Arthur Sullivan - 9781409469100

Taylor & Francis

Arthur Sullivan (1842\u20131900) was Victorian Britain\u2019s most celebrated and popular composer, whose music to this day reaches a wider audience than that of any of his contemporaries. Yet the comic operas on which Sullivan\u2019s reputation is chiefly based have been consistently belittled or ignored by the British musicological establishment, while his serious works have until recently remained virtually unknown. The time is thus long overdue for scholarly re-engagement with Sullivan. The present book offers a new appraisal of the music of this most notable nineteenth-century British composer, combining close analytical attention to his music with critical consideration of the wider aesthetic and social context to his work. Focusing on key pieces in all the major genres in which Sullivan composed, it includes accounts of his most important serious works \u2013 the music to The Tempest, the \u2018Irish\u2019 Symphony, The Golden Legend, Ivanhoe \u2013 alongside detailed examinat.