Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers

Ian Bradley

Description

Arthur Sullivan is best known as W. S. Gilbert's collaborator in the Savoy Operas. Sullivan was regarded as the nation's leading composer of sacred oratorios on a par with Mendelssohn and Brahms. Ian Bradley provides the first detailed, comprehensive, critical study and review of Sullivan's church and sacred music.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 22 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334049937
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers




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IAN BRADLEY
Lost Chords and Christian Soldiers
The Sacred Music of Sir Arthur Sullivan






© Ian Bradley 2013
Published in 2013 by SCM Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, SCM Press.
The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
978-0-334-04421-5
Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon



Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Things Are Seldom What They Seem: Changing Views of Sullivan’s Sacred Music
2. Are You in Sentimental Mood? The Religious, Cultural and Musical Context
3. When I First Put this Uniform On: Sullivan’s Upbringing and Formative Years
4. They Only Suffer Dr Watts’ Hymns: Hymn Tunes and Arrangements
5. Ballads, Songs and Snatches: Sacred Ballads and Part-Songs
6. They Sing Choruses in Public: Oratorios and Cantatas
7. For All Our Faults, We Love Our Queen: Anthems and Other Liturgical Pieces
8. I Hear the Soft Note: Spiritual Echoes in Sullivan’s Secular Works
9. Conclusion: All Hail, All Hail, Divine Emollient

Appendix 1. List of Hymn Tunes
Appendix 2. Alternative Lyrics for ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’
Appendix 3. Sullivan’s Possible Involvement in ST CLEMENT
Appendix 4. Sullivan’s Sacred Songs
Appendix 5. The Prodigal Son : Musical Numbers and Biblical Sources
Appendix 6. The Light of the World : Musical Numbers and Biblical Sources
Appendix 7. Sullivan’s Anthems and Liturgical Pieces

Select Bibliography
Select Discography





My sacred music is that on which I base my reputation as a composer. These works are the offspring of my liveliest fancy, the children of my greatest strength, the products of my most earnest thought and most incessant toil.




Preface and Acknowledgements
This is the first book-length study of the church and sacred music of Arthur Sullivan, justifiably described by an early twentieth-century musical historian who was not very keen on him as ‘probably the most widely popular English composer who has ever lived’. 1 It is extraordinary that this part of Sullivan’s output has never before been subjected to serious and comprehensive study. It encompasses two oratorios, a sacred cantata, three Te Deums, 61 original hymn tunes and 75 hymn tune arrangements, 26 sacred part-songs and ballads, 19 anthems and several other liturgical pieces. Among these works are ST GERTRUDE , written to accompany ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ and still one of the best known and loved of all hymn tunes, NOEL , the melody to which the popular Christmas carol ‘It came upon the midnight clear’ is universally sung in Britain and ‘The Lost Chord’, the best-selling sacred parlour ballad of all time.
Sullivan himself wanted to be chiefly remembered for his sacred music. He is not, of course, nor is he ever likely to be. The comic operas that he wrote with Gilbert will always be his most enduring legacy. However, his sacred work deserves to be much better known and appreciated. During his lifetime and for much of the century following his death, it was dismissed and, indeed, vilified by many of his fellow musicians and by critics as shallow, sentimental, secular and second-rate. Over the last two or three decades awareness and appreciation of the work Sullivan did without Gilbert has grown considerably. This is partly a consequence of the wider move away from the anti-Victorianism which afflicted so much academic and critical thought throughout most of the twentieth century. It is also more directly a result of the tireless advocacy and activities of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, which have brought many of his long and unjustly neglected works to public attention through performances, recordings and new editions.
This book is offered as a contribution to this process of rehabilitation and increasing public awareness. It is not a technical musicological study. Rather it attempts to locate Sullivan’s church and sacred music in the context of its time, to explore the motives and the faith that led him to engage substantially in this area of composition and to assess its theological and spiritual impact and legacy. It offers a radical reassessment of the composer’s own religious faith on the basis of a careful reading of his letters and diaries and an analysis of the texts that he chose to set and the way that he set them. It places his work in the context of Victorian sentimentalism, liberal Christianity and fervent patriotism and charts its popular and critical reception during his lifetime and through the twentieth century. If it leads some readers to discover Sullivan’s sacred works for the first time and others, already familiar with them, to ponder more deeply their significance and influence, then it will have done its job.
Like most other devotees of Sullivan that I know, I was first drawn to him as a pre-teenager through the magical melodies of the Savoy operas. While my contemporaries clamoured to buy the latest Beatles’ single, I saved my pocket money to collect the complete Ace of Clubs D’Oyly Carte collection. I saw my first Savoy opera at the age of 11, and Gilbert and Sullivan has been one of the main and most consistent passions of my life ever since. I have performed it over five decades, attended hundreds of performances, written three books and contributed to numerous radio and television programmes about it. Over the last 20 or so years, while retaining my love for the Savoy operas, I have also become increasingly interested in and captivated by Sullivan’s rich corpus of church and sacred music, thanks in no small part to my involvement in the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, and this has fuelled the research which finds fruit in this volume.
I should probably begin my acknowledgements with a nod to the Norwegian psychotherapist with whom I fell into conversation in May 2004 while walking across the island of Iona to St Columba’s Bay. As we tramped over the rough boggy ground speaking mostly of spiritual matters but also of my passion for Sullivan’s music, she suddenly stopped, turned to me and said in an intense and serious voice: ‘I believe you are the reincarnation of Arthur Sullivan.’ It was an uncanny experience. As a Christian, and indeed as a Presbyterian minister, albeit of the most liberal rather than the most bigoted and persecuting type, I do not believe in reincarnation, and I do not for one moment think that I somehow embody the soul of Sullivan come to earth again. I certainly possess none of his musical gifts. However, I do feel a strong affinity and empathy towards him and a mission to explain, promote and defend his work in the face of the torrent of criticism and abuse to which it has been and still is subjected. I have no recollection of the name of my walking companion and have had no further contact with her since that memorable early summer day. She deserves a word of thanks, however, for recognizing my fascination for and sense of closeness to Sullivan, both of which have been driving factors in the researching and writing of this boo