The following is a list of musical works by the English composer Arthur Sullivan, best known for his operatic collaborations with W. S. Gilbert. In all, Sullivan's artistic output included 23 operas, 13 major orchestral works, eight choral works and oratorios, two ballets, one song cycle, incidental music to several plays, numerous hymns and other church pieces, and a large body of songs, parlour ballads, part songs, carols, and piano and chamber pieces.[1]
Sullivan began to compose music at an early age. His first known composition, By the Waters of Babylon, dates from when he was eight years old. While a member of the prestigious boys' choir of the Chapel Royal, with the support of the choirmaster, Thomas Helmore, Sullivan composed several more anthems, and one of these, O, Israel, was Sullivan's first published composition, in 1855.[2] Sullivan attended the Royal Academy of Music from 1856 to 1858 and the Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany from 1858 to 1861.[3] As his graduation piece, Sullivan composed a set of incidental music to Shakespeare'sThe Tempest.[3] Revised and expanded, it was performed at the Crystal Palace in 1862 and was an immediate sensation. He began building a reputation as England's most promising young composer.[4]
Sullivan continued to compose throughout his life. At his death at age 58, he left unfinished a comic opera, The Emerald Isle, completed by Edward German and produced in 1901, and his Te Deum Laudamus, written to commemorate the end of the Second Boer War, which was performed posthumously.[5]
