The Lost Chord
Encyclopedia
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred
Fred Sullivan
Frederic Sullivan was an English actor and singer. He is best remembered as the creator of the role of the Learned Judge in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, providing a model for the comic roles in the later Savoy Operas composed by his brother Arthur Sullivan.By 1870, Sullivan had abandoned...
during Fred's last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877; Fred Sullivan died five days later. The lyric was written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked on behalf of a number of causes, most prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted...
called "A Lost Chord," published in 1858 in The English Woman's Journal.
The song was immediately successful and became particularly associated with American contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Antoinette Sterling
Antoinette Sterling
Antoinette Sterling was an Anglo-American vocalist born in Sterlingville, a community in the Town of Philadelphia in Jefferson County, New York....
, with Sullivan's close friend and mistress, Fanny Ronalds
Fanny Ronalds
Mary Frances "Fanny" Ronalds , was an American socialite and amateur singer who is best known for her long affair with the composer Arthur Sullivan in London in the last decades of the nineteenth century....
, and with British contralto Clara Butt
Clara Butt
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE , sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English contralto with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.-Early life and career:Clara Butt was born in Southwick,...
. Sullivan was proud of the song and later noted: "I have composed much music since then, but have never written a second Lost Chord."
Many singers have recorded the song, including Enrico Caruso, who sang it at the Metropolitan Opera House
Metropolitan Opera House (39th St)
The Metropolitan Opera House was an opera house located at 1411 Broadway in New York City. Opened in 1883 and demolished in 1967, it was the first home of the Metropolitan Opera Company.-History:...
on 29 April 1912 at a benefit concert for families of victims of the Titanic disaster. The piece has endured as one of Sullivan's best-known songs, and the setting is still performed today.
Background
In 1877, Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
was already Britain's foremost composer, having already produced such critically praised pieces as his Irish Symphony
Symphony in E, Irish
The Symphony in E, first performed on March 10, 1866, was the only symphony composed by Arthur Sullivan. It is frequently called the 'Irish' Symphony.There are four movements:*Andante – Allegro, ma non troppo vivace*Andante espressivo*Allegretto...
, his Overture di Ballo
Overture di Ballo
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...
, many hymns and songs, such as "Onward, Christian Soldiers
Onward, Christian Soldiers
"Onward, Christian Soldiers" is a 19th century English hymn. The words were written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865, and the music was composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871. Sullivan named the tune "St. Gertrude," after the wife of his friend Ernest Clay Ker Seymer, at whose country home he composed...
", and the popular short operas Cox and Box
Cox and Box
Cox and Box; or, The Long-Lost Brothers, is a one-act comic opera with a libretto by F. C. Burnand and music by Arthur Sullivan, based on the 1847 farce Box and Cox by John Maddison Morton. It was Sullivan's first successful comic opera. The story concerns a landlord who lets a room to two...
and Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
. Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist. She worked on behalf of a number of causes, most prominently on behalf of unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted...
was an extremely popular poet in Britain, second in fame only to Alfred Lord Tennyson. On the early published sheet music for the song, Procter's name is written in larger letters than Sullivan's. Sullivan's father's death had inspired him to write his Overture In C (In Memoriam)
Overture In C (In Memoriam)
The Overture in C, "In Memoriam", by Arthur Sullivan, premiered on 30 October 1866 at the Norwich Festival, in honour of his father, who died just before composition began. The piece was written early in Sullivan's career, before he began to work with his famous collaborator, W. S. Gilbert, on...
over a dozen years earlier.
Fred Sullivan
Fred Sullivan
Frederic Sullivan was an English actor and singer. He is best remembered as the creator of the role of the Learned Judge in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, providing a model for the comic roles in the later Savoy Operas composed by his brother Arthur Sullivan.By 1870, Sullivan had abandoned...
was an actor who appeared mostly in operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s and comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
s. Playwright F. C. Burnand wrote of Fred: "As he was the most absurd person, so was he the very kindliest. The brothers were devoted to each other, but Arthur went up, and poor little Fred went under." Fred created the roles of Apollo in Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's Thespis (1871), and the Learned Judge in their Trial by Jury (1875), among others. He most likely would have played the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan's next work, The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
(1877), but he fell ill in 1876 and died before that work was produced.
During Fred's final illness, Arthur visited his brother frequently at his home on King's Road
King's Road
King's Road is a street in Chelsea, London, England.King's Road or Kings Road may also refer to:* King's Road * King's Road * King's Road * King's Road...
in Fulham, London. The composer had tried to set the poem to music five years previously but had not been satisfied by the effort. Again in grieving, he was inspired to compose, and at Fred's bedside, he sketched out the music to The Lost Chord. Although not written for sale, the song became the biggest commercial success of any British or American song of the 1870s and 1880s. The American contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Antoinette Sterling
Antoinette Sterling
Antoinette Sterling was an Anglo-American vocalist born in Sterlingville, a community in the Town of Philadelphia in Jefferson County, New York....
became one of its leading proponents, as did Sullivan's close friend and sometime mistress, Fanny Ronalds
Fanny Ronalds
Mary Frances "Fanny" Ronalds , was an American socialite and amateur singer who is best known for her long affair with the composer Arthur Sullivan in London in the last decades of the nineteenth century....
, who often sang it at society functions. Dame Clara Butt
Clara Butt
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE , sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English contralto with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.-Early life and career:Clara Butt was born in Southwick,...
recorded the song several times, as did many others, including Enrico Caruso in 1912. A copy of the manuscript was buried with Ronalds, who bequeathed the manuscript to Butt in 1914. Butt's husband, baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Robert Kennerly Rumford (1870-1957), gave the manuscript to the Worshipful Company of Musicians
Worshipful Company of Musicians
The Worshipful Company of Musicians is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Its history dates back to at least 1350. Originally a specialist guild for musicians, its role became an anachronism in the 18th century, when the centre of music making in London moved from the City to the...
in 1950.
Musicologist Derek B. Scott offers this analysis of the composition:
1888 recording for Edison
In 1888, Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
sent his "Perfected" Phonograph to Mr. George Gouraud
George Edward Gouraud
Colonel George Edward Gouraud was an American Civil War recipient of the Medal of Honor who later became famous for introducing the new Edison Phonograph cylinder audio recording technology to England in 1888.-Biography:...
in London, England, and on August 14, 1888, Gouraud introduced the phonograph to London in a press conference, including the playing of a piano and cornet recording of Sullivan's "The Lost Chord," one of the first recordings of music ever made.
A series of parties followed, introducing the phonograph to members of society at the so-called "Little Menlo" in London. Sullivan was invited to one of these on October 5, 1888. After dinner, he recorded a speech to be sent to Thomas Edison, saying, in part:
These recordings were discovered in the Edison Library in New Jersey in the 1950s.
Text
Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I know not what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
,
Like the sound of a great Amen
Doxology
A doxology is a short hymn of praises to God in various Christian worship services, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns...
.
It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
echo
From our discordant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
life.
It linked all perplexèd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.
It may be that death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heav'n
I shall hear that grand Amen.
Cultural influence
- There have been at least six films titled The Lost Chord, as well as one titled The Trail of the Lost Chord.
- Jimmy DuranteJimmy DuranteJames Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...
recorded a humorous song called "The Guy Who Found the Lost Chord," which he also sings in the film This Time for KeepsThis Time for KeepsThis Time for Keeps is an American romantic musical film released in 1947 and produced by MGM. It is about a soldier, returning home from war who does not wish to work for his father's opera company or to continue his relationship with his pre-war lover. It stars Esther Williams, Jimmy Durante,...
. - Michael FlandersMichael FlandersMichael Henry Flanders OBE, was an English actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs. He is best known to the general public for his partnership with Donald Swann performing as the duo Flanders and Swann....
and Donald SwannDonald SwannDonald Ibrahím Swann was a British composer, musician and entertainer. He is best known to the general public for his partnership of writing and performing comic songs with Michael Flanders .-Life:...
's comic song, "The Reluctant Cannibal" has the opening line, "Seated one day at the tom-tom", a reference to the first line of "The Lost Chord." - The Moody BluesThe Moody BluesThe Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
produced an album called In Search of the Lost ChordIn Search of the Lost Chord-2006 SACD Deluxe Edition Bonus Tracks:In Search of the Lost Chord was remastered into SACD in March 2006 and repackaged into a 2 CD Deluxe Edition.Extra tracks on the Deluxe Edition are:#"Departure" – 0:55...
in 1968. - The StrangersStrangers (TV series)Strangers was a UK police drama that appeared on ITV between 1978 and 1982.After the success of the TV series The XYY Man, adapted from books by Kenneth Royce, Granada TV devised a new series to feature the regular characters of Detective Sergeant George Bulman and his assistant Detective...
TV series had an episode called "The Lost Chord." - An organization called The Lost Chord describes itself as "a collaborative effort to nurture young talent from underprivileged communities and to foster a commitment to music and arts education accessibility in the New England community."
- Caryl Brahms wrote a book called Gilbert and Sullivan: Lost Chords and Discords (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975).
- Edith WhartonEdith WhartonEdith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
's novel Ethan FromeEthan FromeEthan Frome is a novel published in 1911 by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Edith Wharton. It is set in the fictitious town of Starkfield, Massachusetts, New England, United States...
contains references to the song. - In Isaac AsimovIsaac AsimovIsaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
's Black WidowersBlack WidowersThe Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov for a series of sixty-six mystery stories which he started writing in 1971...
story "The Quiet Place" (Ellery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery MagazineEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine is an American monthly digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction...
, March 1988), the traditional "Guest" of The Black WidowersBlack WidowersThe Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov for a series of sixty-six mystery stories which he started writing in 1971...
hums this tune all through a dinner. - The book Bad Wisdom by Bill DrummondBill DrummondWilliam Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
and Mark Manning concerns their trip to the North Pole with an icon of Elvis to search for the Lost Chord.
External links
- "The Lost Chord" a video of the song being sung by English treble Peter AutyPeter AutyPeter Auty is an English operatic tenor who has worked with most of the major opera companies in Britain and a number of companies in continental Europe.-Choirboy:...
, at YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos.... - "The Lost Chord" links to free sound file of the song being sung by Enrico Caruso
- "The Lost Chord" at The Cyber Hymnal
- "The Lost Chord" at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Derek B. Scott singing Sullivan's setting, and information about it