer to her in the diary as "Auntie",[55] and the tick marks indicating sexual activity were no longer there, although similar notation continued to be used for his relationships with other women who have not been identified, and who were always referred to by their initials. In 1896, Sullivan proposed marriage to the 20-year-old Violet Beddington, but she refused him. Some books and websites claim or speculate that Sullivan was homosexual or bisexual. Brahms[56] says that Sullivan had a relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh. It is undisputed that Sullivan and the Duke were friends, but the only evidence cited for a sexual relationship is unspecified "Victorian cartoonists." The Gay Book of Days (Carol Publishing Corporation, 1985) and The Alyson Almanac (Alyson Publications, 1990) both list Sullivan as a gay composer, again not stating the source. Sullivan was devoted to his parents, his brother Fred, and Fred's children. After Fred died, Sullivan did his best to provide for Fred's family, and he left the bulk of his estate to Fred's children. Compositional styleProcess and OrchestrationSullivan composed without the use of the keyboard. "I don't use the piano in composition – that would limit me terribly," he told interviewer Arthur Lawrence. Sullivan explained that his process of composition was not to wait for inspiration like "a miner seated at the top of a shaft", waiting for "the coal to come bubbling up to the surface... He has to dig for it.... The first thing I have to decide upon is the rhythm, and I decide on that before I come to the question of melody. The notes must come afterwards. ...I mark out the metre in dots and dashes, and not until I have quite settled on the rhythm do I proceed to actual notation."[57] Sullivan's orchestra for the Savoy Operas was typical of any other pit orchestra of his era: 2 flutes (+ piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion, and strings. Sullivan had argued hard for an increase in the pit orchestra's size, and starting with Yeomen the operas all included the usual complement plus second bassoon and bass trombone.[58] Sullivan noted that the orchestration for an opera had to wait until he saw the staging so that he could judge how heavily or lightly to orchestrate each part of the music.[59] Musical Quotations
To the delight of his generally well educated Savoy Theatre audiences, Sullivan often quoted or imitated famous themes and passages from popular tunes or well-known composers such as Schubert, Donizetti, Bellini and Mendelssohn.[60] He also liked to evoke familiar musical styles, such as his "madrigals" in The Mikado, Ruddigore and Yeomen, "glees" in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado and "gavottes" in Ruddigore and The Gondoliers. In The Sorcerer, there is a country dance and folksy duet between the men and women's chorus in "If You'll Marry Me." In several of the operas, the style of a hornpipe or sea shanty is woven into the music, or the military sound of the fife and drum is quoted. Sullivan uses the exotic musical styles of the Far East in The Mikado, with the composer even trying to replicate a popular war song in "Miya Sama". His trip to Egypt provided him with musical flavour for his later opera, The Rose of Persia. In early pieces, Sullivan took a page out of the Offenbach playbook in spoofing the idioms of Italian opera, such as in the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi.[61] Examples of this include Mabel's aria "Poor Wand'ring One" in Pirates (compare this to "Sempre libera" from La Traviata) and the duet "Who are you, sir?" from Cox and Box.[62] The overture of Cox and Box also is influenced by Offenbach, while the scena, "Not long ago", echoes Rossini's "La Fioraia Fiorentina," and the lullaby "Hush-a-bye, bacon" is in the style of a then-popular ballad.[63] Later, the influences of Handel, Schubert and especially Mendelssohn can be heard in Sullivan's work.[64] The then-popular Michael Balfe (especially his The Bohemian Girl and The Maid of Artois (see, e.g., "The rapture dwelling within my breast")) is parodied in The Sorcerer and The Pirates of Penzance. In the Major-General's Act II song "Sighing softly to the river" from The Pirates of Penzance, Sullivan imitates Schubert’s partsongs for male voices, and the accompaniment parallels Schubert's song "Auf dem Wasser zu singen." The chorus "With catlike tread" from the same opera is an imitation of Verdi's "Anvil Chorus" from Il Trovatore. Sullivan also quotes the theme of Schubert’s song "Der Wanderer" in the choral entry of the family ghosts in Act II of Ruddigore. In Sullivan's songs, like "Orpheus with his Lute", Schubert's influence can be felt strongly in his use of modulation and construction of melodies.[63] In Iolanthe, Sullivan creates a baroque-style fugue; this occurs on three occasions when the Lord Chancellor enters, including at the beginning of his "Nightmare" patter song. Likewise, in Iolanthe there is a Wagnerian style in the Fairy Queen's music in the finale of Act I ("All the most terrific thunders in my armoury of wonders"), as well as the fairies' music during Iolanthe's self-revelation. Iolanthe enters to an oboe solo quoting "Die alte Weise" from Tristan und Isolde. The strings over Phyllis' "heart that's aching" passage play virtually the same notes as the theme of desire (sometimes called "yearning") from Tristan. Other fairy music in Iolanthe, such as "Tripping Hither", bears many similarities to Mendelssohn's fairy music from his incidental music to Midsummer Night's Dream, for example, "You spotted snakes with double tongue."[63] In Princess Ida, there is a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III. In The Gondoliers, there are the Spanish cachucha, the Italian saltarello and tarantella, and the Venetian barcarolle. Hughes (p. 91) compares "Here is a case unprecedented" from The Gondoliers to the Act II quintet from Carmen. In "My Object All Sublime," when the Mikado mentions "Bach interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven," the bassoon quotes from the fugue subject of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542 (the subject is itself evidently a quote from Reincken). The Golden Legend, shows the influence of Liszt and Dvorak.[63] The spinning song, "When maiden loves" in The Yeomen of the Guard recalls a similar Schubert spinning tune, "Gretchen am sminnrade." More generally, beyond his use of particular styles or the quotation of actual compositions, Sullivan also gave each opera, or elements in each opera, a thematic core style, motif or mood using particular orchestrations, key sequencing and rhythmic settings. For instance, The Pirates of Penzance, the policemen always enter to a signature theme. The Sorcerer is filled with lyrical, pastoral string and woodwind figures appropriate to a country manor setting. Princess Ida's two settings are contrasted, with the militaristic men's court separated from the dreamy, fairytale setting of the women's university. Likewise, in both Iolanthe and Patience, military or government officers march to a far different beat than that of aesthetically etherealized women or fairies, and so forth. In The Yeomen of the Guard, a strong rhythmic brass figure usually evokes the Tower of London. Indeed, in Yeomen, Sullivan uses Wagner's leitmotiv technique, which he repeated and developed further in Ivanhoe.[63] OverturesThe overtures from Sullivan's comic operas remain popular, and there are many recordings of them. Most of them are structured as a potpourri of tunes from the operas. They are generally well orchestrated, but not all of them were composed by Sullivan. However, even those delegated to his assistants were probably based on an outline he provided, and in many cases incorporated his suggestions or corrections.[65] One can certainly presume that he approved of them, since he invariably conducted on opening night. 
Those Sullivan wrote himself include Cox and Box, Thespis, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, and The Grand Duke. Sullivan's authorship of the overture to Utopia Limited cannot be verified with certainty, as his autograph score is now lost, but it is likely attributable to him, as it consists of only a few bars of introduction, followed by a straight copy of music heard elsewhere in the opera (the Drawing Room scene). Thespis is now lost, but there is no doubt that it had an overture and that Sullivan wrote it.[67] Of those remaining, the overtures to H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance are by Alfred Cellier; to The Sorcerer, The Mikado and Ruddigore are by Hamilton Clarke (although Geoffrey Toye's 1920 Ruddigore overture has largely replaced Clarke's); and to Patience is by Eugene d'Albert.[68] Most of the overtures are in three sections: a lively introduction, a slow middle section, and a concluding allegro in sonata form, with two subjects, a brief development, a recapitulation and a coda. However, Sullivan himself didn't always follow this pattern. The overtures to Princess Ida and The Gondoliers, for instance, have only an opening fast section and a concluding slow section. The overture to Utopia Limited is dominated by a slow section, with only a very brief original passage introducing it. In the 1920s, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company commissioned its musical director at the time, Geoffrey Toye, to write new overtures for Ruddigore and The Pirates of Penzance. Toye’s Ruddigore overture entered the general repertory, and today is more often heard than the original overture by Clarke. Toye’s Pirates overture, however, did not last long and is now presumed lost.[69] Sir Malcolm Sargent devised a new ending for the overture to The Gondoliers, adding the "cachucha" from the second act of the opera. This gave the Gondoliers overture the familiar fast-slow-fast pattern of most of the rest of the Savoy Opera overtures, and this version has competed for popularity with Sullivan's original version. Reputation and criticismEarly career
When the young Arthur Sullivan returned to England after his studies in Leipzig, critics were struck by his potential. His incidental music to The Tempest received an acclaimed premiere at the Crystal Palace on April 5, 1862. The Athenaeum wrote:
His Irish Symphony of 1866 won similarly enthusiastic praise:
But as Jacobs notes, "The first rapturous outburst of enthusiasm for Sullivan as an orchestral composer did not last." A comment that may be taken as typical of those that would follow the composer throughout his career was that "Sullivan's unquestionable talent should make him doubly careful not to mistake popular applause for artistic appreciation."[72] Sullivan was also occasionally cited for a lack of diligence. For instance, of his early oratorio, The Prodigal Son, his teacher, John Goss, wrote:
The transition to opera
Punch cartoon
By the mid-1870s, Sullivan had turned his attention mainly to works for the theatre, for which he was generally admired. For instance, after the first performance of Trial by Jury (1875), the Times said that "It seems, as in the great Wagnerian operas, as though poem and music had proceeded simultaneously from one and the same brain."[74] But by the time The Sorcerer appeared, there were charges that Sullivan was wasting his talents in comic opera:
Implicit in these comments was the view that comic opera, no matter how carefully crafted, was an intrinsically lower form of art. The Athenaeum's review of The Martyr of Antioch expressed a similar complaint:
The operas with Gilbert themselves, however, garnered Sullivan high praise from the theatre reviewers. For instance, The Daily Telegraph wrote, "The composer has risen to his opportunity, and we are disposed to account Iolanthe his best effort in all the Gilbertian series."[77] Similarly, the Theatre would say that "the music of Iolanthe is Dr Sullivan's chef d'oeuvre. The quality throughout is more even, and maintained at a higher standard, than in any of his earlier works.... In every respect Iolanthe sustains Dr Sullivan's reputation as the most spontaneous, fertile, and scholarly composer of comic opera this country has ever produced."[78] Knighthood and maturity
Sullivan was knighted in 1883, and serious music critics renewed the charge that the composer was squandering his talent. The Musical Review of that year wrote:
In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Sir George Grove, who was an old friend of Sullivan's, recognised the artistry in the Savoy Operas while urging the composer to bigger and better things: "Surely the time has come when so able and experienced a master of voice, orchestra, and stage effect—master, too, of so much genuine sentiment—may apply his gifts to a serious opera on some subject of abiding human or natural interest."[80] The premiere of The Golden Legend at the Leeds Festival in 1886 finally brought Sullivan the acclaim for a serious work that he had previously lacked. For instance, the critic of the Daily Telegraph wrote that "a greater, more legitimate and more undoubted triumph than that of the new cantata has not been achieved within my experience."[81] Similarly, Louis Engel in The World wrote that it was:
Hopes for a new departure were evident in the Daily Telegraph's review of The Yeomen of the Guard, Sullivan's most serious opera to that point:
The 1890sThe advance the Daily Telegraph was looking for would come with Ivanhoe (1891), which opened to largely favourable reviews, but attracted some significant negative ones. For instance, J. A. Fuller-Maitland wrote in The Times that the opera's "best portions rise so far above anything else that Sir Arthur Sullivan has given to the world, and have such force and dignity, that it is not difficult to forget the drawbacks which may be found in the want of interest in much of the choral writing, and the brevity of the concerted solo parts."[84] In the 1890s, Sullivan's successes were fewer and far between. The ballet Victoria and Merrie England (1898) won praise from most critics:
After The Rose of Persia (1899), the Daily Telegraph said that "The musician is once again absolutely himself," while the Musical Times opined that "it is music that to hear once is to want to hear again and again."[86] In 1899, Sullivan composed a popular song, "The Absent-Minded Beggar", to a text by Rudyard Kipling, donating the proceeds of the sale to "the wives and children of soldiers and sailors" on active service in the Boer War. Fuller-Maitland disapproved in The Times, but Sullivan himself asked a friend, "Did the idiot expect the words to be set in cantata form, or as a developed composition with symphonic introduction, contrapuntal treatment, etc.?"[87] Death and posthumous reputationIf the musical establishment never quite forgave Sullivan for condescending to write music that was both comic and popular, he was, nevertheless, the nation's de facto composer laureate. Sullivan was considered the natural candidate to compose a Te Deum for the end of the Boer War, which he duly completed, despite serious ill-health, but did not live to see performed. Gian Andrea Mazzucato would write this glowing summary of his career in The Musical Standard of December 16, 1899:
Likewise, Sir George Grove wrote, "Form and symmetry he seems to possess by instinct; rhythm and melody clothe everything he touches; the music shows not only sympathetic genius, but sense, judgement, proportion, and a complete absence of pedantry and pretension; while the orchestration is distinguished by a happy and original beauty hardly surpassed by the greatest masters."[6] Over the next decade, however, Sullivan's reputation sank considerably. Shortly after the composer's death, J. A. Fuller-Maitland took issue with the generally praiseworthy tone of most of the obituaries, citing the composer's failure to live up to the early praise of his Tempest music:
Edward Elgar, to whom Sullivan had been particularly kind, rose to Sullivan's defence, branding Fuller-Maitland's obituary "the shady side of musical criticism... that foul unforgettable episode."[90] In his History of Music in England (1907), however, Ernest Walker was even more damning of Sullivan:
Fuller-Maitland would incorporate similar views in the second edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, which he edited, while Walker's History would be re-issued in 1923 and 1956 with his earlier verdict intact. As late as 1966, Frank Howes wrote:
Yet, there were other writers who rose to praise Sullivan. For example, in an entire chapter of his 1928 book, Sullivan's Comic Operas, titled "Mainly in Defence," Thomas F. Dunhill wrote:
Gervase Hughes (1959) would pick up the trail where Dunhill left off:
Recent viewsIn recent years, Sullivan's work outside of the Savoy Operas has begun to be re-assessed. It has only been since the late 1960s that a quantity of his non-Savoy music has been professionally recorded. The Symphony in E had its first professional recording in 1968; his solo piano and chamber music in 1974; the cello concerto in 1986; Kenilworth in 1999; The Martyr of Antioch in 2000; The Golden Legend in 2001. In 1992 and 1993, Naxos released four discs featuring performances of Sullivan's ballet music and his incidental music to plays. Of his operas apart from Gilbert, Cox and Box (1961 and several later recordings), The Zoo (1978), The Rose of Persia (1999), and The Contrabandista (2004) have had professional recordings. In recent decades, several publishers have issued scholarly critical editions of Sullivan's works, including Ernst Eulenburg (The Gondoliers), Broude Brothers (Trial by Jury and H.M.S. Pinafore), David Russell Hulme for Oxford University Press (Ruddigore), and R. Clyde (Cox and Box, Haddon Hall, Overture "In Memoriam", Overture di Ballo, and The Golden Legend). In a 2000 article for the Musical Times, Nigel Burton wrote:
Sullivan's views on Edison's phonograph and recorded music:In 1888, Thomas Edison sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to Mr. George Gouraud in London, England. Recordings made by Gouraud on this equipment in 1888 were discovered at the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s. On August 14, 1888, Gouraud and members of the press made a recording that was sent to Edison in America. Edison hoped that the phonograph would become a common method of correspondence. One of the recordings played that night was a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's "The Lost Chord," which was one of the first music recordings ever made.[94] Sullivan saw the phonograph and heard a demonstration of Edison's wax cylinder recording technology two months later on October 5, 1888 at one of the "phonograph parties" and recorded a message to Edison on that occasion that included the following:
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
This biographical information was gathered from the Arthur_Sullivan page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksAfter Dinner Toast at Little Menlo (Music, recorded)The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan The Lost Chord (Music, recorded) |
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