ABSTRACT
Sullivan is not notable for his production of chamber and instrumental music. As with orchestral and symphonic music, this was a genre that occupied him during the first decade of his creative life and thereafter it appears not at all. Yet his output, though slight in quantity, includes some highly appealing music, and allows us an intimate glimpse into the nature of his compositional style during an important formative period. The earliest of the surviving chamber works from Sullivan's hand consist of two separate movements for string quartet written whilst a student in Leipzig: a sonata-form movement in D minor, dating from 1858, and a Romance in G minor from the following year. The Idyll in D major for cello and piano was written in 1865 but published only much later at the end of Sullivan's life.
