Master and Master

I've promised my publisher that I will write short articles to go on Facebook relating to Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, but I keep putting off the evil day of actually writing anything. So maybe I should write something here and treat it as a first draft of the Facebook stuff.

It's well known that Gilbert and Sullivan didn't always get on. Mike Leigh's excellent film Topsy-Turvy portrays the strain in the relationship very well: a surface politeness and even a rapport, but a fundamental underlying difference of temperaments and of artistic aims. Sullivan wanted to write operas in which the relationship of composer with librettist was more conventional--that is, the music being the factor of primary importance, and the words being designed to facilitate the expression of emotion through that music. Gilbert, the foremost dramatist of his era, did not wish to become a librettist in that traditional sense, did not wish to take that role, was temperamentally unable to do so.

All this is documented in letters that passed between the two men throughout their joint career. In their first years, each was happy to accept what the other had to offer--Sullivan revelled in Gilbert's exuberant humour and perfectly turned verses, while Gilbert greatly admired Sullivan's ability to turn even what he considered pedestrian lines into something beautiful. As the years passed, however, their artistic ambitions began to diverge. I'm simplifying here, but broadly speaking Sullivan felt he was squandering his talents on the operas, and he wanted to show he could write something bigger and more serious; while Gilbert, who had already written his ambitious serious works which were generally speaking disliked by the public, was now content to write frivolous nonsense which made him rich.

In early 1889 they had written most of their best works, and the most ambitious of these, The Yeomen of the Guard, was still drawing audiences at the Savoy. In January of that year Sullivan met up with Gilbert and explained to him that he wanted to write something bigger and more serious, with the music taking a more prominent position than even in Yeomen. Gilbert seemed to agree to this, but in letters written between the two men in February and March, the problem rose to the surface. Gilbert objected that if they collaborated on a "grand" opera the words would be subservient to the music, so that he would be "swamped." Sullivan responded that this was exactly the position he had found himself in through all their collaborative works, having to keep his music down in order to serve the words. He wrote (12 March 1889): "You say that in a serious opera, you must more or less sacrifice yourself. I say that this is just what I have been doing in all our joint pieces, and, what is more, must continue to do in comic opera to make it successful."

Gilbert's response written on 19 March 1889--and this is why I've gone into the whole tedious matter in the first place--was to express his "amazement and regret" that Sullivan should be "under the astounding impression that you have been effacing yourself during the last twelve years". He added, "You are an adept in your profession, and I am an adept in mine. If we meet, it must be as master and master--not as master and servant."

The quarrel didn't end there, of course--Sullivan bristled at what he considered Gilbert's "abrupt letter", and the two men continued to snipe at each other. But it is probably easier for us to see now, than it was for them then, that Gilbert's verdict was the clincher of the argument.

Sullivan hankered after the composer's traditional position on the operatic stage, in command of his librettist. Gilbert insisted that he could not take the subordinate position. In fact they had created a form of art in which words and music existed in a completely new relationship to each other--and it was Sullivan who had invented it. He was bound not by Gilbert but by his own sense of what his music had to be to suit Gilbert's words. The music served the words but also liberated the words and gave them wings.

In traditional opera, the dictum generally applies that "If it's not worth saying, sing it." Gilbert and Sullivan invented a new kind of song in which words and music are equally important: they are the collaborations of master and master. And this is the template of the classic songs of 20th century Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.

Elsewhere, Gilbert wrote: "I have always held that English is (next to Italian) the very best of all European languages for singing purposes, provided that the song-writer will take into consideration the requirements of the singer & reject words & phrases that involve a hard collocation of consonants & a succession of close vowels." A devotee of opera will laugh at the idea. But the history of popular song in the past century, most of it written in English, suggests that he may have been right.