Long before he wrote his Savoy Operas with W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan had established his credentials as a composer with his incidental music to The Tempest, written when he was barely twenty. Throughout his career he would return to the creation of incidental music.

On September 19, 1871, his second musical accompaniment for a Shakespeare play was unveiledat the Princes Theatre in Manchester, England. The suite from The Merchant of Venice is a typically delightful opus; it may go somewhat against the grain of the play but, divorced from the drama, it makes for interesting listening. Although Sullivan himself would think of his popular and his serious efforts as quite separate, one can easily hear harbingers of the popular operas in this music.

The piece opens with an introduction that is fleet and far too cheery for this cynical play. Two dance movements follow, each seemingly from a completely different era. The Bourrée is a variant on the Introduction's theme and shows how well Sullivan could adapt older styles (here a Baroque-era dance) to his own needs. Sprinkled throughout his operas are reminders of his thorough grounding in classical compositional technique. One only has to listen to the Madrigal in The Mikado to see that Sullivan was far more than a simple tunesmith.

There follows a waltz—then a popular dance—cast in music that would not have been out of place in a ballet. The finale sounds like a cousin of "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore" from H.M.S. Pinafore.

Sullivan would also write incidental music to The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VIII, and Macbeth, as well as music for Tennyson's The Foresters and for King Arthur by Commyns Carr.

With the exception of the Symphony in E minor, these suites of incidental music are Sullivan's largest orchestral works.



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