Sullivan wrote this in response to a commission from the Theatre Royal in Manchester, which had previously commissioned the incidental music for The Merchant of Venice in 1871, for a revival of Shakespeare's almost-forgotten drama Henry VIII.

It opens with a fanfare leading to a swaggering march (of the kind that Sullivan was to parody so aptly in The March of the Peers in his 1882 Iolanthe) typifying the combined brilliance and arrogance of King Henry and his court. For the setting of King Henry's Song (the text is probably by Henry himself), Sullivan did not use Henry's own setting, but instead combined hints of the original's stately pace with a lush Romantic orchestration and a rather parlor-ballad setting, certain to please an audience more concerned with atmosphere than with absolute authenticity. The piece combines complacency and seductiveness, much as the character in the play does. The Graceful Dance more than lives up to its name, even though it, too, is anachronistic in every way. It opens with strings dominating, giving an almost pastoral atmosphere, and then adds brass and percussion with a more processional-like theme, at times suggesting the opening March, alternating these themes throughout. The Water Music opens with an arpeggio over a held chord, deftly suggesting the movement of water, and continues with a swaying, graceful trumpet solo over hushed strings, in one of Sullivan's most striking and effective pieces of orchestral writing. Both strings and trumpet are augmented as the piece goes on, but retaining the sense of slow, flowing water. The methods are simple, relying heavily on chords and arpeggios and the least complicated intervals, but the result is exceptional.

© All Music Guide