The Tempest (Sullivan)
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The Tempest incidental music is a set of movements for Shakespeare's play composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1861-62.
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[edit] Background
Sullivan wrote his incidental music to Shakespeare’s play as his graduation piece while a conservatory student at Leipzig. Mendelssohn was much admired by the tutors at the Leipzig Conservatoire, and Sullivan’s music, following the pattern of Mendelssohn’s famous score for A Midsummer Night's Dream, was chosen for inclusion in the Conservatoire’s end-of-year concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on April 6, 1861, while Sullivan was still 19 years old. At that concert, six items from the score were played, conducted by the composer: Introduction, Ariel’s Song, Entr’acte, Grotesque Dance, Entr’acte and Epilogue, Dance of Nymphs and Reapers.
In England, the work was taken up by August Manns, conductor of the Crystal Palace concerts. Sullivan revised and extended the music to twelve movements, which were given in full at a concert on April 5, 1862 at the Crystal Palace, with a linking narration written by the music critic Henry Chorley and spoken by Arthur Matthison. The solo singers were May Banks and Robertina Henderson. The work was an immediate success, with five numbers being encored. The score was favourably reviewed by The Times and even more favourably by The Athenaeum, which was the publication for which Chorley was critic. So great was the success of the concert that it was repeated the following week.
[edit] Musical analysis and subsequent performances
As might be expected in the work of such a young composer, the influence of earlier composers is marked. Gervase Hughes detects the influence of Beethoven in the Introduction, Schumann in the Act IV Overture. Percy Young suggests Liszt (an acquaintance of Sullivan's) and Berlioz as influences. Hughes, Young and Arthur Jacobs agree that the most conspicuous influence is Mendelssohn. In early 1863, Charles Hallé included the work in two concerts with his Manchester orchestra, which also included Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music, where Sullivan's piece was received enthusiastically. The Manchester Guardian was strong in its praise for Sullivan's work. In October 1864 it was used, as Sullivan had intended, in a production of the play at Prince's Theatre in Manchester.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream was regularly used in theatrical productions. The same is not true of Sullivan's The Tempest music, although he later was commissioned to write incidental music for productions of other Shakespeare plays staged by Henry Irving and others.[1]
[edit] Recordings and musical numbers
The music has been recorded both in full and in selections.[2] The full score was recorded in 1955 by the Vienna Orchestral Society conducted by F. Charles Adler, better known for his performances of the works of Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. The recording has been reissued on CD. The description of the musical numbers in that version is as follows:
- Introduction
Act I
- Song: Come unto these yellow sands (Ariel to Ferdinand)
- Song: Full fathom five thy father lies (Ariel to Ferdinand)
Act II
- Ariel's Music
- Melodrama and Song: While you here do snoring lie (Ariel to Gonzalo)
Act III
- Prelude
- Banquet Dance
Act IV
- Overture
- Masque of Iris, Ceres, Juno
- Duet: Honour, riches, marriage blessings (Juno and Ceres to Ferdinand and Miranda)
- Dance of nymphs and reapers
Act V
- Prelude
- Song: Where the bee sucks (Ariel to Prospero)
- Epilogue
[edit] References
- Hughes, Gervase: The Music of Arthur Sullivan, Macmillan, London 1960
- Jacobs, Arthur: Arthur Sullivan, OUP, Oxford, 1986 ISBN 0-19-282033-8
- Rowse, A L (ed): The Annotated Shakespeare, Orbis, London, 1978 ISBN 0-85613-073-7
- Young, Percy M: Note to EMI recording CSD 3713 of numbers from The Tempest, 1972
- Young, Percy M: Sir Arthur Sullivan, J M Dent & Sons, London 1971 ISBN 0-460-03932-2
[edit] External links
- The Tempest at the G&S Archive, including Midi files and the score
- The Tempest at the G&S Discography
