The Tempest incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form 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"....

, Op. 1, is a set of movements for Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's play composed by 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...

 in 1861 and expanded in 1862. This was Sullivan's first major piece of composition, and its success quickly brought him to the attention of the musical establishment in England.

Background

Sullivan wrote his incidental music to Shakespeare's play

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

 as his graduation piece while a conservatory student at Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

. Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

 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

Gewandhaus

Gewandhaus is a concert hall in Leipzig, Germany. Today's hall is the third to bear this name; like the second, it is noted for its fine acoustics. The first Gewandhaus was built in 1781 by architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe. The second opened on 11 December 1884, and was destroyed in the...

 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.

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

George Grove

Sir George Grove, CB was an English writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians....

, at that time Secretary to the Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...

, 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

August Manns

Sir August Friedrich Manns was a German-born conductor who made his career in England. After serving as a military bandmaster in Germany, he moved to England and soon became director of music at London's Crystal Palace. He increased the resident band to full symphonic strength and for more than...

, conductor of the Crystal Palace concerts.

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

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

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.

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

Gervase Hughes

Gervase Alfred Booth Hughes was an English composer, conductor and writer on music. From 1926 to 1933, Hughes pursued a career as a conductor and chorus master, principally at the British National Opera Company, and also co-produced Shakespeare plays...

 detects the influence of Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 in the Introduction, Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

 in the Act IV Overture. Percy Young suggests Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 (an acquaintance of Sullivan's) and Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

 as influences. Hughes, Young and Arthur Jacobs

Arthur Jacobs

Arthur David Jacobs was an English music critic, musicologist, teacher, librettist and translator. Among his many books, two of the best known are his Penguin Dictionary of Music, which was reprinted in several editions between 1958 and 1996, and his biography of Arthur Sullivan, which was praised...

 agree that the most conspicuous influence is Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

. In early 1863, Charles Hallé

Charles Hallé

Sir Charles Hallé was an Anglo-German pianist and conductor, and founder of The Hallé orchestra in 1858.-Life:Hallé was born in Hagen, Westphalia, Germany who after settling in England changed his name from Karl Halle...

 included the work in two concerts with his Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 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

Prince's Theatre, Manchester

The Prince's Theatre in Oxford Street, Manchester, England, was built at a cost of £20,000 in 1864. Under the artistic and managerial leadership of Charles Calvert, "Manchester's most celebrated actor-manager", it soon became a great popular success...

 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

Henry Irving

Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...

 and others.

In his review of the 2008 recording by the Kansas City Symphony

Kansas City Symphony

The Kansas City Symphony is a United States symphony orchestra based in Kansas City, Missouri. The current music director is conductor Michael Stern. The current home of the Symphony is the Lyric Theatre, located in Downtown Kansas City on 11th Street between Wyandotte and Central Streets...

, 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."

Musical numbers

• 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

Recordings

The Tempest has been recorded (nearly) in full and in selections. The full score (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

Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...

 and Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

. The recording was well regarded and was reissued on CD in 1999 on the "Sounds on CD" label. A "suite" of about half the music is heard on a 1972 recording by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Vivian Dunn

Vivian Dunn

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Vivian Dunn KCVO OBE FRSA was the Director of Music, Portsmouth Division, Royal Marines1931-53 and Principal Director of Music, Royal Marines, from 1953 to 1968. He was the first military musician to be knighted.Francis Vivian Dunn was born in Jabalpur, India...

 and in 2000, by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox

Richard Hickox

Richard Sidney Hickox CBE was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.-Early life:Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family...

. In 2008, a recording of most of the music was issued by the Kansas City Symphony

Kansas City Symphony

The Kansas City Symphony is a United States symphony orchestra based in Kansas City, Missouri. The current music director is conductor Michael Stern. The current home of the Symphony is the Lyric Theatre, located in Downtown Kansas City on 11th Street between Wyandotte and Central Streets...

, Michael Stern

Michael Stern

Michael Charles Stern is a British Conservative Party politician. Stern contested Derby South at the 1979 general election before being elected as Member of Parliament for Bristol North West at the 1983 general election. He represented the seat for 14 years...

 conductor (the son of Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...

), on the Reference Recordings label (RR-115CD). Rob Barnett calls the recording excellent in his review of the recording for Music Web. Reviewer Marc Shepherd writes that the 2008 recording "is not as good as the 1955 reading ... but it is nevertheless enjoyable.

External links

• The Tempest at the G&S Archive, including Midi files and the score
• The Tempest at the G&S Discography
• Review of The Tempest in The Times, 7 April 1862
• Later review of The Tempest in The Times, 21 December 1868