ABSTRACT
Between the years 1862 and 1870 a spate of compositions in the classical instrumental forms issued forth from the young composer, anxious to build upon the early success of The Tempest. This chapter concentrates on Sullivan's one major essay in the area, the 'Irish' Symphony of 1866, though his other orchestral works from this decade are also considered from the perspective of their relationship with generic form. At a larger level, the symphony will be contextualised against the compositional backdrop of the 1860s, an era sometimes seen as an interim period between the generation of Mendelssohn and Schumann and the 'second age of the symphony', the resurgence of symphonic composition in the decades following 1870. Sullivan's position within the nineteenth-century symphonic tradition sheds valuable light on the influences that contribute to his style, and how this affects where people situate him in music history.
