Life According to ME!

Café Leon Dore, Mulberry St, New York | June 2022

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OTD in Music History: “The Pirates of Penzance,” a “topsy-turvy” comic opera with lyrics by dramatist W.S. Gilbert (1836 – 1911) and music by composer Arthur Sullivan (1842 – 1900), receives its New York premiere in 1879. Gilbert and Sullivan are still widely recognized as one of the all-time-great teams in musical history, churning out more than a dozen classic comic operas (including “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “The Mikado”) between 1871 – 1896, many of which continue to delight audiences nearly a century and a half later. In 1922, conductor Sir Henry Wood (1869 – 1944) explained the enduring success of their remarkable collaboration as follows: “Sullivan has never had an equal for brightness and drollery, for humour without coarseness and without vulgarity, and for charm and grace. His orchestration is delightful: he wrote with full understanding of every orchestral voice. Above all, his music is perfectly appropriate to the words of which it is the setting.... He found the right, the only cadences to fit Gilbert's happy and original rhythms, and to match Gilbert's fun or to throw Gilbert's frequent irony, pointed although not savage, into relief. Sullivan's music is much more than the accompaniment of Gilbert's libretti, just as Gilbert's libretti are far more than words to Sullivan's music. We have two masters who are playing a concerto. Neither is subordinate to the other; each gives what is original, but the two, while neither predominates, are in perfect correspondence. This rare harmony of words and music is what makes these operas entirely unique. They are the work not of a musician and his librettist nor of a poet and one who sets his words to music, but of two geniuses..." PICTURED: Two short autograph letters, handwritten and signed (separately) by Gilbert and Sullivan, respectively.

This scroll-back chair and its mates were part of a set of 24 made by Duncan Phyfe for the family of William Livingston, governor of New Jersey (1776–1790). A sketch of about 1816 in Phyfe's hand shows this type of chair and gives its price. These chairs were somewhat higher in price than for other contemporary scroll-back chairs due to the extra cost charged to carve the front paw feet.

Attributed to Duncan Phyfe (1770-1854) or D. Phyfe & Sons (active 1837-1840) New York, 1835-1840 The undulating veneered crest rail terminating in a scroll with a characteristic rimmed disk boss above an upholstered back and seat with a scrolled arm at one end with a matching rimmed disk boss in the volute. The highly figured seat rail raised on flat rectangular legs terminating in suppressed demi-lune feet with recessed casters.

Sofa, NYC, c. 1810. Attributed to workshop of Duncan Phyfe. The cornucopia decoration appears on the arms as well as the central section of the back. Dallas Museum of Art.

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Looking down the creek