   #copyright

Arthur Sullivan

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History
1750-1900; Writers and critics

   Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan
   Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan

   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. His artistic output included 23 operas, 13
   orchestral works, 8 choral or oratorio works, 2 ballets, incidental
   music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces,
   songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber
   pieces.

Life and career

Beginnings

   Memorial To Sir Arthur Sullivan Victoria Embankment Gardens London
   Memorial To Sir Arthur Sullivan Victoria Embankment Gardens London

   Sullivan was born in Lambeth, now part of London. His father was a
   military bandmaster, and Arthur was proficient with all the instruments
   in the band by age eight. Following a stay at private school in
   Bayswater, he was admitted to the choir of the Chapel Royal, attending
   its school in Cheyne Walk. While there, he began to compose anthems and
   songs. In 1856, he received the first Mendelssohn prize and went to
   study at the Royal Academy of Music until 1858. He then continued his
   studies at Leipzig, Germany, at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music
   and Theatre where he also took up conducting. There, he was influenced
   by Felix Mendelssohn's musical style.

   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 work for orchestra, 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 came during this
   period: The Window; or, The Song of the Wrens (1871), to a text of
   eleven poems by 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. 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), The Merry Wives of Windsor (
   Gaiety Theatre, London, 1874), and Henry VIII (Theatre Royal,
   Manchester, 1877). (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. He
   worked as a church organist 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). He also turned out over 80
   popular songs and parlour ballads – again, most of them written before
   the late 1870s. The best known of these 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 The Learned Judge in Trial
   by Jury and Apollo in Thespis.

   In the autumn of 1867, he travelled with Sir 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 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, 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 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, but H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), which followed
   it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon.
   Indeed, Pinafore was so succeessful that over a hundred unauthorised
   productions sprang up in America alone. Gilbert, Sullian 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 sometimes 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. 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, 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. 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. 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 asked out of the partnership. 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).

   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 1890

   During the years of Sullivan's most successful work with Gilbert, his
   career as a conductor and educator continued in parallel. 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. 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 works

   In 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, it
   passed into virtual obscurity after the opera house failed. 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 breakup 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.

Death

   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.

Personal 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 (quoted in Jacobs 1992, p.
          88).

   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 (Jacobs, p. 161). It is thought that Fanny was
   pregnant, or believed herself pregnant, on at least two occasions
   (Jacobs, pp. 178, 203–204), 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" (Jacobs, p. 295), 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 (1975, p. 46) 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 style

Orchestration

   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.

Musical Quotations

   To the delight of his generally well educated Savoy Theatre audiences,
   Sullivan often quoted or imitated famous themes and passages from
   well-known composers or popular tunes.

   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. The exotic sounds of the Far East are evoked in The Mikado,
   with the composer even trying to replicate a popular war song in "Miya
   Sama". 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 chanty is woven into the
   music, or the military sound of the fife and drum is quoted.

   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. Later, the influences of Handel, Schubert and
   especially Mendelssohn can be heard in Sullivan's work.

   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. 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 Iolanthe, Sullivan imitates a Bach 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.

   In Princess Ida, there is a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in
   Act III, and in The Gondoliers, there is a Mozartean quintet, "Try we
   lifelong". Also in The Gondoliers, there is the Spanish cachucha, the
   Italian saltarello and tarantella, and the Venetian barcarolle. 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).

   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, in
   The Yeomen of the Guard, a strong rhythmic brass figure usually evokes
   the Tower of London. In 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.

Overtures

   The 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. 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.

   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.

   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 lost.

   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 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. (Quoted in Jacobs 1992, p. 28).

   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.... (The Times, quoted in
          Jacobs, p. 42).

   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" (Jacobs, p. 49).

   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. (Letter of December
          22, 1869, quoted in Allen 1975a, p. 32).

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" (quoted in Allen
   1975b, p. 30). 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. (Figaro, quoted in Allen 1975b,
          pp. 49–50).

   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. ( October 25, 1880, quoted in Jacobs, p. 149).

   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"
   (quoted in Allen 1975b, p. 176). 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." (William
   Beatty-Kingston, Theatre, January 1, 1883, quoted in Baily 1966, p.
   246).

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:

          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.
          (Quoted in Baily, p. 250).

   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" (quoted in Baily, p. 250).

   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" (quoted in
   Jacobs, p. 247). 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. (Quoted in Harris, p. IV).

   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. (Quoted in Allen
          1975b, p. 312).

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." (Quoted in
   Jacobs, p. 331).

   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. (Quoted in Tillett 1998, p. 26).

   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" (quoted in Jacobs, p. 397).

   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.?" (quoted in Jacobs, p.
   396).

Death and 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.
          (Quoted in the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Journal, No. 34,
          Spring 1992, pp. 11-12).

   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? (Eden 1992,
          quoting Cornhill March 1901, pp. 301, 309).

   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" (quoted in
   Young 1971, p. 264). 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,
   in an entire chapter of his 1928 book, Sullivan's Comic Operas, titled
   "Mainly in Defence," Thomas F. Dunhill wrote:

          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. (Dunhill
          1928, p. 13).

   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. (Hughes 1959, p. 6).

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),
   Oxford University Press (Ruddigore), and R. Clyde (Cox and Box,
   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 on recorded music:

   After hearing a demonstration of Edison's wax cylinder recording
   technology on October 5, 1888, Sullivan wrote, "For myself, I can only
   say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this
   evening's experiment -- 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."

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