ABSTRACT
IT was fitting—though it was none of Arthur Sullivan’s doing—that the operetta chosen for prior production in the United States should eventually engender an American national song. In New York in the first days of 1880, Arthur Sullivan could rejoice in the general success of The Pirates of Penzance more than in any recognition of his specific contribution. Sullivan’s music is obliged to join in the reminiscence of ‘What never? Hardly ever’. The Major-General’s song is a conventionally poetic address to Nature, ‘River, river, running river’, to which Sullivan supplies a rippling orchestral accompaniment, as in Schubert’s song ‘To be sung on the water’. From New York, Sullivan wrote to Fanny Ronalds as well as to his mother. In company with Gilbert, Sullivan sailed on the Gallia on 3 March. On 30 June Sullivan and 19 of his fellow-composers met at his flat to organize a united defence of their professional rights—a matter on which Sullivan had already expressed himself strongly.
