written for Birmingham in 1870, and the next year appeared
his brilliant cantata "On Shore and Sea." On the 11th of May, 1867, was
first heard in public his little comic operetta "Cox and Box." It was the
first in that series of extraordinary successes, really dating from "The
Sorcerer," which are almost without parallel in the operatic world, and
which have made his name and that of his collaborator, Gilbert, household
words. He has done much for sacred as well as for secular music. In
addition to his oratorios he has written numerous anthems, forty-seven
hymn-tunes, two Te Deums, several carols, part-songs, and choruses, and
in 1872 edited the collection of "Church Hymns with Tunes" for the
Christian Knowledge Society.

He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Cambridge in
1876, and from Oxford in 1879, and in 1883 was knighted by the Queen.

The Prodigal Son.

"The Prodigal Son," the first of Sullivan's oratorios, was written for
the Worcester Festival in England, and performed for the first time Sept.
8, 1869. It is a short work, comprising but eighteen numbers, and very
melodious in character. In his preface to the work the composer says,--

"It is a remarkable fact that the parable of the Prodigal Son should
never before have been chosen as the text of a sacred musical
composition. The story is so natural and pathetic, and forms so
complete a whole; its lesson is so thoroughly Christian; the
characters, though few, are so perfectly contrasted; and the
opportunity for the employment of local color is so obvious,--that it
is indeed astonishing to find the subject so long overlooked.

"The only drawback is the shortness of the narrative, and the
consequent necessity for filling it out with material drawn from
elsewhere. In the present case this has been done as sparingly as
possible, and entirely from the Scriptures. In so doing, the Prodigal
himself has been conceived, not as of a naturally brutish and depraved
disposition,--a view taken by many commentators, with apparently little
knowledge of human nature, and no recollection of their own youthful
impulses,--but rather as a buoyant, restless youth, tired of the
monotony of home, and anxious to see what lay beyond the narrow
confines of his father's farm, going forth in the confidence of his own
simplicity and ardor, and led gradually away into follies and sins
which at the