Arthur Sullivan
Background Information
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Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan ( May 13 1842 – November 22 1900) was an English composer, of Irish and Italian descent, best known for his operatic collaborations with librettist W. S. Gilbert, including such continually-popular works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado. Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, 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.
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". His most critically praised pieces include his Irish Symphony, 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 highly successful, but it has been little heard since his death.
Life and career
Beginnings
Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London. His father, Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866), was a military bandmaster and music teacher born in Ireland, who was educated in Chelsea, London and was based for some years at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Here Arthur became proficient with all the instruments in the band by the age of eight. His mother Mary Clementina (née Coghlan, 1811–1882) was English, of Irish and Italian descent. While studying at a private school in Bayswater, Sullivan convinced his parents and the headmaster, William Gordon Plees, to allow him to try out for the choir of the Chapel Royal. Despite concerns about Sullivan's age, which would limit how long he could serve before his voice began to change, he was accepted and soon became a soloist. Sullivan flourished under the training of Reverend Thomas Helmore, the master of the choristers, and began to compose anthems and songs. Helmore arranged for one of these, "O Israel", to be published by Novello in 1855 – Sullivan's first published work. Helmore also enlisted Sullivan's assistance in creating harmonisations for a volume of The Hymnal Noted.
In 1856, the Royal Academy of Music awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to Sullivan, granting him a year's training at the academy. This was extended to a second year at the academy, and in 1858 the scholarship committee, in an "extraordinary gesture of confidence", extended it for a third year so that he could study in Leipzig, Germany, at the Leipzig Conservatoire. While there, Sullivan was trained in Mendelssohn's ideas and techniques but was also exposed to a variety of new musical styles, including Schubert, Verdi, Bach and Wagner. Visiting a Jewish synagogue, he would be so struck by some of the cadences and progressions of the music that thirty years later he would still remember it vividly enough to use them in his grand opera, Ivanhoe. He also developed various acquaintances and friendships at Leipzig, such as Carl Rosa, who was later to create the Carl Rosa Opera Company; violinist Joseph Joachim, and composer Franz Liszt. For his last year at the Conservatoire, money was scraped together by his father, and the Conservatoire assisted by waiving its fees.
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. 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.
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. 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. His single most successful orchestral work, the Overture di Ballo, satisfied a commission from the Birmingham Festival in 1870.
His long association with works for the voice began early. Significant commissions for chorus and orchestra included The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864); an oratorio, The Prodigal Son (Three Choirs Festival, 1869); a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea (Opening of the London International Exhibition, 1871); the Festival Te Deum (Crystal Palace, 1872); and another oratorio, The Light of the World (Birmingham Festival, 1873). His only song cycle was also written in this period: The Window; or, The Songs of the Wrens (1871), in collaboration with Tennyson.
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. In the nineteenth century, plays were often accompanied by live incidental music, and Sullivan composed music for more than half a dozen productions. Early examples included The Merchant of Venice (Prince's Theatre, Manchester, 1871); The Merry Wives of Windsor ( Gaiety Theatre, London, 1874); and Henry VIII (Theatre Royal, Manchester, 1877). His earlier Tempest incidental music, although composed with the theatre in mind, was originally prepared for the concert hall. He would continue in this genre throughout his life, with incidental music to Macbeth (1888) at the Lyceum Theatre; to Alfred Tennyson's The Foresters (1892) Daly's Theatre in New York; and to J. Comyns Carr's King Arthur (1895), again at the Lyceum.
These commissions were not sufficient to keep Sullivan afloat. He worked as a church organist from 1861 to 1872, 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, words by Sabine Baring-Gould) and " Nearer, my God, to Thee" (the "Propior Deo" version). He also turned out over 80 popular songs and parlour ballads – again, most of them written before the late 1870s. His first popular song was "Orpheus with his Lute", and a popular part song was "Oh! hush thee, my babie." 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 created the roles of Apollo in Thespis and The Learned Judge in Trial by Jury.
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.
First operas
Sullivan'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.
His first surviving opera, Cox and Box (1866), was originally written for a private performance. 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. 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.
The Gilbert and Sullivan years
Thespis to The Mikado
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, with the exception of two parlour ballads in late 1874 and early 1875.
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. 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. But the new work had only a few short runs, 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, but H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon. 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. 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 commonly known as the " Savoy Operas". Iolanthe (1882) was the first of their works to premiere at the new theatre.
In 1883, during the run of Iolanthe, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. The announcement of this impending honour was made just before Sullivan's 40th birthday at the opening of the Royal College of Music. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. 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. 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, only two months before receiving news of the honour, Sullivan had signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte, compelling him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice. Having agreed to this, Sullivan suddenly felt trapped.
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. With box office receipts lagging, Carte gave the contractual six months' notice for a new opera. Sullivan's close friend, conductor Frederic Clay, had suffered a serious stroke in early December 1883 that effectively ended his career. Sullivan, reflecting on this, on his own precarious health, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, replied that "it is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those already written by Gilbert and myself." Gilbert had already started work on a new opera involving a plot in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Sullivan pronounced it overly mechanical and too similar to their earlier work, and he asked to leave the partnership. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied on 2 April that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: "I have been continually keeping down the music in order that not one [syllable] should be lost.... I should like to set a story of human interest & probability where the humorous words would come in a humorous (not serious) situation, & where, if the situation were a tender or dramatic one the words would be of similar character." 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). The piece ran for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time.
Ruddigore, Yeomen and Gondoliers
Ruddygore, renamed Ruddigore after a few performances, followed in 1887. It ran profitably for nine months, but was not considered a success, compared with most of the other Savoy operas. For their next opera, Gilbert proposed another version of the lozenge plot, but Sullivan rejected it. Gilbert finally proposed a comparatively serious opera, which Sullivan immediately accepted. Although it was not a grand opera, The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) provided Sullivan with the opportunity to write his most ambitious and innovative score to date.
As early as 1883, Sullivan had been under pressure from the musical establishment to write a grand opera. After Yeomen, he wished to produce further serious works with Gilbert. He collaborated with no other librettists besides Gilbert since 1876. But Gilbert felt that Yeomen's success had "not been so convincing as to warrant us in assuming that the public want something more earnest still." He proposed instead that:
| “ | We have a name, jointly, for humorous work, tempered with occasional glimpses of earnest drama. I think we should do unwisely if we left, altogether, the path which we have trodden together so long and so successfully. I can quite understand your desire to write a big work, well, why not write one? But why abandon the Savoy business? Cannot the two things be done concorrently? If you can write an oratorio like The Martyr of Antioch while you are occupied by pieces like Patience and Iolanthe, can't you write a grand opera without giving up pieces like The Yeomen of the Guard? | ” |
Sullivan replied:
| “ | I have lost the liking for writing comic opera, and entertain very grave doubts as to my power of doing it.... I have lost the necessary nerve for it, and it is not too much to say that it is distasteful to me. The types used over and over again (unavoidable in such a company as ours), the Grossmith part, the middle-aged woman with fading charms, cannot again be clothed in music by me. Nor can I again write to any wildly improbable plot in which there is not some human interest.... You say that in serious opera, you must more or less sacrifice yourself. I say that this is just what I have been doing in all our joint pieces, and, what is more, must continue to do in comic opera to make it successful. Business and syllabic setting assume an importance which, however much they fetter me, cannot be overlooked. I am bound, in the interests of the piece, to give way. Hence the reason of my wishing to do a work where the music is to be the first consideration – where words are to suggest music, not govern it, and where music will intensify and emphasize the emotional effects of the words. |
” |
Nevertheless, a compromise was reached: Sullivan commissioned a grand opera libretto from Julian Sturgis (who was recommended by Gilbert), while suggesting to Gilbert that he revive an old idea for an opera set in sunny Venice. The comic opera was completed first: The Gondoliers (1889) was a piece emphasising Sullivan's talents, and the last great Gilbert and Sullivan success.
The Carpet Quarrel and later operas
However, the relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan suffered its most serious breach during the run of The Gondoliers, when Gilbert objected to a charge by Carte to the partnership for the cost of new carpeting for the Savoy Theatre lobby. Sullivan considered the dispute unimportant and sided with Carte, who was building a theatre to produce his forthcoming grand opera. Gilbert sued his partners, and the quarrel led to the separation of Gilbert and Sullivan for four years. 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 and Sullivan revivals and works by other composers when no Sullivan work was available.
Meanwhile, the grand opera, 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. It was, as critic Hermann Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!" Sullivan did not seriously consider writing grand opera again.
Sullivan returned to comic opera, but, still quarreling with Gilbert, he sought other collaborators. Haddon Hall (1892), with a libretto by Sydney Grundy), was the first of these. Although based loosely on the historical elopement of Dorothy Vernon with John Manners, Grundy changed the setting from 1563, in the Elizabethan period, to the middle of the English Civil War, allowing for jokes at the expense of the Puritans. Although still comic, the tone and style of the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with Gilbert. It enjoyed a modest success and earned critical praise.
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 celebrate English history and culture, with the Victorian period as the grand finale. Its six-month run was considered a great success. The Beauty Stone (1898), with a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr was based on mediaeval morality plays. The collaboration did not go particularly well: Sullivan wrote that Pinero and Comyns Carr were "gifted and brilliant men, with no experience in writing for music", and, when he asked for alterations to improve the structure, they refused. Sullivan's score, moreover, was too serious for the Savoy audiences' tastes. The opera was both a critical and popular failure, running for a mere seven weeks.
Finally, in The Rose of Persia (1899), Sullivan returned to his comic roots, with a libretto by Basil Hood that combined an exotic Arabian Nights setting with plot elements of The Mikado. Sullivan's tuneful score proved to be his most successful full-length opera apart from his collaborations with Gilbert. Another opera with Hood, The Emerald Isle, quickly went into preparation, but Sullivan died before it could be completed.
Serious music from 1875 to 1890
During the years of his most successful work with Gilbert, Sullivan continued his careers in conducting and musical education. Conducting appointments included the Glasgow Choral Union concerts, 1875-77; the Royal Acquarium, London, 1876; the triennial Leeds Music Festivals; and the Philharmonic Society, 1885–87. In addition to his appointment as Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, of which he was a Fellow, he was appointed as the first Principal of the National Training School for Music, 1876–81. Sullivan composed only four major serious works during this period: Incidental music for productions of Shakespeare's Henry VIII (1877) and Macbeth (1888), and two compositions for the Leeds Festival, of which he was appointed music director in 1880.
For the 1880 Leeds Festival, Sullivan was commissioned to write a sacred choral work. He chose Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life and death of Saint Margaret the Virgin for its basis. W. S. Gilbert adapted the libretto for Sullivan, abridging it, rearranging sections, reassigning lines, and making a few additions of his own. The Martyr of Antioch premièred on the morning of 15 October 1880 and proved successful, being frequently revived. As thanks for Gilbert's help, Sullivan presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup. Gilbert replied, "...it most certainly never occurred to me to look for any other reward than the honour of being associated, however remotely and unworthily, in a success which, I suppose, will endure until music itself shall die. 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."
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" as the basis for his cantata of the same name. Outside of the comic operas with Gilbert (and perhaps Cox and Box), this proved to be Sullivan's most successful major 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. It remained in the repertory until about the 1920s, but since then it has been seldom performed, although it received its first professional recording in 2001.
Death, honours and legacy
Having suffered from long-standing recurrent kidney disease that made it necessary, from the 1880s, for him to conduct sitting down, Sullivan died of heart failure, following an attack of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900. His last opera, The Emerald Isle, was left unfinished but was completed by Edward German and produced in 1901. His Te Deum, written to commemorate 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. 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, Légion d'honneur, France (1878); The Order of the Medjidieh, by the Sultan of Turkey (1888); and Membership in the Royal Victorian Order.
In all, Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, 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. His legacy, aside from writing the Savoy Operas and other works that are still being performed over a hundred and twenty-five years after their creation, is felt perhaps most strongly today through his influence on the American and British musical theatre. The innovations in content and form of the works that he and Gilbert developed directly influenced the development of the modern musical throughout the 20th century. In addition, biographies continue to be written about Sullivan's life and work, and his work is not only performed, but frequently parodied, pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, film, television and other popular media.
Personal life
Romantic life
Although 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."
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. It is thought that Fanny was pregnant, or believed herself pregnant, on at least two occasions, and she procured an abortion in 1882. 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", 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 says that Sullivan had a relationship with the Duke of Edinburgh. It is undisputed that Sullivan and the Duke (who was married) 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.
Leisure and family life
Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and the south of France), where his well-connected friends included the princess Marie-Amélie of Orleans and Claude Debussy.
Sullivan was devoted to his parents, particularly his mother, with whom he corresponded regularly when away from London, until her death in 1882. Henry Lytton wrote, "I believe there was never a more affectionate tie than that which existed between [Sullivan] and his mother, a very witty old lady, and one who took an exceptional pride in her son's accomplishments. Sullivan was also very fond of his brother Fred, whose acting caree he assisted whenever possible, and of Fred's children. When Fred died at the age of 39, he left his pregnant wife, Charlotte, with seven children under the age of 14. After Fred's death, Arthur visited the family often and became guardian to all of the children. In 1883, Charlotte and six of her children emigrated to Los Angeles, California, in the U.S., leaving the oldest boy, Herbert "Bertie" Sullivan, in Arthur Sullivan's sole care. Despite Arthur's reservations about the move to Los Angeles, he paid for the trip and continued to give very substantial financial support to the family. Only a year after moving to Los Angeles, in January 1885, Charlotte died, leaving the six children to be raised mostly by her brother and the older girls, with the financial support of Arthur Sullivan.
From June through August 1885, after completing his work on The Mikado, Sullivan travelled to America to visit the family in Los Angeles and to take them on a sightseeing trip of the American West, including Yosemite Valley. Sullivan continued, throughout the rest of his life, and in his will, to take good care of Fred's children, continuing to correspond with them and to be concerned with their education, marriages and financial affairs. Bertie stayed with his uncle Arthur for the rest of Arthur's life.
Compositional style
Method and text setting
Sullivan 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."
Sullivan's text setting, unlike that of his 19th century English predecessors or his European contemporaries was "vastly more sensitive.... Sullivan's operatic style attempts to create for itself a uniquely English text-music synthesis", and, in addition, by adopting a conservative musical style, he was able to achieve "the clarity to match Gilbert's finely honed wit with musical wit of his own."
In composing the Savoy operas, Sullivan wrote the vocal lines of the musical numbers first, and these were given to the actors. He improvised a piano accompaniment at the early rehearsals, supplying the orchestrations later, after he had seen what Gilbert's stage business would be. He left the overtures for last and often delegated their composition to his assistants (including the company's music director, Alfred Cellier) based on his outlines, and often incorporating his suggestions or corrections. Those Sullivan wrote himself include Thespis, Iolanthe, Princess Ida, The Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Grand Duke and probably Utopia Limited. Most of the overtures are structured as a potpourri of tunes from the operas in three sections, fast, slow and fast. However, those for Iolanthe, and Yeomen are written in sonata form. The overtures from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas remain popular, and there are many recordings of them. Sullivan invariably conducted the operas on opening night.
Melody and Rhythm
As Sullivan told Lawrence, his melodies sprung from rhythm, although some of his themes may have been prompted by his chosen instrumentation or his harmonic techniques. In the comic operas, where many numbers were in verse-plus-refrain form, Sullivan frequently was required to produce two climaxes in the melodic line. Hughes instances ‘If you go in’ (Iolanthe) as a good example. Hughes goes so far as to say that though most of the tunes in the Savoy operas are good ones, Sullivan rarely reached the same class of excellence elsewhere when he had no librettist to feed his imagination. Even so, on those occasions when Gilbert wrote in unvaried metre, Sullivan often followed suit and produced phrases of simple repetition, such as ‘Love is a plaintive song’ (Patience) and ‘A man who would woo a fair maid’ (Yeomen).
Sullivan’s deliberate echoes of other composers are covered below under 'Musical Quotations', but other echoes may not have been conscious: Hughes cites the concluding bars of ‘Tell a tale of cock and bull’ from Yeomen as an example of Handel’s influence, and another critic found a theme in the slow movement of the Irish symphony ‘an outrageous crib’ from Schubert’s Unfinished. Sullivan’s tunes, at least in the comic operas, appeal to the professional as much as to the layman. Sullivan’s continental contemporaries such as Debussy, Leoncavallo and Saint-Saens held the Savoy operas in high regard. 'When Sullivan wrote what we call 'a good tune' it was nearly always 'good music' as well. Outside the ranks of the giants there are few other composers of whom the same could be said.'
Harmony and Counterpoint
- Harmony
Sullivan was trained in the classical style, and contemporary music did not greatly attract him. Harmonically his early works used the conventional formulae of Auber, Donizetti, Balfe and Schubert. Later he drew on Gounod and Bizet. Mendelssohn’s influence, conspicuous in early works, appears intermittently in later ones. As a contemporary writer observed, Sullivan draws on these various influences while remaining recognisably himself.
In general, Sullivan preferred to write in major keys. In the Savoy operas there are only eleven substantial numbers wholly in a minor key, and even in his serious works the major prevails. Examples of Sullivan’s rare excursions into minor keys include the long E minor melody in the first movement of the Irish Symphony, ‘Go away, madam’ in the Act I finale of Iolanthe (echoing Verdi and even Beethoven) and the funeral march in the Act I finale of The Yeomen of the Guard.
Both Hughes and Grove's Dictionary comment adversely on Sullivan’s over-use of tonic pedals, usually in the bass, which Hughes attributes to ‘lack of enterprise or even downright laziness’. Another Sullivan trademark criticised by Hughes is the excessive use of the chord of the augmented fourth at moments of pathos. In his serious works, Sullivan attempted to avoid harmonic devices associated with the Savoy operas, with the result, according to Hughes, that The Golden Legend is a ‘hotch-potch of harmonic styles’. Harmonic contrast in Sullivan’s Savoy works is enhanced by his characteristically resourceful modulation between keys, as in ‘Expressive glances’ (Princess Ida) where he smoothly negotiates E major, C sharp minor and C major, or ‘Then one of us will be a queen’ (The Gondoliers) where he writes in F major, D flat major and D minor.
In the field of harmony Sullivan remained to the end an eclectic. ‘He had easily recognisable habits but his style never achieved individuality’. Cox and Box
- Counterpoint
Despite his thorough academic contrapuntal training in London and Leipzig, as well as his experience as a church organist, Sullivan rarely composed fugues. Hughes cites the examples from the Epilogue to The Golden Legend and Victoria and Merrie England. In the Savoy operas, fugal style is reserved for making fun of legal solemnity in Trial by Jury and Iolanthe. Less formal counterpoint is employed in numbers such as ‘Brightly Dawns our Wedding Day’ (The Mikado) and ‘When the Buds are Blossoming’ (Ruddigore).
Sullivan’s best known contrapuntal device, which, if he did not invent it, certainly became his trademark, was ‘the simultaneous presentation of two or more distinct melodies previously heard independently’. Sometimes the melodies were for solo voices, as in ‘Once more the face I loved so well’ (The Zoo), and ‘I am so proud’ (The Mikado), which combines three melodic lines; other examples are in choruses, where typically a graceful tune for the ladies is combined with a robust one for the men. Examples include 'When the Foeman bares his steel' (Pirates), ‘Gaily tripping’ (Pinafore), ‘In a doleful train’ (Patience), ‘Welcome, gentry’ (Ruddigore), and ‘Night has spread her pall once more’ (The Yeomen of the Guard). At other times, notably in ‘How beautifully blue the sky’ (Pirates), one theme is given to the chorus and the other to solo voices.
Orchestration
Gervase Hughes concludes his chapter on Sullivan’s orchestration: ‘in this vitally important sector of the composer’s art he deserves to rank as a master.’ Sullivan was a competent player of at least four orchestral instruments (flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone) and a technically highly skilled orchestrator. Though sometimes inclined to indulge in grandiosity when writing for a full symphony orchestra, he was adept in using smaller forces to the maximum effect. Orchestral players generally like playing Sullivan’s music: ‘Sullivan never asked his players to do what was either uncongenial or impracticable.’
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. 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.
One of the most recognisable features in Sullivan's orchestration is his woodwind scoring. Hughes especially notes Sullivan’s clarinet writing, exploiting all registers and colours of the instrument, and his particular fondness for oboe solos. For instance, the Irish Symphony contains two long solo oboe passages in succession, and in the Savoy operas there are many shorter examples. In the operas, and also in concert works, another characteristic Sullivan touch is his fondness for pizzicato passages for all the string sections. Most of the operas have at least one number that is virtually a pizzicato ostinato, such as ‘Kind sir, you cannot have the heart’ (The Gondoliers) and 'Free from his fetters grim (Yeomen).
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.
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, according to Debussy, in addition to his reflection of Mendelssohn (for example in his incidental music for The Tempest), Sullivan imitated Auber in his Henry VIII music and Gounod in The Light of the World. In his comic operas, Sullivan took a page out of the Offenbach playbook in spoofing the idioms of French and Italian opera, such as in the operas of Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. Examples of this include Mabel's aria "Poor Wand'ring One" in Pirates (compare this to "Sempre libera" from La Traviata and "Je veux vivre" from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette) and the duet "Who are you, sir?" from Cox and Box. 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. Later, the influences of Handel, Schubert and especially Mendelssohn can be heard in Sullivan's work. 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, and "Twenty Love Sick Maidens" imitates Wallace's "Alas Those Chimes" from Maritana.
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.
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."
In Princess Ida, there is a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III ("This helmet, I suppose"), and the Act II quartet "The World Is But a Broken Toy" has been called "Gounodesque". In The Gondoliers, there are the Spanish cachucha, the Italian saltarello and tarantella, and the Venetian barcarolle. Hughes 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. The spinning song, "When maiden loves" in The Yeomen of the Guard recalls a similar Schubert spinning tune, " Gretchen am Spinnrade."
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, Sullivan has the military or government officers march to a far different beat than the dreamy, lyrical music of the 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.
Reputation and criticism
Early 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:
| “ | It was one of those events which mark an epoch in a man's life; and, what is of more universal consequence, it may mark an epoch in English music, or we shall be greatly disappointed. Years on years have elapsed since we have heard a work by so young an artist so full of promise, so full of fancy, showing so much conscientiousness, so much skill, and so few references to any model elect. | ” |
His Irish Symphony of 1866 won similarly enthusiastic praise:
| “ | The symphony...is not only by far the most noticeable composition that has proceeded from Mr. Sullivan's pen, but the best musical work, if judged only by the largeness of its form and the number of beautiful thoughts it contains, for a long time produced by any English composer.... | ” |
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."
Sullivan was also occasionally cited for a lack of diligence. For instance, of his early oratorio, The Prodigal Son, his teacher, John Goss, wrote:
| “ | All you have done is most masterly – Your orchestration superb, & your effects many of them original & first-rate.... Some day, you will, I hope, try another oratorio, putting out all your strength, but not the strength of a few weeks or months, whatever your immediate friends may say...only don't do anything so pretentious as an oratorio or even a Symphony without all your power, which seldom comes in one fit. | ” |
The transition to opera
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." But by the time The Sorcerer appeared, there were charges that Sullivan was wasting his talents in comic opera:
| “ | There is nothing whatever in Mr. Sullivan's score which any theatrical conductor engaged at a few pounds a week could not have written equally well.... We trust Mr. Sullivan is more proud of it than we can pretend to be. But we must confess to a sense of disappointment at the downward art course Mr. Sullivan appears to be now drifting into.... [He] has all the ability to make him a great composer, but he wilfully throws his opportunity away. A giant may play at times, but Mr. Sullivan is always playing.... He possesses all the natural ability to have given us an English opera, and, instead, he affords us a little more-or-less excellent fooling. | ” |
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:
| “ | It might be wished that in some portions Mr Sullivan had taken a loftier view of his theme, but at any rate he has written some most charming music, and orchestration equal, if not superior, to any that has ever proceeded from the pen of an English musician. And, further, it is an advantage to have the composer of H.M.S. Pinafore occupying himself with a worthier form of art. | ” |
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." 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."
Knighthood and maturity
 |
| Cartoon from Punch in 1880. It was a bit premature in declaring Sullivan's knighthood, but was accompanied by a parody version of "When I, good friends" from Trial by Jury that summarised Sullivan's career to that date: |
| "A HUMOROUS KNIGHT." |
| ["It is reported that after the Leeds Festival Dr. Sullivan will be knighted." Having read this in a column of gossip, a be-nighted Contributor, who has "the Judge's Song" on the brain, suggests the following verse, adapted to probabilities.] |
|
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:
| “ | Some things that Mr Arthur Sullivan may do, Sir Arthur ought not to do. In other words, it will look rather more than odd to see announced in the papers that a new comic opera is in preparation, the book by Mr W. S. Gilbert and the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. A musical knight can hardly write shop ballads either; he must not dare to soil his hands with anything less than an anthem or a madrigal; oratorio, in which he has so conspicuously shone, and symphony, must now be his line. Here is not only an opportunity, but a positive obligation for him to return to the sphere from which he has too long descended. | ” |
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."
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." Similarly, Louis Engel in The World wrote that it was:
| “ | one of the greatest creations we have had for many years. Original, bold, inspired, grand in conception, in execution, in treatment, it is a composition which will make an "epoch" and which will carry the name of its composer higher on the wings of fame and glory. The effect it produced at rehearsal was enormous. The effect of the public performance was unprecedented. | ” |
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 accompaniments...are delightful to hear, and especially does the treatment of the woodwind compel admiring attention. Schubert himself could hardly have handled those instruments more deftly, written for them more lovingly.... We place the songs and choruses in The Yeomen of the Guard before all his previous efforts of this particular kind. Thus the music follows the book to a higher plane, and we have a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage. | ” |
The 1890s
The 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."
In the 1890s, Sullivan's successes were fewer and far between. The ballet Victoria and Merrie England (1898) won praise from most critics:
| “ | Sir Arthur Sullivan's music is music for the people. There is no attempt made to force on the public the dullness of academic experience. The melodies are all as fresh as last year's wine, and as exhilarating as sparkling champagne. There is not one tune which tires the hearing, and in the matter of orchestration our only humorous has let himself run riot, not being handicapped with libretto, and the gain is enormous.... All through we have orchestration of infinite delicacy, tunes of alarming simplicity, but never a tinge of vulgarity, and a total absence of the cymbal-brassy combination which some ballets never do without. | ” |
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."
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.?"
Posthumous reputation
If 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:
| “ | As regards music, the English history of the 19th century could not record the name of a man whose 'life work' is more worthy of honour, study and admiration than the name of Sir Arthur Sullivan, whose useful activity, it may be expected, will extend considerably into the 20th century; and it is a debatable point whether the universal history of music can point to any musical personality since the days of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose influence is likely to be more lasting than the influence the great Englishman is slowly, but surely, exerting, and whose results shall be clearly seen, perhaps, only by our posterity. I make no doubt that when, in proper course of time, Sir Arthur Sullivan's life and works have become known on the continent, he will, by unanimous consent, be classed among the epoch-making composers, the select few whose genius and strength of will empowered them to find and found a national school of music, that is, to endow their countrymen with the undefinable, yet positive means of evoking in a man's soul, by the magic of sound, those delicate nuances of feeling which are characteristic of the emotional power of each different race. | ” |
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."
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:
| “ | Among the lesser men who are still ranked with the great composers, there are many who may only have reached the highest level now and then, but within whose capacity it lies to attain great heights; some may have produced work on a dead-level of mediocrity, but may have risen on some special occasion to a pitch of beauty or power which would establish their claim to be numbered among the great. Is there anywhere a case quite parallel to that of Sir Arthur Sullivan, who began his career with a work which at once stamped him as a genius, and to the height of which he only rarely attained throughout life?.... Though the illustrious masters of the past never did write music as vulgar, it would have been forgiven them if they had, in virtue of the beauty and value of the great bulk of their productions. It is because such great natural gifts – gifts greater, perhaps, than fell to any English musician since the time of Purcell – were so very seldom employed in work worthy of them.... If the author of The Golden Legend, the music to The Tempest, Henry VIII and Macbeth cannot be classed with these, how can the composer of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Absent-Minded Beggar" claim a place in the hierarchy of music among the men who would face death rather than smirch their singing robes for the sake of a fleeting popularity? |
” |
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." In his History of Music in England (1907), however, Ernest Walker was even more damning of Sullivan:
| “ | After all, Sullivan is merely the idle singer of an empty evening; with all his gift for tunefulness, he could never raise it to the height of a real strong melody of the kind that appeals to cultured and relatively uncultured alike as a good folk-song does – often and often on the other hand (but chiefly outside the operas) it sunk to mere vulgar catchiness. He laid the original foundations of his success on work that as a matter of fact he did extremely well; and it would have been incalculably better for the permanence of his reputation if he had realised this and set himself, with sincerity and self-criticism, to the task of becoming – as he might easily have become – a really great composer of musicianly light music. But anything like steadiness of artistic purpose was never one of his endowments, and without that, a composer, whatever his technical ability may be, is easily liable to degenerate into a mere popularity-hunting trifler. (Walker 1907, quoted in Eden 1992). | ” |
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:
| “ | Outside the Savoy operas, little enough of Sullivan has survived... Yet a post-mortem is a valuable form of inquest, not only to ascertain the cause of death, but to discover why Sullivan's music as a whole had not in it the seeds of the revival that was on the verge of taking place. The lack of sustained effort, that is artistic effort proved by vigorous self-criticism, is responsible for the impression of weakness, the streaks of poor stuff among the better metal, and the consequent general ambiguity that is left by his music. His contemporaries deprecated his addiction to high life, the turf, and an outward lack of seriousness. Without adopting the simplified morality of the women's magazines, it is possible to urge that his contemporaries were really right, in that such addiction implied a fundamental lack of seriousness towards his art. (Howes 1966, quoted in Eden 1992). | ” |
Yet, there were other writers who rose to praise Sullivan. For example, Thomas F. Dunhill wrote an entire chapter of his 1928 book, Sullivan's Comic Operas, titled "Mainly in Defence," which reads in part:
| “ | It should not be necessary to defend a writer who is so firmly established in popular esteem that his best works are more widely known and more keenly appreciated over a quarter of a century after his death than they were at any period during his lifetime.... But no critical appreciation of Sullivan can be attempted to-day which does not, from the first, adopt a defensive attitude, for his music has suffered in an extraordinary degree from the vigorous attacks which have been made upon it in professional circles. These attacks have succeeded in surrounding the composer with a kind of barricade of prejudice which must be sweat away before justice can be done to his genius. | ” |
Gervase Hughes (1959) would pick up the trail where Dunhill left off:
| “ | Dunhill's achievement was that of a pioneer, a preliminary skirmish in a campaign whose advance has yet to be implemented. Today there may be few musicians for whom — as for Ernest Walker — Sullivan is merely 'the idle singer of an empty evening'; there are many who, while acknowledging his great gifts, tend to take them for granted.... The time is surely ripe for a comprehensive study of his music as a whole, which, while recognising that the operettas 'for his chief title to fame' will not leave the rest out of account, and while taking note of his weaknesses (which are many) and not hesitating to castigate his lapses from good taste (which were comparatively rare) will attempt to view them in perspective against the wider background of his sound musicianship. | ” |
Recent views
In 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:
| “ | We must assert that Sullivan has no need to be 'earnest' (though he could be), for he spoke naturally to all people, for all time, of the passions, sorrows and joys which are forever rooted in the human consciousness. He believed, deeply, in the moral expressed at the close of Cherubini's Les deux journées: that the human being's prime duty in life is to serve humanity. It is his artistic consistency in this respect which obliges us to pronounce him our greatest Victorian composer. Time has now sufficiently dispersed the mists of criticism for us to be able to see the truth, to enjoy all his music, and to rejoice in the rich diversity of its panoply. Now, therefore, one hundred years after his death, let us resolve to set aside the `One-and-a-half-hurrahs' syndrome once and for all, and, in its place, raise THREE LOUD CHEERS. | ” |
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, and on August 14 1888, Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's " The Lost Chord," one of the first recordings of music ever made.
A series of parties followed, introducing the phonograph to members of society at the so-called "Little Menlo" in London. Sullivan was invited to one of these on October 5 1888. After dinner, he recorded a speech to be sent to Thomas Edison, saying, in part:
| “ | I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery. | ” |
These recordings were discovered in the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s.
