Symphony in E (Sullivan)

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:

The playing time is about thirty five minutes (or slightly longer if the exposition repeat is taken in the first movement).

Sullivan began work on his symphony in 1863, very early in his career, when he was 21 years old. From holiday in Ireland, he wrote that "as I was jolting home through wind and rain... in an open jaunting-car, the whole first movement of a symphony came into my head with a real Irish flavour about it – besides scraps of the other movements." The composer later wrote, "I always meant to call it the 'Irish Symphony', but I modestly refrained, as it was courting comparison with the 'Scotch Symphony'." [i.e. Mendelssohn's Symphony No 3.] The title did not appear on the published score until after Sullivan's death, in the Novello edition of 1915.

The first performance of the symphony was at The Crystal Palace in March 1866, thanks to the popular singer, Jenny Lind, who sponsored the concert and attracted an audience of 3,000 for her singing in the first half of the programme. The conductor was August Manns, who had previously conducted the London première of Sullivan's incidental music to The Tempest.

The symphony was well received, though the music critics, both then and later, observed the influence of other composers. The Times wrote, "Mr Sullivan should abjure Mendelssohn, even Beethoven and above all Schumann, for a year and a day." In his 1960 study of Sullivan's music Gervase Hughes also detects echoes of Schumann, and of Schubert as well.

The symphony was performed frequently during Sullivan's lifetime, but received few performances in the twentieth century. It has, however, been performed more frequently in recent years and was the major work of the opening concert of the first English Music Festival (broadcast by the BBC) in October 2006. Four CD recordings of the piece are available, and a new study score edition has been published by a German firm, Musikproduction Jürgen Höflich and is available here (a reprint of the out-of-print Novello & Co edition, with a new introduction).

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Wikipedia