Sullivan Sir A
See Gilbert & Sullivan
ACHIEVEMENTS: Composer best known for his operettas, written in partnership with the librettist W. S. Gilbert.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 13th May 1842, in London, England.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 22nd November 1900, in London, England. Aged 58.
DISCIPLINE: Musician.
FIELD: Composition.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Father, Thomas Sullivan, mother, Mary Clementina Coghlan Sullivan.
SIBLINGS: 1 brother, Frederic.
SPOUSE: Never married.
CHILDREN: No children.
EDUCATION: Royal Academy of Music and Leipzig Conservatory.
MAJOR WORKS: HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado
LIFE AND TIMES: Arthur Sullivan's father was sergeant bandmaster at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, England; consequently, the boy developed an early affinity with wind instruments and band music. Arthur also learned to play the piano and began composing music when he was only eight.
Thanks to his outstanding talent as a singer, he won a post as a choirboy in the Chapel Royal from 1854-1857, where he received a more formal music education. As a teenager, Sullivan was awarded a scholarship which paid for one year's tuition at the Royal Academy of Music. His family moved to London so that he could pursue his studies in piano and composition .
Sullivan enjoyed the first public performance of his work in July 1858, at the age of sixteen. His scholarship was extended for two more years, and he won the opportunity to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, as well. His graduation exercise at Leipzig was a suite of incidental music based on Shakespeare's The Tempest.
This work caught the attention of English musicologist <mentor was> Grove*, who would become one of Sullivan's closest friends despite the more than twenty-year age difference between them. Grove arranged for a London performance of The Tempest in 1862. The work was extraordinarily successful for such a young composer; Sullivan was still only twenty years old, but music critics showered him with praise and the work was performed three more times in less than a year.
The success of The Tempest resulted in a wealth of commissions for Sullivan. By the mid-1860s, he had begun to earn most of his income by composing hymns and popular songs of the type often called "drawing room ballads." He still maintained a devotion to "serious" music, however, in 1867 traveling with Grove to Paris and Vienna, where they were able to recover part of Schubert's missing music to Rosamunde, an important musicological discovery.
Grove also introduced the composer to <composed to text by> Tennyson*, whose writings provided the text for Sullivan's song cycle, The Window.
Sullivan first collaborated with the librettist <collaborated with> W. S. Gilbert* on a burlesque theater piece, Thespis (now lost), in 1871. He could hardly have imagined how much the genre of operetta and the partnership with Gilbert would come to dominate his life.
Sullivan was an art-music composer who considered comic opera and popular song to be a money-making diversion rather than a serious pursuit. But the success of the comic opera Trial by Jury at the Royalty Theatre in 1875 established "Gilbert and Sullivan" as a popular phenomenon, almost a genre in itself. Richard D'Oyly Carte, one of the managers at the Royalty, took over promotion of the pair.
Under his management, Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on The Sorceror (1877) and then the smash hit HMS Pinafore (1878). Carte arranged for a touring company to take The Pirates of Penzance to New York for its 1879 premiere.
In 1881 he built the Savoy Theatre, the first theater in London to be completely lit by electricity, to showcase the duo's operettas. Sullivan conducted most of the opening performances, and was knighted in 1883 for his role in advancing the popularity of English music. The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's best-known and longest-running show, opened in 1885 and went on to play 672 performances.
Despite his success with light theater, Sullivan continued writing symphonic works and was a conductor for the Philharmonic Society of London for three seasons. He owed his fame and wealth to the operettas, however, and their popularity vaulted him into London's high society. Sullivan became a fixture at gentlemen's clubs, aristocratic house parties, casinos, and horse races. He was friends with the wealthiest families in London and enjoyed traveling internationally in their company. He was also deeply devoted to his family.
In 1885 he went to California to comfort his brother's recently-orphaned children and took on the responsibility of raising his nephew Herbert, who would eventually become his biographer. Although he never married, Sullivan maintained a lengthy, devoted relationship with Mary Frances Ronalds, an American in London society who had separated from her husband but never legally divorced him. Sullivan helped care for Mary's father and had a close relationship with her children.
One person with whom he never shared a close friendship, however, was W. S. Gilbert. In fact, Sullivan complained as early as 1884 that he felt musically stifled by their working relationship. Tensions between them were high and the two quarreled fiercely during the creation of The Yeomen of the Guard in 1888. Their last great success was The Gondoliers (1889).
Shortly afterward, Gilbert and Carte had a bitter legal battle over the management of the Savoy Theatre, and Sullivan took Carte's side in the dispute.
In the final decade of his life, Sullivan tried to rehabilitate his artistic career by composing a grand opera based on <set work of> Sir Walter Scott's* Ivanhoe (1891). Carte produced the work at the Savoy and it ran nightly, like an operetta, for an impressive 160 performances. The opera took a serious toll on Carte's finances, however, and he was forced to sell one of his theaters.
When it was produced outside of England, Ivanhoe was soundly panned by German critics, to Sullivan's great disappointment. He eventually reconciled with Gilbert, but their final works, Utopia Limited and The Grand Duke, could not match the success of the earlier operettas. Sullivan continued writing music despite his increasingly poor health, composing patriotic tunes to help raise money for charities during the South African (Boer) War.
He also forged a friendship with <a pal of> Queen Victoria*, for whom he played the harmonium at an Easter service. He visited her several times at Windsor Castle, and she made him a member of the Royal Victorian Order in 1897.
Sullivan died on November 22, 1900, of bronchitis and heart failure. Although he had planned to be buried with his family at the Brompton Cemetery, the Queen overrode his wish and had him buried in the crypt at St. Paul's cathedral. She also honored him with a memorial service at the Chapel Royal, St. James Palace, where the choir boys gave him a special salute.
A memorial statue of Sullivan still stands in the Embankment Gardens, in sight of the Savoy Theatre.
ASSESSMENT: Arthur Sullivan was the most famous musical figure of Victorian England, both and home and abroad. His operettas with W. S. Gilbert have remained as the most popular musical icons of his era.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None.
ONELINER: Sir Arthur Sullivan, composer, of Gilbert-and-Sullivan fame
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ewen, David. 'Sir Arthur Sullivan,' Sir Arthur Sullivan Society Home Page, http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/html/sullivan2.html
Jacobs, Arthur, Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1992.
Jacobs, Arthur, 'Sullivan, Sir Arthur,' grovemusic.com, ed. L. Macy, http://www.grovemusic.com