7 Johannes Brahms 7

from the complex and highly organized to the extremely

simple, strophic type. His late piano music, most of which

is of small dimension, has a quiet and intense quality of its

own that renders the occasional outburst of angry passion

the more potent.

Brahms’s musical range is finally attested by his choral

music. A German Requiem, one of the choral masterpieces

of its period, shows all his characteristics in this field

together with an ability to integrate solo and tutti with the

same kind of subtlety as in the concerti. The spaciousness

and grandeur of this work’s lines and the power of its con-

struction place Brahms’s underlying melancholy within the

scope of a large, objective, nonreligious humane vision.

Sir Arthur Sullivan Sir W. S. Gilbert and

ArtHur sulliVAn

Respectively (b. Nov. 18, 1836, London, Eng.—d. May 29, 1911,

Harrow Weald, Middlesex); (b. May 13, 1842, London, Eng.—d. Nov. 22,

1900, London)

E

nglish playwright and humorist Sir William Schwenk

Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur (Seymour) Sullivan

(commonly referred to as Gilbert and Sullivan) worked

together to establish a distinctive English form of operetta.

Gilbert’s satire and verbal ingenuity were matched so well

by Sullivan’s unfailing melodiousness, resourceful musician-

ship, and sense of parody that the works of this unique

partnership won lasting international acclaim.

Gilbert began to write in an age of rhymed couplets,

puns, and travesty; his early work exhibits the facetiousness

common to writers of extravaganza. But he turned away from

this style and developed a genuinely artful style burlesqu-

ing contemporary behaviour. Many of his original targets

are no longer topical—Pre-Raphaelite aesthetes in Patience;

women’s education (Princess Ida); Victorian plays about