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.

The Art of Damning with Faint Praise

I first got to know the Savoy Operas as scripts to be read by borrowing the two-volume Oxford University World's Classics edition (1962-3) from the school library. I devoured them in print more or less in tandem with my listening to the music on cassettes and seeing local amateur productions in Bingley and elsewhere. I have very fond memories of this edition of the libretti, which I haven't read in about twenty-five years. (What a shocking number to have to set down! I think of myself as a young man setting out in life still.)

Well, about a week ago I bought a copy of the two-volume set very cheaply on Ebay, and yesterday the books arrived (see left). The libretti themselves are set out beautifully clearly, and in versions meticulously edited by Bridget D'Oyly Carte. But Volume One also contains an Introduction by Lord David Cecil which, reading it today, I can only call an exercise in literary condescension. After some praise of Gilbert's vein of nonsense and of the operas as satires (or rather, as "skits"), he continues almost by apologising for Oxford having published the libretti as World's Classics at all:

"[The present edition] gives us only one half of the composite author. The less important half too; for Sullivan has lasted better than Gilbert. His tunes are still playedeverywhere while few people read Gilbert's words. This is not wholly Gilbert's fault; there are a hundred people who enjoy a pleasant tune for one who likes verbal wit. But it is also true that Sullivan in his own line was an artist of the first order.... Gilbert does not maintain the same level. On the contrary, unhelped by the charm of Sullivan's tunes, the libretti show up as very unequal. The prose dialogue in particular is often stilted and facetious: Gilbert was one of those who suffered under the delusion that to say a simple thing in long words is to make it laughable. Further, his touch on fantasy is uncertain.... he is liable to degenerate into a mechanical whimsicality.... Along with imaginative weakness goes insensitiveness of taste, especially apparent when he aspires to be graceful and gallant: [quotation from "Take a pair of sparkling eyes] There is a genteel vulgarity about this which is distressing.... Gilbert was... a middle-class Victorian with the characterstic defects of his type. Though prudish, he was not refined. Indeed, his prudery emphasises his lack of refinement...." (pages xii-xiii)

Later, he condemns the libretto of The Yeomen of the Guard as "a muddled failure," on the grounds that "plot and style are at odds with one another throughout the piece." However, he adds, "If The Yeomen of the Guard is Gilbert's worst libretto, it is Sullivan's best score. 'Is Life a Boon?' and 'The Merryman and his Maid' breathe a delicate pathos he touches nowhere else. Here Sullivan supplied Gilbert's deficiencies. He did so elsewhere, too. For, unlike Gilbert, he was a man of imagination and could therefore convey by his tunes the fantasy and feeling that the genre demanded but which were lacking in Gilbert's words. It is Sullivan's music that makes the fairies in Iolanthe fairy-like and the ghosts in Ruddigore eerie and Jack Point's love story poignant." (pages xvi-xvii)

It would be easy here to make the mistake of getting into the whole worthless "Who was better, Gilbert or Sullivan?" routine. The simple fact is that each was, as Gilbert acknowledged, a master in his own sphere, and they met as equals. Lord David Cecil, Eton and Oxford educated though he was, and Professor of English Literature though he also was later on, has written an infuriatingly flabby and vague Introduction which puts down the writer he ought to be celebrating, and ascribes to the music (of which he knew nothing) the long-lasting qualities that he does not wish to find in the words. It is absurd to state, airily or glibly, that Gilbert lacked imagination, when that is one of his overriding qualities. One might argue that Gilbert had too much imagination, in that he wanted his Fairies to contradict the lazy cliche of "fairy-like" behaviour, and he wanted his ghosts to be ordinary and un-ghost-like; what Sullivan's music does is to create magnificent realisations of what fairy music or ghost music ought to sound like according to the conventions. The fault of many of Gilbert's non-Sullivan works is that he hurried ahead into his own peculiar realm and he left his slower audiences behind him.

Lord David Cecil's Introduction to the Savoy Operas is an excellent example of the kind of attitude that has held back our appreciation of Gilbert's works for so long. Whenever Gilbert is given a word of praise, there is always an implicit "but" at the end of the sentence. All writers, all artists are imperfect. If you want, you can find a "but" to say about any great genius. But in Gilbert's case, the "but" must always be expressed (and it always the same two or three hoary old "buts" which get trotted out every time). It is some years since I resolved to emphasise Gilbert's qualities rather than his defects, for sheer propaganda reasons. If you want to attack him, well and good; but why should I hand you the ammunition?

What makes me most angry, looking back at this Introduction, is that Oxford and Lord David Cecil thought it a good way to introduce readers to this magnificent and ground-breaking edition of Gilbert's most polished works.

Utopia

It's just beginning to sink in now: it's 2011, the big Gilbert year! I have reserved the next month to try and catch up with all the things I've been promising people I will write in order to help launch the book.

Years ago, I urged people on Savoynet (the G&S online discussion group) to prepare for 2011, because this is the right time for a Gilbert revival. Well, in a strange way perhaps the world is ready. I've done my little bit, and am still doing it. Not as well as another, more perfect person would do it, but still, I've done what I can.

The big obstacle is what it always was: Gilbert's own reputation. His name is compromised by association with English complacency and bourgeoiserie. His rage, his savagery, his contempt for the values of his own society, have been dulled and submerged. Something must be done to bring them to the surface again.


I think of the late G&S opera Utopia, Limited. The harshest satire that he wrote with Sullivan. An attack on Thatcherite politics ninety years before Thatcher. An opera without a plot; if it had been written in the 1970s it would have been called a concept musical, but as it is, the fact that it has no consistent through line is considered a flaw. But the simple fact is that it is a satire, of the kind that we are constantly told Gilbert was incapable of writing; and satires usually have structural problems.


I will quote one passage from the end of the opera. The island of Utopia has been "reformed" by the introduction of English ideas. But this has resulted in disaster, because the professions that rely on misery and pain--doctors, soldiers, lawyers, and so on--have been thrown out of work. And it is realised that the last plank of reform has been omitted:


"Government by Party! Introduce that great and glorious element--at once the bulwark and foundation of England's greatness--and all will be well! No political measures will endure, because one Party will assuredly undo all that the other party has done; and while grouse is to be shot, and foxes worried to death, the legislative action of the country will be at a standstill. Then there will be sickness in plenty, endless lawsuits, crowded jails, interminable confusion in the Army and Navy, and, in short, general and unexampled prosperity!"

And they still say Gilbert wasn't a satirist! Well, it must be true, because they say it. Still, I'm very glad to know that in this centenary year, with the Conservatives in power, Utopia is going to be professionally performed at the Buxton Festival. If it's done right, it will explode like a bomb.