Arthur Sullivan

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), English composer, best known for his comic operas written in collaboration with the English playwright William S. Gilbert. These works, and the genre they created (a blend of parody, burlesque, and satire), became known as “Savoy operas” because several were first performed at the Savoy Theatre, London. Born May 13, 1842, in London, he was trained at the Royal Academy of Music and the Leipzig Conservatory and by his father, Thomas Sullivan, a bandmaster and teacher of clarinet. Sullivan was appointed organist at St Michael's Church, Chester Square, London, in 1861. In 1862 his incidental music to Shakespeare's Tempest established his reputation. In 1866 he became professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Sullivan's first comic opera, Cox and Box (1867), revealed a notable talent for this medium. In 1871 he met Gilbert, and the two men entered into a remarkable collaboration that lasted 25 years. Together they produced 14 comic operas, including Trial by Jury (1875), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), The Mikado (1885), The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), and The Gondoliers (1889). Musically, the Gilbert and Sullivan operas are generally considered the finest comic operas ever written to English texts. Sullivan had a notable gift for melody and for musical parody, particularly of such overornate traditions as those of Italian opera and the English Elizabethan madrigal; in addition, he originated new forms of comic musical settings, notably the patter song, a light tune restricted to a small vocal range in which adroit use is made of a long, rapidly delivered text.

Among his later works are the once-popular cantata, The Golden Legend (1886); a Te Deum (1897); a grand opera, Ivanhoe (1891); and songs, among them a group set to poems by Shakespeare and the popular “Onward! Christian Soldiers” (1872) and “The Lost Chord” (1877).

Sullivan died November 22, 1900, in London.