Monday music spot: Sir Arthur Sullivan, "The Pirate King's song" from "The Pirates of Penzance"

Continuing my series of music by British born composers who were working between the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 and "the rise of Elgar," which I am defining as starting with the date of his first public composition, 1889.

Sir Arthur Sullivan was born in Lambeth in 1842 (so 147 years after the death of Henry Purcell.)

His father Thomas Sullivan was based from 1845 to 1857 at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he was the bandmaster and taught music privately to supplement his income. Young Arthur became proficient with many of the instruments in the band and composed an anthem, "By the Waters of Babylon", when he was eight. He later recalled:

"I was intensely interested in all that the band did, and learned to play every wind instrument, with which I formed not merely a passing acquaintance, but a real, life-long, intimate friendship. I gradually learned the peculiarities of each ... what it could do and what it was unable to do. I learned in the best possible way how to write for an orchestra."

In 1856, at 14, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Music, which allowed him to study at the academy and then at the Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany. His graduation piece, incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest (1861), was received with acclaim on its first performance in London - 28 years before Elgar's first published work. 

Sullivan's output covered a much, much wider range than this, but he is of course best remembered for his light opera collaborations with the librettist Sir William Schwenk Gilbert which began in 1875 with "Trial by Jury," and went on to include 14 comic opera collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including "H.M.S. Pinafore," "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Mikado." 

Overall Sullivan's works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".

There are so many pieces by Sullivan which I love among the Savoy Operas alone that is is very hard indeed to pick one to ost, but I'm going to run with "The Pirate King's Song" from "The Pirates of Penzance."

Here is a very slapstick version sung by Kevin Kline (from a film which was very true to the comic spirit of the original: 




And here sung by Tim Curry is a performance which perhaps showcases the music better.


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