Background Information

Family and Youth
Early Career
The Gilbert and Sullivan Years
The Man
Later Career

FAMILY AND YOUTH
The composer's grandfather was an Irishman who woke one morning, after a night with too much to drink, to find himself in the British army. He fought against Napoleon in the Peninsula War and later was one of those stationed on St. Helena to guard the deposed Emperor. There his children became pets of Napoleon who gave them sweets. After Napoleon's death, he was discharged as 'worn out and undersized'.

His son Thomas, the composer's father became a musician and played clarinet in a London pit orchestra for one guinea a week. He supplemented this meager income by music copying and was able to marry and rent a house. After the birth of their first son, Frederick, they were so poor that Frederick was put out to nurse and his mother, Maria, became a governess. After a time, Thomas took on more pupils and the copying increased, so that family was able to get together again. Arthur was born May 13, 1842. When his father eventually became the bandmaster at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, things improved.

By age eight, Arthur was familiar with all of the instruments in a band and had composed his first anthem. He was first sent to a private school but, after four years, his dream to become a chorister at the Chapel Royal came true; he was admitted as a chorister even though he was over the usual starting age of nine. (His other dream was to buy a chemistry set.) Soon he became a soloist and was named first boy. When he was fourteen, the Mendelssohn Scholarship was instituted, and he sat for the examination. Of the nineteen applicants he was the youngest, but he won and became a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music. (He was already writing and selling songs.) He wrote: "I have chosen music, and I shall go on, because nothing in the world would every interest me so much. I may not make a lot of money, but I shall have music, and that will make up if I don't".

When his voice started to break he was awarded another scholarship to study in Leipzig, Germany; he was sixteen and was identified as one of the most promising young musicians of his day. Although the scholarship was for only one year, his expenses for a second year in Leipzig were remitted because he was so good.

EARLY CAREER
On his return to London in 1860, Sullivan took on a number of positions to support himself while he continued to compose. He obtained the post of organist at St. Michael's, Chester Square and started a choir. There were enough sopranos and altos from the congregation, but he had to recruit his tenors and basses from the nearby police station. He also became a teacher at the Chapel Royal. In 1861 he composed incidental music for the The Tempest which was so successful that his life changed. After hearing a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest, Charles Dickens said: "I don't pretend to know much about music, but I do know I have been listening to a very great work". Sullivan and Dickens became friends and went together to Paris where they met the seventy-year-old Rossini, the composer of Cinderella. Sullivan later told the story of Rossini composing a piece for his dog.

In 1863 Sullivan wrote a song for the wedding of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. He became a personal friend of the royal couple and of the Prince's brother, the future Duke of Edinburgh. Soon his compositions included music for Shakespeare's songs including O Mistress Mine (1866) and The Willow Song (1866). He wrote incidental music for The Merry Wives of Windsor (1874), Henry VIII (1877 and Macbeth (1888). Poets (including Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson) begged him to set their works to music. Lewis Carroll approached him about writing music for Alice in Wonderland, but nothing came of it.

He was most famous as a writer of sacred music including over seventy hymns among them Onward Christian Soldiers, Nearer My God to Thee, and Lead Kindly Light. He wrote about one hundred ballads and songs for which he received royalties every time one was sold. The most famous and beloved of these is The Lost Chord, written on the death of his brother, Frederick.

Wanting to be able to attend rehearsals, Sullivan asked to become the organist at the Covent Garden Opera House. There he learned the art of composing opera. When he wrote Cox and Box, his first comic opera, to words by Morton, its success surprised everyone, most of all Sullivan. It was gay and decent in contrast to the usual musical theatre fare then available. (Theatres in London and on Continent were then producing burlesques which featured coarse lyrics and dull music. Respectable people did not attend them.) In a 1867 review of Cox and Box (before their first collaboration) Gilbert wrote: "Sullivan's music is, in many places, of too high a class for the grotesquely absurd plot to which it is wedded. It is funny here and there, and grand or graceful where it is not funny; but the grand and graceful have, we think, too large a share of the honors to themselves". In other words it was too good for the material.

With the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales, Sullivan founded what is now the Royal College of Music and, in 1876, became its principal. He was also appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School. He watched over the Education Act of 1870 to make sure elementary schools included class singing.

THE GILBERT AND SULLIVAN YEARS
Note: These are treated in detail in another article.

Gilbert and Sullivan first worked together on Thespis 1871. They were both already highly successful in their separate careers and did not contemplate a partnership at that time. Thespis didn't last but Sullivan used some of its music in The Pirates of Penzance. In 1875 they were convinced by Richard D'Oyly Carte to collaborate on Trial by Jury, and history was made.

They continued to pursue their own interests even while collaborating on their highly successful light operas. For example, after Trial by Jury, Sullivan became the director of the Glasgow Orpheus Choir. He conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra between 1885 and 1887, the years immediately after the opening of The Mikado.

The partnership finally dissolved after The Grand Duke of 1896.

THE MAN
Seymour Hicks wrote: "Arthur Sullivan was surely one of the most lovable men who ever lived. Unlike his giant partner [Gilbert was 6'4"], he was quite short. He had a gentle, kindly face and two merry eyes which looked out upon the world, one of them through an eyeglass, always searching for the sunshine".

The conductor François Cellier said he never heard a harsh word from him. Society idolized him, and he had many close, life-long friends. He never married and, if there were any affairs, they were very discreet. He had many women friends including the opera singer Jenny Lind. His friends among royalty, included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Napoleon III and his empress. He was knighted at Windsor Castle by Queen Victoria in 1883. In contrast to the austere Gilbert, he was fond of gambling and horse-racing and, once money came easily to him, he spent extravagantly. He also smoked and drank "copiously".

He was especially close to his older brother Frederick who was a fine musician and a singer. He had appeared in Thespis, but made his reputation for his sterling performance in Trial by Jury. The part of John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer was written for him, but he died before it was produced. Arthur stayed at his bedside until the end and it was while there that he wrote one of his best known and most popular songs, The Lost Chord. After Frederick's death it was several months before he composed again.

Plagued all his life with kidney problems (in 1879 he had an operation for kidney stones) and other ills and with a hectic work schedule, he was frequently indisposed. Then, unlike his real self, he could become very difficult. Realizing his health as the cause of his intolerance, he would go to his room in the Savoy Theatre and give himself hypodermic injections.

LATER CAREER
As the years went on, Sullivan continued to receive honors and make new friends. Among other things, he was given honorary doctorates by both Oxford and Cambridge and was made an officer in the French Legion of Honor. Yet he was constantly urged by reviewers and others to write more 'serious' music, especially after his knighthood, and he was anxious to oblige. He was tired of writing things that "lacked human interest and probability". Although he had always written such music, especially after the end of his collaboration with Gilbert, he was never as famous for it as for religious and lighter fare. He did composed the 'romantic' opera Ivanhoe, based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. It was highly acclaimed at the time but was not very successful. It has been called a "ponderous work", more like a symphony than an opera.

Fascinated with modern gadgets, he installed a special connection line between his house and the Savoy theatre. After dinners his guests, including the Prince of Wales, could listen to what was being presented in the comfort of his home. In 1888 he attended one of the 'phonograph parties' held by a Mr. Gouraud who introduced Edison's new invention to the Londoners. He had recordings made to be sent to Edison and on one of them, Sullivan prophetically said:

I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record for ever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have every experienced.

In his day Sullivan was recognized as the outstanding English composer of his generation. He had written: "There are so many things I want to do for music if God will only give me two days for every one in which to do them". He was devoted to the music of Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn and was one of the first in England to espouse Wagner; there are many Wagnerian touches is his work, especially in Iolanthe. In his lifetime he was more honored for his oratorios than his operas, but his gift was for light music, especially that associated with words; one reviewer said he could make his instruments almost laugh with his text. Another wrote: "He could conjure up any kind of music or sound from the orchestra, nautical music, military music, weird music for ghosts, could make the orchestra sound like a group of banjos or like bagpipes. His personal favorite was The Yeomen of the Guard, one of his later collaborations with Gilbert; he said its composition had given him more pleasure than anything else.

In 1900, he had a fall from which he never completely recovered. He worked intermittently, but his condition worsened. The last entry in his diary, on October 15, reads, "Lovely day ... I am sorry to leave on such a lovely day"; He died in November. Part of his funeral was held at the Chapel Royal, and he is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. His funeral procession went past the residence of D'Oyly Carte who was extremely ill and would himself die in a few months. Gilbert was abroad and could not attend, but he later paid tribute to him as follows:

A composer of the rarest genius — who, because he was a composer of the rarest genius, was as modest and as unassuming as a neophyte should be, but seldom is. ... I remember all that he has done for me in allowing his genius to shed some of its lustre upon my humble name.

Revised December 2006
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