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Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was an English composer best known for his operatic collaborations with W. S. Gilbert. Learn about his life, career, music, reputation and legacy on Wikipedia.
Arthur Sullivan was a British composer who created the distinctive English form of the operetta with W.S. Gilbert. Learn about his life, works, and legacy in this comprehensive article from Britannica.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn about the life and works of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the composer of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other musical genres. Explore his childhood, training, career, partnership with Gilbert, and legacy.
A comprehensive list of musical works by the English composer Arthur Sullivan, best known for his operas with W. S. Gilbert. The list includes theatre music, ballets, choral works, orchestral works, song cycles, church music, and other genres.
- Life and Career
- Personal Life
- Compositional Style
- Reputation and Criticism
- Sullivan as Conductor
- Sullivan's Views on Edison's Phonograph and Recorded Music
- See Also
- References
- Further Reading
- External Links
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Beginnings
Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London. His father, Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866), was a military bandmaster and music teacher born in Ireland, who was educated in Chelsea, London and was based for some years at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Here Arthur became proficient with all the instruments in the band by the age of eight. His mother Mary Clementina (née Coghlan, 1811–1882) was English, of Irish and Italian descent. While studying at a private school in Bayswater, Sull...
First operas
Sullivan's first attempt at opera, The Sapphire Necklace (1863–64, libretto by Henry F. Chorley), was not produced and is now lost, although the overture and two songs from the work were separately published. His first surviving opera, Cox and Box (1866), was originally written for a private performance. It then received charity performances in both London and Manchester, and it was later produced at the Gallery of Illustration, where it ran for an extremely successful 264 performance...
Death, honours and legacy
Having suffered from long-standing recurrent kidney disease that made it necessary, from the 1880s, for him to conduct sitting down, Sullivan died of heart failure, following an attack of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900.[101][102] His last opera, The Emerald Isle, was left unfinished but was completed by Edward German and produced in 1901. His Te Deum, written to commemorate the end of the Boer War, was performed posthumously. A monument in the composer's memory featurin...
Romantic life
Although Sullivan never married, he had many love affairs. His first serious affair was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845–1882). Precisely when it began is uncertain, but Sullivan and his friend, Frederic Clay, were frequent visitors at the Scott Russell home beginning in 1864, and by 1866 the affair was in full bloom. Rachel's parents did not approve of a possible union to a young composer with uncertain financial prospects. After Rachel's mother discovered the relationship in 1867, the two co...
Leisure and family life
Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and the south of France), where his well-connected friends included the princess Marie-Amélie of Orleans and Claude Debussy.[123] In 1865 he was initiated as a Freemason of the aristocratic Studholme Lodge № 1451, where he met and dined with its numerous well-connected members.[124] He was the Grand Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.[125] Sullivan was devoted to his parents, partic...
Method and text setting
Sullivan composed without the use of the keyboard. "I don't use the piano in composition – that would limit me terribly", he told interviewer Arthur Lawrence. Sullivan explained that his process of composition was not to wait for inspiration like "a miner seated at the top of a shaft", waiting for "the coal to come bubbling up to the surface.... He has to dig for it.... The first thing I have to decide upon is the rhythm, and I decide on that before I come to the question of melody. The notes...
Melody and rhythm
As Sullivan told Lawrence, his melodies sprung from rhythm,[132] although some of his themes may have been prompted by his chosen instrumentation or his harmonic techniques.[140] In the comic operas, where many numbers were in verse-plus-refrain form, Sullivan frequently was required to produce two climaxes in the melodic line. Hughes instances ‘If you go in’ (Iolanthe) as a good example. Hughes goes so far as to say that though most of the tunes in the Savoy operas are good ones, Sullivan ra...
Harmony and counterpoint
Harmony Sullivan was trained in the classical style, and contemporary music did not greatly attract him.[145] Harmonically his early works used the conventional formulae of Auber, Donizetti, Balfe and Schubert.[145] Later he drew on Gounod and Bizet. Mendelssohn's influence, conspicuous in early works, appears intermittently in later ones. As a contemporary writer observed, Sullivan draws on these various influences while remaining recognisably himself.[146] In general, Sullivan preferred to...
Early career
When the young Arthur Sullivan returned to England after his studies in Leipzig, critics were struck by his potential. His incidental music to The Tempest received an acclaimed premiere at the Crystal Palace on 5 April 1862. The Athenaeumwrote: His Irish Symphonyof 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." A comment that may be taken as typical of those that would follow...
The transition to opera
By the mid-1870s, Sullivan had turned his attention mainly to works for the theatre, for which he was generally admired. For instance, after the first performance of Trial by Jury (1875), the Times said that "It seems, as in the great Wagnerian operas, as though poem and music had proceeded simultaneously from one and the same brain."[182] But by the time The Sorcererappeared, there were charges that Sullivan was wasting his talents in comic opera: Implicit in these comments was the view that...
Knighthood and maturity
After Sullivan was knighted in 1883, serious music critics renewed the charge that the composer was squandering his talent. The Musical Reviewof that year wrote: In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Sir George Grove, who was an old friend of Sullivan's, recognised the artistry in the Savoy Operas while urging the composer to bigger and better things: "Surely the time has come when so able and experienced a master of voice, orchestra, and stage effect—master, too, of so much genuine s...
Sullivan held high-profile conducting posts in the 1880s, primarily the musical directorship of the Philharmonic Society and the triennial Leeds festival. He was not regarded as an exciting conductor. The Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote of Sullivan's conducting of a Mozart symphony: "Sullivan presides on the podium from the comfortable ...
In 1888, Thomas Edison sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to Mr. George Gouraud in London, England, and on 14 August 1888, Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made.[205] A series of parties foll...
Ainger, Michael (2002). Gilbert and Sullivan – A Dual Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195147693.Allen, Reginald; Gale R. D'Luhy (1975a). Sir Arthur Sullivan – Composer & Personage. New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library.Allen, Reginald (1975b). The First Night Gilbert and Sullivan. London: Chappell & Co. Ltd.Bradley, Ian C (2005). Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! The Enduring Phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195167007.Baily, Leslie (1966). The Gilbert and Sullivan Book(Third Edition ed.). London: Spring Books.Brahms, Caryl (1975). Gilbert and Sullivan: Lost Chords and Discords. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.Bradley, Ian (1996). The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019816503X.Burton, Nigel (2000). "See how the fates". Musical Times. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3870/is_200001/ai_n8899626. Retrieved 2006-04-09.Free scores by Arthur Sullivan in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)Archival material relating to Arthur Sullivan listed at the UK National Register of ArchivesFree scores by Sullivan in the International Music Score Library ProjectThe Mutopia Project has compositions by Arthur SullivanLearn about the life and works of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the English composer of comic operas with W. S. Gilbert and other genres. Explore his musical style, reputation, legacy and more.
Oct 31, 2017 · Learn about the life and music of Arthur Sullivan, the leading composer of Victorian comic operas with W. S. Gilbert. Explore his musical style, notable operas, related media and more.
Learn about the life and works of Sir Arthur Sullivan, the composer of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other genres. Find recordings, publications, festivals, events and more on the official website of the society.
