Editing Arthur Sullivan (section)

===Influences===
Reviewers and scholars often cite Mendelssohn as the most important influence on Sullivan.<ref name=y22/> The music for ''The Tempest'' and the ''Irish Symphony'', among other works, was seen by contemporary writers as strikingly Mendelssohnian.<ref>Taylor, Chapter 1, 3rd and 4th page</ref> Percy Young writes that Sullivan's early affection for Mendelssohn remained evident throughout his composing career.<ref name=y22>Young, p. 22</ref> Hughes remarks that although Sullivan emulated Mendelssohn in certain ways he seldom "lapsed into those harmonic clichés which mar some of Mendelssohn's more sentimental effusions".<ref>Hughes, p. 69</ref> When ''The Tempest'' music was first presented the ''[[Neue Zeitschrift für Musik]]'' identified [[Robert Schumann|Schumann]] as a stronger influence, and Benedict Taylor, writing in 2017, concurs.<ref>Taylor, p. 10</ref> In a 2009 study Taylor adds Schubert as another major influence on Sullivan in his orchestral works, although "from the beginning ... there is the peculiar, intangible stamp of Sullivan emerging confidently".<ref>Eden and Saremba, p. 38</ref> Meinhard Saremba notes that from Sullivan's first meeting with [[Gioachino Rossini|Rossini]] in Paris, in 1862, Rossini's output became a model for Sullivan's comic opera music, "as evidenced in several rhythmic patterns and constructions of long finales".<ref>Eden and Saremba, p. 57</ref>

[[File:arthur sullivan by ape.jpg|thumb|upright|Sullivan by the cartoonist [[Carlo Pellegrini (caricaturist)|"Ape"]], 1874|alt=Colour cartoon of Sullivan standing, in concert dress, wearing a monocle, ready to conduct]]
As a young man, Sullivan's conservative musical education led him to follow in the conventions of his predecessors. Later he became more adventurous; Richard Silverman, writing in 2009, points to the influence of Liszt in later works – a harmonic ambiguity and [[chromaticism]] – so that by the time of ''The Golden Legend'' Sullivan had abandoned a [[Tonic (music)|home]] key altogether for the prelude.<ref>Eden and Saremba, pp. 76–77</ref> Sullivan disliked much of Wagner's [[Musikdrama]], but he modelled the overture to ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' on the prelude of ''[[Die Meistersinger]]'', which he described as "the greatest comic opera ever written".<ref>Eden and Saremba, p. 57; and Klein, p. 196</ref> Saremba writes that in works from his middle and later years, Sullivan was inspired by Verdi's example both in details of orchestration, and in ''la tinta musical'' – the individual musical character of a piece – ranging from the "nautical air of ''H.M.S Pinafore''" to "the swift Mediterranean lightness of ''The Gondoliers''" and "the bleakness of Torquilstone in ''Ivanhoe''".<ref>Eden and Saremba, p. 60</ref>