Three Deleted Songs from Iolanthe

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On a recent research trip to London, I found three deleted songs from Iolanthe, hiding in plain sight in the British Library. All of them are certainly unheard since the 19th century. I wasn’t looking for the songs and it’s just good luck that I found them. You can download the full score and vocal score. Links to MP3 sound files are provided below.

The three songs are:

1. “On you they’d set a coronet,” a quartet in Act I for Phyllis, Lord Tolloller, Lord Mountararat, and the Lord Chancellor. It goes between the present No. 8 (“My well-loved Lord and guardian dear”) and No. 9 (“Nay, tempt me not”).

2. “My love for him is dead,” a ballad in Act II for Phyllis, after “Oh, foolish fay.”

3. “De Belville was regarded as the Crichton of his age,” a song in Act II for Lord Mountararat before “Though p’r’aps I may incur your blame.”

The songs are in a manuscript full score, copied from Sullivan’s autograph at around the time of the 1882 premiere. Such scores aren’t unusual—they exist for many of the operas. But this is the only one I’ve seen that has significant material no longer in the autograph itself.

Sullivan’s usual practice was to discard songs not retained in the opera, with a handful of exceptions. One of these is from Iolanthe: Strephon’s “Fold your flapping wings,” which is bound at the back end of his manuscript. I can’t tell you why he kept that one.¹ But clearly this manuscript copy score was made before Sullivan made his other deletions.

The score was in the D’Oyly Carte organization until their archive was sold to the British Library in 2015. I suspect the company did not know its significance. The BL catalogue description for this score doesn’t clearly say that the lost songs are in it—if it had, I am sure others would’ve found them, since it has been there for over a decade. On top of that, the score is misfiled—it is not under the shelf mark where the catalogue says it should be.²

Lost Gilbert & Sullivan songs aren’t often discovered: finding three at once is like sighting a unicorn. I believe the last one was “Reflect, my child,” the duet from H.M.S. Pinafore found almost thirty years ago by Bruce I. Miller and Helga J. Perry. But that song was in band parts, which were incomplete and lacked the vocal line. Miller & Perry attempted a reconstruction, and perhaps they came close, but we don’t really know how Sullivan set it.

This Iolanthe full score has the orchestration and vocal parts for the three songs. Other than finding them in Sullivan’s hand, we can hardly have hoped to do better. I found the songs a week ago. I was determined to release them as quickly as I could. On returning home, I immediately entered them into Dorico.

The sections below also provide links to MP3 sound files, so you can listen along. I recommend following a score as you do so. The sound files give a general idea of the songs, but they don’t capture every nuance of the orchestration, and I didn’t spend much time fiddling with dials to get every dynamic perfectly balanced. The sound files are between 3.5 and 5.25 megabytes apiece.

I haven’t generated band parts yet, because I didn’t want to take any more time before publishing this. If you want to include any of the songs in a production or a concert with orchestra, just let me know.

I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible in the time frame: I believe a week from discovery to publication is unusually speedy. I’ve probably made mistakes along the way. If you want to perform the songs, they’re of course royalty free, but I’d appreciate a heads-up that you’ve done so. And please alert me to any errors you find.

Helga Perry wrote the definitive study of Iolanthe’s gestation in her 2005 M. Phil. thesis for the University of Birmingham, which you can download from academia.edu. I highly recommend it. The thesis covers the history of these deleted songs and many others in copious detail. I’m not going to repeat what Helga has already done so well, but I offer below a brief history and my observations about the songs.

Quartet: “On you they’d set a coronet”

Sound file: here

After the present No. 8 (“My well-loved Lord and guardian dear”), the Lord Chancellor originally had a recitative, as follows:

     Nay, do not recklessly refuse their proffer—
     Attend to the advantages they offer!

This very short recitative is in Sullivan’s autograph, marked cancelled. He didn’t remove it because it shares the page with material that he kept. Although not new, I have included this recitative in my draft, since it clearly was designed to lead into the quartet.

What follows is an ensemble with chorus, in which the Peers tell Phyllis all the luxuries that could be hers, if she would marry one of them. This may be the finest of the three newly discovered songs, although it requires four strong singers, a solid chorus, and plenty of rehearsal, as the orchestration is dense and the harmonies relatively difficult by Sullivan’s standards.

No. 9 (“Nay, tempt me not”) follows this. No. 9 went through several iterations, and it is hard to say when it took its current form. But the present No. 9 can follow the quartet perfectly well. After a long number in which the peers have plied Phyllis with temptations aplenty, the words “Nay, tempt me not” seem like a perfect retort.

Ballad: “My love for him is dead”

Sound file: here

In Act II, Phyllis enters after “Oh, foolish fay,” and speaks about how miserable she is. In most musical shows that would be a cue for a song—and originally there was one. I can’t say why they cut it, but first night critics found Act II depressing—it’s a parade of characters complaining about their troubles. This song was cut in rehearsals: perhaps Gilbert already sensed that the action was moving too slowly.

Sullivan’s contribution to this song comes off better than Gilbert’s. You will probably agree that this was not one of the librettist’s finest efforts:

     My love for him is dead,
               And yet I sigh!
     My eyes are very red:
               I wonder why?
     Love fills my heart no more,
     I’ve turned it out of door—
     And yet my heart is sore!
               I wonder why?
[and then a second verse]

But still, in the right production it could work. The manuscript lacks a tempo marking. I have supplied “Andante moderato.”

De Belville

Sound file: here

“De Belville” is the most famous of the newly discovered songs. Unlike the other two, it was performed. Iolanthe had same-day premieres in New York and London. Sullivan had to complete his score a month early, which is perhaps why there are so many surviving cut songs for this opera.

In New York, “De Belville” was sung. But in London, Rutland Barrington recited the first and third verses without music—for unknown reasons. Sullivan’s setting doesn’t appear to be more difficult than other songs written for Barrington. However, Act II was a heavy work out for him: it’s uncommon for the same character to have two 3-verse solos so close together, with only “Oh, foolish fay” separating them.

Over twenty-five years ago, Bruce I. Miller and Helga J. Perry discovered a first violin part dating from the original production that contained the “De Belville” song. They published it with a detailed article about the song’s history, in a pamphlet distributed by the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society. The part was also transcribed in the Broude Brothers edition of Iolanthe, and Helga Perry included a facsimile of it in her thesis. The full score in the British Library largely agrees with this band part, with a few minor differences.

You’ll notice that the song begins with a strong accented rhythm in the strings, which persists throughout the song. Miller and Perry noted that this is the same rhythm as the cornet fanfare in the first measure of the March of the Peers—one of those examples (among many) where Sullivan creates thematic linkages between disparate numbers:

Perhaps this is more of a stretch, but Miller and Perry also pointed out this passage which is heard between the verses and as the play-out:

The interval of a sixth from F to D is the same interval that begins the Peers’ tune, “Our lordly style you shall not quench . . .” in the Act I finale. Is that accidental, subliminal, or intentional? You decide.

The lyric is top-drawer Gilbert, and he clearly knew it. Years later, he published it as a poem without the music, as part of a volume that unified the Bab Ballads with selected lyrics from his operas.³ The book footnoted the piece as “omitted in representation.”

One peculiar sidelight is that the song is scored for woodwinds sans oboe, horns, triangle, and strings. I can’t recall Sullivan using that lineup of instruments in any other number. The oboe is one of his favorite instruments—it generally plays in almost any number in which the woodwinds participate.

Sullivan invented a jaunty tune: you may find after listening a few times that you can’t get it out of your head. The manuscript lacks a tempo marking, but the band part has “Allegro.” In the sound file, I have taken it rather briskly, but in performance I would recommend a slightly slower pace, as this is the type of song for which every word matters.

Are there more?

You might wonder: are there more lost songs out there? Nobody knows. Any future discoveries are likely to be like this one—totally unexpected. There isn’t a predictable way of finding lost songs. You just have to get lucky. And it could be that there are no more. Outside of Thespis, there are only a small handful of remaining lost songs that Sullivan is known to have orchestrated. But that doesn’t mean they have survived, only that they could have.

1. “Fold your flapping wings” is in the copy score, too.

2. The score is catalogued as shelf mark MS Mus. 1824/1/7/2. If you want to see it, you must ask for MS Mus. 1824/1/7/4.

3. This later edition of the Bab Ballads included one other Iolanthe lyric that was never performed, a song for Private Willis called “Sleep on!” Unlike the De Belville song, there is no evidence that Sullivan ever composed this.