On Shore and Sea is a "dramatic cantata" composed by Arthur Sullivan, with words by Tom Taylor. Sullivan completed this work to open the Royal Albert Hall, and it was performed at the opening of the London International Exhibition of art and industry, May 1, 1871. The concert featured works commissioned from Italy, France, Germany, and Great Britain. Charles Gounod was the French representative.
The cantata has an appropriately international flavour, telling of war and reunion, based on a 16th-century conflict between Christians and Moors at a time when conflict raged between the Saracen settlements in Northern Africa and the Christian states of the Mediterranean, especially Genoa. The theme is the sorrows and separations that are always incidental to war. The central characters are a sailor and his love, who are separated when he goes to battle, and later reunited. The final chorus, "Sink and Scatter, Clouds of War," was later renamed "The Song of Peace" and was played separately as a concert item.
Four years later, in 1875, Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury would also be described as "a dramatic cantata," and these were the only two Sullivan works so named.
Read more about On Shore And Sea: Synopsis, Characters, Musical Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words shore and/or sea:
“Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation; not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.”
—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
““The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)