Hide

WLE Austria Logo (no text).svg

Wiki Loves Earth 2020 photo competition: take photos in nature and support
Wikipedia.
This is a featured article. Click here for more information.
Arthur Sullivan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
For other people named Arthur Sullivan, see Arthur Sullivan (disambiguation).
Head and shoulders of Sullivan, dressed in a dark suit, facing slightly left of
center, with moustache and long sideburns. Black and white.
Arthur Sullivan in 1888

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English
composer. He is best known for 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S.
Gilbert, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His
works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios,
two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs,
and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian
Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".

The son of a military bandmaster, Sullivan composed his first anthem at the age of
eight and was later a soloist in the boys' choir of the Chapel Royal. In 1856, at
14, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Music,
which allowed him to study at the academy and then at the Leipzig Conservatoire in
Germany. His graduation piece, incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest
(1861), was received with acclaim on its first performance in London. Among his
early major works were a ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864), a symphony, a cello
concerto (both 1866), and his Overture di Ballo (1870). To supplement the income
from his concert works he wrote hymns, parlour ballads and other light pieces, and
worked as a church organist and music teacher.

In 1866 Sullivan composed a one-act comic opera, Cox and Box, which is still widely
performed. He wrote his first opera with W. S. Gilbert, Thespis, in 1871. Four
years later, the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte engaged Gilbert and Sullivan to
create a one-act piece, Trial by Jury (1875). Its box-office success led to a
series of twelve full-length comic operas by the collaborators. After the
extraordinary success of H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Pirates of Penzance (1879),
Carte used his profits from the partnership to build the Savoy Theatre in 1881, and
their joint works became known as the Savoy operas. Among the best known of the
later operas are The Mikado (1885) and The Gondoliers (1889). Gilbert broke from
Sullivan and Carte in 1890, after a quarrel over expenses at the Savoy. They
reunited in the 1890s for two more operas, but these did not achieve the popularity
of their earlier works.

Sullivan's infrequent serious pieces during the 1880s included two cantatas, The
Martyr of Antioch (1880) and The Golden Legend (1886), his most popular choral
work. He also wrote incidental music for West End productions of several
Shakespeare plays, and held conducting and academic appointments. Sullivan's only
grand opera, Ivanhoe, though initially successful in 1891, has rarely been revived.
In his last decade Sullivan continued to compose comic operas with various
librettists and wrote other major and minor works. He died at the age of 58,
regarded as Britain's foremost composer. His comic opera style served as a model
for generations of musical theatre composers that followed, and his music is still
frequently performed, recorded and pastiched.
Contents
 1 Life and career
1.1 Beginnings
1.2 Mendelssohn scholar
1.3 Rising composer
1.4 1870s: first collaborations with Gilbert
1.5 Early 1880s
1.6 Later 1880s
1.7 1890s
1.8 Death, honours and legacy
2 Personal life
2.1 Romantic life
2.2 Leisure and family life
3 Music
3.1 Influences
3.2 Method of composition and text setting
3.3 Melody and rhythm
3.4 Harmony and counterpoint
3.5 Orchestration
3.6 Musical quotations and parodies
4 Reputation and criticism
4.1 Early reception
4.2 Knighthood and later years
4.3 Posthumous reputation
5 Recordings
6 See also
7 Notes and references
7.1 Notes
7.2 References
7.3 Sources
7.4 Further reading
8 External links
8.1 General
8.2 Music

Life and career

Beginnings
Painting of Sullivan, about age 12, in his Chapel Royal uniform, standing next to
an organ keyboard
Sullivan as a chorister of the Chapel Royal, circa 1855

Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London, the younger of the two children, both boys,
of Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866) and his wife, Mary Clementina née Coghlan (1811–
1882). His father was a military bandmaster, clarinettist and music teacher, born
in Ireland and raised in Chelsea, London; his mother was English born, of Irish and
Italian descent.[1] Thomas Sullivan was based from 1845 to 1857 at the Royal
Military College, Sandhurst, where he was the bandmaster and taught music privately
to supplement his income.[2][3] Young Arthur became proficient with many of the
instruments in the band and composed an anthem, "By the Waters of Babylon", when he
was eight.[4] He later recalled:

I was intensely interested in all that the band did, and learned to play every
wind instrument, with which I formed not merely a passing acquaintance, but a real,
life-long, intimate friendship. I gradually learned the peculiarities of each ...
what it could do and what it was unable to do. I learned in the best possible way
how to write for an orchestra.[5]

While recognising the boy's obvious talent, his father knew the insecurity of a
musical career and discouraged him from pursuing it.[6] Sullivan studied at a
private school in Bayswater. In 1854 he persuaded his parents and the headmaster to
allow him to apply for membership in the choir of the Chapel Royal.[7] Despite
concerns that, at nearly 12 years of age, Sullivan was too old to give much service
as a treble before his voice broke, he was accepted and soon became a soloist. By
1856, he was promoted to "first boy".[8] Even at this age, his health was delicate,
and he was easily fatigued.[9]

Sullivan flourished under the training of the Reverend Thomas Helmore, Master of
the Children of the Chapel Royal, and began to write anthems and songs.[10] Helmore
encouraged his compositional talent and arranged for one of his pieces, "O Israel",
to be published in 1855, his first published work.[11] Helmore enlisted Sullivan's
assistance in creating harmonisations for a volume of The Hymnal Noted[12] and
arranged for the boy's compositions to be performed; one anthem was performed at
the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace under the direction of Sir George Smart.[10]
Mendelssohn scholar
Sullivan seated with one leg crossed over another, age 16, in his Royal Academy of
Music uniform, showing his thick, curly hair. Black and white.
Sullivan aged 16, in his Royal Academy of Music uniform

In 1856 the Royal Academy of Music awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship to the
14-year-old Sullivan, granting him a year's training at the academy.[9][n 1] His
principal teacher there was John Goss, whose own teacher, Thomas Attwood, had been
a pupil of Mozart.[14] He studied piano with William Sterndale Bennett (the future
head of the academy) and Arthur O'Leary.[15] During this first year at the academy
Sullivan continued to sing solos with the Chapel Royal, which provided a small
amount of spending money.[16]

Sullivan's scholarship was extended to a second year, and in 1858, in what his
biographer Arthur Jacobs calls an "extraordinary gesture of confidence",[17] the
scholarship committee extended his grant for a third year so that he could study in
Germany, at the Leipzig Conservatoire.[17] There, Sullivan studied composition with
Julius Rietz and Carl Reinecke, counterpoint with Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst
Richter, and the piano with Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles.[18] He was trained in
Mendelssohn's ideas and techniques but was also exposed to a variety of styles,
including those of Schubert, Verdi, Bach and Wagner.[19] Visiting a synagogue, he
was so struck by some of the cadences and progressions of the music that thirty
years later he could recall them for use in his grand opera, Ivanhoe.[19] He became
friendly with the future impresario Carl Rosa and the violinist Joseph Joachim,
among others.[20]

The academy renewed Sullivan's scholarship to allow him a second year of study at
Leipzig.[21] For his third and last year there, his father scraped together the
money for living expenses, and the conservatoire assisted by waiving its fees.[22]
Sullivan's graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a suite of incidental music to
Shakespeare's The Tempest.[19] Revised and expanded, it was performed at the
Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London; The Musical Times
described it as a sensation.[12][23] He began building a reputation as England's
most promising young composer.[24]
Rising composer
Head and shoulders photos of each of the four men. Black and white. Grove is bald
and benign-looking; Burnand fully-thatched and moderately bearded, looking pleased
with himself; Carte, serious, dark-haired and neatly bearded; and Gilbert light-
coloured hair and moustache looking slightly to right.
Colleagues and collaborators: clockwise from top left, George Grove, F. C. Burnand,
Richard D'Oyly Carte, W. S. Gilbert

Sullivan embarked on his composing career with a series of ambitious works,

interspersed with hymns, parlour songs and other light pieces in a more commercial
vein. His compositions were not enough to support him financially, and from 1861 to
1872 he worked as a church organist, which he enjoyed, and as a music teacher,
which he hated and gave up as soon as he could.[25][n 2] He took an early
opportunity to compose several pieces for royalty in connection with the wedding of
the Prince of Wales in 1863.[28]

With The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864), Sullivan began his
association with works for voice and orchestra.[29] While an organist at the Royal
Italian Opera, Covent Garden, he composed his first ballet, L'Île Enchantée (1864).
[30] His Irish Symphony and Cello Concerto (both 1866) were his only works in their
respective genres.[31] In the same year, his Overture in C (In Memoriam),
commemorating the recent death of his father, was a commission from the Norwich
Festival. It achieved considerable popularity.[32] In June 1867 the Philharmonic
Society gave the first performance of his overture Marmion.[26] The reviewer for
The Times called it "another step in advance on the part of the only composer of
any remarkable promise that just at present we can boast."[33] In October, Sullivan
travelled with George Grove to Vienna in search of neglected scores by Schubert.
[34] They unearthed manuscript copies of symphonies and vocal music, and were
particularly elated by their final discovery, the incidental music to Rosamunde.[n
3]

Sullivan's first attempt at opera, The Sapphire Necklace (1863–64) to a libretto by

Henry F. Chorley, was not produced and is now lost, except for the overture and two
songs that were separately published.[36] His first surviving opera, Cox and Box
(1866), was written for a private performance.[37] It then received charity
performances in London and Manchester, and was later produced at the Gallery of
Illustration, where it ran for an extraordinary 264 performances. W. S. Gilbert,
writing in Fun magazine, pronounced the score superior to F. C. Burnand's libretto.
[38] Sullivan and Burnand were soon commissioned by Thomas German Reed for a two-
act opera, The Contrabandista (1867; revised and expanded as The Chieftain in
1894), but it did not do as well.[39] Among Sullivan's early part songs is "The
Long Day Closes" (1868).[40] Sullivan's last major work of the 1860s was a short
oratorio, The Prodigal Son, first given in Worcester Cathedral as part of the 1869
Three Choirs Festival to much praise.[41]
1870s: first collaborations with Gilbert
Poster showing scenes from all three operas featuring principal characters; the
productions, by an American opera company around 1879, seem lavish. Black and
white.
Poster: scenes from The Sorcerer, H.M.S. Pinafore and Trial by Jury

Sullivan's most enduring orchestral work,[42] the Overture di Ballo, was composed
for the Birmingham Festival in 1870.[n 4] The same year, Sullivan first met the
poet and dramatist W. S. Gilbert.[n 5] In 1871 Sullivan published his only song
cycle, The Window, to words by Tennyson,[45] and he wrote the first of a series of
incidental music scores for productions of Shakespeare plays.[n 6] He also composed
a dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea, for the opening of the London International
Exhibition,[48] and the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers", with words by Sabine
Baring-Gould.[40] The Salvation Army adopted the latter as its favoured
processional,[49] and it became Sullivan's best-known hymn.[40][50]

At the end of 1871 John Hollingshead, proprietor of London's Gaiety Theatre,

commissioned Sullivan to work with Gilbert to create the burlesque-style comic
opera Thespis.[51][n 7] Played as a Christmas entertainment, it ran through to
Easter 1872, a good run for such a piece.[55][n 8] Gilbert and Sullivan then went
their separate ways[58] until they collaborated on three parlour ballads in late
1874 and early 1875.[59]

Sullivan's large-scale works of the early 1870s were the Festival Te Deum (Crystal
Palace, 1872)[60] and the oratorio The Light of the World (Birmingham Festival,
1873).[60] He provided incidental music for productions of The Merry Wives of
Windsor at the Gaiety in 1874[61] and Henry VIII at the Theatre Royal, Manchester,
in 1877.[62] He continued to compose hymns throughout the decade.[n 9] In 1873
Sullivan contributed songs to Burnand's Christmas "drawing room extravaganza", The
Miller and His Man.[64]

In 1875 the manager of the Royalty Theatre, Richard D'Oyly Carte, needed a short
piece to fill out a bill with Offenbach's La Périchole. Carte had conducted
Sullivan's Cox and Box.[65][n 10] Remembering that Gilbert had suggested a libretto
to him, Carte engaged Sullivan to set it, and the result was the one-act comic
opera Trial by Jury.[67][n 11] Trial, starring Sullivan's brother Fred as the
Learned Judge, became a surprise hit, earning glowing praise from the critics and
playing for 300 performances over its first few seasons.[69] The Daily Telegraph
commented that the piece illustrated the composer's "great capacity for dramatic
writing of the lighter class",[69] and other reviews emphasised the felicitous
combination of Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music.[70] One wrote, "it seems, as
in the great Wagnerian operas, as though poem and music had proceeded
simultaneously from one and the same brain."[71] A few months later, another
Sullivan one-act comic opera opened: The Zoo, with a libretto by B. C. Stephenson.
[72] It was less successful than Trial, and for the next 15 years Sullivan's sole
operatic collaborator was Gilbert; the partners created a further twelve operas
together.[73]

"The Lost Chord"

Menu
0:00
1913 recording of "The Lost Chord" (1877) by Arthur Sullivan and Adelaide Anne
Procter, sung by Reed Miller
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Sullivan also turned out more than 80 popular songs and parlour ballads, most of
them written before the end of the 1870s.[74] His first popular song was "Orpheus
with his Lute" (1866), and a well-received part song was "Oh! Hush thee, my Babie"
(1867).[12] The best known of his songs is "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by
Adelaide Anne Procter), written at the bedside of his brother during Fred's last
illness.[75] The sheet music for his best-received songs sold in large numbers and
was an important part of his income.[76][n 12]
Newspaper cartoon of a monocled Sullivan lounging in a chair, his feet propped up
on the podium, lazily conducting
Caricature of Sullivan as a conductor, c. 1879

In this decade, Sullivan's conducting appointments included the Glasgow Choral

Union concerts (1875–77) and the Royal Aquarium Theatre, London (1876).[78] 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 in 1876.[79] He accepted the latter post
reluctantly, fearing that discharging the duties thoroughly would leave too little
time for composing; in this he was correct.[n 13] He was not effective in the post,
and resigned in 1881.[n 14]

Sullivan's next collaboration with Gilbert, The Sorcerer (1877), ran for 178
performances,[81] a success by the standards of the day,[82] but H.M.S. Pinafore
(1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international
phenomenon.[83] Sullivan composed the bright and cheerful music of Pinafore while
suffering from excruciating pain from a kidney stone.[84] Pinafore ran for 571
performances in London, then the second-longest theatrical run in history,[85] and
more than 150 unauthorised productions were quickly mounted in America alone.[86][n
15] Among other favourable reviews, The Times noted that the opera was an early
attempt at the establishment of a "national musical stage" free from risqué French
"improprieties" and without the "aid" of Italian and German musical models.[88] The
Times and several of the other papers agreed that although the piece was
entertaining, Sullivan was capable of higher art, and frivolous light opera would
hold him back.[89] This criticism would follow Sullivan throughout his career.[90]

In 1879 Sullivan suggested to a reporter from The New York Times the secret of his
success with Gilbert: "His ideas are as suggestive for music as they are quaint and
laughable. His numbers ... always give me musical ideas."[91] Pinafore was followed
by The Pirates of Penzance in 1879, which opened in New York and then ran in London
for 363 performances.[92]
Early 1880s
Drawing of scenes from the festival premiere of The Golden Legend showing the
chorus, the faces of the principal singers and Sullivan's back, as he stands
conducting. Black and white.
Scenes from The Golden Legend at the Leeds Music Festival, 1886

In 1880 Sullivan was appointed director of the triennial Leeds Music Festival.[93]
He had earlier been commissioned to write a sacred choral work for the festival and
chose, as its subject, Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life and
death of St. Margaret of Antioch. The Martyr of Antioch was first performed at the
Leeds Festival in October 1880.[94] Gilbert adapted the libretto for Sullivan,[95]
who, in gratitude, presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup inscribed
"W.S. Gilbert from his friend Arthur Sullivan."[n 16] Sullivan was not a showy
conductor, and some thought him dull and old-fashioned on the podium,[n 17] but
Martyr had an enthusiastic reception and was frequently revived.[101] Other critics
and performers had favorable reactions to Sullivan's conducting, and he had a busy
conducting career in parallel with his composing career, including seven Leeds
Festivals among many other appointments.[102] Sullivan invariably conducted the
opening nights of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.[103]

Carte opened the next Gilbert and Sullivan piece, Patience, in April 1881 at
London's Opera Comique, where their past three operas had played. In October,
Patience transferred to the new, larger, state-of-the-art Savoy Theatre, built with
the profits of the previous Gilbert and Sullivan works. The rest of the
partnership's collaborations were produced at the Savoy, and are widely known as
the "Savoy operas".[n 18] Iolanthe (1882), the first new opera to open at the
Savoy, was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth hit in a row.[106] Sullivan, despite the
financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed the composition of
comic operas as unimportant, beneath his skills, and also repetitious. After
Iolanthe, Sullivan had not intended to write a new work with Gilbert, but he
suffered a serious financial loss when his broker went bankrupt in November 1882.
Therefore, he concluded that his financial needs obliged him to continue writing
Savoy operas.[107] In February 1883, he and Gilbert signed a five-year agreement
with Carte, requiring them to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.[108]

On 22 May 1883 Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria for his "services ...
rendered to the promotion of the art of music" in Britain.[109] The musical
establishment, and many critics, believed that this should end his career as a
composer of comic opera – that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or
grand opera.[90] Having just signed the five-year agreement, Sullivan suddenly felt
trapped.[110] The next opera, Princess Ida (1884, the duo's only three-act, blank
verse work), had a shorter run than its four predecessors; Sullivan's score was
praised. With box office receipts lagging in March 1884, Carte gave the six months'
notice, under the partnership contract, requiring a new opera.[111] Sullivan's
close friend, the composer Frederic Clay, had recently suffered a career-ending
stroke at the age of 45. Sullivan, reflecting on this, on his own long-standing
kidney problems, and on his desire to devote himself to more serious music, replied
to Carte, "[I]t is impossible for me to do another piece of the character of those
already written by Gilbert and myself."[112]
Colourful programme cover for The Mikado showing several of the principal
characters under the words "Savoy Theatre"
Programme for The Mikado, 1885

Gilbert had already started work on a new opera in which the characters fell in
love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Sullivan wrote on 1 April
1884 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."[113] In a
lengthy exchange of correspondence, Sullivan pronounced Gilbert's plot sketch
(particularly the "lozenge" element) unacceptably mechanical, and too similar in
both its grotesque "elements of topsyturveydom" and in actual plot to their earlier
work, especially The Sorcerer.[n 19] He repeatedly requested that Gilbert find a
new subject.[114] The impasse was finally resolved on 8 May 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).[115] 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.[n 20]
Later 1880s
Painting of Sullivan, seated with one leg crossed over the other, looking intently
at the artist
Portrait by Millais (1888) in the National Portrait Gallery, London. It hangs next
to Frank Holl's 1886 portrait of Gilbert.

In 1886 Sullivan composed his second and last large-scale choral work of the
decade. It was a cantata for the Leeds Festival, The Golden Legend, based on
Longfellow's poem of the same name. Apart from the comic operas, this proved to be
Sullivan's best received full-length work.[117] It was given hundreds of
performances during his lifetime, and at one point he declared a moratorium on its
presentation, fearing that it would become over-exposed.[118] Only Handel's Messiah
was performed more often in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s.[119] It remained in the
repertory until about the 1920s, but since then it has seldom been performed;[120]
it received its first professional recording in 2001.[119] The musical scholar and
conductor David Russell Hulme writes that the work influenced Elgar and Walton.[n
21]

Ruddigore followed The Mikado at the Savoy in 1887. It was profitable, but its
nine-month run was disappointing compared with most of the earlier Savoy operas.
[121] For their next piece, Gilbert submitted another version of the magic lozenge
plot, which Sullivan again rejected. Gilbert finally proposed a comparatively
serious opera, to which Sullivan agreed.[122] Although it was not a grand opera,
The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) provided him with the opportunity to compose his
most ambitious stage work to date.[123] As early as 1883 Sullivan had been under
pressure from the musical establishment to write a grand opera. In 1885 he told an
interviewer, "The opera of the future is a compromise [among the French, German and
Italian schools] – a sort of eclectic school, a selection of the merits of each
one. I myself will make an attempt to produce a grand opera of this new school. ...
Yes, it will be an historical work, and it is the dream of my life."[124] After The
Yeomen of the Guard opened, Sullivan turned again to Shakespeare, composing
incidental music for Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre production of Macbeth (1888).
[125]

Sullivan wished to produce further serious works with Gilbert. He had collaborated
with no other librettist since 1875. But Gilbert felt that the reaction to The
Yeomen of the Guard had "not been so convincing as to warrant us in assuming that
the public want something more earnest still".[126] He proposed instead that
Sullivan should go ahead with his plan to write a grand opera, but should continue
also to compose comic works for the Savoy.[n 22] Sullivan was not immediately
persuaded. He replied, "I have lost the liking for writing comic opera, and
entertain very grave doubts as to my power of doing it."[n 23] Nevertheless,
Sullivan soon commissioned a grand opera libretto from Julian Sturgis (who was
recommended by Gilbert), and suggested to Gilbert that he revive an old idea for an
opera set in colourful Venice.[128] The comic opera was completed first: The
Gondoliers (1889) was a piece described by Gervase Hughes as a pinnacle of
Sullivan's achievement.[129] It was the last great Gilbert and Sullivan success.
[130]
1890s
Colourful programme cover for Ivanhoe, showing one of the characters in a white
wedding dress, under the words "The Royal English Opera"
Ivanhoe, 1891

The relationship between Gilbert and Sullivan suffered its most serious breach in
April 1890, during the run of The Gondoliers, when Gilbert objected to Carte's
financial accounts for the production, including a charge to the partnership for
the cost of new carpeting for the Savoy Theatre lobby. Gilbert believed that this
was a maintenance expense that should be charged to Carte alone.[131] Carte was
building a new theatre to present Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera, and Sullivan
sided with Carte, going so far as to sign an affidavit that contained erroneous
information about old debts of the partnership.[132] Gilbert took legal action
against Carte and Sullivan, vowing to write no more for the Savoy, and so the
partnership came to an acrimonious end.[133] Sullivan wrote to Gilbert in September
1890 that he was "physically and mentally ill over this wretched business. I have
not yet got over the shock of seeing our names coupled ... in hostile antagonism
over a few miserable pounds".[134]

Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, based on Walter Scott's novel, opened at
Carte's new Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891. Sullivan completed the
score too late to meet Carte's planned production date, and costs mounted; Sullivan
was required to pay Carte a contractual penalty of £3,000 (equivalent to £340,000
in 2019) for his delay.[135][136] The production lasted for 155 consecutive
performances, an unprecedented run for a grand opera, and earned good notices for
its music.[137] Afterwards, Carte was unable to fill the new opera house with other
opera productions and sold the theatre. Despite the initial success of Ivanhoe,
some writers blamed it for the failure of the opera house, and it soon passed into
obscurity.[137] Herman Klein called the episode "the strangest comingling of
success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric
enterprise!"[138] Later in 1891 Sullivan composed music for Tennyson's The
Foresters, which ran well at Daly's Theatre in New York in 1892, but failed in
London the following year.[n 24]
Colourful poster for The Chieftain, showing the figure of a man dressed as a
flamboyant bandit with a large, peaked black hat
Poster for The Chieftain (1894)

Sullivan returned to comic opera, but because of the fracture with Gilbert, he and
Carte sought other collaborators. Sullivan's next piece was Haddon Hall (1892),
with a libretto by Sydney Grundy based loosely on the legend of the elopement of
Dorothy Vernon with John Manners.[143] Although still comic, the tone and style of
the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with
Gilbert. It ran for 204 performances, and was praised by critics.[144] In 1895
Sullivan once more provided incidental music for the Lyceum, this time for J.
Comyns Carr's King Arthur.[145]

With the aid of an intermediary, Sullivan's music publisher Tom Chappell, the three
partners were reunited in 1892.[146] Their next opera, Utopia, Limited (1893), ran
for 245 performances, barely covering the expenses of the lavish production,[147]
although it was the longest run at the Savoy in the 1890s.[148] Sullivan came to
disapprove of the leading lady, Nancy McIntosh, and refused to write another piece
featuring her; Gilbert insisted that she must appear in his next opera.[149]
Instead, 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.[150] Gilbert and Sullivan reunited one more time, after
McIntosh announced her retirement from the stage, for The Grand Duke (1896). It
failed, and Sullivan never worked with Gilbert again, although their operas
continued to be revived with success at the Savoy.[151]

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 celebrates
English history and culture, with the Victorian period as the grand finale. Its
six-month run was considered a great achievement.[152] 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 well: Sullivan wrote that Pinero and
Comyns Carr were "gifted and brilliant men, with no experience in writing for
music",[153] and, when he asked for alterations to improve the structure, they
refused.[154] The opera, moreover, was too serious for the Savoy audiences' tastes.
[155] It was a critical failure and ran for only seven weeks.[156]

In 1899, to benefit "the wives and children of soldiers and sailors" on active
service in the Boer War, Sullivan composed the music of a song, "The Absent-Minded
Beggar", to a text by Rudyard Kipling, which became an instant sensation and raised
an unprecedented £300,000 (equivalent to £34,000,000 in 2019) for the fund from
performances and the sale of sheet music and related merchandise.[157] In The Rose
of Persia (1899), Sullivan returned to his comic roots, writing to a libretto by
Basil Hood that combined an exotic Arabian Nights setting with plot elements of The
Mikado. Sullivan's tuneful score was well received, and the opera proved to be his
most successful full-length collaboration apart from those with Gilbert.[158]
Another opera with Hood, The Emerald Isle, quickly went into preparation, but
Sullivan died before it was completed. The score was finished by Edward German, and
produced in 1901.[159]
Death, honours and legacy
Further information: Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan
Colour photo of bronze statue of a partly-clothed muse, leaning on a stone pillar,
looking up, longingly, at a bronze bust of Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens

Sullivan's health was never robust – from his thirties his kidney disease often
obliged him to conduct sitting down. He died of heart failure, following an attack
of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900.[160] His Te Deum
Laudamus, written in expectation of victory in the Boer War, was performed
posthumously.[161]

A monument in the composer's memory featuring a weeping Muse was erected in the
Victoria Embankment Gardens in London and is inscribed with 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.[162] In addition to his knighthood, honours awarded to
Sullivan in his lifetime included Doctor in Music, honoris causa, by the
Universities of Cambridge (1876) and Oxford (1879); Chevalier, Légion d'honneur,
France (1878); The Order of the Medjidieh conferred by the Sultan of Turkey (1888);
and appointment as a Member of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO)
in 1897.[12][163]

Sullivan's operas have often been adapted, first in the 19th century as dance
pieces[77] and in foreign adaptations of the operas themselves. Since then, his
music has been made into ballets (Pineapple Poll (1951) and Pirates of Penzance –
The Ballet! (1991)) and musicals (The Swing Mikado (1938), The Hot Mikado (1939)
and Hot Mikado (1986), Hollywood Pinafore and Memphis Bound (both 1945), The Black
Mikado (1975), etc.). His operas are frequently performed,[164] and also parodied,
pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, advertising, law, film,
television, and other popular media.[165][166] He has been portrayed on screen in
The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953) and Topsy-Turvy (2000).[167] He is
celebrated not only for writing the Savoy operas and his other works, but also for
his influence on the development of modern American and British musical theatre.
[165][168]
Personal life
Romantic life
Photo of Ronalds from the waist up, facing the camera. She is handsome and well-
dressed, with a fur collar and an "up" hairdo.
Fanny Ronalds

Sullivan never married, but he had serious love affairs with several women. The
first was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845–1882), the daughter of the engineer John
Scott Russell. Sullivan was a frequent visitor at the Scott Russell home in the
mid-1860s, and by 1865 the affair was in full bloom. Rachel's parents did not
approve of a possible union with a young composer of uncertain financial prospects,
but the two continued to see each other covertly. At some point in 1868 Sullivan
started a simultaneous (and secret) affair with Rachel's sister Louise (1841–1878).
Both relationships ended by early 1869.[169][n 25]

Sullivan's longest love affair was with the American socialite Fanny Ronalds, a
woman three years his senior, who had two children.[171] He met her in Paris around
1867, and the affair began in earnest soon after she moved to London in 1871.[171]
According to a contemporary description of Ronalds, "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."[172] Sullivan called her "the best amateur singer in London".
[173] She often performed Sullivan's songs at her famous Sunday soirées.[171] She
became particularly associated with "The Lost Chord", singing it both in private
and in public, often with Sullivan accompanying her.[174] When Sullivan died, he
left her the autograph manuscript of that song, along with other bequests.[175]

Ronalds was separated from her American husband, but they never divorced. Social
conventions of the time compelled Sullivan and Ronalds to keep their relationship
private.[n 26] She apparently became pregnant at least twice and procured abortions
in 1882 and 1884.[177] Sullivan had a roving eye, and his diary records the
occasional quarrels when Ronalds discovered his other liaisons, but he always
returned to her.[n 27] Around 1889 or 1890 the sexual relationship evidently ended
– he started to refer to her in his diary as "Auntie"[179] – but she remained a
constant companion for the rest of his life.[180]

In 1896 the 54-year-old Sullivan proposed marriage to the 22-year-old Violet

Beddington (1874–1962), but she refused him.[181][n 28]
Leisure and family life
Sullivan, seated, with Herbert standing behind his left shoulder; both are very
well-dressed and mustachioed
Sullivan and his nephew Herbert ("Bertie")

Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and on the Riviera), where
his acquaintances included European royalty and where the casinos enabled him to
indulge his passion for gambling.[184] He enjoyed hosting private dinners and
entertainments at his home, often featuring famous singers and well-known actors.
[185] In 1865 he was initiated into Freemasonry and was Grand Organist of the
United Grand Lodge of England in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.[186]
Sullivan's talent and native charm gained him the friendship of many not only in
the musical establishment, such as Grove, Chorley and Herman Klein, but also in
society circles, such as Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.[187] Sullivan enjoyed playing
tennis; according to George Grossmith, "I have seen some bad lawn-tennis players in
my time, but I never saw anyone so bad as Arthur Sullivan".[185]

Sullivan was devoted to his parents, particularly his mother. He corresponded

regularly with her 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."[188] Sullivan was also very fond
of his brother Fred, whose acting career he assisted whenever possible,[n 29] and
of Fred's children.[193] After Fred died at the age of 39, leaving his pregnant
wife, Charlotte, with seven children under the age of 14, Sullivan visited the
family often and became guardian to the children.[194]

In 1883 Charlotte and six of her children emigrated to Los Angeles, California,
leaving the oldest boy, "Bertie", in Sullivan's sole care.[195] Despite his
reservations about the move to the United States, Sullivan paid all the costs and
gave substantial financial support to the family.[196] A year later, Charlotte
died, leaving the children to be raised mostly by her brother.[n 30] From June to
August 1885, after The Mikado opened, Sullivan visited the family in Los Angeles
and took them on a sightseeing trip of the American west.[198] Throughout the rest
of his life, and in his will, he contributed financially to Fred's children,
continuing to correspond with them and to be concerned with their education,
marriages and financial affairs. Bertie remained with his Uncle Arthur for the rest
of the composer's life.[199]

Three of Sullivan's cousins, the daughters of his uncle John Thomas Sullivan,
performed with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company: Rose, Jane ("Jennie") and Kate
Sullivan, the first two of whom used the stage surname Hervey. Kate was a chorister
who defected to the Comedy Opera Company's rival production of H.M.S. Pinafore,
where she had the opportunity to play the leading soprano role, Josephine, in 1879.
[200] Jennie was a D'Oyly Carte chorister for fourteen years.[201] Rose took
principal roles in many of the companion pieces that played with the Savoy operas.
[202][203]
Music
See also: List of compositions by Arthur Sullivan

Sullivan's works comprise 24 operas, 11 full orchestral works, ten choral works and
oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, more
than 70 hymns and anthems, over 80 songs and parlour ballads, and a body of part
songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.[26][204] The operatic output spanned
his whole career, as did that of his songs and religious music. The solo piano and
chamber pieces are mostly from his early years, and are generally in a
Mendelssohnian style.[205] With the exception of his Imperial March, composed for a
royal occasion in 1893, the large-scale orchestral concert works also date from
early in the composer's career.[206]
Influences

Reviewers and scholars often cite Mendelssohn as the most important influence on
Sullivan.[207] The music for The Tempest and the Irish Symphony, among other works,
was seen by contemporary writers as strikingly Mendelssohnian.[208] Percy Young
writes that Sullivan's early affection for Mendelssohn remained evident throughout
his composing career.[207] Hughes remarks that although Sullivan emulated
Mendelssohn in certain ways he seldom "lapsed into those harmonic clichés which mar
some of Mendelssohn's more sentimental effusions".[209] When The Tempest music was
first presented the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik identified Schumann as a stronger
influence, and Benedict Taylor, writing in 2017, concurs.[210] In a 2009 study
Taylor adds Schubert as another major influence on Sullivan in his orchestral
works, although "from the beginning ... there is the peculiar, intangible stamp of
Sullivan emerging confidently".[211] Meinhard Saremba notes that from Sullivan's
first meeting with Rossini in Paris, in 1862, Rossini's output became a model for
Sullivan's comic opera music, "as evidenced in several rhythmic patterns and
constructions of long finales".[212]
Colour cartoon of Sullivan standing, in concert dress, wearing a monocle, ready to
conduct
Sullivan by the cartoonist "Ape", 1874

As a young man, Sullivan's conservative musical education led him to follow in the
conventions of his predecessors. Later he became more adventurous; Richard
Silverman, writing in 2009, points to the influence of Liszt in later works – a
harmonic ambiguity and chromaticism – so that by the time of The Golden Legend
Sullivan had abandoned a home key altogether for the prelude.[213] Sullivan
disliked much of Wagner's Musikdrama, but he modelled the overture to The Yeomen of
the Guard on the prelude of Die Meistersinger, which he described as "the greatest
comic opera ever written".[214] Saremba writes that in works from his middle and
later years, Sullivan was inspired by Verdi's example both in details of
orchestration, and in la tinta musical – the individual musical character of a
piece – ranging from the "nautical air of H.M.S Pinafore" to "the swift
Mediterranean lightness of The Gondoliers" and "the bleakness of Torquilstone in
Ivanhoe".[215]
Method of composition and text setting

Sullivan told an interviewer, Arthur Lawrence, "I don't use the piano in
composition – that would limit me terribly". Sullivan explained that his process
was not to wait for inspiration, but "to dig for it. ... I decide on [the rhythm]
before I come to the question of melody. ... 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."[24] Sullivan's text setting, compared with 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".[216]

In composing the Savoy operas, Sullivan wrote the vocal lines of the musical
numbers first, and these were given to the actors. He, or an assistant, improvised
a piano accompaniment at the early rehearsals; he wrote the orchestrations later,
after he had seen what Gilbert's stage business would be.[24][217] He left the
overtures until last and sometimes delegated their composition, based on his
outlines, to his assistants,[218] often adding his suggestions or corrections.[219]
Those Sullivan wrote himself include Thespis,[220] Iolanthe, Princess Ida, The
Yeomen of the Guard, The Gondoliers, The Grand Duke and probably Utopia, Limited.
[221] Most of the overtures are structured as a pot-pourri of tunes from the operas
in three sections: fast, slow and fast.[219] Those for Iolanthe and The Yeomen of
the Guard are written in a modified sonata form.[222]
Melody and rhythm

The Musical Times noted that Sullivan's tunes, at least in the comic operas, appeal
to the professional as much as to the layman: his continental contemporaries such
as Saint-Saëns and the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick held the Savoy operas in
high regard.[223] Hughes writes, "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."[224] Although his melodies
sprang from rhythm,[24] some of his themes may have been prompted by his chosen
instrumentation or his harmonic techniques.[224]
Excerpt of music – part of Tolloller's line
Climaxes of verse and refrain of "If You Go In" (Iolanthe)
In the comic operas, where many numbers are in verse-plus-refrain form, Sullivan
shaped his melodies to provide a climax for the verse, capped by an overall climax
in the refrain.[225] Hughes cites "If you go in" (Iolanthe) as an example. He adds
that Sullivan rarely reached the same class of excellence in instrumental works,
where he had no librettist to feed his imagination.[225] Even with Gilbert, on
those occasions when the librettist wrote in unvaried metre, Sullivan often
followed suit and produced phrases of simple repetition, such as in "Love Is a
Plaintive Song" (Patience) and "A Man Who Would Woo a Fair Maid" (The Yeomen of the
Guard).[226]

Sullivan preferred to write in major keys, overwhelmingly in the Savoy operas, and
even in his serious works.[227] Examples of his 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 Beethoven) and the
execution march in the Act I finale of The Yeomen of the Guard.[227]
Harmony and counterpoint

Sullivan was trained in the classical style, and contemporary music did not greatly
attract him.[228] Harmonically his early works used the conventional formulae of
early-nineteenth-century composers including Mendelssohn, Auber, Donizetti, Balfe
and Schubert.[229] Hughes comments that harmonic contrast in the Savoy works is
enhanced by Sullivan's characteristic modulation between keys, as in "Expressive
Glances" (Princess Ida), where he negotiates smoothly 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.[230]

When reproached for using consecutive fifths in Cox and Box, Sullivan replied "if
5ths turn up it doesn't matter, so long as there is no offence to the ear."[12]
Both Hughes[231] and Jacobs in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians[26]
comment adversely on Sullivan's overuse 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 repeated use of the chord of the
augmented fourth at moments of pathos.[232] 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".[233]
Excerpt of music – part of "I Am So Proud"
Characteristic "counterpoint of characters" from The Mikado, Act 1

One of Sullivan's best-known devices is what Jacobs terms his "'counterpoint of

characters': the presentation by different personages of two seemingly independent
tunes which later come together" simultaneously. He was not the first composer to
combine themes in this way,[n 31] but in Jacobs's phrase it became almost "the
trademark of Sullivan's operetta style".[26][235] Sometimes the melodies were for
solo voices, as in "I Am So Proud" (The Mikado), which combines three melodic
lines.[236] Other examples are in choruses, where typically a graceful tune for the
women is combined with a robust one for the men. Examples include "When the Foeman
Bares his Steel" (The Pirates of Penzance), "In a Doleful Train" (Patience) and
"Welcome, Gentry" (Ruddigore).[237] In "How Beautifully Blue the Sky" (The Pirates
of Penzance), one theme is given to the chorus (in 2/4 time) and the other to solo
voices (in 3/4).[238]

Sullivan rarely composed fugues. Examples are from the "Epilogue" to The Golden
Legend and Victoria and Merrie England.[239] In the Savoy operas, fugal style is
reserved for making fun of legal solemnity in Trial by Jury and Iolanthe (e.g., the
Lord Chancellor's leitmotif in the latter).[240] Less formal counterpoint is
employed in numbers such as "Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day" (The Mikado) and "When
the Buds Are Blossoming" (Ruddigore).[240]
Orchestration
Hughes concludes his chapter on Sullivan's orchestration: "[I]n this vitally
important sector of the composer's art he deserves to rank as a master."[241]
Sullivan was a competent player of at least four orchestral instruments (flute,
clarinet, trumpet and trombone) and technically a most skilful orchestrator.[n 32]
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.
[242] Young writes that orchestral players generally like playing Sullivan's music:
"Sullivan never asked his players to do what was either uncongenial or
impracticable."[243][244]

Overture di Ballo
Menu
0:00
The Overture di Ballo (1870) is regarded as Sullivan's most successful orchestral
work.[42] This military band arrangement is performed by the U.S. Marine Band.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Sullivan's orchestra for the Savoy operas was typical of the theatre orchestra of
his era: 2 flutes (+ piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2
trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. According to Geoffrey Toye, the number
of players in Sullivan's Savoy Theatre orchestras was a "minimum" of 31.[245]
Sullivan argued hard for an increase in the pit orchestra's size, and, starting
with The Yeomen of the Guard, the orchestra was augmented with a second bassoon and
a second tenor trombone.[246] He generally orchestrated each score at almost the
last moment, noting that the accompaniment 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.[247] For his large-scale orchestral pieces, which often employed very
large forces, Sullivan added a second oboe part, sometimes double bassoon and bass
clarinet, more horns, trumpets, tuba, and occasionally an organ and/or a harp.[248]

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.[249] In the
operas, and also in concert works, another characteristic Sullivan touch is his
fondness for pizzicato passages for the string sections. Hughes instances "Kind
Sir, You Cannot Have the Heart" (The Gondoliers), "Free From his Fetters Grim" (The
Yeomen of the Guard) and "In Vain to Us You Plead" (Iolanthe).[250]
Musical quotations and parodies
Head and shoulders of Sullivan as a young man, wearing a moustache, long sideburns
and a serious expression
Sullivan in about 1870

Throughout the Savoy operas, and occasionally in other works, Sullivan quotes or
imitates well-known themes or parodies the styles of famous composers.[251] On
occasion he may have echoed his predecessors unconsciously: Hughes cites a
Handelian influence in "Hereupon We're Both Agreed" (The Yeomen of the Guard), and
Rodney Milnes called "Sighing Softly" in The Pirates of Penzance "a song plainly
inspired by – and indeed worthy of – Sullivan's hero, Schubert".[252][253] Edward
Greenfield found a theme in the slow movement of the Irish Symphony "an outrageous
crib" from Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.[254] In early pieces, Sullivan drew on
Mendelssohn's style in his music for The Tempest, Auber's in his Henry VIII music
and Gounod's in The Light of the World.[255] The influence of Mendelssohn pervades
the fairy music in Iolanthe.[256] The Golden Legend shows the influence of Liszt
and Wagner.[257]

Sullivan adopted traditional musical forms, such as madrigals in The Mikado,

Ruddigore and The Yeomen of the Guard and glees in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado,
and the Venetian barcarolle in The Gondoliers. He made use of dance styles to
enhance the sense of time or place in various scenes: gavottes in Ruddigore and The
Gondoliers;[258] a country dance in The Sorcerer; a nautical hornpipe in Ruddigore;
and the Spanish cachucha and Italian saltarello and tarantella in The Gondoliers.
[258] Occasionally he drew on influences from further afield. In The Mikado, he
used an old Japanese war song, and his 1882 trip to Egypt inspired musical styles
in his later opera The Rose of Persia.[259]

Elsewhere, Sullivan wrote undisguised parody. Of the sextet "I Hear the Soft Note"
in Patience, he said to the singers, "I think you will like this. It is Dr. Arne
and Purcell at their best."[185] In his comic operas, he followed Offenbach's lead
in lampooning the idioms of French and Italian opera, such as those of Donizetti,
Bellini and Verdi.[260] Examples of his operatic parody include Mabel's aria "Poor
Wand'ring One" in The Pirates of Penzance, the duet "Who Are You, Sir?" from Cox
and Box,[261] and the whispered plans for elopement in "This Very Night" in H.M.S.
Pinafore, parodying the conspirators' choruses in Verdi's Il trovatore and
Rigoletto.[262] The mock-jingoistic "He Is an Englishman" in H.M.S. Pinafore and
choral passages in The Zoo satirise patriotic British tunes such as Arne's "Rule,
Britannia!".[262] The chorus "With Catlike Tread" from The Pirates parodies Verdi's
"Anvil Chorus" from Il trovatore.[263]

Hughes calls Bouncer's song in Cox and Box "a jolly Handelian parody" and notes a
strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III of Princess Ida.[252] In "A More
Humane Mikado", at the words "Bach interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven", the
clarinet and bassoon quote the fugue subject of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G
minor.[264] Sullivan sometimes used Wagnerian leitmotifs for both comic and
dramatic effect. In Iolanthe, a distinctive four-note theme is associated with the
title character, the Lord Chancellor has a fugal motif, and the Fairy Queen's music
parodies that of Wagner heroines such as Brünnhilde.[265] In The Yeomen of the
Guard the Tower of London is evoked by its own motif.[266] This use of the
leitmotif technique is repeated and developed further in Ivanhoe.[267]
Reputation and criticism
Main article: Critical reputation of Arthur Sullivan
Early reception

Sullivan's critical reputation has undergone extreme changes since the 1860s when
critics, struck by his potential, hailed him as the long-awaited great English
composer.[268] His incidental music to The Tempest was received with acclaim at the
Crystal Palace, just before his 20th birthday, in April 1862. The Athenaeum
commented:

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.[269]

Mocking newspaper cartoon showing Sullivan wearing a "pinafore" apron, standing en

pointe in a violin case while conducting, surrounded by corrupted paraphernalia
relating to his early comic operas, over the sardonic song title "When Arthur First
at Court Began"
Cartoon from Punch (1880)[n 33]

His Irish Symphony of 1866 won similarly enthusiastic praise, but as Arthur Jacobs
notes, "The first rapturous outburst of enthusiasm for Sullivan as an orchestral
composer did not last."[271] A comment typical of those that followed him
throughout his career was that "Sullivan's unquestionable talent should make him
doubly careful not to mistake popular applause for artistic appreciation."[272]
When Sullivan turned to comic opera with Gilbert, the serious critics began to
express disapproval. The music critic Peter Gammond writes of "misapprehensions and
prejudices, delivered to our door by the Victorian firm Musical Snobs Ltd. ...
frivolity and high spirits were sincerely seen as elements that could not be
exhibited by anyone who was to be admitted to the sanctified society of Art."[273]
As early as 1877 The London Figaro commented that Sullivan "wilfully throws his
opportunity away. ... 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."[274] Few critics denied the excellence of Sullivan's theatre scores. The
Theatre commented, "Iolanthe sustains Dr. Sullivan's reputation as the most
spontaneous, fertile, and scholarly composer of comic opera this country has ever
produced."[275][n 34] Comic opera, no matter how skilfully crafted, was viewed as
an intrinsically lower form of art than oratorio. The Athenaeum's review of The
Martyr of Antioch declared: "[I]t is an advantage to have the composer of H.M.S.
Pinafore occupying himself with a worthier form of art."[278]
Knighthood and later years

Sullivan's knighthood in 1883 gave the serious music critics further ammunition.
The Musical Review of that year observed:

[S]ome 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 [and] do battle for the honour
of English art ... against all foreign rivals, and arouse us thoroughly from our
present half-torpid condition.[90]

Even Sullivan's friend George Grove wrote: "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."[279] Sullivan finally redeemed himself in
critical eyes with The Golden Legend in 1886.[280] The Observer hailed it as a
"triumph of English art".[281] The World called it "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 of the public performance was unprecedented."[282]

Hopes for a new departure were expressed in The Daily Telegraph's review of The
Yeomen of the Guard (1888), Sullivan's most serious opera to that point: "[T]he
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."[283] Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe (1891),
received generally favourable reviews,[284] although J. A. Fuller Maitland, in The
Times, expressed reservations, writing 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."[285] Sullivan's 1897 ballet Victoria and Merrie England was
one of several late pieces that won praise from most critics:[286]

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
humorist 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.[287]

Although the more solemn members of the musical establishment could not forgive
Sullivan for writing music that was both comic and accessible, he was,
nevertheless, "the nation's de facto composer laureate".[288][n 35] His obituary in
The Times called him England's "most conspicuous composer ... the musician who had
such power to charm all classes. ... The critic and the student found new beauties
at every fresh hearing. What ... set Sullivan in popular esteem far above all the
other English composers of his day was the tunefulness of his music, that quality
in it by which ... [it] was immediately recognized as a joyous contribution to the
gaiety of life. ... Sullivan’s name stood as a synonym for music in England.[n 36]
Posthumous reputation

"Favorite airs from The Mikado"

Menu
0:00
A 1914 Edison Records recording of selections from The Mikado. Includes parts of
the overture, "A Wand'ring Minstrel", "Three Little Maids", "Tit-willow" and the
Act II finale.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

In the decade after his death, Sullivan's reputation sank considerably among music
critics. In 1901 Fuller Maitland took issue with the generally laudatory tone of
the obituaries: "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? ... It is
because such great natural gifts – gifts greater, perhaps, than fell to any English
musician since ... Purcell – were so very seldom employed in work worthy of
them."[291] Edward Elgar, to whom Sullivan had been particularly kind,[292] rose to
Sullivan's defence, branding Fuller Maitland's obituary "the shady side of musical
criticism ... that foul unforgettable episode".[293][n 37]
Drawing of a grandfather, father and boy, all dressed for the theatre, sitting in
happy anticipation, over the caption "The Joy of Three Generations (To be seen any
night at the Gilbert and Sullivan Operas)"
20th-century audiences

Fuller Maitland's followers, including Ernest Walker, also dismissed Sullivan as

"merely the idle singer of an empty evening".[296] As late as 1966 Frank Howes, a
music critic for The Times, condemned Sullivan for a "lack of sustained effort ...
a fundamental lack of seriousness towards his art [and] inability to perceive the
smugness, the sentimentality and banality of the Mendelssohnian detritus ... to
remain content with the flattest and most obvious rhythms, this yielding to a fatal
facility, that excludes Sullivan from the ranks of the good composers."[297] Thomas
Dunhill wrote in 1928 that Sullivan's "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 swept away before justice can be done to his
genius."[298]

Sir Henry Wood continued to perform Sullivan's serious music.[299] In 1942 Wood
presented a Sullivan centenary concert at the Royal Albert Hall,[26] but it was not
until the 1960s that Sullivan's music other than the Savoy operas began to be
widely revived. In 1960 Hughes published the first full-length book about
Sullivan's music "which, while taking note of his weaknesses (which are many) and
not hesitating to castigate his lapses from good taste (which were comparatively
rare) [attempted] to view them in perspective against the wider background of his
sound musicianship."[296] The work of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, founded in
1977, and books about Sullivan by musicians such as Young (1971) and Jacobs (1986)
contributed to the re-evaluation of Sullivan's serious music.[294] The Irish
Symphony had its first professional recording in 1968, and many of Sullivan's non-
Gilbert works have since been recorded.[300] Scholarly critical editions of an
increasing number of Sullivan's works have been published.[26]

In 1957 a review in The Times explained Sullivan's contributions to "the continued

vitality of the Savoy operas": "Gilbert's lyrics ... take on extra point and
sparkle when set to Sullivan's music. ... [Sullivan, too, is] a delicate wit, whose
airs have a precision, a neatness, a grace, and a flowing melody".[301] A 2000
article in The Musical Times by Nigel Burton noted the resurgence of Sullivan's
reputation beyond the comic operas:

[Sullivan] spoke naturally to all people, for all time, of the passions,
sorrows and joys which are forever rooted in the human consciousness. ... 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. ... [L]et us resolve to set aside the "One-and-a-half-
hurrahs" syndrome once and for all, and, in its place, raise THREE LOUD CHEERS.
[294]

Recordings
Further information: Gilbert and Sullivan § Recordings and broadcasts
Poster advertising, in plain type, a recording of The Mikado
Advertisement for the first recording of The Mikado, 1917

On 14 August 1888 George Gouraud introduced Thomas Edison's 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.[302]
At a party on 5 October 1888 given to demonstrate the technology, Sullivan recorded
a speech to be sent to Edison, saying, in part: "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."[302] These recordings were found in the Edison
Library in New Jersey in the 1950s:[302]

"The Lost Chord"

Menu
0:00
One of the recordings played at the press conference on 14 August 1888
After-dinner speech at the Little Menlo
Menu
0:00
Sullivan's phonographic letter to Thomas Edison, 5 October 1888
Problems listening to the files? See media help.

The first commercial recordings of Sullivan's music, beginning in 1898, were of

individual numbers from the Savoy operas.[n 38] In 1917 the Gramophone Company
(HMV) produced the first album of a complete Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The
Mikado, followed by eight more.[304] Electrical recordings of most of the operas
issued by HMV and Victor followed from the 1920s, supervised by Rupert D'Oyly
Carte.[305] The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company continued to produce recordings until
1979.[306] After the copyrights expired, recordings were made by opera companies
such as Gilbert and Sullivan for All[307] and Australian Opera, and Sir Malcolm
Sargent[308] and Sir Charles Mackerras each conducted audio sets of several Savoy
operas.[309][310] Since 1994, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival has
released professional and amateur CDs and videos of its productions and other
Sullivan recordings,[311] and Ohio Light Opera has recorded several of the operas
in the 21st century.[312]

Sullivan's non-Savoy works were infrequently recorded until the 1960s. A few of his
songs were put on disc in the early years of the 20th century, including versions
of "The Lost Chord" by Enrico Caruso and Clara Butt.[313] The first of many
recordings of the Overture di Ballo was made in 1932, conducted by Sargent.[314]
The Irish Symphony was first recorded in 1968 under Sir Charles Groves.[315] Since
then, much of Sullivan's serious music and his operas without Gilbert have been
recorded, including the Cello Concerto by Julian Lloyd Webber (1986);[316] and The
Rose of Persia (1999);[317] The Golden Legend (2001);[318] Ivanhoe (2009);[319] and
The Masque at Kenilworth and On Shore and Sea (2014),[320] conducted by,
respectively, Tom Higgins, Ronald Corp, David Lloyd-Jones and Richard Bonynge. In
2017 Chandos Records released an album, Songs, which includes The Window and 35
individual Sullivan songs.[321] Mackerras's Sullivan ballet, Pineapple Poll, has
received many recordings since its first performance in 1951.[322]
See also

List of compositions by Arthur Sullivan

People associated with Gilbert and Sullivan

Notes and references

Notes

In 1848, Jenny Lind performed the soprano part to Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio
Elijah, which he had written for her. The concert raised £1,000 to fund a
scholarship in his name. After Sullivan became the first recipient of the
scholarship, Lind encouraged him in his career.[13]
Between 1861 and 1872 Sullivan worked as an organist at two fashionable London
churches: St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, Pimlico, and St. Peter's, Cranley
Gardens, Kensington.[26] He taught, among other places, at the Crystal Palace
School.[27]
They were permitted to copy the Rosamunde score and two of the symphonies – the
Fourth and Sixth – and inspected four others (the First, Second, Third and Fifth),
to the existence of which they quickly drew the attention of the musical world.
Grove described their final discovery: "I found, at the bottom of the cupboard and
in its farthest corner, a bundle of music books two feet high, carefully tied
round, and black with the undisturbed dust of nearly half-a-century. ... There were
the part books of the whole of the music in Rosamunde, tied up after the second
performance, in December 1823, and probably never disturbed since. Dr. Schneider
[Schubert's nephew] must have been amused at our excitement ... at any rate, he
kindly overlooked it, and gave us permission to ... copy what we wanted."[35]
The work received an enthusiastic public reception, but The Musical Times printed
an early example of critical censure of Sullivan for his accessibility: "The
applause which it received was general and spontaneous [but] it may be a question
whether, if Mr. Sullivan could not be requested to furnish a higher class of work,
he should not have been passed over altogether until a more fitting opportunity
presented itself."[43]
They met at a rehearsal for a second run of Gilbert's Ages Ago at the Gallery of
Illustration, probably in July 1870.[44] Gilbert was then known for his light
verse, especially his Bab Ballads; his theatre reviews; and his two dozen plays,
including operatic burlesques (such as Robert the Devil, 1868), his German Reed
Entertainments, and blank verse comedies such as The Palace of Truth (1870) and
Pygmalion and Galatea (1871).
This was for The Merchant of Venice at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester.[46]
Sullivan's earlier Tempest music was composed for the concert hall, rather than
theatrical performance, although it was later used for at least one stage
production.[47]
With a classical story and a mixture of political satire and grand opera parody,
Thespis was reminiscent of Orpheus in the Underworld and La belle Hélène by
Offenbach, whose operettas were extremely popular on the English stage in both
French and English.[52] La belle Hélène entered the Gaiety's repertory eight weeks
before the premiere of Thespis.[53] Sullivan may have been encouraged to write the
music for Thespis by Hollingshead's offer of the role of Apollo to the composer's
elder brother, the comic actor and singer Fred Sullivan.[54]
Its run was extended beyond the length of a normal run at the Gaiety.[56] The
musical score of Thespis was never published and is now lost, except for one song
that was published separately, a chorus that was re-used in The Pirates of
Penzance, and the Act II ballet.[57]
Sullivan composed 72 hymns, including two settings of "Nearer, My God, to Thee", of
which the "Propior Deo" is the better known.[63]
Carte conducted Cox and Box and some operettas on a tour, in 1871, managed by the
composer's brother, Fred, who played Cox. Cox and Box, again with Fred as Cox, had
been revived in 1874, and Arthur Sullivan may have been considering a return to
comic opera.[66]
The title page of the libretto describes Trial as "A Dramatic Cantata";[68] Gilbert
and Sullivan insisted on calling the rest of their joint works "operas", often with
a descriptive adjective, such as a "nautical comic opera" (Jacobs, p. 118), an
"aesthetic opera" or a "Japanese opera" (Jacobs, Preface).
Later, songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas were adapted and sold as dance
pieces.[77]
His successor Hubert Parry also discovered this to be true.[80]
In a study of the School and its successor, the Royal College of Music, David
Wright comments on Sullivan: "He lacked any fresh perspective on musical training
and any vision of what the NTSM needed to achieve if it was to make a mark. ...
Neither did Sullivan have real sympathy with the Society of Arts' progressive
social ideals of scholarship education regardless of social origin, despite having
himself gained his education through scholarship support."[79]
Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte tried for many years to control the American
performance copyrights over their operas, but they were unable to do so.[87]
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."[96]
The Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote of Sullivan's conducting of a
Mozart symphony: "Sullivan presides on the podium from the comfortable recesses of
a commodious armchair, his left arm lazily extended on the arm-rest, his right
giving the beat in a mechanical way, his eyes fastened on the score. ... Sullivan
never looked up from the notes; it was as though he was reading at sight. The
heavenly piece plodded along for better or for worse, listlessly, insensibly."[97]
Bernard Shaw, who praised Sullivan as a composer ("They trained him to make Europe
yawn, and he took advantage of their teaching to make London and New York laugh and
whistle."[98]), commented: "Under his bâton orchestras are never deficient in
refinement. Coarseness, exaggeration, and carelessness are unacquainted with him.
So, unfortunately, are vigor and earnestness."[99] Vernon Blackburn of the Pall
Mall Gazette thought that Sullivan conducted Mendelssohn's Elijah "quite
extraordinarily well. This is a rather subtle conductor who makes his effects
almost unexpectedly, so reticent is his manner and so quiet his method. Yet effects
are there, and … are marked by a great smoothness in the linking of phrase with
phrase, and in consequence by a wonderful fluent continuousness of melody."[100]
The term came to be applied to all 13 surviving Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and
extended, by some writers, to the other comic operas and companion pieces produced
at the Savoy Theatre until 1909.[104] The Oxford English Dictionary defines the
phrase as: "Designating any of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas originally presented
at the Savoy Theatre in London by the D'Oyly Carte company. Also used more
generally to designate any of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including those
first presented before the Savoy Theatre opened in 1881, or to designate any comic
opera of a similar style which appeared at the theatre".[105]
Even after Gilbert made changes (but retained a magic lozenge that changed people
into what they pretended to be), Sullivan did not accept it.[114]
The longest-running piece of musical theatre was Robert Planquette's 1877 opéra-
comique Les cloches de Corneville, which held the record until Alfred Cellier's
operetta Dorothy ran for 931 performances beginning in 1886.[116]
"King Olaf, Caractacus and Gerontius owe much to The Golden Legend – as, via them,
does Walton's Belshazzar's Feast."[119]
Gilbert wrote, "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 concurrently? 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?"[126]
Sullivan continued, "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.[127]
Sullivan's biographers and scholars of his work have censured Tennyson's text.[139]
Gervase Hughes called it "puerile rubbish".[129] Percy Young found it "Devoid of
any kind of merit whatsoever."[140] Sullivan's music was initially well-received,
[141] but Sullivan's biographers were not impressed: "One of Sullivan's lamest ...
resourceless in magic" (Young);[140] "[not] even one memorable number" (Jacobs).
[139] More recent critics have praised Sullivan's contribution.[141][142]
Some two hundred love letters from the two Scott Russell women survive and are
excerpted in detail in Wolfson.[170]
In Sullivan's diary, she appears as "Mrs. Ronalds" when he refers to their meetings
in public, and "L. W." (for "Little Woman") or "D. H." (possibly "Dear Heart") for
when they were alone together. When noting their private meetings, Sullivan
indicated with tick marks the number of sexual acts completed. After the
relationship with Ronalds had ceased to be sexual the tick marks no longer appeared
alongside mentions of her, but continued to be used for his relationships with
other women who have not been identified, and who were always referred to by their
initials.[176]
One such flirtation was with "Anna", whom he met in Paris in 1878.[178]
Beddington later married Sydney Schiff, who used elements of her relationship with
Sullivan in his 1925 novel Myrtle. She was the younger sister of Ada Beddington.
[182][183]
In 1871 Fred appeared as Cox in his brother's Cox and Box at the Alhambra Theatre,
[189] and he toured as Cox in his own production that summer.[190] Later that year,
he played Apollo in Gilbert and Sullivan's Thespis at the Gaiety Theatre, remaining
at the Gaiety thereafter. He took his own company on tour in the summer of 1874,
appearing in Cox and Box and The Contrabandista, and later that year he again
played Cox, this time at the Gaiety.[191] The next year, he created the role of the
Learned Judge in Trial by Jury, a role that he would play in London and on tour for
the rest of his career.[192]
One of the children, Frederic Richard Sullivan, went on to become a well-known film
director.[197]
An earlier exponent of the device was Hector Berlioz, who called it the réunion de
deux thèmes. The article on Berlioz in Grove cites examples including the finale of
the Symphonie fantastique, where the "witches' sabbath" theme is combined with the
Dies irae.[234]
Sullivan could also play the oboe and bassoon, but less proficiently.[5]
The cartoon was accompanied by a parody of "When I, good friends" from Trial by
Jury that summarised Sullivan's career to that date. It prematurely carried a
caption stating "It is reported that after the Leeds Festival Dr. Sullivan will be
knighted" and was accompanied by a punny parody version of "When I, good friends"
from Trial by Jury that summarised Sullivan's career to that date.[270]
Sullivan received honorary doctorates of music from the University of Cambridge in
1876,[276] and Oxford in 1879.[277]
Gian Andrea Mazzucato wrote this summary of Sullivan's career in The Musical
Standard of 16 December 1899: "[T]he 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 ... 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. ... I make no
doubt that when ... 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."[289]
The obituary also stated: "Many who are able to appreciate classical music regret
that Sir Arthur Sullivan did not aim consistently at higher things, that he set
himself to rival Offenbach and Lecocq instead of competing on a level of high
seriousness with such musicians as Sir Hubert Parry and Professor Stanford. If he
had followed this path, he might have enrolled his name among the great composers
of all time. ... That Sir Arthur Sullivan could aim high and succeed he proved by
The Golden Legend and by a good deal of Ivanhoe".[290]
Fuller Maitland was later discredited when it was shown that he had invented a
banal lyric, passing it off as genuine and condemning Sullivan for supposedly
setting such inanity.[294] In 1929 Fuller Maitland admitted that he had been wrong
in earlier years to dismiss Sullivan's comic operas as "ephemeral".[295]

The first was "Take a pair of sparkling eyes", from The Gondoliers.[303]

References

Young, pp. 1–2

Ainger, pp. 6 and 22–23
Jacobs, pp. 6–7
Jacobs, p. 7
Sullivan, quoted in Young, pp. 4–5
Young, p. 5
Jacobs, p. 7; and Ainger, p. 24
Jacobs, pp. 8 and 12
Jacobs, pp. 12–13
Jacobs, pp. 10–11
Young, p. 8
"Arthur Sullivan", The Musical Times, 1 December 1900, pp. 785–87 (subscription
required)
Rosen, Carole. "Lind, Jenny (1820–1887)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 7 December 2008 (subscription or UK public
library membership required)
MacKenzie, Alexander. "The Life-Work of Arthur Sullivan", Sammelbände der
Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3. Jahrg., H. 3, May 1902, pp. 539–64
(subscription required)
Fitzsimons, pp. 98 and 142
Jacobs, pp. 13–16
Jacobs, p. 17
Ainger, p. 37
Jacobs, p. 24
Jacobs, pp. 22–24
Young, p. 21
Jacobs, p. 23
Jacobs, pp. 27–28
Lawrence, Arthur H. "An Illustrated interview with Sir Arthur Sullivan, Part I",
The Strand Magazine, vol. xiv, No. 84, December 1897
Ainger, p. 56
Jacobs, Arthur. "Sullivan, Sir Arthur", Grove Music Online, Oxford University
Press, accessed 19 August 2011 (subscription required)
Musgrave, pp. 171–72
Jacobs, p. 35
Jacobs, p. 38
Jacobs, p. 37
Jacobs, pp. 36 and 42
Jacobs, p. 43
"Concerts", The Times, 17 June 1867, p. 12
Jacobs, p. 45; and Young, p. 56
Kreissle (1869), pp. 327–328 and, with respect to the whole journey, pp. 297–332
Jacobs, pp. 42–43
Ainger, p. 65
Young, p. 63
Young, p. 63; and Rollins and Witts, p. 15
Sullivan, Marc. "Discography of Sir Arthur Sullivan: Recordings of Hymns and
Songs", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, 11 July 2010, accessed 9 September
2011
"Worcester Music Festival", The Times, 9 September 1869, p. 10
Hughes, p. 14
Lunn, Henry C. "The Birmingham Musical Festival", The Musical Times, 1 October
1870, pp. 615–20 (subscription required)
Crowther (2011), p. 84
Jacobs, pp. 57–58
Jacobs, p. 68
Jacobs, pp. 27–28 and 38
Jacobs, pp. 65–66
Branston, John. "Christian Soldiers: The Salvation Army brings humility and $48
million to the fairgrounds discussion", Memphis Flyer, 18 November 2005
Young, p. 99
Ainger, p. 93
Jacobs, p. 50
Rees, p. 72
Rees, p. 15
Rees, p. 78
Walters, Michael. "Thespis: a reply", W. S. Gilbert Society Journal, Vol. 4, part
3, Issue 29, Summer 2011
Rees, pp. 34, 49 and 89
Stedman, p. 94
Stedman, pp. 126–27
Jacobs, pp. 75–76
Jacobs, p. 76
Jacobs, p. 108
Young, pp. 278–80
Howarth, Paul. The Miller and His Man, the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed
28 July 2018
Ainger, pp. 107–08
McElroy, George. "Whose Zoo; or, When Did the Trial Begin?", Nineteenth Century
Theatre Research, 12 December 1984, pp. 39–54
Ainger, p. 108
Jacobs, p. 90
Allen, p. 30
The Daily News, 27 March 1875, p. 3
"Trial by Jury", The Musical World, 3 April 1875, p. 226, accessed 17 June 2008
Jacobs, pp. 91–92
Rollins and Witts, pp. 5–12
Young, pp. 273–78, gives a complete list. For links and descriptions, see Howarth,
Paul (ed.) "Sir Arthur Sullivan's Songs and Parlour Ballads", the Gilbert and
Sullivan Archive, 18 July 2004, accessed 18 December 2017
Ainger, p. 128
Goodman, p. 19
Sands, John. "Dance Arrangements from the Savoy Operas" (Introduction), the Gilbert
and Sullivan Archive, 4 April 2010, accessed 28 August 2018
Ainger, p. 121
Wright, David. "The South Kensington Music Schools and the Development of the
British Conservatoire in the Late Nineteenth Century", Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, Oxford University Press, Vol. 130 No. 2, pp. 236–82
Legge, Robin H. "Charles Hubert Hastings Parry", The Musical Times, 1 November
1918, pp. 489–91 (subscription required)
Rollins and Witts, p. 5
Crowther (2000), p. 96
Crowther (2000), p. 96; and Stedman, p. 169
Ainger, p. 155
Gaye, p. 1532; and Gillan, Don. "Longest Running Plays in London and New York",
StageBeauty.net (2007), accessed 10 March 2009
Prestige, Colin. "D'Oyly Carte and the Pirates: The Original New York Productions
of Gilbert and Sullivan", pp. 113–48 at p. 118, Gilbert and Sullivan Papers
Presented at the International Conference held at the University of Kansas in May
1970, Edited by James Helyar. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Libraries,
1971.
Rosen, Z. S. "The Twilight of the Opera Pirates: A Prehistory of the Right of
Public Performance for Musical Compositions", Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law
Journal, Vol. 24, 2007 (subscription required)
"Opera Comique", The Times, 27 May 1878, p. 6
Allen, Introduction to chapter on H.M.S. Pinafore
Dailey, p. 28; and Lawrence, pp. 163–64
"A Talk With Mr. Sullivan", The New York Times, 1 August 1879, p. 3, accessed 22
May 2012
Rollins and Witts, p. 7
Jacobs, p. 139
Ainger, p. 163
McClure, Derrick. "The Martyr of Antioch: Gilbert's Contribution to the Libretto",
the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 28 July 2018
Jacobs, p. 146
"Dr. Hanslick on Music in England", The Musical Times, 1 September 1886, pp. 518–20
(subscription required); Hanslick, p. 263, quoted in Rodmell, p. 343; and Jacobs,
p. 249
Shaw, Vol. 2, p. 174
Shaw, Vol. 1, p. 237
Blackburn, Vernon. "Leeds Musical Festival", Pall Mall Gazette, 7 October 1898, p.
3
Ainger, pp. 190, 195, 203, 215, 255–56 and 390
Palmer, chapter 3
Rollins and Witts, pp. 3–18
See, e.g., The Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1910, p. 1; Fitz-Gerald, The Story
of the Savoy Opera, passim; Rollins and Witts, passim; and Farrell, passim
"Savoy", Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, June 2017, accessed 9
December 2017 (subscription required)
Jacobs, p. 178
Ainger, pp. 217–19
Ainger, p. 219
Ainger, p. 220
Jacobs, p. 188
Jacobs, p. 187
Crowther, Andrew. "The Carpet Quarrel Explained", the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive,
accessed 28 July 2018
Ainger, p. 230
Jacobs, pp. 190–93
Rollins and Witts, p. 10
Mackerness, E.D. "Cellier, Alfred", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press,
accessed 18 August 2011 (subscription required); and Gänzl, Kurt. "Cloches de
Corneville, Les", The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Grove Music Online, Oxford
University Press, accessed 18 August 2011
Jacobs, pp. 242–43
Turnbull, Stephen. "Sullivan Biography", the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed
28 July 2018
Russell Hulme, David. Notes to Hyperion CD set CDA67280, The Golden Legend (2001)
Jacobs, p. 243
Ainger, pp. 259–61
Ainger, pp. 265, 270
Ainger, pp. 281–82; and Jacobs, pp. 274–75
"Sir Arthur Sullivan: A Talk With the Composer of Pinafore", San Francisco
Chronicle, 22 July 1885, p. 9
Hughes, p.19
Letter from Gilbert to Sullivan, 20 February 1889, quoted in Jacobs, p. 282
Letter from Sullivan to Gilbert, 12 March 1889, quoted in Jacobs, pp. 283–84
Jacobs, pp. 282–83 and 288; and Ainger, p. 294
Hughes, p. 24
Ainger, p. 303
Stedman, p. 270
Ainger, pp. 315–16
Ainger, p. 312
Lamb, Andrew. "Ivanhoe and the Royal English Opera", The Musical Times, Vol. 114,
No. 1563, May 1973, pp. 475–78 (subscription required)
Jacobs, pp. 328–29
Ainger, p. 322
Gordon-Powell, Robin. Ivanhoe, full score, Introduction, vol. I, pp. XII–XIV, 2008,
The Amber Ring
Klein, Herman. "An Account of the Composition and Production of Ivanhoe", Thirty
Years of Musical Life in London, 1870–1900 (1903), reprinted at the Gilbert and
Sullivan Archive, 3 October 2003, accessed 5 October 2014
Jacobs, pp. 335–36
Young, p. 194
Eden, David and William Parry. Notes to Hyperion CD set CDA67486, The
Contrabandista and The Foresters (2004)
Lamb, Andrew. "Sullivan, The Contrabandista", Gramophone, December 2004, p. 121
Jacobs, pp. 336–42
Jacobs, pp. 341–42
Jacobs, pp. 436–37
Ainger, p. 328
Ainger, p. 346
Coles, Clifton. "Mirette: Introduction", the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 28 May
1998, accessed 28 July 2018
Ainger, p. 352
Ainger, p. 357
Young, p. 201
Jacobs, pp. 372–76
Entry from Sullivan's diary, quoted in Jacobs p. 379
Jacobs, p. 379
Coles, Clifton. "The Beauty Stone: Notes on the Text", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Archive, 2004, accessed 18 July 2018
Jacobs, pp. 379–80
Lycett, p. 432
Jacobs, pp. 387, 391–92
Jacobs, p. 400
Jacobs, Arthur. "Sullivan, Sir Arthur Seymour (1842–1900)", Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004 (online edition, May
2006), accessed 8 July 2008 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
Howarth, Paul. "Te Deum Laudamus, A Thanksgiving for Victory", the Gilbert and
Sullivan Archive, 12 January 2010, accessed 28 July 2018
"Funeral of Sir Arthur Sullivan", The Times, 28 November 1900, p. 12
The London Gazette, 9 July 1897, p. 54
Bradley (2005), pp. 30 and 68
Downs, Peter. "Actors Cast Away Cares", Hartford Courant, 18 October 2006
(subscription required)
Bradley, Chapter 1
"The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953)" and "Topsy-Turvy, British Film
Institute, accessed 13 December 2017.
Jones, J. Bush. Our Musicals, Ourselves, pp. 10–11, 2003, Brandeis University
Press: Lebanon, N.H. (2003) 1584653116
Ainger, p. 87; and Jacobs, pp. 53–55.
Wolfson, passim
Ainger, pp. 128–29
Quoted in Jacobs, p. 88
Ainger, p. 167
Ainger, p. 135
Ainger, p. 390
Jacobs, p. 161; and Ainger, p. 177
Jacobs, pp. 178, 203–04; and Ainger, pp. 210 and 237–38
Jacobs, p. 20
Jacobs, p. 295
Ainger, pp. 306 and 342
Ainger, pp. 364–65
Whitworth, Michael H. "Schiff, Sydney Alfred (1868–1944)", Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2008, accessed 26 October 2012
(subscription or UK public library membership required); and Usher, David A. "In
Search of Miss Violet: The Personal Journey of a Gilbert & Sullivan Devotee",
GASBAG, Friends of the University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society, Volume
XLIV, No. 1, Issue 259, Summer 2013, pp. 24–29
Jacobs, p. 371
Young, pp. 246–47 and 250
Grossmith, George. "Sir Arthur Sullivan: A Personal Reminiscence", The Pall Mall
Magazine, February 1901, reprinted at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 28
July 2018
Beresiner, Yasha. "Gilbert and Sullivan: Musical Masons", Pietre-Stones Review of
Freemasonry, 18 December 2007
Jacobs, p. 73 and passim
Lytton, Henry (1922). "Leaders of the Savoy", Secrets of a Savoyard, the Gilbert
and Sullivan Archive, accessed 28 July 2018
Stone, David. "Frederic Sullivan", Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company,
27 January 2007, accessed 28 July 2018
"Public Amusements", Liverpool Mercury, 5 September 1871, p. 1
Ainger, p. 107; and "The London Theatres", The Era, 6 September 1874, p. 11
Ainger, pp. 107, 113 and 120
Hayes, passim
Hayes, pp. 6–7
Ainger, pp. 224–25
Hayes, p. 9
Hayes, pp. 10–12
Hayes, pp. 14–22
Hayes, pp. 23–32
Stone, David. Kate Sullivan, Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 27
January 2007, accessed 28 July 2018
Stone, David. Jennie Hervey, Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 8
August 2002, accessed 28 July 2018
Rollins and Witts, pp. 8, 10–12, 70, 71, 73–75 and 77; and Stone, David. Rose
Hervey, Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 7 August 2002, accessed 28
July 2018
See Sullivan family tree in appendix to Jacobs
Young, passim
Jacobs, p. 42
Young, pp, 271–72
Young, p. 22
Taylor, Chapter 1, 3rd and 4th page
Hughes, p. 69
Taylor, p. 10
Eden and Saremba, p. 38
Eden and Saremba, p. 57
Eden and Saremba, pp. 76–77
Eden and Saremba, p. 57; and Klein, p. 196
Eden and Saremba, p. 60
Fink, Robert. "Rhythm and Text Setting in The Mikado", 19th Century Music, vol. XIV
No. 1, Summer 1990
Ainger, p. 138
"Sir Arthur Sullivan", interviewed by The Pall Mall Gazette, 5 December 1889,
reprinted at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 6 October 2011
Hughes, p. 130
Rees, p. 79
Hughes, pp. 130–41
Williams, p. 298
Jacobs, p. 244; and Harding, p. 119
Hughes, p. 129
Hughes, p. 128
Hughes, p. 125
Hughes, p. 52
Hughes, p. 44
Hughes, pp. 44 and 49
Hughes, p. 59
Hughes, p. 48
Hughes, pp. 47–48
Hughes, p. 66
Macdonald, Hugh. "Berlioz, (Louis-)Hector", Grove Music Online, Oxford University
Press, 2001 accessed 11 October 2018 (subscription required)
Hughes, p. 78
Hughes, pp. 79 and 81–82
Hughes, pp. 79–80
Rees, p. 80
Hughes, pp. 73–74
Hughes, p. 75
Hughes, p. 118
Hughes, pp. 96–97
Young, p. 178
Hughes, p. 96
Seeley, Paul. "Authentic Sullivan", Opera, November 2016, p. 1372; and "The Savoy
Opera Revival", The Observer, 28 September 1919
Hughes, p. 108
Findon, p. 107
Eden and Saremba, Appendix: The orchestration of Sullivan's major works
Hughes, p. 104
Hughes, p. 117
Cooper, Martin. "Sullivan", Opera News, April 1960, pp. 8–12
Hughes, p. 152
Milnes, Rodney. "Putting the Jolly in Roger", The Times, 26 April 2001, Section 2,
p. 20
Greenfield, Edward. "Sullivan – Symphony in E major", The Gramophone, February
1969, p. 61
De Ternant, Andrew. "Debussy and Others on Sullivan", The Musical Times, 1 December
1924, pp. 1089–90 (subscription required)
Hughes, pp. 46–47 and 152
Young, p. 221; and Burton, Nigel. "100 Years of a Legend", The Musical Times, 1
October 1986 pp. 554–57 (subscription required)
Hughes, pp. 144–45
"The Rose of Persia; Or, the Story-teller and the Slave", The Era, 2 December 1899,
p. 14
Hughes, pp. 150–51; and Jacobs, p. 52
Hughes, pp. 151 and 80
Scherer, Barrymore Laurence. "Gilbert & Sullivan, Parody's Patresfamilias", The
Wall Street Journal, 23 June 2011, accessed 19 December 2017 (subscription
required)
Hughes, pp. 150–51
Hughes, p. 109
Williams, p. 217
Hughes, p. 143
Young, p. 223
Jacobs, pp. 28 and 42
Quoted in Jacobs, p. 28
"A Humorous Knight", Punch, 30 October 1880, p. 202
Jacobs, p. 48
Jacobs, p. 49
Gammond, p. 137
The London Figaro, quoted in Allen, pp. 49–50
Beatty-Kingston, William. The Theatre, 1 January 1883, p. 28
"University Intelligence", The Times, 18 May 1876, p. 6
"University Intelligence", The Times, 11 June 1879, p. 10
25 October 1880, quoted in Jacobs, p. 149
Grove, George. "Sullivan, Arthur Seymour" Grove's Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, London 1879–89, p. 762, quoted in Sarema, Meinhard. "In the Purgatory of
Tradition: Arthur Sullivan and the English Musical Renaissance", Deutsche Sullivan
Gesellschaft, 2000, accessed 10 December 2017
Stanford, pp. 161–63
"Leeds Music Festival", The Observer, 17 October 1886, p. 6
Quoted in Harris, p. IV
Quoted in Allen, p. 312
Dailey, pp. 129–33
Quoted in Jacobs, p. 331
"Sir Arthur Sullivan's New Ballet", The Daily News, 26 May 1897, p. 8; "Alhambra
Theatre", The Morning Post, 26 May 1897, p. 7; "Sir Arthur Sullivan's New Ballet
'Victoria'", The Manchester Guardian, 26 May 1897, p. 7; "Music", The Illustrated
London News, 29 May 1897, p. 730; and "Victoria And Merrie England", The Era, 29
May 1897, p. 8
Quoted in Tillett, p. 26
Maine, Basil. "Elgar, Sir Edward William", 1949, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography archive, accessed 20 April 2010 (subscription or UK public library
membership required)
Quoted in the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Journal, No. 34, Spring 1992, pp. 11–12
Sullivan's Obituary in The Times, 23 November 1900, pp. 7 and 9, reprinted at the
Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 12 December 2017
Fuller Maitland, J. A. "Obituary", Cornhill Magazine, March 1901, pp. 300–09
Young, p. 264
Quoted in Young, p. 264
Burton, Nigel. "Sullivan Reassessed: See How the Fates", The Musical Times, Winter
2000, pp. 15–22 (subscription required)
"Light Opera", The Times, 22 September 1934, p. 10
Hughes, p. 6
Howes, p. 54
Dunhill 1928, p. 13
"Sir Henry Wood Jubilee Concert at Albert Hall", The Times, 6 October 1938, p. 10
Shepherd, Marc. "Discography of Sir Arthur Sullivan", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Discography, 10 July 2010, accessed 5 October 2014
"The Lasting Charm of Gilbert and Sullivan: Operas of an Artificial World", The
Times, 14 February 1957, p. 5
"Historic Sullivan Recordings", the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, accessed 28 July
2018
Wolfson, John (1973). "A history of Savoyard recordings", Notes to Pearl LP set GEM
118/120
Rollins and Witts, Appendix pp. x–xi; and Shepherd, Marc. "The First D'Oyly Carte
Recordings", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, 18 November 2001, accessed 5
October 2014
Rollins and Witts, Appendix, pp. xi–xiii; and Shepherd, Marc. "G&S Discography: The
Electrical Era", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, 18 November 2001, accessed 5
October 2014
Shepherd, Marc. "The D'Oyly Carte Stereo Recordings", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Discography, 24 December 2003, accessed 5 October 2014
Shepherd, Marc. "The Gilbert and Sullivan for All recordings", the Gilbert and
Sullivan Discography, accessed 8 September 2011, accessed 5 October 2014
Shepherd, Marc. "G&S Discography: The Stereo Era", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Discography, accessed 18 November 2001, accessed 5 October 2014
Shepherd, Marc. "G&S Discography: The Digital Era", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Discography, 27 August 2002, accessed 5 October 2014
Shepherd, Marc. "G&S on Film, TV and Video", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography,
18 November 2001, accessed 5 October 2014
"DVDs", International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival, accessed 10 December 2017
Shepherd, Marc. "The Ohio Light Opera Recordings", the Gilbert and Sullivan
Discography, 18 April 2010, accessed 2 December 2017
HMV 78 discs 02397 and 03151: Rust, p. xxxiv
Shepherd, Marc. "Overture di Ballo (1870)", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography,
12 July 2009, accessed 10 December 2017
"Irish Symphony; Overture di Ballo", EMI LP ASD 2435, WorldCat, accessed 11
December 2017
"Romance, op. 62", EMI LP EL 27 0430 1, WorldCat, accessed 11 December 2017
"The Rose of Persia", BBC Music Magazine, V7/9, WorldCat, accessed 11 December 2017
"The Golden Legend", Hyperion CD set 67280, World Cat, accessed 11 December 2017
"Ivanhoe", Chandos CD set CHAN 10578, WorldCat, accessed 11 December 2017
"Early works of Arthur Sullivan: On Shore and Sea and Kenilworth", Dutton CD set
DLX 7310, WorldCat, accessed 11 December 2017
"Songs", Chandos CD set CHAN 10935, WorldCat, accessed 10 December 2017

"Recordings of Pineapple Poll", the Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, 1

November 2009, accessed 10 December 2017

Sources

Ainger, Michael (2002). Gilbert and Sullivan – A Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514769-8.
Allen, Reginald (1976). The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan. London: Chappell.
ISBN 978-0-903443-10-4.
Bradley, Ian C (2005). Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert
and Sullivan. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516700-9.
Crowther, Andrew (2000). Contradiction Contradicted – The Plays of W. S.
Gilbert. London and Madison, New Jersey: Associated University Presses and
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 978-0-8386-3839-2.
Crowther, Andrew (2011). Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan: his Life and Character.
London: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5589-1.
Dailey, Jeff S. (2008). Sir Arthur Sullivan's Grand Opera Ivanhoe and its
Theatrical and Musical Precursors. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN
978-0-7734-5068-4.
Dunhill, Thomas (1928). Sullivan's Comic Operas – A Critical Appreciation.
London: Edward Arnold. OCLC 409499.
Eden, David; Meinhard Saremba (2009). The Cambridge Companion to Gilbert and
Sullivan. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-88849-3.
Farrell, Scott (2009). The C. H. Workman Productions: A Centenary Review of the
Final Savoy Operas. Loves Park: Scott Farrell. ISBN 978-1-257-34089-7.
Findon, Benjamin William (1904). Sir Arthur Sullivan – His Life and Music.
London: James Nisbet. OCLC 499660152.
Fitz-Gerald, S. J. Adair (1924). The Story of the Savoy Opera. London: Stanley
Paul & Co. OCLC 711957498.
Fitzsimons, Bob (2008). Arthur O'Leary & Arthur Sullivan: Musical Journeys from
Kerry to the Heart of Victorian England. Tralee: Doghouse. ISBN 978-0-9558746-1-1.
Gammond, Peter (1980). Offenbach. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-0257-
2.
Gaye, Freda, ed. (1967). Who's Who in the Theatre (fourteenth ed.). London: Sir
Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 5997224.
Goodman, Andrew (1988). Gilbert and Sullivan's London. Tunbridge Wells:
Spellmount. ISBN 978-0-946771-31-8.
Hanslick, Eduard (1988) [1950]. Hanslick's Music Criticisms. Henry Pleasants
(ed and trans). New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-25739-6.
Harding, James (1965). Saint-Saëns and his Circle. London: Chapman and Hall.
OCLC 60222627.
Harris, Roger, ed. (1986). The Golden Legend. Chorleywood: R Clyde. OCLC
16794345.
Hayes, Scott (2003). Uncle Arthur: The California Connection. Saffron Walden:
Sir Arthur Sullivan Society. OCLC 52232815.
Howes, Frank (1966). The English Musical Renaissance. London: Secker and
Warburg. OCLC 460655985.
Hughes, Gervase (1959). The Music of Sir Arthur Sullivan. London: Macmillan.
OCLC 500626743.
Jacobs, Arthur (1984). Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician. Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-315443-8.
Klein, Herman (1903). Thirty Years of Musical Life in London, 1870–1900.
London: Heinemann. OCLC 5346607.
Kreissle von Hellborn, Heinrich; Coleridge, Arthur Duke (translator); Grove,
George (appendix) (1869). The Life of Franz Schubert. 2. Longmans, Green, and Co.
Lawrence, Arthur (1899). Sir Arthur Sullivan, Life Story, Letters and
Reminiscences (1907 ed.). London: Duffield. OCLC 1303888.
Lycett, Andrew (2000). Rudyard Kipling. London: Phoenix. ISBN 978-0-7538-1085-
9.
 Musgrave, Michael (1995). The Musical Life of the Crystal Palace. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-37562-7.
Palmer, Fiona M. (2017). Conductors in Britain 1870–1914: Wielding the Baton at
the Height of Empire. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer. ISBN 978-1-783-
27145-0.
Rees, Terence (1964). Thespis – A Gilbert & Sullivan Enigma. London: Dillon's
University Bookshop. OCLC 220047638.
Rodmell, Paul (2017). Charles Villiers Stanford. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-
138-26903-3.
Rollins, Cyril; R. John Witts (1961). The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert
and Sullivan Operas. London: Michael Joseph, Ltd. OCLC 1317843.
Rust, Brian (1975). Gramophone Records of the First World War: An HMV Catalogue
1914–18. Newton Abbot: David and Charles. ISBN 978-0-7153-6842-8.
Shaw, Bernard (1981). Dan Laurence (ed.). Shaw's Music: The Complete Music
Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 1 (1876–1890). London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-
0-370-30247-8.
Shaw, Bernard (1981). Dan Laurence (ed.). Shaw's Music: The Complete Music
Criticism of Bernard Shaw, Volume 2 (1890–1893). London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-
0-370-31271-2.
Stanford, Charles Villiers (1908). Studies and Memories. London: Constable.
OCLC 238881659.
Stedman, Jane W. (1996). W. S. Gilbert, A Classic Victorian & His Theatre.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816174-5.
Taylor, Benedict (2017). Arthur Sullivan: A Musical Reappraisal. Abingdon and
New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4094-6910-0.
Tillett, Selwyn (1998). The Ballets of Arthur Sullivan. Coventry: Sir Arthur
Sullivan Society. OCLC 227181926.
Williams, Carolyn (2010). Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody. New
York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14804-7.
Wolfson, John (1984). Sullivan and the Scott Russells: A Victorian love affair
told through the letters of Rachel and Louise Scott Russell to Arthur Sullivan,
1864–1870. Chichester: Packard Publishing. ISBN 978-0-906527-14-6.
Young, Percy M. (1971). Sir Arthur Sullivan. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. ISBN
978-0-460-03934-5.

Further reading

Allen, Reginald; Gale R. D'Luhy (1975). Sir Arthur Sullivan – Composer &
Personage. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library. OCLC 642398593.
Bradley, Ian C (1997). Abide With Me: The World of the Victorian Hymn. London:
SCM-Canterbury Press. ISBN 978-0-334-02703-4.
Cellier, François; Cunningham Bridgeman (1914). Gilbert and Sullivan and Their
Operas. New York: Little, Brown and Company. OCLC 58942004.
Hulme, David Russell (1986). The operettas of Sir Arthur Sullivan: A study of
available autograph scores. Aberystwyth University.
Dillard, Philip H. (1996). Sir Arthur Sullivan: A Resource Book. Boston:
Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-3157-5.

External links
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Arthur Sullivan
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur Sullivan.
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Arthur Sullivan
General

Extensive list of links to Sullivan works and materials, Gilbert and Sullivan
Archive
Sir Arthur Sullivan Society
Detailed 1879 article about Sullivan
 "The Other Side of Sullivan", lecture by Robin Wilson, 2008.
"Archival material relating to Arthur Sullivan". UK National Archives. Edit
this at Wikidata
Works by Arthur Sullivan at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Music

Free scores by Arthur Sullivan in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Free scores by Sullivan at the International Music Score Library Project
(IMSLP)
Works by or about Arthur Sullivan at Internet Archive
Sullivan manuscript scores at The Morgan Library
Works by Arthur Sullivan at Project Gutenberg

vte

Gilbert and Sullivan

W. S. Gilbert Arthur Sullivan Richard D'Oyly Carte

Operas

Thespis Trial by Jury The Sorcerer H.M.S. Pinafore The Pirates of Penzance
Patience Iolanthe Princess Ida The Mikado Ruddigore The Yeomen of the Guard The
Gondoliers Utopia, Limited The Grand Duke

Related

Savoy opera D'Oyly Carte Opera Company Helen Carte Rupert D'Oyly Carte Bridget
D'Oyly Carte Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan International Gilbert and
Sullivan Festival W. S. Gilbert bibliography
dramatic works List of compositions by Arthur Sullivan Grim's Dyke People
associated with Gilbert and Sullivan Works about Gilbert and Sullivan Adaptations
of works by Gilbert and Sullivan

Authority control Edit this at Wikidata

BNE: XX1091246 BNF: cb13900171x (data) CANTIC: a10160711 GND: 118799371 ISNI:
0000 0000 8167 9107 LCCN: n80019543 MusicBrainz: 4b466f5e-4620-4084-8841-
3fe4ea38e689 NDL: 01034017 NKC: ola2002111164 NLA: 36546130 NLI: 000426579 NTA:
069735107 SELIBR: 283521 SNAC: w69p2zzd SUDOC: 080711707 Trove: 1284514 VIAF:
95208295 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n80019543

Categories:

Arthur Sullivan1842 births1900 deathsEnglish Romantic composersEnglish opera

composersMale opera composersEnglish male classical composersOratorio
composersBritish ballet composers19th-century British composers19th-century
classical composersKnights BachelorComposers awarded knighthoodsGilbert and
Sullivan19th-century English musicians19th-century male musiciansUniversity of
Music and Theatre Leipzig alumniAlumni of the Royal Academy of MusicEnglish
AnglicansFreemasons of the United Grand Lodge of EnglandPeople from LambethEnglish
people of Irish descentEnglish people of Italian descentBurials at St Paul's
Cathedral

Navigation menu

Not logged in
Talk
 Contributions
Create account
Log in

Article
Talk

Read
Edit
View history

Search

Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store

Interaction

Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page

Tools

What links here

Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page

In other projects

Wikimedia Commons
Wikiquote
Wikisource

Print/export

Download as PDF
Printable version

Languages

Dansk
Deutsch
Ελληνικά
Español
Français
Italiano
 Nederlands
Polski
Русский

Edit links

This page was last edited on 21 April 2020, at 07:52 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., a non-profit organization.

Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Developers
Statistics
Cookie statement
Mobile view
Contact Wikipedia

Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki