ABSTRACT
To Arthur Sullivan and his fellow-choristers, Helmore was the complete tutor. An undated letter of Sullivan’s inscribed ‘Tuesday evening’ refers to a concert series, almost certainly that of the Madrigal Society. By 1856 Sullivan’s voice and reliable musicianship had made him a chosen favourite when individual solos were required. Sullivan’s success, in so far as it was not in his own native gifts, must largely be ascribed to Helmore’s training. On Sullivan’s death his fellow-chorister Bridgeman was to write in the Musical Times a memorial of those days. Sullivan’s prowess in his first academic year was sufficient to induce the extension of his Mendelssohn Scholarship for a second year. Sullivan could not have been more generously treated—and it was a generosity stirred not only by his musical worth but by a charm of manner which persisted through life, making him as welcome to ladies in the drawing room as to clubmen and colonels, bankers and brother artists.
