__NOTOC__ Year 1888 (MDCCCLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Friday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar. In Germany, 1888 is known as the Year of Three Emperors. Currently, it is the year that, when written in Roman numerals, has the most digits (13). This record will not be equalled until 2388 (MMCCCLXXXVIII), or surpassed until 2888 (MMDCCCLXXXVIII).

Events

January–March

January 3 – The 91-centimeter telescope is first used at Lick Observatory.

January 12 – Blizzards (see: ''Schoolhouse Blizzard'') hit Dakota Territory, the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, leaving 235 dead, many of whom are children on their way home from school.

January 13 – In Washington, DC, the National Geographic Society is founded.

February 27 – In West Orange, New Jersey, Thomas Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge, who proposes a scheme for sound film.

March 8 – The Agriculture College of Utah, (later Utah State University) is founded in Logan, Utah.

March 11 – The "Great Blizzard of '88" begins along the eastern seaboard of the United States, shutting down commerce and killing more than 400.

March 20 – The very first Romani language operetta premieres in Moscow, Russia.

March 22 – The Football League is formed.

March 27 – Dorus Rijkers saves the 30-man crew of the ''Renown'', risking his own life.

April–June

April 3 – The Brighton Beach Hotel in Coney Island is moved 520 feet using six steam locomotives by Civil Engineer B.C. Miller to save it from ocean storms.

April 6 – first New Year's Day of the solar calendar adopted by Siamese King Chulalongkorn with the 106th anniversary of Bangkok's founding in 1782 as its epoch (reference date).

April 11 – The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is inaugurated.

May 1 – The United States Congress establishes the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

May 13 – Brazil abolishes the last remnants of slavery.

May 28 – In Scotland, the Celtic F.C. plays its first official match winning 5–2 against Rangers F.C..

May 30 – Hong Kong Peak Tram began operation.

June – Annie Besant organizes the London matchgirls strike of 1888.

June 3

* The ''Kingdom of Sedang'' is formed in modern-day Vietnam.

* ''Casey at the Bat'' is published.

June 15 – Wilhelm II is crowned German Emperor.

June 19 – In Chicago, the Republican Convention opens at the Auditorium Building. Benjamin Harrison & Levi Morton win the nominations for President and Vice President, respectively.

June 29 – Handel's ''Israel in Egypt'' is recorded onto wax cylinder at The Crystal Palace, it being the earliest known recording of classical music.

June 30 – The Marine Biological Association Laboratory opens on Plymouth Hoe, Devon, UK.

July–September

July 25 – Frank Edward McGurrin, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City, Utah, purportedly the only person using touch typing at the time, wins a decisive victory over Louis Traub in a typing contest held in Cincinnati, Ohio. This date can be called the birthday of the touch typing method that is widely used now.

July 27 – The British Parliament passes an act that permits bicycles on the road, on condition that they are equipped with a bell that should be rung while on the carriageway. The law is eventually abolished in 1930.

August 5 – Berta Benz arrives in Pforzheim, having driven from Mannheim in a car manufactured by her husband Karl Benz, thus completing the first "long-distance" drive in the history of the automobile.

August 7 – The body of Martha Tabram is found, a possible murder victim of Jack the Ripper.

August 9 – A fire destroyed Main Building, the heart of Wells College in Aurora, NY causing a loss of $130,000.

August 20 – There is a mutiny at Dufile, India, and the Emin Pasha is imprisoned.

August 31 – Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is considered the first of Jack the Ripper's victims.

September 4 – George Eastman registers the trademark ''Kodak'', and receives a patent for his camera which uses roll film.

September 6 – Charles Turner becomes the first cricket bowler to take 250 wickets in an English season – a feat since accomplished only by Tom Richardson (twice), J.T. Hearne, Wilfred Rhodes (twice) and Tich Freeman (six times).

September 8

* In London, the dead body of Annie Chapman is found. She is considered to be the second victim of Jack the Ripper.

* In England, the first 6 Football League matches are played.

September 30 – In London, the bodies of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes are found. They are generally considered Jack the Ripper's third and fourth victims, respectively.

October–December

October 1 – Sofia University officially opens, becoming the first university in liberated Bulgaria.

October 9 – The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public.

October 14 –

* Louis Le Prince films the first motion picture: ''Roundhay Garden Scene'' in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK (followed by his movie ''Leeds Bridge'').

* Seeking to extend to extend Mahdist control over what is now southwestern Ethiopia, governor Khalil al-Khuzani is routed at the Battle of Guté Dili by an alliance of Shewan forces under ''Ras'' Gobana Dacche and Moroda Bekere, ruler of Leqa Naqamte. Only a handful, including Khalil, barely manage to flee the battle field.

October 25 – St. Cuthbert's Society, University of Durham is founded after a general meeting, chaired by the Reverend Hastings Rashdall.

November 6 – U.S. presidential election, 1888: United States Democratic Party incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College vote to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison, therefore losing the election.

November 9 – In London, England, the dead body of Mary Jane Kelly is found. She is considered to be the fifth, and last, of Jack the Ripper's victims. A number of similar murders in England follow, but the police attribute them to copy-cat killers.

November 27 – Delta Delta Delta was founded at Boston University.

December 18 – Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law discover the Indian ruins of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado.

December 23 – During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh infamously cuts off the lower part of his own left ear.

Date unknown

"1888 Glad Tidings" message proclaimed in Minneapolis, MN USA by Alonzo T. Jones and Ellet J. Waggoner. A new understanding of the Christian gospel message of righteousness by faith was presented.

John Robert Gregg first publishes Gregg Shorthand.

Prosecution of Edward King, Anglican bishop of Lincoln, for using ritualistic practices begins.

Sarawak and Borneo become British protectorates.

Susan B. Anthony organizes a ''Congress for Women's Rights'' in Washington, DC.

A national library in Athens, Greece is established.

The first railway in China goes into operation.

The Kodak camera increases the popularity of photography as a hobby.

The dolphin Pelorus Jack is first sighted in Cook Strait, New Zealand.

The Camborne School of Mines is founded in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

Rudyard Kipling's short story collection ''Plain Tales from the Hills'' is published in Calcutta, India.

The Finnish epic ''Kalevala'' is published for the first time in the English Language by John Martin Crawford.

The Baldwin School is founded in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Chin Gee Hee starts the Quong Tuck Company.

U.S. President Grover Cleveland declares the Chinese "impossible of assimilation with our people and dangerous to our peace and welfare".

Texas finishes its 3 million dollar state capital building in Austin.

Katz's Delicatessen is founded in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Births

January–March

January – Lead Belly, American folk singer (d. 1949)

January 1 – Victor Goldschmidt, Swiss geochemist (d. 1947)

January 8 – Matt Moore, Irish-born actor (d. 1960)

January 18 – Thomas Sopwith, British aviation pioneer and yachtsman (d. 1989)

January 24

* Vicki Baum, Austrian writer (d. 1960)

* Ernst Heinkel, German aircraft designer (d. 1958)

February 2 – Frederick Lane, Australian swimmer (d. 1969)

February 8 – Edith Evans, British actress (d. 1976)

February 17 – Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1969)

February 19

* José Eustasio Rivera, Colombian writer (d. 1928)

* Aurora Quezon, First Lady of the Philippines (d. 1949)

February 20 – Georges Bernanos, French writer (d. 1948)

February 23 – Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly), American folk and blues musician (d. 1949)

February 25 – John Foster Dulles, United States Secretary of State (d. 1959)

February 27

* Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., American historian (d. 1965)

* Lotte Lehmann, German singer (d. 1976)

March 1 – Ewart Astill, English cricketer (Leicestershire) (d. 1948)

March 4 – Knute Rockne, American football player and coach (d. 1931)

March 10 – Barry Fitzgerald, Irish actor (d. 1966)

March 26 – Elsa Brändström, Russian nurse (d. 1948)

March 29 – James E. Casey, founder of the United Parcel Service (d. 1983)

March 30 – Anna Q. Nilsson, Swedish American silent film star (d. 1974)

April–June

April 4

* Tris Speaker, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1958)

* Zdzisław Żygulski, Sr., Polish literary historian (d. 1975)

April 6

* Hans Richter, German filmmaker (d. 1976)

* Gerhard Richter, German historian (d. 1967)

April 18 – Duffy Lewis, Major League Baseball player (d. 1979)

April 26 – Anita Loos, American writer (d. 1981)

April 27 – Florence La Badie, Canadian actress (d. 1917)

May 10

* Karl Barth, Protestant theologian (d. 1968)

* Max Steiner, Austrian-American composer (d. 1971)

May 11 – Irving Berlin, American composer (d. 1989)

May 17 – Tich Freeman, English cricketer (d. 1965)

May 23 – Zack Wheat, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1972)

May 25 – Miles Malleson, English actor (d. 1969)

May 27 – Louis Durey, French composer (d. 1979)

May 28 – Jim Thorpe, American athlete (d. 1953)

May 31 – Jack Holt, American actor (d. 1951)

June 3 – Tom Brown, American jazz musician (d. 1958)

June 6 – Pete Wendling, American composer, pianist, and piano roll recording artist (d. 1974)

June 9 – Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Australian illustrator (d. 1960)

June 13 – Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese writer (d. 1935)

June 16 – Peter Stoner, American mathematician, astronomer and Christian apologist (d. 1980)

June 24 – Gerrit Rietveld, Dutch architect (d. 1964)

June 27 – Antoinette Perry, New York stage director, Tony Award named for her (d. 1946)

June 29 – Joseph 'Squizzy' Taylor, Australian underworld figure (d. 1927)

July–September

July 5 – Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1963)

July 10 – Giorgio Chirico, Italian painter (d. 1978)

July 16

* Percy Kilbride, American actor (d. 1964)

* Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1966)

July 17 – Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israeli writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)

July 22

* Kirk Bryan, American geologist (d. 1950)

* Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1973)

July 23 – Raymond Chandler, American-born novelist (d. 1959)

August 4 – Syedna Taher Saifuddin, Bohra spiritual leader (d. 1965)

August 6

* Stephen Galatti, Director of AFS, American Field Service (d. 1964)

* Heinrich Schlusnus, German baritone (d. 1952)

August 13

* Gleb W. Derujinsky, Russian-American sculptor (d. 1975)

* John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor (d. 1946)

August 16

* Armand J. Piron, American jazz musician (d. 1943)

* T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), British liaison officer during the Arab Revolt, writer, and academic (d. 1935)

August 25 – Allama Mashriqi, Pakistani scholar and politician (d. 1963)

September 4 – Margaret Emma Henley, J. M. Barrie's inspiration for the name "Wendy" in ''Peter Pan'' (d. 1894)

September 5 – Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, President of India (d. 1975)

September 6 – Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., American politician (d. 1969)

September 12 – Maurice Chevalier, French singer and actor (d. 1972)

September 16 – Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Finnish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1964)

September 26

* J. Frank Dobie, American folklorist and journalist (d. 1964)

* T. S. Eliot, British (American-born) writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1965)

October–December

October 3 – Claud Allister, English actor (d. 1970)

October 6 – Roland Garros, French pilot (d. 1918)

October 7 – Henry A. Wallace, Vice President of the United States (d. 1965)

October 8 – Ernst Kretschmer, German psychiatrist (d. 1964)

October 9 – Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Russian politician (d. 1938)

October 16

* Eugene O'Neill, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)

* Paul Popenoe, American eugenicist (d. 1979)

October 19 – Venkatarama Ramalingam Pillai, Indian Freedom Fighter, Tamil Poet (d. 1972)

October 25 – Lester Cuneo, American actor (d. 1925)

November 7 – Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Indian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1970)

November 15

* Harald Sverdrup, Norwegian scientist (d. 1957)

* José Raúl Capablanca, World chess champion 1921–1927 (d. 1942)

November 16 – Luis Cluzeau Mortet, Uruguayan composer and musician (d. 1957)

November 23 – Harpo Marx, American comedian (d. 1964)

November 26 – Francisco Canaro, Uruguayan-born violinist and composer (d. 1964)

November 28 – Edgar Church, American comic book collector (d. 1978)

November 30 – Ralph Hartley, American electronics researcher and inventor (d. 1970)

December 3 – Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, Polish-born Chief Rabbi of Ireland and of Israel (d. 1959)

December 4 – King Alexander of Yugoslavia (d. 1934)

December 6 – Will Hay, British actor and comedian (d. 1949)

December 7 – Joyce Cary, Northern Irish author (d. 1957)

December 16 – Alphonse Juin, Marshal of France (d. 1967)

December 18

* Robert Moses, American civil engineer, public works director, and highway and bridge builder (d. 1981)

* Gladys Cooper, English actress, (d. 1971)

December 19 – Fritz Reiner, Hungarian conductor (d. 1963)

December 20 – Yitzhak Baer, German-born Israeli historian (d. 1980)

December 28 – F.W. Murnau, German film director (d. 1931)

Date unknown

Mariano Andreu, Spanish painter (d. 1976)

Philip Francis Nowlan, science fiction writer, creator of the Buck Rogers character (d. 1940)

Deaths

January–June

January 19 – Anton de Bary, German biologist (b. 1831)

January 20 – William Pitt Ballinger, Texas lawyer, southern statesman (b. 1825)

January 29 – Edward Lear, British artist and writer (b. 1812)

January 31 – John Bosco, Italian priest, youth worker, educator and founder of the Salesian Society (b. 1815)

February 3 – Henry Maine, British jurist (b. 1822)

February 5 – Anton Mauve, Dutch painter (b. 1838)

February 24 – Seth Kinman, American hunter and settler (b. 1815)

March 6

* Louisa May Alcott, American novelist (b. 1832)

* Josif Pančić, Serbian botanist (b. 1814)

March 9 – German Emperor Wilhelm I (b. 1797)

March 12 – Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (b. 1811)

March 16 – Hippolyte Carnot, French statesman (b. 1801)

March 23 – Morrison Waite, Chief Justice of the United States (b. 1816)

March 27 – Francesco Faà di Bruno, Italian mathematician (b. 1825)

March 29 – Charles-Valentin Alkan, French composer and pianist (b. 1813)

April 15 – Matthew Arnold, English poet (b. 1822)

May 26 – Ascanio Sobrero, Italian chemist (b. 1812)

June 15 – German Emperor Friedrich III (b. 1831)

July–December

July 20 – Paul Langerhans, German pathologist and biologist (b. 1847)

August 9 – Charles Cros, French poet (b. 1831)

August 16 – John Stith Pemberton, American founder of ''Coca-Cola''

August 20 – Henry Richard, Welsh peace campaigner (b. 1812)

August 23 – Philip Henry Gosse, British scientist (b. 1810)

August 24 – Rudolf Clausius, German physicist, contributor to thermodynamics (b. 1822)

September 6 – Lester Wallack, Theater Impresario (b. 1820)

September 11 – Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, Politician, writer and father of education (b. 1811)

September 24 – Karl von Prantl, German philosopher (b. 1820)

October 16

* John Wentworth, Mayor of Chicago (b. 1815)

* Horatio Spafford, American author of the hymn ''"It Is Well With My Soul"'' (b. 1828)

December 2 – Namık Kemal, Turkish patriotic poet, social reformer (b. 1840)

December 3 – Carl Zeiss, Optician and founder of company now known as Carl Zeiss AG (b. 1816)

December 31 – Samson Raphael Hirsch, German rabbi (b. 1808)

References

References

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Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for his internationally successful series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and ''The Mikado''. Sullivan composed 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.

Apart from his Savoy operas with Gilbert, Sullivan is best known for some of his hymns and parlour songs, including "Onward Christian Soldiers", "The Absent-Minded Beggar", and "The Lost Chord". His most critically praised pieces include his ''Irish Symphony'', his ''Overture di Ballo'', ''The Martyr of Antioch'', ''The Golden Legend'', his incidental music to ''The Tempest'' and, of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, ''The Yeomen of the Guard''. Sullivan's only grand opera, ''Ivanhoe'', was initially highly successful, but it has been little heard since his death.

Life and career

Beginnings

Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London. His parents were Thomas Sullivan (1805–1866), a military bandmaster, clarinettist and music teacher born in Ireland and raised in Chelsea, London, and Mary Clementina (''née'' Coghlan, 1811–1882), English born, of Irish and Italian descent. Thomas Sullivan was based from 1845 to 1857 at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he was the bandmaster. Young Sullivan became proficient with many of the instruments in the band and had composed an anthem, "By the waters of Babylon", by the age of eight. He later recalled:

Despite the boy's obvious musical talent, Thomas Sullivan knew the disappointments and insecurity of a musical career, and discouraged him from pursuing it. While studying at a private school in Bayswater, Sullivan, then aged 11, persuaded his parents and the headmaster, William Gordon Plees, to allow him to apply for membership in the choir of the Chapel Royal. Despite concerns that Sullivan at nearly 12 years of age was too old to give much service as a treble before his voice broke, he was accepted and soon became a soloist and, by 1856, was promoted to "first boy". Even at this age, Sullivan's health was delicate, and he was easily fatigued.

Sullivan flourished under the training of the Reverend Thomas Helmore, master of the choristers, and began to compose anthems and songs. Helmore encouraged the young Sullivan's composing talent and arranged for one of his pieces, "O Israel", to be published in 1855, Sullivan's first published work. Helmore also enlisted Sullivan's assistance in creating harmonisations for a volume of ''The Hymnal Noted'' and arranged for Sullivan's compositions to be performed; one of the boy's anthems was given at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace under the direction of Sir George Smart.

Mendelssohn scholar

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.|group= n}} His principal teacher there was John Goss, whose own teacher, Thomas Attwood, had been a pupil of Mozart. He studied piano with the head of the academy, William Sterndale Bennett. During this year at the Royal Academy, Sullivan continued to sing solos with the Chapel Royal, which provided a small amount of spending money.

Sullivan's scholarship was extended to a second year, and in 1858 in what the biographer Arthur Jacobs calls an "extraordinary gesture of confidence" the scholarship committee extended his grant for a third year so that he could study in Germany, at the Leipzig Conservatoire. While there, Sullivan studied composition with Julius Rietz, counterpoint with Moritz Hauptmann and Ernst Richter and the piano with Louis Plaidy and Ignaz Moscheles. He was trained in Mendelssohn's ideas and techniques but was also exposed to a variety of musical styles, including Schubert, Verdi, Bach, and Wagner. 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 serious opera, ''Ivanhoe''. Originally intended to spend a year in Leipzig, Sullivan stayed there for three years.

During his years in Germany, Sullivan became friendly with the composer Franz Liszt, the singer and later impresario Carl Rosa, and the violinist Joseph Joachim. For his last year at Leipzig, his father scraped together the money for living expenses, and the conservatoire assisted by waiving its fees. Sullivan credited his Leipzig period with tremendous musical growth. His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a set of incidental music to Shakespeare's ''The Tempest''. Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London, and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer.

Rising composer

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 supplemented his income by working as a church organist, which he enjoyed, and as a music teacher, which he hated and gave up as soon as he could.

Sullivan's long association with works for the voice began with ''The Masque at Kenilworth'' (Birmingham Festival, 1864). During a spell as organist at Covent Garden, he composed his first ballet, ''L'Île Enchantée'' (1864), and had his first experience of opera, which was directed there by Michael Costa. In 1866, he premiered his ''Irish Symphony'' and ''Cello Concerto'', his only works in each such genre. In the same year, his ''Overture in C (In Memoriam)'', commemorating the recent death of his father, was a commission from the Norwich Festival. During his lifetime, it was one of his most popular works for orchestra. In 1867, his overture ''Marmion'' was premiered by the Philharmonic Society. ''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."

In the autumn of 1867, Sullivan travelled with George Grove to Vienna, in search of neglected manuscript scores by Schubert. They found and copied several, and were particularly excited about their final discovery, which Grove described thus: "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. … These 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 [curator] must have been amused at our excitement; but let us hope that he recollected his own days of rapture; at any rate, he kindly overlooked it, and gave us permission to take away with us and copy what we wanted."

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 from the work, which were separately published. His first surviving opera, ''Cox and Box'' (1866), was originally written for a private performance. 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. The first Sullivan-Burnand collaboration was sufficiently successful to spawn a two-act opera, ''The Contrabandista'' (1867; revised and expanded as ''The Chieftain'' in 1894), which did not do nearly as well. Sullivan's last major work of the 1860s was a short oratorio, ''The Prodigal Son'', premiered in Worcester Cathedral as part of the 1869 Three Choirs Festival to much praise.

1870s; first collaborations with Gilbert

Sullivan's most successful orchestral work, the ''Overture di Ballo'', was composed for the Birmingham Festival in 1870.|group= n}} In 1871, he published his only song cycle, ''The Window; or, The Songs of the Wrens'' (1871), to words by Tennyson. In the same year, he wrote the first of a series of suites of incidental music for West End theatre productions of Shakespeare plays. In the same year, Sullivan composed a dramatic cantata, ''On Shore and Sea'', for the opening of the London International Exhibition. At the end of 1871, the impresario John Hollingshead commissioned Sullivan to work with W. S. Gilbert to create the burlesque-style comic opera ''Thespis'' for the Gaiety Theatre. Conceived as a Christmas entertainment, it ran through to Easter 1872, a satisfying run for such a piece. After ''Thespis'', Gilbert and Sullivan went their separate ways until they collaborated on three parlour ballads in late 1874 and early 1875.

Sullivan's large-scale works of the early 1870s were the ''Festival Te Deum'' (Crystal Palace, 1872); and the oratorio, ''The Light of the World'' (Birmingham Festival, 1873). He provided suites of incidental music for a production of ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' at the Gaiety in 1874 and ''Henry VIII'' at the Theatre Royal, Manchester in 1877. He continued to compose hymns throughout the decade, the most famous of which is "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (1872, words by Sabine Baring-Gould). In 1873, Sullivan contributed two songs to Burnand's Christmas "drawing room extravaganza", ''The Miller and His Man''.

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''. Remembering ''Thespis'', Carte reunited Gilbert and Sullivan, and the result was the one-act comic opera ''Trial by Jury''. ''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. The ''Daily Telegraph'' commented that the piece illustrated the composer's "great capacity for dramatic writing of the lighter class", and other reviews emphasised the felicitous combination of Gilbert's words and Sullivan's music. One wrote, "it seems, as in the great Wagnerian operas, as though poem and music had proceeded simultaneously from one and the same brain." Soon after the opening of ''Trial'', Sullivan wrote ''The Zoo'', another one-act comic opera, with a libretto by B. C. Stephenson. But the latter work had only a few short runs, and for the next 15 years, Sullivan's sole operatic collaborator was Gilbert; the two created an additional 12 operas together.

{|align=right | |} Sullivan also turned out more than 80 popular songs and parlour ballads, most of them written before the end of the 1870s. His first popular song was "Orpheus with his Lute" (1866), and a successful part song was "Oh! hush thee, my babie" (1867). The best known of his songs is "The Lost Chord" (1877, lyrics by Adelaide Anne Procter), written in sorrow at the death of his brother Frederic. The sheet music for his best received songs sold in large numbers, and were an important part of his income; many of them were adapted as dance pieces.

In this decade, Sullivan's conducting appointments included the Glasgow Choral Union concerts, 1875–77 and the Royal Aquarium, London, 1876. 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. He accepted the latter post reluctantly, fearing that discharging the duties thoroughly would leave too little time for composing. In this he was correct, as his successor Hubert Parry also discovered. Sullivan was not a success in the post, and resigned in 1881.

Sullivan's next collaboration with Gilbert, ''The Sorcerer'' (1877), ran for 178 performances, a success by the standards of the day, but ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' (1878), which followed it, turned Gilbert and Sullivan into an international phenomenon. ''Pinafore'' ran for 571 performances in London, and more than 100 unauthorised productions were quickly mounted in America alone. |group= n}} Among other favorable 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. ''The Times'' and several of the other papers agreed, however, that while the piece was entertaining, Sullivan was capable of higher art, and frivolous light opera would hold him back. This criticism would follow Sullivan throughout his career. ''Pinafore'' was followed by ''The Pirates of Penzance'' in 1879, another international success that opened in New York and then ran in London for 363 performances.

Early 1880s

In 1880, Sullivan was appointed director of the Leeds Festival. For his first festival he was commissioned to write a sacred choral work. He chose Henry Hart Milman's 1822 dramatic poem based on the life and death of Saint Margaret the Virgin for its basis. Gilbert adapted the libretto for Sullivan, abridging it, rearranging sections, reassigning lines, and making a few additions of his own. ''The Martyr of Antioch'' premiered in October 1880. Sullivan was an unshowy conductor, and some thought him dull, 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.") was less impressed by Sullivan as a conductor: "Under his ''bâton'' orchestras are never deficient in refinement. Coarseness, exaggeration, and carelessness are unacquainted with him. So, unfortunately, are vigor and earnestness. … It is well for Sir Arthur to be fastidious; but one cannot help thinking that he would get a firmer grip sometimes if he took his gloves off."|group= n}} but his composition had an enthusiastic reception and was frequently revived. A grateful Sullivan presented his collaborator with an engraved silver cup inscribed "W.S. Gilbert from his friend Arthur Sullivan."

After the profitable run of ''The Pirates of Penzance'', 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, as a result of which they are widely known as the "Savoy Operas". ''Iolanthe'' (1882), Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth extraordinary success in a row, was the first of the operas to premiere at the new theatre. Sullivan, despite the financial security of writing for the Savoy, increasingly viewed his work with Gilbert 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 required him to continue writing Savoy operas. In February 1883, he signed a five-year agreement with Gilbert and Carte, requiring him to produce a new comic opera on six months' notice.

On 22 May 1883, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. Although the operas with Gilbert had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as a composer of comic opera – that a musical knight should not stoop below oratorio or grand opera. Having just signed the five-year agreement, Sullivan suddenly felt trapped. In mid-December, Sullivan bade farewell to his sister-in-law Charlotte, Fred's widow, who emigrated with her young family to America. Sullivan's oldest nephew, Herbert, stayed behind in England as his uncle's ward. The next opera, ''Princess Ida'' (1884, the duo's only three-act, blank verse work), was noticeably less successful than its four predecessors, although Sullivan's score was praised. With box office receipts lagging, Carte gave the six months' notice for a new opera required under the partnership contract. Sullivan's close friend, the composer Frederic Clay, had suffered a serious stroke in early December 1883 that effectively ended his career at the age of 45. Sullivan, reflecting on this, on his own longstanding 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."

Gilbert had already started work on a new opera involving a plot in which people fell in love against their wills after taking a magic lozenge. Sullivan pronounced it unacceptably mechanical and too similar to their earlier work, and he asked to leave the partnership. Gilbert wrote to Sullivan asking him to reconsider, but the composer replied that he had "come to the end of my tether" with the operas: "I have been continually keeping down the music in order that not one [syllable] should be lost. ... I should like to set a story of human interest & probability where the humorous words would come in a humorous (not serious) situation, & where, if the situation were a tender or dramatic one the words would be of similar character." The impasse was finally resolved when Gilbert proposed a plot that did not depend on any supernatural device. The result was Gilbert and Sullivan's most successful work, ''The Mikado'' (1885). The piece ran for 672 performances, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre, and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece, up to that time., and Gänzl, Kurt. "Cloches de Corneville, Les," ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 18 August 2011|group= n}}

Later 1880s

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 most successful full-length work. 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 The work was so popular that only Handel's ''Messiah'' was performed more often in Britain in the 1880s and 90s. It remained in the repertory until about the 1920s, but since then it has been seldom performed, although it received its first professional recording in 2001. The musical scholar and conductor David Russell Hulme writes that the work influenced Elgar and Walton.

''Ruddigore'' followed ''The Mikado'' at the Savoy in 1887. It ran profitably for nine months but was less successful than most of the earlier Savoy operas. For their next piece, Gilbert submitted another version of the magic lozenge plot; Sullivan immediately rejected it. Gilbert finally proposed a comparatively serious opera, to which Sullivan agreed. 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. 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.” After ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' opened, Sullivan turned once again to Shakespeare, composing incidental music for Henry Irving's production of ''Macbeth'' (1888).

Sullivan wished to produce further serious works with Gilbert. He had collaborated with no other librettist since 1875. But Gilbert felt that the success of ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' had "not been so convincing as to warrant us in assuming that the public want something more earnest still." 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. 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." Nevertheless, a compromise was reached: Sullivan commissioned a grand opera libretto from Julian Sturgis (who was recommended by Gilbert), while suggesting to Gilbert that he revive an old idea for an opera set in the sunshine of Venice. The comic opera was completed first: ''The Gondoliers'' (1889) was a piece described by Hughes as a pinnacle of Sullivan's achievement. It was the last great Gilbert and Sullivan success.

1890s

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. Carte was building a new theatre to present Sullivan's forthcoming grand opera, and Sullivan sided with Carte, going so far as to testify erroneously as to certain old debts. Gilbert took legal action against Carte and Sullivan and vowed to write no more for the Savoy, and so the partnership came to an acrimonious end. 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".

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 as the producer had to pay performers, crew and others, while the theatre sat empty. Sullivan was required to pay Carte a contractual penalty of £3,000 for his delay. The opera was a success, running for an unprecedented 155 performances and earning good notices for its music. Carte was unable to fill the new opera house with other opera productions, however, and ''Ivanhoe'' was blamed for the failure of the opera house. The opera passed into obscurity after a touring revival in 1894–95. The episode was, as the critic Herman Klein observed, "the strangest comingling of success and failure ever chronicled in the history of British lyric enterprise!" Sullivan did not seriously consider writing grand opera again. Later in 1891, Sullivan composed music for Tennyson's ''The Foresters'', which was a success at Daly's Theatre in New York in 1892, but a failure in London the following year.

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 historical elopement of Dorothy Vernon with John Manners. Although still comic, the tone and style of the work was considerably more serious and romantic than most of the operas with Gilbert. It enjoyed a modest success, running for 204 performances, and earned critical praise. In 1895, Sullivan once more provided incidental music for the Lyceum, this time for J. Comyns Carr's ''King Arthur''.

The partnership with Gilbert had been so profitable that, after the financial failure of the Royal English Opera House, Carte and his wife sought to reunite the author and composer, eventually succeeding with the help of Tom Chappell, their music publisher. Their next opera, the expensively-produced ''Utopia Limited'' (1893), ran for 245 performances – barely profitable and disappointing in comparison to the team's bigger successes. Sullivan came to disapprove of the leading lady, Nancy McIntosh, and refused to write another piece featuring her, while Gilbert insisted that she must appear in his next opera. 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. Gilbert and Sullivan reunited one more time, after McIntosh announced her retirement from the stage, for ''The Grand Duke'' (1896). This also failed, and Sullivan never worked with Gilbert again, although their operas continued to be revived with success at the Savoy.

In May 1897, Sullivan's full-length ballet, ''Victoria and Merrie England'', opened at the Alhambra Theatre to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The work's seven scenes celebrate English history and culture, with the Victorian period as the grand finale. Its six-month run was considered a great success. ''The Beauty Stone'' (1898), with a libretto by Arthur Wing Pinero and J. Comyns Carr was based on mediaeval morality plays. The collaboration did not go particularly well: Sullivan wrote that Pinero and Comyns Carr were "gifted and brilliant men, with ''no'' experience in writing for music", and, when he asked for alterations to improve the structure, they refused. Sullivan's score, moreover, was too serious for the Savoy audiences' tastes. The opera was both a critical and popular failure, running for only seven weeks.

In ''The Rose of Persia'' (1899), however, Sullivan returned to his comic roots, with a libretto by Basil Hood that combined an exotic ''Arabian Nights'' setting with plot elements of ''The Mikado''. Sullivan's tuneful score proved to be his most successful full-length opera apart from his collaborations with Gilbert. Another opera with Hood, ''The Emerald Isle'', quickly went into preparation, but Sullivan died before it could be completed.

Death, honours and legacy

Having suffered from long-standing recurrent kidney disease that made it necessary, from the 1880s, for him to conduct sitting down, Sullivan died of heart failure, following an attack of bronchitis, at his flat in London on 22 November 1900. His unfinished opera, ''The Emerald Isle'', 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 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. 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, by the Sultan of Turkey (1888); and appointment as a Member of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) on 30 June 1897.

In all, Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, and numerous hymns and other church pieces, songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces. His legacy, apart from writing the Savoy operas and other works that are still being performed, is felt perhaps most strongly today through his influence on the American and British musical theatre. The innovations in content and form of the works that he and Gilbert developed directly influenced the development of the modern musical throughout the 20th century. In addition, biographies continue to be written about Sullivan's life and work, and his work is not only frequently performed, but also frequently parodied, pastiched, quoted and imitated in comedy routines, film, television, advertising and other popular media.

Personal life

Romantic life

Sullivan never married, but he had serious love affairs with several women. The first was with Rachel Scott Russell (1845–1882). Sullivan and his friend Frederic Clay were frequent visitors at the Scott Russell home in the mid-1860s, 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, 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 had ceased by the end of the decade.

Sullivan's longest love affair was with the American socialite, Mary Frances ("Fanny") Ronalds ''née'' Carter, a woman three years Sullivan's senior, who had two children. He met her in Paris around 1867, and the affair began in earnest soon after she moved to London permanently in 1871. A contemporary account described Fanny Ronalds this way: "Her face was perfectly divine in its loveliness, her features small and exquisitely regular. Her hair was a dark shade of brown – ''châtain foncé'' [deep chestnut] – and very abundant ... a lovely woman, with the most generous smile one could possibly imagine, and the most beautiful teeth." Sullivan called her "the best amateur singer in London". She often performed Sullivan's songs at her famous Sunday soirees. She became particularly associated with "The Lost Chord", singing it both in private and in public, often with Sullivan accompanying her. When Sullivan died, he left her the autograph manuscript of that song, along with other bequests.

Ronalds was separated from her American husband, but she was never divorced. Social conventions of the time compelled Sullivan and Ronalds to keep their relationship private. In his diary, he would refer to her as "Mrs. Ronalds" when he saw her in a public setting, but "L. W." (for "Little Woman") or "D. H." (possibly "Dear Heart") when they were alone together, often with a number in parentheses indicating the number of sexual acts completed. It is thought that Ronalds was pregnant on at least two occasions, and she apparently procured an abortion in 1882 and again in 1884. Sullivan had a roving eye, and his diary records the occasional quarrel when Ronalds discovered his other liaisons, but he always returned to her. She was a constant companion up to the time of Sullivan's death, but around 1889 or 1890, the sexual relationship seems to have ended. He started to refer to her in the diary as "Auntie", and the tick marks indicating sexual activity were no longer there, although similar notation continued to be used for his relationships with other women who have not been identified, and who were always referred to by their initials.

In 1896, Sullivan proposed marriage to the 20-year-old Violet Beddington, but she refused him.

Leisure and family life

Sullivan loved to spend time in France (both in Paris and the south of France), where his friends ranged from Princess Marie-Amélie of Orleans to the composer Claude Debussy. 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. He was the Grand Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Sullivan was devoted to his parents, particularly his mother, with whom he corresponded regularly when away from London, until her death in 1882. Henry Lytton wrote, "I believe there was never a more affectionate tie than that which existed between [Sullivan] and his mother, a very witty old lady, and one who took an exceptional pride in her son's accomplishments. Sullivan was also very fond of his brother Fred, whose acting career he assisted whenever possible, and of Fred's children. When Fred died at the age of 39, he left his pregnant wife, Charlotte, with seven children under the age of 14. After Fred's death, Arthur visited the family often and became guardian to all of the children.

In 1883, Charlotte and six of her children emigrated to Los Angeles, California, leaving the oldest boy, "Bertie", in Sullivan's sole care. Despite his reservations about the move to America, Sullivan paid for the trip and continued to give very substantial financial support to the family. Only a year after moving to Los Angeles, in January 1885, Charlotte died, leaving the six children to be raised mostly by her brother and the older girls. From June to August 1885, after ''The Mikado'' premiered, Sullivan visited the family in Los Angeles and took them on a sightseeing trip of the American west. He continued, throughout the rest of his life, and in his will, to take good care of Fred's children, continuing to correspond with them and to be concerned with their education, marriages and financial affairs. Bertie stayed with his uncle Arthur for the rest of the composer's life.

Three of Sullivan's cousins, the daughters of his uncle John Thomas Sullivan, performed with D'Oyly Carte: 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 Josephine in 1879. Jennie was a D'Oyly Carte chorister for fourteen years. Rose took principal roles in many of the companion pieces that played with the Savoy operas.

Music

Method 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 of composition was not to wait for inspiration like "a miner seated at the top of a shaft", waiting for "the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. ... He has to dig for it. ... The first thing I have to decide upon is the rhythm, and I decide on that before I come to the question of melody. The notes must come afterwards. ... I mark out the metre in dots and dashes, and not until I have quite settled on the rhythm do I proceed to actual notation." Sullivan's text setting, 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."

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. He left the overtures until last and often delegated their composition, based on his outlines, to his assistants often incorporating his suggestions or corrections. Those Sullivan wrote himself include ''Thespis'', ''Iolanthe'', ''Princess Ida'', ''The Yeomen of the Guard'', ''The Gondoliers'', ''The Grand Duke'' and probably ''Utopia Limited''. Most of the overtures are structured as a ''potpourri'' of tunes from the operas in three sections: fast, slow and fast. However, those for ''Iolanthe'', and ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' are written in a modified sonata form. The overtures from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas remain popular, and there are many recordings of them. Sullivan invariably conducted the operas on their opening nights.

In 1957, a review in ''The Times'' gave this rationale for "the continued vitality of the Savoy operas": :"[T]hey were never really contemporary in their idiom. ... Gilbert and Sullivan's [world was] an artificial world, with a neatly controlled and shapely precision. ... For this, each partner has his share of credit. The neat articulation of incredibilities in Gilbert's plots is perfectly matched by his language.... [Of] equal importance ... Gilbert's lyrics almost invariably take on extra point and sparkle when set to Sullivan's music. ... Sullivan's tunes, in these operas, also exist in a make-believe world of their own. ... [He is] a delicate wit, whose airs have a precision, a neatness, a grace, and a flowing melody".

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 Debussy, Leoncavallo and Saint-Saëns held the Savoy operas in high regard. 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." Sullivan told Lawrence that his melodies sprang from rhythm, although some of his themes may have been prompted by his chosen instrumentation or his harmonic techniques.

{|align=left | |} 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. In Hughes's view, though most of the tunes in the Savoy operas are good ones, Sullivan rarely reached the same class of excellence elsewhere when he had no librettist to feed his imagination. Even so, on those occasions when Gilbert wrote in unvaried metre, Sullivan often followed suit and produced phrases of simple repetition, such as "Love is a plaintive song" (''Patience'') and "A man who would woo a fair maid" (''The Yeomen of the Guard'').

Sullivan's deliberate echoes of other composers are covered below under "Musical Quotations", but other echoes may not have been conscious: Hughes cites the concluding bars of "Tell a tale of cock and bull" from ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' as an example of Handel's influence, and another critic, Edward Greenfield, found a theme in the slow movement of the Irish symphony "an outrageous crib" from Schubert's Unfinished.

Harmony and counterpoint

;Harmony Sullivan was trained in the classical style, and contemporary music did not greatly attract him. Harmonically his early works used the conventional formulae of Auber, Donizetti, Balfe and Schubert. Later he drew on Gounod and Bizet. Mendelssohn's influence, conspicuous in early works, appears intermittently in later ones. As a contemporary writer observed, Sullivan draws on these various influences while remaining recognisably himself.

In general, Sullivan preferred to write in major keys. In the Savoy operas, there are only eleven substantial numbers wholly in a minor key (less than 5% of the musical numbers), and even in his serious works the major prevails. Examples of Sullivan's rare excursions into minor keys include the long E minor melody in the first movement of the Irish Symphony, "Go away, madam" in the Act I finale of ''Iolanthe'' (echoing Verdi and Beethoven) and the funeral march in the Act I finale of ''The Yeomen of the Guard''.

Both Hughes and Jacobs in ''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' comment adversely on Sullivan's over-use of tonic pedals, usually in the bass, which Hughes attributes to "lack of enterprise or even downright laziness". Another Sullivan trademark criticised by Hughes is the excessive use of the chord of the augmented fourth at moments of pathos. In his serious works, Sullivan attempted to avoid harmonic devices associated with the Savoy operas, with the result, according to Hughes, that ''The Golden Legend'' is a "hotch-potch of harmonic styles". The same writer 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 smoothly negotiates E major, C sharp minor and C major, or "Then one of us will be a queen" (''The Gondoliers''), where he writes in F major, D flat major and D minor.

Though generally conservative in his harmony, Sullivan was happy on occasion to use chords traditionally considered technically incorrect. When reproached for using consecutive fifths in ''Cox and Box'', he replied "if 5ths turn up it doesn't matter, so long as there is no offence to the ear." In the field of harmony, Hughes writes, Sullivan remained an eclectic: "He had easily recognisable ''habits'' but his style never achieved individuality".

;Counterpoint Despite his thorough academic contrapuntal training in London and Leipzig, as well as his experience as a church organist, Sullivan rarely composed fugues. Hughes cites the examples from the Epilogue to ''The Golden Legend'' and ''Victoria and Merrie England''. In the Savoy operas, fugal style is reserved for making fun of legal solemnity in ''Trial by Jury'' and ''Iolanthe'' (it is the Lord Chancellor's motif in the latter). Less formal counterpoint is employed in numbers such as "Brightly Dawns our Wedding Day" (''The Mikado'') and "When the Buds are Blossoming" (''Ruddigore'').

Sullivan's best known contrapuntal device was "the simultaneous presentation of two or more distinct melodies previously heard independently". He was not the first composer to combine themes in this way, but it became a characteristic feature of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Sometimes the melodies were for solo voices, as in "Once more the face I loved so well" (''The Zoo''), and "I am so proud" (''The Mikado''), which combines three melodic lines; other examples are in choruses, where typically a graceful tune for the ladies is combined with a robust one for the men. Examples include "When the Foeman bares his steel" (''The Pirates of Penzance''), "Gaily tripping" (''H.M.S. Pinafore''), "In a doleful train" (''Patience''), "Welcome, gentry" (''Ruddigore''), and "Night has spread her pall once more" (''The Yeomen of the Guard''). At other times, notably in "How beautifully blue the sky" (''The Pirates of Penzance''), one theme is given to the chorus and the other to solo voices.

Orchestration

Gervase Hughes concludes his chapter on Sullivan's orchestration: "in this vitally important sector of the composer's art he deserves to rank as a master." Sullivan was a competent player of at least four orchestral instruments (flute, clarinet, trumpet and trombone) and a technically highly skilled orchestrator. Though sometimes inclined to indulge in grandiosity when writing for a full symphony orchestra, he was adept in using smaller forces to the maximum effect. Percy Young writes that orchestral players generally like playing Sullivan's music: "Sullivan never asked his players to do what was either uncongenial or impracticable."

Sullivan's orchestra for the Savoy Operas was typical of any other pit orchestra of his era: 2 flutes (+ piccolo), oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. According to Geoffrey Toye, the number of players in the Savoy orchestra was originally 31. 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 bass trombone. Sullivan 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. For his large-scale orchestral pieces, Sullivan added a second oboe part, sometimes double bassoon and bass clarinet, more horns, trumpets, tuba, and sometimes an organ and/or a harp. Many of these pieces used very large orchestras.

One of the most recognisable features in Sullivan's orchestration is his woodwind scoring. Hughes especially notes Sullivan's clarinet writing, exploiting all registers and colours of the instrument, and his particular fondness for oboe solos. For instance, the ''Irish Symphony'' contains two long solo oboe passages in succession, and in the Savoy operas there are many shorter examples. In the operas, and also in concert works, another characteristic Sullivan touch is his fondness for pizzicato passages for all the string sections. Most of the operas have at least one number that Hughes calls "virtually a ''pizzicato ostinato''"; he 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'').

Musical quotations and parodies

Sullivan often quoted or imitated famous themes and passages from popular tunes or parodied the styles of well-known composers such as Schubert, Donizetti, Bellini, Gounod and Mendelssohn. He also liked to evoke familiar musical styles, such as his madrigals in ''The Mikado'', ''Ruddigore'' and ''The Yeomen of the Guard'', glees in ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' and ''The Mikado'' and gavottes in ''Ruddigore'' and ''The Gondoliers''. In ''The Sorcerer'', there is a country dance and folksy duet between the men and women's chorus in "If you'll marry me." Of the sextette "I hear the soft note" in ''Patience'', Sullivan said to the singers, "I think you will like this. It is Dr. Arne and Purcell at their best."

In early pieces, according to Debussy, in addition to his reflection of Mendelssohn (for example in his incidental music for ''The Tempest''), Sullivan imitated Auber in his ''Henry VIII'' music and Gounod in ''The Light of the World''. In his comic operas, Sullivan followed Offenbach's lead in guying the idioms of French and Italian opera, such as those of Donizetti, Verdi and Bellini. Later, Sullivan's music shows the influence of Handel, Schubert and, conspicuously in the fairy music in ''Iolanthe'', Mendelssohn. The then-popular Michael Balfe is parodied in ''The Sorcerer'' and ''The Pirates of Penzance'', and "Twenty Love Sick Maidens" imitates William Vincent Wallace's "Alas Those Chimes" from ''Maritana''. The sextet "A Nice Dilemma" in ''Trial by Jury'' parodies "D'un pensiero" in Bellini's ''La Sonnambula''.

Other examples of opera parody include Mabel's aria "Poor Wand'ring One" in ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and the duet "Who are you, sir?" from ''Cox and Box''. In ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', the whispered plans for elopement in "This very night" parodies the conspirators' choruses in Verdi's ''Il Trovatore'' and ''Rigoletto'', and the octet, "Farewell, my own," evokes the ensemble "Mag der Himmel euch vergeben" in Flotow's ''Martha'' and such concerted numbers as the sextet in Donizetti's ''Lucia di Lammermoor''. The mock-jingoistic "He is an Englishman" in ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' and choral passages in ''The Zoo'' satirise patriotic British tunes auch as Arne's "Rule, Britannia!".

In ''Princess Ida'', there is a strong Handelian flavour to Arac's song in Act III ("This helmet, I suppose"), and the Act II quartet "The world is but a broken toy" has been called "Gounodesque". Florian's statement in "Gently, Gently": "In this college, useful knowledge/Everywhere one finds" is a quotation from Chopin's Waltz No. 5 in A-flat Major (Op. 42). In ''The Gondoliers'', there are the Spanish cachucha, the Italian saltarello and tarantella, and the Venetian barcarolle. Hughes compares "Here is a case unprecedented" from ''The Gondoliers'' to the Act II quintet from Bizet's ''Carmen''. In "A more humane Mikado", when the Mikado mentions "Bach interwoven with Spohr and Beethoven", the clarinet and bassoon quote the fugue subject of Bach's ''Fantasia and Fugue in G minor''. ''The Golden Legend'' shows the influence of Liszt and Wagner.

Sullivan frequently gives groups or locations their own characters and motifs. Hughes points to the striking difference between the male chorus of rustics in ''The Sorcerer'' and the eponymous gondoliers, and between the fairies in ''Iolanthe'' and the undergraduates in ''Princess Ida''. ''H.M.S Pinafore'' retains "a nautical tang ''throughout''", and in ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' the Tower of London is evoked continually by its own motif. This use of Wagnerian leitmotif technique is repeated and developed further in ''Ivanhoe''.

Reputation and criticism

Sullivan's critical reputation has undergone extreme changes since he first came to prominence in the 1860s. At first he was hailed as the long-awaited great English composer. His incidental music to ''The Tempest'' received an acclaimed premiere at the Crystal Palace in April 1862. The ''Athenaeum'' wrote:

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." 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."

When Sullivan turned to comic opera, the serious critics began to express disapproval. The 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." Few critics denied the excellence of Sullivan's theatre scores; ''The Theatre'' wrote that "''Iolanthe'' sustains Dr Sullivan's reputation as the most spontaneous, fertile, and scholarly composer of comic opera this country has ever produced." However, 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.

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

Sullivan redeemed himself in critical eyes with ''The Golden Legend'' in 1886. ''The Observer'' hailed it as a "triumph of English art" and wrote of "a sublimity about the music which transcends description". Hopes for a new departure were evident in the ''Daily Telegraph'''s review of ''The Yeomen of the Guard'', Sullivan's most serious opera to that point: "[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. Sullivan's only wholly serious opera, ''Ivanhoe'' (1891), received generally favourable reviews; J. A. Fuller Maitland wrote in ''The Times'' that the opera's "best portions rise so far above anything else that Sir Arthur Sullivan has given to the world, and have such force and dignity, that it is not difficult to forget the drawbacks which may be found in the want of interest in much of the choral writing, and the brevity of the concerted solo parts."

Although the more solemn members of the musical establishment could not forgive Sullivan for writing music that was both comic and popular, he was, nevertheless, "the nation's ''de facto'' composer laureate".

In the decade after his death, Sullivan's reputation sank considerably. In 1901, Fuller Maitland took issue with the generally laudatory tone of most 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?... [H]ow can the composer of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "The Absent-Minded Beggar" claim a place in the hierarchy of music among the men who would face death rather than smirch their singing robes for the sake of a fleeting popularity?" Edward Elgar, to whom Sullivan had been particularly kind, rose to Sullivan's defence, branding Fuller Maitland's obituary "the shady side of musical criticism... that foul unforgettable episode."

Fuller Maitland's followers, including Ernest Walker also condemned Sullivan, as "merely the idle singer of an empty evening". As late as 1966, Frank Howes, music critic of ''The Times'' condemned Sullivan for "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." In the 1920s, Thomas F. Dunhill wrote a chapter entitled "Mainly in Defence" in his 1928 book, ''Sullivan's Comic Operas''; the defence was necessary because "[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." Sir Henry Wood continued to perform Sullivan's serious music, but it was not until the 1960s that Sullivan's music began to be widely revived and reassessed.

In 1960 Gervase Hughes published the first full-length book about Sullivan's music "taking note of his weaknesses (which are many) and not hesitating to castigate his lapses from good taste (which were comparatively rare) [and attempting] to view them in perspective against the wider background of his sound musicianship" The work of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, founded in 1977, and books about Sullivan by musicians such as Percy Young (1971) and Arthur Jacobs (1986) have contributed to the re-evaluation of Sullivan's music.

The ''Symphony in E'' had its first professional recording in 1968, and a considerable number of Sullivan's non-Gilbert works have since been recorded, including ballet music, the cello concerto, and solo piano and chamber music. Scholarly critical editions of Sullivan's works have been published.

In a 2000 article in ''The Musical Times'', Nigel Burton wrote: |}}

Recordings

In 1888, Thomas Edison sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to 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.

A series of parties followed, introducing the phonograph to members of society at the so-called "Little Menlo" in London. Sullivan was invited to one of these on 5 October 1888. After dinner, he recorded a speech to be sent to Thomas Edison, saying, in part:

These recordings were discovered in the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s.

See also

Gilbert and Sullivan

Savoy opera

Notes and references

;Notes ;References

Sources

Further reading

External links

Arthur Sullivan biography and further information

Extensive list of, and links to Sullivan works at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive

Obituary notices in ''The Times''

Detailed 1879 article about Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan Discography

"Sir Arthur Sullivan Buried in St. Paul's" ''The New York Times'', November 28, 1900, p. 9

"The Other Side of Sullivan", lecture by Robin Wilson on the non-operatic musical output of Sullivan, given at Gresham College, 11 June 2008.

Sir Arthur Sullivan Society

Article on Sullivan's rhythmic treatment of Gilbert's texts

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