Sullivan, Arthur

Arthur Sullivan – Symphony in E Major (Irish Symphony)

(b. London, 13 May 1842 – d. London, 22 November 1900)

Preface
Known best for the operettas he composed with his colleague William S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) also composed a number of outstanding instrumental works. His works for the stage include incidental music for various plays. In fact, his graduation from the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, included a performance of Sullivan’s own incidental music for Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1861; rev. 1862), a gesture that merits attention for the obvious comparisons those on the continent would make with Felix Mendelssohn’s well-known music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sullivan’s music for The Tempest earned him recognition as a budding composer, and he responded, in turn, by producing more works, including some inspired by English topics, like the choral piece Kenilworth (1864), an Overture nicknamed In memoriam – bringing to mind Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetic work of the same title – and the large-scale Symphony in E major, also known as the Irish Symphony (1863).

Despite its name ›Irish‹, Sullivan’s symphony is not connected overtly to Ireland either by virtue of content derived from idiomatic tunes or through programmatic associations with the country, as Richard Strauss would later make in his four-movement symphonic poem Aus Italien. Rather, Sullivan took up work on the symphony after a visit to Ireland, and at one time intended to call the work In Ireland. If Sullivan had specific meanings in mind by using that title of the adjectival form ›Irish‹, he left no clues that would suggest anything specific. Rather, he composed a substantial multi-movement work that stands easily within the symphonic tradition that existed on the continent, without necessarily requiring an explication of any national associations that its title suggests. As a matter of comparison, the thematic content bears little resemblance to the music that Sullivan later composed for his ultimately unfinished opera The Emerald Isle. The kind of cliché musical gestures match the ironic lyrics in »If You Wish to Appear as an Irish Type« are absent from the Irish Symphony. Even in a number like »Come Away, Sigh the Fairy Voice« Sullivan used simple-sounding, arpeggiated intervals and diatonic harmony to suggest local color in that work, and the similar approach he used in some parts of the Irish Symphony may be regarded as a existing in contrasting to other, more complex musical structures.

Read preface / Vorwort > HERE