Gilbert and Sullivan: HMS Pinafore: Opera: Libretto

As you read this somewhere in the English-speaking world a production of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta is being rehearsed or presented. It may be taking place in an elementary secondary or high school; a university; an amateurmusical theater group; a summer-stock ensemble; a professional light-opera company. The musical accompaniment may consist of a piano or two - perhaps plus a few other instruments - or a full orchestra. Audiences be theyfirst-time listeners or dyed-in-the wool G&S fanatics will be captivated by the scintillating melodies and effervescent lyrics of those highly unlikely collaborators: Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan and Sir William Schwenck GIlbert.Incredibly despite the seemingly endless popularity of these works which have been published staged recorded broadcast televised and cinematized over the years since their first performances by the D’Oyly Carte Opera inLondon in the 1870s and 1880s there has never been an edition which permitted the guitar-playing masses to enjoy these Victorian gems. Until now. Here for the first time are 52 G&S favorites (or if you will favourites) drawnfrom five of their most popular operettas: H.M.S. Pinafore The Pirates of Penzance Patience Iolanthe The Mikado. arranged with guitar chords in guitar-friendly keys! The very model of a modern music manuscript! Allselections include melody lyrics and guitar chords.

Written at the deathbed of Arthur Sullivan’s brother Fred in 1877 and setting words by Adelaide Anne Proctor The Lost Chord was immediately successful and became the biggest sensation of any song in its decade. Of all the drawing room ballads of the Victorian era The Lost Chord has remained alive in the popular imagination. This arrangement for solo Organ is true to the original without overplaying its drama and restores the eponymous 'lost chord’ to the Organ from whence it originally came. Composer Arthur Sullivan is known the world over for his operatic collaborations with W S Gilbert including H M S Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance among many others. ButSullivan was also a composer of a host of other works among them operas Orchestral works ballets and hymns and church pieces.

The Te Deum Laudamus is a single movement Choral work and was Sullivan’s last completed composition. In one movement the composer moves through all the component parts of the mass drawing them together seamlessly and expressing Sullivan’s own deeply felt faith.Composer Arthur Sullivan is known the world over for his operatic collaborations with W S Gilbert including H M S Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance among many others. But Sullivan was also a composer of many other works among them operas Orchestral works ballets and hymns and church pieces.Among his church works Sullivan is best known for his hymn Onward Christian Soldiers and the theme of that hymn isincorporated in this Te Deum. Sullivan wrote the work on request for a Thanksgiving Service held in St Paul’s Cathedral at the close of the Boer War in South Africa. It received its first performance in 1902 in the presence of King Edward VII and other members of the royal family. That the song of thanksgiving was composed nearly two years before the end of the war perhaps demonstrated Sullivan’s patriotism.