GILBERT—SULLIVAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22256, 2 November 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

GILBERT—SULLIVAN

THEIR COLLABORATION

BY KOTAUK

" The Gilbert and Sullivan operas," wrote William Archer, " helped more than any other productions of their time to restore our national self-respect in matters of the theatre." In them we have an ex uession of tho essential English spirit that is of all time because it is of no particular time. Gilbert's fantastic imagination created a world and filled it with men and women sufficiently like tho world and people wo know to keep our interest at stretch, and sufficiently unlike to achieve something of tho universal. Sullivan set this strange yet familiar company marching to the lilting rhythms the English soul has always loved and in which it has from tho beginning found itself.

As our folk songs prove, the lilting melody is our native musical form. Of course, theoretically, we should move on to ail appreciation of the subtler, more elaborate and intricate forms of music. But it is a difficult matter remoulding a national taste. Somo twenty years ago under foreign influences we lost our power to compose tho light, lilting rhythms. A movement began that ended in the abomination of desolation, the triumph of tho crooner. It is possible that the American soul can find some obscure satisfaction in the tuneless bleatings of senile dyspeptic sheep. Anyway, America seems to have taken that unfortunate quadruped as its musical model. We strayed into the wilderness, and for a time, just as tho musk at the same period lost its fragrance, wc seemed to havo lost tho ability to appreciate and compose music in the old national style. But we are finding ourselves again. If wo have not yet the old knack, we have enough sense to serve up again the old material. The old song " Coifiing Home " makes a surprising reappearance as "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life," and it sweeps tho world. Harking Back It shows how hungry we are for this sort of thing. In its latest form this song of an earlier day is far more popular than it was twenty years ago. " Sweet Marie," an even more ancient lyric, has also successfully appeared this year in a new guise. The old comic operas prove an infallible draw when tlioy are revived. Community singers again shout the songs their parents found delight in. Schools and colleges everywhere are staging Gilbert and Sullivan. One expects at any minute to hear that the musk has recaptured its long lost perfume. Hesketh Pearson has just told again the story of the Gilbert and Sullivan collaboration, which restored in one field our national self-respect, and has added immeasurably to the delight and tho gaiety of the world. Tho partnership has done so much for England and mankind that a library of histories of its difficult course has not exhausted the public interest. The foolish question whether the collaboration owed more to Gilbert or to Sullivan is still being debater! with vehemence; as usual in such matters where no decision is possible, with morO heat than light. The obvious fact is that neither can stand alone. In some curious fashion each was stimulated to the height of his special powers by his association with the other. They found a medium in which each was completely dependent 011 the other. It was not Gilbert that made the partnership; neither was it Sullivan. Any attempt to assign relative values to their united work is a mere beating the wind. The names stand together, and the glory is the undivided, indivisible, property of both. The Two Men On tho face of it tho partnership would have been judged impossible. Gilbert was crotchety, domineering, full of sharp angles. Sullivan was suave, polished, friendly. Gilbert liked to be disliked; when a bitter, brilliant, caustic phrase occurred to him he allowed 110 consideration for others to place a check upon his tongue. Ho was tho forthright, downright type of Englishman. Sullivan was half Irish, half Italian. It is generally thought that somewhere in his family tree lodged an ancestor who would not be tolerated in Aryan Germany. He liked above everything that peoplo should like hi;n. There was something almost feline in bis excess of friendliness and love of sunshine.

While Gilbert made enemies everywhere and spent much of his life in gratifying his passion for litigation, Sullivan was tho beloved of society, had an assured place in the most exclusive royal circles, numbered his royal acquaintances by the dozen, and was a member of the intimate group Kdward VH. gathered round him in his later Prince of Wales period. Gilbert was a terrific and systematic worker, allowing nothing to come between him and the task in hand. Sullivan worked in wild spasms. He was never up to time with bis music for the theatre. Ho postponed getting down to composition till the very last minute and then tore into it with a fury that left him a nervous wreck. He was always a very sick man, and wrote practically all the operas during bouts of agony that often left him insensible. Incompatibility Sometimes Gilbert was able to holp Sullivan 011 tho musical side. Tho famous " I Have a Song to Sing, 0," in the " Yeomen of the Guard," had Sullivan completely stuck. For a fortnight he struggled with it, but the tunc would not come. In despair he consulted Gilbert, who, being in an obliging mood, offered to rewrite it on the chance that the new rhythm might suggest something to the composer. But Sullivan liked the words too much to allow any tampering with them. He asked Gilbert if he did not havo some tune in his mind when he had written tho words. Gilbert remembered that ho had adapted them to a sea-chanty 110 had heard 011 one of his yachting trips. Ho hummed tho air. Jn a flash Sullivan had it, and one of his best songs was born.

Tho long association of librettist and composer was punctuated by many bitter quarrels. Much of their finest work was done in an atmosphere of strife. Gilbert thought his best writing had boon done for the straight stage, and would have gone on writing sentimental comedies and farce burlesques if tho operas had not proved much more profitable. Ho was probably jealous, too, of tho, popularity of the music apart from the words, and of Sullivan's greater royalties through tho sales of tho inline. Sullivan liked the money the operas brought in, but thought no was prostituting his genius by devoting it to what his high-brow friends cousiderod unworthy of him. That tli- y were between them creating imperishable masterpieces never seems to havo occurred to either of them.

So time and again thoy separated, to come together again for a short period of work. Sullivan swung into grand opera with littlo success. Ho tried other librettists, but Gilbert struck tire from him as no one elso could do it. That two men so utterly incompatible should have worked together so long with such splendid results will always be a deep mystery. But the workings of genius are always mysterious, and particularly in this unique case where the touch of genius depended on the fusion of elements contributed by two such diverse personalities.