I’ve been writing so much about Gilbert & Sullivan lately, and here it is, the anniversary of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s birth (in 1842)! This gives me an excuse to share this video of “The Gondoliers,” which I’ve been holding in reserve for just such an occasion. Goes great with mutton chops.
Venetian bonus! Incidental music for a production of “The Merchant of Venice”:
Sir Arthur Sullivan speaks in 1888 (also the year of the photo). “The Gondoliers” opened in 1889.
Happy birthday, Arthur Sullivan!
This week on “Sweetness and Light,” musicians step out to strut their stuff in a collection of lighter works for solo instrument and orchestra.
Some of the pieces will be well-known, some perhaps not. We’ll enjoy a trumpet overture derived from a film score by Franz Waxman, a scherzo by the swashbuckling pianist and composer Henry Charles Litolff, a polka for bassoon and orchestra evocative of a grumpy old bear by Julius Fučík, and more.
A highlight will surely be a cello concerto by Arthur Sullivan, later of Gilbert & Sullivan fame, that was destroyed by fire but reconstructed decades later, largely from memory, by Sir Charles Mackerras.
One is the loneliest number, as the old song goes. So put your hands together for soloists stepping into the “light music” spotlight, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EST/8:00 PST, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
Today is the birthday of Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). Sullivan, of course, is best known as one half of the evergreen partnership, with Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, of Gilbert & Sullivan, creators of the successful series of still frequently performed, emulated, and parodied comic operas. Of course, Sullivan wrote much else besides, often chafing at being hitched to Gilbert and the obligations of Savoy opera (though admittedly lucrative), which he felt limited him as a serious composer.
I’ve long known about the cylinder of Sullivan speaking at a dinner party in 1888 (on which he makes some perspicacious remarks about the future of recorded music), but there is plenty else here that is new to me – 17 minutes of astonishing recordings and footage from Sullivan’s world. As someone points out in the comments section, the dinner party took place only five days after the double murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes by Jack the Ripper.
Documents like these really make history come alive. People born in this era still walked the earth when I was a boy.
Caricature of Sullivan, with impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte and William S. Gilbert
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” with the First of May right around the corner, we don our May Day finery and caper about the Maypole, to a couple of works by English composers.
The first is by Sir Arthur Sullivan – he of Gilbert & Sullivan fame – who, in 1897, set to music a “Jubilee Hymn,” as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations surrounding the reign of Queen Victoria, which were held in May of that year.
Concurrently, he was commissioned to write a ballet to mark sixty years of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square. The result was “Victoria and Merrie England,” which was made up of nationalistic tableaux celebrating the history, legends, and royalty of Great Britain.
We’ll listen to Scenes II & III from the ballet, together titled “May Day in Queen Elizabeth’s Time” (this alluding, of course, to the reign of Elizabeth I). The suite includes colorful descriptive subsections like “Procession of the Mummers and the Revelers,” “Knights and Rose Maidens,” “Friar Tuck and the Dragon” and “Maypole Dance.”
Then we’ll turn to one of the earliest programmatic works by Arnold Bax (later SIR Arnold Bax). “Spring Fire,” composed in 1913 and 1914, is meant to suggest the awakening of mythological beings in early spring.
The subject matter was an attempt to cash in on the fashionable “paganism craze” sparked by the Ballets Russes and its composers. Bax’s affection for the writings of Algernon Swinburne had recently yielded the symphonic poem “Nympholept.” Quotations from Swinburne also adorn portions of the score to “Spring Fire.”
The piece was scheduled for performance several times, but repeatedly cancelled, first because of the outbreak of war, then because of the work’s difficulty. Ultimately, it would never be performed during Bax’s lifetime. The manuscript was consumed in a fire in 1964, and all hope of ever hearing the score vanished. Fortunately, a copy was discovered, and the piece was finally recorded in 1986.
The work is meant to evoke a woodland sunrise in early spring, as ancient denizens of the forest shrug off their winter sleep. They skip with mad antics down the glades. Forest lovers loll in their ecstatic dreams, until they are rudely awakened by a turbulent rout of satyrs and maenads. Sounds like spring to me.
I hope you’ll join me for “Spring into May Day,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
All right, Savoyards, it’s Sir Arthur Sullivan’s birthday. Let’s see those “likes.”
Here’s the great John Reed. Why is this collection not on CD, in the form it was originally issued? Granted, all the numbers are drawn from complete recordings:
Seasonal Sullivan:
Sullivan without Gilbert – his “Irish Symphony” (though I still prefer Sir Charles Groves’ recording):
Aaron Copland (92) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (119) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (185) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (99) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (134) Opera (198) Philadelphia Orchestra (86) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (106) Radio (87) Ralph Vaughan Williams (85) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (102) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)