Sullivan, Arthur Seymour ___ 1842-1900 ___ British ___ composer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Sullivan was born in Lambeth, London, into a musical family - his father was a bandmaster at the Royal Military College. By the age of 14, he was already an accomplished musician and won several scholarships, one of which was at Leipzig, Germany, where Franz List heard his study composition 'The Tempest'. On returning to England, aged 20, 'The 'Tempest' was produced and received much acclaim. For a decade he worked as a teacher (at what would become the Royal College of Music) and organist (at the Royal Opera House), and was regarded as a leading composer. He wrote 'Onward Christian Soldiers', and composed a variety of grand choral works such as 'The Prodigal Son' and 'The Light of the World'. He began collaborating with W S Gilbert in his late 20s. Their first piece was 'Thespis', but their first success was 'Trial by Jury' which they wrote on commission for Richard D'Oyly Carte. Together they produced many famous comic operas. In the 1880s, Sullivan was appointed principal conductor of the Leeds Triennial Musical Festival, for which he wrote 'The Martyr of Antioch' and 'The Golden Legend'. During his lifetime, the latter was second in popularity only to Handel's 'Messiah'. In 1883, he was knighted by Queen Victoria, for whom he had written several pieces. Despite suffering from painful kidney stones in the last decades of his life, Sullivan continued to work on many projects, but, famously, he fell out with Gilbert for a short while in the early 1890s. One of Sullivan's last big works - and his most ambitious - was the opera, 'Ivanhoe'.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1881-1900 ___ music

WEB TEXT LINKS
one quote and a bit about
a few citations

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Beinecke Library, Yale University - 1886 diary

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Sir Arthur Sullivan; His Life, Letters and Diaries
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.