The Tempest incidental music, Op. 1, is a set of movements for Shakespeare's play composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1861 and expanded in 1862. This was Sullivan's first major composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in England.
Sullivan wrote his incidental music to Shakespeare's play as his graduation piece while a conservatory student at Leipzig. Felix Mendelssohn was much admired by the tutors at the Leipzig Conservatory, and Sullivan's music, following the pattern of Mendelssohn's famous score for A Midsummer Night's Dream , was chosen for inclusion in the Conservatory’s end-of-year concert at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 6 April 1861, while Sullivan was still eighteen 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". [1]
After Sullivan's return to England, early in 1862, music critic Henry F. Chorley hosted a private performance of The Tempest in his home, where George Grove, at that time Secretary to the Crystal Palace, heard the piece. Grove was sufficiently impressed to arrange for a performance the work by the unknown composer at the Crystal Palace, where it was taken up by August Manns, conductor of the Crystal Palace concerts. [2]
Sullivan revised and extended the music to twelve movements, which were given in full at a concert on 5 April 1862 at the Crystal Palace, with a linking narration written by 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, and Sullivan's reputation as an extremely promising composer was made overnight. [2]
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 Ludwig van Beethoven in the Introduction, Robert Schumann in the Act IV Overture. Percy Young suggests Franz Liszt (an acquaintance of Sullivan's) and Hector Berlioz as influences. Hughes, Young and Arthur Jacobs agree that the most conspicuous influence is Felix 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 in a production of the play at the Prince's Theatre in Manchester. [1] 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]
In his review of the 2008 recording by the Kansas City Symphony, Rob Barnett writes, "This music is smooth, full of lissom invention and generally in the style of Schumann and Mendelssohn ... Truly charming is the skipping flute figuration in 'Banquet Dance'. The orchestra is just as successful in the ... 'Dance of Nymphs and Reapers'. Mendelssohn is certainly engaged in the Act IV overture. The Act V Prelude with its shivering-plodding string pizzicato and epic lassitude is another magnificent effort." [3]
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV
Act V
The full score of The Tempest (except for a few passages surrounding the dialogue) was first 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 was well regarded and was reissued on CD in 1999 on the "Sounds on CD" label. [4] A suite comprising about half the music was recorded in 1972 by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Vivian Dunn, and in 2000, by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox. [5] In 2008, a recording of most of the music was issued by the Kansas City Symphony, with Michael Stern conducting, on the Reference Recordings label (RR-115CD). Rob Barnett calls the recording excellent, [3] but Marc Shepherd judges it "not as good as the 1955 reading [but] nevertheless enjoyable". [6]
A complete recording was issued in 2016 on the Dutton Epoch label, together with Sullivan's incidental music for Macbeth and his "Marmion Overture". Soloists are the sopranos Mary Bevan and Fflur Wyn, with Simon Callow speaking some of Shakespeare's dialogue surrounding the music, and the BBC Singers and BBC Concert Orchestra. The conductor is John Andrews. [7] [8]
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan was an English composer. He is best known for 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the film score or soundtrack.
Sir Granville Ransome Bantock was a British composer of classical music.
Frederick Stock was a German conductor and composer, most famous for his 37-year tenure as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
On two occasions, Felix Mendelssohn composed music for William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. First in 1826, near the start of his career, he wrote a concert overture. Later, in 1842, only a few years before his death, he wrote incidental music for a production of the play, into which he incorporated the existing overture. The incidental music includes the famous "Wedding March".
August Wilhelm Julius Rietz was a German composer, conductor, cellist, and teacher. His students included Woldemar Bargiel, Salomon Jadassohn, Arthur O'Leary, and Sir Arthur Sullivan. He also edited many works by Felix Mendelssohn for publication.
The Overture di Ballo is a concert overture by Arthur Sullivan. Its first performance was in August 1870 at the Birmingham Triennial Festival, conducted by the composer. It predates all his work with W. S. Gilbert, and is his most frequently recorded concert work for orchestra.
The Sapphire Necklace, or the False Heiress, was the first opera composed by Arthur Sullivan. It was never performed, and most of the music and libretto are now lost.
Kenilworth, A Masque of the Days of Queen Elizabeth, is a cantata with music by Arthur Sullivan and words by Henry Fothergill Chorley that premiered at the Birmingham Festival on 8 September 1864.
The Symphony in E, first performed on March 10, 1866, was the only symphony composed by Arthur Sullivan. Since Sullivan's death, it has frequently been called the "Irish" Symphony as it was composed in Ireland, and as a homage to Mendelssohn's "Scottish Symphony".
The Cello Concerto in D major is Arthur Sullivan's only concerto and was one of his earliest large-scale works. It was written for the Italian cellist Alfredo Piatti and premiered on 24 November 1866 at the Crystal Palace, London, with August Manns conducting. After this, it was performed only a few times. The score was not published, and the manuscript was destroyed in a fire in the 1960s, but the full score was reconstructed by the conductors Sir Charles Mackerras and David Mackie in the 1980s. Their version was premiered and published in 1986.
L'Île Enchantée is an 1864 ballet by Arthur Sullivan written as a divertissement at the end of Vincenzo Bellini's La Sonnambula at Covent Garden. It was choreographed by H. Desplaces.
The Light of the World is an oratorio composed in 1873 by Arthur Sullivan. Sullivan wrote the libretto with the assistance of George Grove, based on the New Testament. The work was inspired by William Holman Hunt's popular 1853–54 painting, The Light of the World. The story of the oratorio follows the whole life of Christ, told mostly in the first person, focusing on his deeds on Earth as preacher, healer and prophet.
The Tempest (Stormen), Op. 109, is incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, by Jean Sibelius. He composed it in 1925–26, at about the same time as he wrote his tone poem Tapiola. Sibelius derived two suites from the score.
Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde, known in English as Son and Stranger or Return of the Roamer, is a one-act Singspiel written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1829 to a German libretto by the composer's friend Karl Klingemann, a poet who would later provide the text for the oratorio Elijah. The English title Son and Stranger originated with the translation by Mendelssohn's friend, the critic Henry Chorley, created for a London production of 1851 and still often used for the rare revivals in English-speaking countries. The work was published posthumously as Mendelssohn's Op. 89.
George Wilford Bulkley Byng was an English conductor, composer, music arranger and musical director of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is known for composing music for ballet productions staged at the Alhambra Theatre in London during the Edwardian era, for his theatre compositions, and as a conductor for HMV from World War I up to about 1930. Byng was his stage name.
Theatre music refers to a wide range of music composed or adapted for performance in theatres. Genres of theatre music include opera, ballet and several forms of musical theatre, from pantomime to operetta and modern stage musicals and revues. Another form of theatre music is incidental music, which, as in radio, film and television, is used to accompany the action or to separate the scenes of a play. The physical embodiment of the music is called a score, which includes the music and, if there are lyrics, it also shows the lyrics.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 51-minute studio album containing the overture and most of the incidental music that Felix Mendelssohn wrote to accompany William Shakespeare's play of the same name. It is performed by Judith Blegen, Frederica von Stade, the Women's Voices of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. It was released in 1977.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 55-minute studio album containing the overture and almost all of the incidental music that Felix Mendelssohn wrote to accompany William Shakespeare's play of the same name. It is performed by Kathleen Battle, Frederica von Stade, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Seiji Ozawa, with interlinking passages of verse spoken by Judi Dench. It was released in 1994.
