"IN MEMORIAM."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 6737, 19 December 1900, Page 2

" IN MEMORIAM."

•A Story,

Tbeovorluro"ln Memoriam," n< is now known, was composed by the late Sir Arthur Sullivan in memory of his father. But the pathetic circumstances under which that work was produced aro less well known. When, in IB6o', that is when he was 24 years old, aud had a commission to write for the Norwich Fostival, Sullivan could not find an appropriate subject, and said to his father, to whom he was devotedly attached, "I havo a mind to give up tho whole affair I don't know what to choose for asubject, 1 ' 'Don'tdo that, my boy," said his father- " Don't giyo it up; something will happen that may furnish you with an oppor. tunity." And, throe days afterwards something did happen—his father suddenly died, Half mad with griof, his son followed tho ooffla to tho grave, and when he came home and sat with his mother brooding over, his loss, lie suddenly jumped up and said," Mother, I can't bear it, I must cry out my grief in music;" and. there and then he sat down and wrote. Aud thus was the overture "In Memorial*" produced,