Sullivan, Arthur (EN)

Sullivan Sir Arthur Seymour, *13 May 1842 Lambeth (London), †22 November 1900 London, English composer and conductor. In 1854–57, he sang in the choir Chapel Royal and in 1856, he obtained a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he was a student of S. Bennett, A. Leavy and J. Goss. In 1858–61, he studied at the conservatory in Leipzig under J. Rietz (composition), M. Hauptmann (counterpoint) and I. Moscheles and L. Plaidy (piano). He achieved his first success as a composer in Leipzig (1861, performance of music for The Tempest by Shakespeare).

After returning to London (1862), he worked as an organist, initially at St. Michael’s Church and in 1867–72 at St. Peter’s Church; during this time, he wrote many church works, including Te Deum for soprano, choir and orchestra (1872), commemorating the recovery of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. He was also appointed organist of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His ballet L’Ile Enchantée premiered there in 1864, which brought him recognition and opened the way to the presentation of other compositions. In 1867, Sullivan’s one-act farce Cox and Box, to a libretto by F. C. Burnand, had its public premiere. In the same year, the composer presented his first full-length operetta, The Contrabandista (libretto by F. C. Burnand). In 1869, the oratorio The Prodigal Son was presented at the Worcester Choral Festival. In subsequent years, he wrote further vocal and instrumental works, as well as stage operettas, including The Merchant of Venice (1871) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1874). In 1875, he received an invitation from the young impresario R. D’Oyly Carte to write an operetta to W.S. Gilbert’s libretto Trial by Jury. In collaboration with Gilbert, he wrote further operettas, including The Sorcerer (1877), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), Patience (1881), Iolanthe (1882), Princess Ida (1884), The Mikado (1885), Ruddigore (1887), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889). During this time, Sullivan also composed cantatas and oratorios, including The Martyr of Antioch (1880, adapted into an opera in 1898) and The Golden Legend (1886), as well as incidental music, including for Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Macbeth. He was also active in other fields: in 1875–77, he directed the Glasgow Choral and Orchestral Union; in 1876–81, he ran the National Training School for Music in Kensington, London; from 1878 to 1879, he was director of the Covent Garden promenade concerts; from 1880, director of the Leeds Triennial Musical Festival; and from 1885 to 1887, conductor of the Philharmonic Society. For the inauguration of the Royal English Opera House in London, founded by R. D’Oyly Carte, he composed the opera seria Ivanhoe to a libretto by J. Sturgis. The premiere took place in 1891. After a year, the English Opera House was sold to another owner, and contacts between Sullivan, Gilbert and Carte loosened. In later years, Sullivan wrote three more operettas to Gilbert’s librettos: Utopia Limited (1893), The Chieftain (1894 – a reworking of The Smuggler) and The Grand Duke (1896). However, they failed to gain the public’s acceptance, as did The Beauty Stone (1898, libretto by A. W. Pinero and J. C. Carr), composed in 1894. A happier fate befell Sullivan’s last stage work, The Rose of Persia, written to a libretto by B. Hood. The artist’s last years were the stage for several more successes. These were brought about by the ballet Victoria and Merrie England (1897), composed to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the setting of R. Kipling’s poem The Absent-Minded Beggar (1899), and Te Deum laudamus (1900), commemorating the defeat of the Boers in the war against the British Empire. This work was first performed after the author’s death (1902).

Sullivan was already recognised during his lifetime as the most outstanding British composer of the Victorian era. For his services to the British crown, he was honoured with prestigious awards and decorations: in 1876, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge, and in 1879 – from Oxford; in 1878, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and in 1883, Queen Victoria awarded him a knighthood.

In wide circles, the composer was associated mainly with his operetta works. The greatest success was achieved by the operetta Mikado (1885), based on an exotic plot, which quickly made its way around European stages (staged in Warsaw in 1887 and in Lviv in 1888). Sullivan’s operettas are influenced by Viennese and Parisian models of this genre. They are distinguished by the presence of effective solo parts with an interesting rhythmic face, demonstrating independence in relation to the verbal text, and a significant share of temperamental choral parts. Sullivan mastered the craft of composition well, freely using conventional harmony and instrumentation, as well as elements of polyphony. Using the chamber sound of an orchestra of about 30 people (only in vocal-instrumental and orchestral works did he use the line-up of a large symphony orchestra), he achieved suggestive colour effects of illustrative significance (the use of bass clarinet, English horn, bells). Some of these effects served parodic purposes, like the quotations (and pseudo-quotations) from the works of J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel and others present in Sullivan’s operettas. Here, Sullivan skilfully made use of his tendency towards eclecticism, which was already characteristic of his early works, including the Cello Concerto, close to the models of German Romantic music of the first half of the 19^th century, and later also religious works, in which he reached for the models of H. Purcell, J.S. Bach, G.F. Haendel, F. Schubert, and F. Mendelssohn; an example of Sullivan’s eclecticism is the seven-part The Festival Te Deum (1872), in which subsequent links are developed in various stylistic conventions; Sullivan combines the traditions of baroque music of various provenance with elements of 19^th-century opera and operetta; the work’s fugue-like climaxes are a testament to Sullivan’s mastery of compositional technique.

Literature: H.S. Wyndham Arthur Sullivan, London 1903; B.W. Findon Sir Arthur Sullivan. His Life and Music, London 1904, entitled Sir Arthur Sullivan and his Operas, 2^nd ed. 1908; H.M. Walbrook Gilbert and Sullivan Opera, London 1922; H.S. Wyndham Arthur Seymour Sullivan, London 1926; A.H. Godwin Gilbert and Sullivan, London 1926, reprint Port Washington (New York) 1969; H. Sullivan, N. Flower Sir Arthur Sullivan. His Life, Letters and Diaries, London 1927, 2^nd ed. 1950; Th. F. Dunhill Sullivan’s Comic Operas. A Critical Appreciation, London 1928; G. Hughes The Music of Arthur Sullivan, London 1960; P.M. Young Sir Arthur Sullivan, London 1971; R. Allen, G.R. D’Luhy Sir Arthur Sullivan. Composer and Personage, New York 1975; J. Wolfton Sir Arthur Sullivan, New York 1976; A. Jacobs Arthur Sullivan. A Victorian Musician, Oxford University Press 1984; M. Saremba Arthur Sullivan. Ein Komponistenlebem im viktorianischem England, Wilhelmshaven 1993; M. Ainger Gilbert and Sullivan/ A Dual Biography, Oxford University Press 2002; I. Bradley Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers. The Sacred music of Arthur Sullivan, London 2013; B. Taylor Arthur Sullivan. A Musical Reappraisal, Routledge 2018; I. Bradley Arthur Sullivan. A Life of Divine Emollient, Oxford University Press 2021; https://sullivansociety.org.uk.