SULLIVAN, Arthur 1842-1900

The Music to Shakespeare's Tempest, Composed & Dedicated to his esteemed friend, Sir George Smart. [Piano four-hands]

London ... New York: Novello & Company, Limited ... Novello, Ewer & Co. [PN 8028], [ca. 1865].

Folio. Contemporary dark blue textured paper boards with titling gilt to upper. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), [i] (blank), 2-105, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved throughout.

With small circular Schirmer and "Made in England" handstamps to foot of title and small label of "Novello & Company 15/- Limited" to outer margin.

Binding worn, rubbed, and bumped; blank lower outer margin of pp. 7-10 slightly defective.

A nice wide-margined copy.

First Edition. OCLC 6704431.

The Tempest was first performed in Leipzig at the Gewandhaus on 6 April 1861.

An English composer and conductor, Sullivan's "widest and most durable fame was won in operetta, especially in partnership with the dramatist and satirist W.S. Gilbert (1836–1911) ...

His graduation exercise at Leipzig, which he conducted on 6 April 1861, was a suite of incidental music to The Tempest much on the lines of Mendelssohn's to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Returning to London, he met George Grove, who arranged for a performance of the Tempest music (revised) under the baton of August Manns at the Crystal Palace on 5 April 1862. The work won an immediate and extraordinary success: ‘it may mark an epoch in English music’, wrote the influential critic Henry F. Chorley in The Athenaeum. It was repeated a week later; in 1863 Hallé likewise gave it two performances with his orchestra in Manchester. Sullivan was thereafter never short of commissions and was exceptionally permitted to dedicate his Procession March (also called Royal Wedding March; Crystal Palace, 10 March 1863) and other works to the Prince of Wales himself, the future King Edward VII. ...

After the operettas, indeed, it is not Ivanhoe which best represents Sullivan but that almost smothered category ‘incidental music’, with which may be grouped his ballet music (insofar as it has been rediscovered). The incidental music to The Tempest (1861) retains the freshness which won the composer his first fame, and cunningly employs the principle of thematic metamorphosis (Schumann, rather than Liszt, being the probable inspiration). The plaintive ‘warning’ oboe figure at the opening, representing Prospero's pervasive magic, becomes the main tune of the Banquet Dance ... appropriately so, because the ostensible jollity of the banquet is a hidden manifestation of Prospero's menace." Arthur Jacobs in Grove Music Online.

Item #41239

Price: $120.00  other currencies