1842–1900 · United Kingdom · Romantic
Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was a British composer, organist, conductor and teacher, born in London. He became best known for the operettas he wrote with William Gilbert, among them The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore. The site offers his song "The Long Day Closes" for voice and piano.
Arthur Seymour Sullivan came into the world in Lambeth, London, on 13 May 1842. His father, Thomas, was born in Ireland but grew up in Chelsea, London; he was a military bandmaster, a clarinettist and a teacher. His mother, Mary Clementina, née Coghlan, was of Irish and Italian descent but had been born in England. Besides Arthur, the family had an older son, Frederick. In 1845 the Sullivans moved to Sandhurst, where until 1857 Thomas served as bandmaster of the Royal Military College and earned extra money by giving private music lessons. Arthur often spent time in the college classrooms, learning first one wind instrument, then another, and the piano as well.
By the age of eight Arthur had written a hymn, "By the Waters of Babylon". His father knew how uncertain a musician's career was, so he first talked his son out of music and then sent him to a private school in Bayswater. But in 1854 Arthur persuaded his father to let him audition for George Smart, organist of the Chapel Royal: he sang for Smart to a piano accompaniment, passed the test and at once became a pupil of the chapel under the choirmaster Thomas Helmore. Soon Sullivan was a soloist, and by 1856 the chapel's "first boy". Helmore supported his talent: in 1855 he arranged for the piece "O Israel" to be printed, and it became Sullivan's first published work.
In 1856 the fourteen-year-old Sullivan entered a competition for young composers run by the Royal Academy of Music and, among 24 entrants, became the first holder of the Mendelssohn Scholarship. At the academy he studied with John Goss, and took piano lessons from the academy's principal William Sterndale Bennett and from Arthur O'Leary; he went on singing in the Chapel Royal as well. The scholarship was renewed for another year and in 1858 for a third, and now Sullivan was sent to the Leipzig Conservatoire.
Sullivan spent three years in Germany, although the scholarship had been extended by only one: for the last year he was helped by his father, who raised the money, and by the conservatoire, which postponed his fees. His teachers there were Julius Rietz and Carl Reinecke for composition, Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter for counterpoint, and Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles for piano. His Leipzig string quartet was played at a concert of the conservatoire, and Louis Spohr personally congratulated its author. His graduation work of 1861 was the music for Shakespeare's The Tempest; in 1862 a reworked version of it was played at the Crystal Palace and caused a sensation. From then on Sullivan began to acquire the reputation of the most promising young English composer.
His compositions brought almost no income, so in 1861-1872 Sullivan served as an organist at two London churches and also taught, although he detested the work. In 1863, for the Prince of Wales's wedding, he wrote a march that was played several times on the day of the celebration. Soon the composer was presented to the prince, and a warm friendship sprang up between them.
That same year, 1863, Sullivan visited Paris for the first time, where he met Pauline Viardot and Rossini. Rossini took an interest in the talent of the enthusiastic Sullivan, played for him and gave him valuable advice, especially about dramatic music. Back in London, under the impression of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice, in which Viardot had sung superbly, and of Rossini's prediction of a great future, he decided to devote all his time to composing: teaching, except in unusual cases, seemed to him incompatible with composition.
In 1864 Sullivan wrote the ballet L'Ile Enchantee for Covent Garden and the cantata The Masque at Kenilworth for the Birmingham Festival, and in 1866 the comic opera Cox and Box (264 performances at the Gallery of Illustration). In the autumn of 1867 he went to Vienna with George Grove to hunt for forgotten manuscripts by Schubert: they found seven symphonies, the music for Rosamunde and much else, and interest in Schubert grew noticeably. In 1868 Sullivan composed a set of part-songs, the best known of which became "The Long Day Closes".
In 1870 the composer Frederic Clay introduced Sullivan to William Gilbert at a rehearsal of the show Ages Ago. In late 1871 the impresario John Hollingshead commissioned from them a burlesque comic opera, Thespis, for the Gaiety Theatre; it ran from Christmas until Easter 1872, after which the authors went their separate ways for a time.
In 1875 Richard D'Oyly Carte, who ran the Royalty Theatre, needed a short piece to be played together with Offenbach's operetta La Perichole. He remembered a libretto that Gilbert had once offered, and so the one-act dramatic cantata Trial by Jury came about. The part of the judge was taken by Frederic Sullivan, the composer's brother. The cantata unexpectedly became a hit, won praise from the critics and was performed more than 300 times over several seasons. For the next 15 years Gilbert remained Sullivan's only operatic collaborator: together they wrote 12 more operas. Their next joint work was the comic opera The Sorcerer (1877), shown 178 times in one season.
Sullivan wrote over eighty well-liked songs and drawing-room ballads, most of them composed by the close of the 1870s. The most famous is "The Lost Chord", to Adelaide Anne Procter's poem "A Lost Chord": he composed it beside his sick brother's bed, the song is dated 13 January 1877, and five days later Frederic died. The printed music of his well-known songs sold well and formed an important part of the composer's income.
H.M.S. Pinafore was written in 1878: in 1878-1880 it was given 571 times and became one of the most popular works of musical theatre in the world. Next came The Pirates of Penzance (1879), another international success: it was first staged in New York and afterwards shown 363 times in London.
In April 1881 D'Oyly Carte staged the opera Patience. At first it ran at the Opera Comique in London and then moved to the new Savoy Theatre, built on the proceeds of Gilbert and Sullivan's earlier operas. All their following operas were first staged there and were called the "Savoy operas". Iolanthe (1882) was the first premiere at the new theatre. Working for the Savoy brought the composer a substantial income, but the partnership with Gilbert and Carte increasingly seemed to him dull and endlessly repetitive.
After Iolanthe Sullivan meant to give up the collaboration, but in November 1882 his broker went bankrupt and the composer suffered serious losses. He decided that the best way to mend his finances was to keep writing operas for the Savoy, and in February 1883 Gilbert and he put their names to a five-year contract with Carte, under which the authors were to write a new opera on six months' notice. On 22 May 1883 Queen Victoria knighted Sullivan. The musical elite and many critics held that a knight ought not to sink lower than oratorio or grand opera, and Sullivan, tied by the agreement, felt trapped.
Princess Ida (1884) came out noticeably shorter than the earlier operas. When the theatre's takings fell in 1884, Carte demanded a new opera within six months under the contract. Sullivan replied that he could not write another piece like the earlier ones and asked Gilbert for a fresh plot. The plot Gilbert offered on 8 May had nothing supernatural in it and led the composer out of the impasse: so The Mikado (1885) came about, which ran for 672 performances and ranked second in number of productions among musical-theatre works of its day. The duo's last great success was The Gondoliers (1889).
In April 1890 relations between Gilbert and Carte sharply worsened: Gilbert, having looked into Carte's accounts, objected to excessive spending on productions and to an expensive carpet for the foyer of the Savoy Theatre. Sullivan sided with Carte, who was building a new theatre for his forthcoming grand opera. Gilbert sued Carte and Sullivan and swore never to write for the Savoy again. That was the end of the partnership. In September 1890 Sullivan wrote to Gilbert that the whole affair had made him feel unwell.
Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, after the novel by Walter Scott, opened, on 31 January 1891, Carte's new theatre, the Royal English Opera House, and ran for 155 performances in a row. Sullivan finished it later than the date set in the contract and had to pay Carte a penalty of 3,000 pounds. The opera was also played on the tours of 1894-1895, after which it was long forgotten.
Then Sullivan looked for other collaborators: to a libretto by Sydney Grundy came Haddon Hall (1892), a more serious and romantic opera than those written with Gilbert; it was played 204 times. With the help of the publisher Tom Chappell, Gilbert and Sullivan were reconciled, and Utopia, Limited (1893) was played 245 times and only just paid for its lavish staging. One more joint opera, The Grand Duke (1896), was a failure, after which Sullivan did not work with Gilbert again, even though their early operas were successfully revived at the Savoy.
In May 1897 the ballet Victoria and Merrie England, written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, ran at the Alhambra Theatre for six months, which was counted a great success. Arthur Wing Pinero and Comyns Carr wrote the libretto of the comic opera The Beauty Stone (1898), which was a failure: the music proved too serious for the Savoy audience, the critics condemned the opera, and it ran for only seven weeks.
Arthur Sullivan died on 22 November 1900 in London, the city where he was born. The cause of death was heart failure. His burial place was St Paul's Cathedral. In his lifetime Sullivan received a knighthood (1883), became a Knight of the Legion of Honour (1878) and a Member of the Royal Victorian Order (1897).
Sullivan left 23 operas and operettas, 12 major orchestral works, 10 works for chorus and orchestra, music for seven stage plays, two ballets and one song cycle. To these are added 72 hymns, church music, songs, parlour romances and ballads, piano pieces and chamber ensembles. Best known are the 14 operettas with spoken dialogue that he wrote with William Gilbert, among them The Mikado, Iolanthe, The Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore. Among works in other genres, the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and the song "The Lost Chord" are named.
Some of Sullivan's serious works succeeded in his lifetime, but most of them are forgotten today, while the operettas are still staged in English-speaking countries. His orchestral works include the Irish Symphony and the Cello Concerto (1866), the overtures Marmion (1867) and "In Memoriam", and the Overture di Ballo (1870), the longest of his orchestral works. The cantata The Golden Legend (1886) was performed hundreds of times in the composer's lifetime, and its first recording appeared only in 2001. The Yeomen of the Guard, of 1888, is not a grand opera but was Sullivan's most ambitious theatre work of its time; his only grand opera was Ivanhoe (1891). Among his works is music for Shakespeare's plays: The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth (1888).
Sullivan's legacy includes over eighty well-liked songs and drawing-room ballads, most of them composed by the close of the 1870s; their printed music sold well and was a major part of his earnings. The first of his songs to become known was "Orpheus with his Lute", dated 1866; the most famous is "The Lost Chord" (1877). The composer's only vocal cycle is The Window, to words by Alfred Tennyson (1871). And the best known of the part-songs of 1868 is "The Long Day Closes".
The site has one edition of his music: "The Long Day Closes" for voice and piano, at the level "Intermediate+". The best known of his part-songs of 1868 has the same title. His piano music and chamber ensembles, which are part of his legacy, cannot yet be explored on the site.