As the musical half of the great Gilbert and Sullivan operetta-writing partnership, Sir Arthur Sullivan was behind some of the most memorable songs in English, but what were his secrets?
Professor David Owen Norris outlines Sullivan’s approach to writing his songs.

The transcript and downloadable versions of this part of the ‘Sullivan Song Day’ conference are available from the on the Gresham College website:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/sullivan-song-day-1

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk

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11 Replies to “Arthur Sullivan’s Songwriting Technique – David Owen Norris”

  1. It is strange what apparent appearances can be~
    Gilbert was outgoing, and you might think he was a jolly,friendly person.It seems he was nice but quite introverted domestically. His wife was 11 years his junior,and it is believed he never consummated his marriage with her.
    Sullivan on the other hand appeared to be stiff and starched,and very model of a Victorian gentleman.He had affairs with several women(some married) but he never married himself. When he was suffering from the pressures of composition,he took a channel ferry,and headed for Parisian brothels.
    I post this,as the two guys are opposites to what they appear to be.

  7. I had never paid much attention to Arthur Sullivan before (all I knew of him was his operettas and "The Lost Chord") but I have a much greater appreciation for his music now. I'll have to listen to some of his more obscure work. Similarly I hadn't thought much of Elgar until I learned a bit about what he was going for.

  9. As well as considering his stage music (from 1:05:56), one might also compare his large corpus of church music, different again and also little-known. Sullivan was first a church musician.

    Norris I think says (at 0:17:27) "we don't really know" about the composer's pronunciation of "lute". His voice was in fact recorded on 5 October 1888 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Sullivan#Recordings), and this 72-second speech luckily contains the word "lucid", pronounced [lju-].

    The second part of Norris' lecture is currently on http://vimeo.com/30844642.

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