Sullivan was born in London. His father was an army bandsman and professor of clarinet at the Royal Military School of Music (Kneller Hall).
As a boy he sang in the Chapel Royal; aged 14 he won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music and later at Leipzig Conservatory.
From the time of his “Opus 1” at the age of 18, to the last of his completed comic operas, The Rose of Persia, nearly 40 years later, Arthur Sullivan produced music in all the forms beloved of Victorian England - orchestral music (a charming Irish Symphony), oratorios (The Golden Legend, at one time second in popularity only to Handel’s Messiah), songs (The Lost Chord), hymns (Onward Christian soldiers) and concert overtures (Marmion and Macbeth).
Sullivan’s music, influenced by Rossini and Schubert, is rich in spontaneous melody, humorous, rhythmically subtle and harmonized and orchestrated in perfect taste. For fifteen years, Sullivan experienced uninterrupted success and fame with the series of operettas written with W.S. Gilbert. Most of Sullivan’s overtures are little more than selections of tunes from the operetta, usually assembled by an assistant. (The Yeoman of the Guard is an exception.)

Although these pieces overshadowed Sullivan’s other work, the concert overture di Ballo, written five years before Trial by Jury, was regularly included in Sullivan’s concert programmes. It is vivacious and tuneful and shows Sullivan’s scoring at its most felicitous.
Sullivan uses the Italian title, di Ballo, to suggest that the overture is not A dance or THE dance. The overture seeks to capture the “Spirit of the Dance” – in a rather more lightweight manner than the “Apotheosis of the Dance” in the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh symphony!

Vaughan Williams’ music often features two contrasting moods - one contemplative and trance-like and the other pugnacious and sinister. The latter aspects of his work are shown in the calculated violence of his Fourth Symphony which he wrote in 1935.The first mood is evident in the grave serenity of the Fifth symphony. The radiant music of this symphony appeared to many at the time as foreseeing an end to war; and to others, as a serene farewell from a composer who was then turned 70. Neither view was accurate as the symphony was begun in 1938 and the composer was to write a further four.

Having composed his one act opera The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains in 1922, Vaughan Williams was working on a full-scale dramatisation of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” in 1938. Believing that the “morality” (as he later called it) might never be performed he diverted some of the music into a new symphony – his Fifth.

First movement Preludio (Moderato)
The Fifth symphony is dedicated “to Jean Sibelius, without permission” – but there is little resemblance in style and method between the two composers. One similarity, though, is that each began his Fifth symphony with a horn-call. This call dominates the movement and it is followed by the strings playing a melody which immediately establishes a tranquil mood. There is a beautiful transition into E major which is followed by a more agitated Allegro section. The music becomes suddenly tempestuous - a passage which is certainly reminiscent of Sibelius. A horn-call marks the beginning of the recapitulation. The brass lead to a noble climax for full orchestra before the movement ends as serenely as it began.

Second movement Scherzo (Presto)
This swift-moving, uneasy movement opens with a Presto for strings followed by a melody for flute and bassoon. The scoring is mostly light and brilliant, but there are emphatic explosions from the brass and some tart comments by the oboe and cor- anglais. The lumpish, snarling contribution for brass is described by Michael Kennedy as “music for a ballet of hobgoblins, gargoyles and other fantastic creatures”. The movement peters out mysteriously with a light, mercurial section for flute, bassoon and strings.

Third movement Romanza (Lento)
The slow movement originally bore the following quotation from Bunyan:

“Upon that place there stood a cross and a little below a sepulchre. Then he said, “He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death”.

In the opera Pilgrim sings the italicised words to the poignant cor anglais tune, which follows after the strings have set the solemn scene. A hesitant, less tranquil section follows, leading to an agitated animato passage which in the opera represents Pilgrim’s cries of “Save me, Lord. My burden is greater than I can bear”.
By way of consolation the horns and trumpets repeat the cor anglais theme. The anguish is soothed by a return of the main theme, richly scored for lower strings and developing into an Alleluia phrase of increasing richness and expressiveness. The solo violin, solo horn and strings end this beautiful movement in a tone of quiet contentment and contemplation - all struggles have been resolved.

Fourth movement Passacaglia (Moderato)
The cellos, soon joined by the flutes, violins and violas, play a gentle, spacious theme which is subject to considerable variation (a characteristic of a passacaglia or chaconne). An Allegro section follows, before the trumpets and trombones proclaim the opening horn call from the first movement.
A scherzando folk dance variation is terminated by the return of the horn-call.
The Passacaglia theme returns, moving to a climax for full orchestra. The string theme re-appears heralding a coda of remarkable beauty and tranquillity. The strings proclaim a benediction in a murmur of Alleluias and a mood of serene radiance – as our pilgrimage ends with a vision of the Celestial City.
The symphony was first produced at a Promenade Concert on the 24th June 1943 with the composer conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since that time, the characteristic warmth and poetry of Vaughan Williams music, as shown in his Fifth symphony, have led many to regard it as the greatest of his nine symphonies.

IN 1580 the tune “Greensleeves” was referred to as “a new Northern dittye” but it may be of an earlier date. It is mentioned by Shakespeare in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor” where reference is made to the lamentable practice of singing the words of the 100th Psalm to the tune.
In the early 1890s Vaughan Williams became involved in the collection and study of English folk song. It is therefore no surprise to encounter “Greensleeves” in his opera Sir John in Love (1929) based on the same Shakespearian play.
An offshoot from the opera was the well-known Fantasia on “Greensleeves” first performed in 1934.

In February 1898, at the age of forty-one, Edward Elgar began to write his Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra, Op. 36.
The work derives its popular title “Enigma Variations” from the fact that the theme is labelled “Enigma”. According to the composer, this theme could be combined in counter-point with another (unheard) melody with which everyone was familiar. Although numerous attempts have been made to “discover” this other tune, there has never been a successful solution. Elgar himself would never divulge his secret. A postcard reply to an enquirer read, “No, Auld Lang Syne won’t do”.

THEME: The poignant and expressive theme is built on two contrasting though interwoven ideas. The first, in the minor, is patterned sequentially over a firm rising bass; the second is more flowing and rhapsodic in the major key. A cadence in the major leads into the first variation.

The Variations were dedicated by the composer “To my friends pictured within”, and each variation is actually a musical portrait of one of these friends.

1. C.A.E. The initials are those of Elgar’s wife, Caroline Alice Elgar. The theme is treated with great warmth and tenderness.

2. H. D. Steuart –Powell. A devout lover of chamber music who, after practicing finger exercises similar to the figuration of this variation, would play the piano accompaniments to Elgar’s violin and Basil G. Nevison’s (subject of Variation 12) ’cello. The theme appears in the bass and suggests that H.D.S.P. was an imaginative and a nimble-fingered pianist.

3. Richard Baxter Townsend was an amateur actor whose reedy voice was capable of remarkable changes in pitch, here reflected in the bassoon and high woodwind

4. William Meath Baker was a country squire renowned for his hospitality – a forthright man of considerable energy and decision.

5. Richard Penrose Arnold, the scholar son of the poet Matthew Arnold, was a quiet, contemplative man and a good amateur pianist.

6. Miss Isabel (“Ysobel”) Fitton, a pupil of Elgar’s, played the viola which is featured prominently in this variation. She was, according to Elgar, “pensive and for a moment romantic”. The large intervals in the first viola part may suggest that she was very tall.

7. Arthur Troyte Griffith was described as a refreshing but highly argumentative individual. His work, as an architect in Malvern, is alluded to by Elgar in music which hammers out great blocks of sound, as if in preparation for some noble edifice.

8. This variation is dedicated to the graceful, gentle Miss Winifred Norbury, a local pianist who often accompanied Elgar in performances of sonatas, although Elgar maintained that his music was “really suggested by an eighteenth century house”!

9. Linked to the previous variation, this solemn movement pays tribute to Elgar’s close friend, A. J. Jaeger of Novello & Co. (Jaeger, in German = hunter = Nimrod, the hunter; hence the title). At the beginning of this long and beautiful variation, richly scored for strings and brass, there is an allusion to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, of which Jaeger was very fond.

10. (Intermezzo) Here Elgar describes his young friend, Miss Dora Penny (“Dorabella”). The woodwind delicately suggest a slight impediment in her speech.

11. Hereford Cathedral organist and keen walker, Dr. George Sinclair, owned a bulldog called Dan. One day, whilst strolling along the banks of the River Wye, the dog fell into the river and after much splashing and barking it managed to climb out further downstream. Sinclair challenged Elgar to set the incident to music.

12. This meditative ’cello solo, clearly derived from the main theme, was written for Basil G. Nevison.

13. (***)Romanza Lady Mary Trefusis was on a sea voyage when this lovely variation was written. This is assumed to be the reason for the quotation (a clarinet solo) from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage overture.

14. E.D.U. The initials refer to a nickname of Elgar’s. The finale is a brilliant self-portrait of the composer himself, with reference to earlier variations.

The first performance of the “Enigma” variations was conducted by Hans Richter at a concert in St. James’s Hall, London on June 19th 1899. Its huge success brought Elgar national acclaim.