The Long Day Closes (song)

The Long Day Closes is a part song with lyrics by Henry Fothergill Chorley and music by Arthur Sullivan, published in 1868.^[1] It has become Sullivan's best-known part song, and is one of seven that he published that year.^[2] Sullivan wrote most of his twenty part songs prior to the beginning of his long collaboration with W. S. Gilbert.^[1] Chorley had also collaborated with Sullivan on other songs, on Sullivan's first (but never-produced) opera, The Sapphire Necklace (completed in 1867), and on a piece for chorus and orchestra, The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864).^[1]

With the growth of choral societies during the Victorian era, part songs became popular in Britain.^[3] The plaintive harmonies of The Long Day Closes and the text's touching meditation on death have made the song a frequent selection at events of mourning. Musicologist Jeremy Dibble observes that in particular, it was often sung at funerals of members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.^[4]

On 16 December 1879, Sullivan attended a concert at the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York, where the song was on the programme. He remarked in his diary that it had been 'admirably sung and encored'.^[5]

Jeremy Dibble believes that one of the work's most attractive qualities is the way Sullivan has skilfully manipulated Chorley's text to create a modified ternary scheme. He says that it has remained popular in both its original version for men's voices, and the later arrangement for mixed choir.^[4]

Terence Davies's 1992 film The Long Day Closes uses a recording of the song by Pro Cantione Antiqua^[6] singing the song a cappella.^[7] Carl Davis included the theme from the song in his instrumental score for the 1999 Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy, along with themes from most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.^[8] Another recording was included in the 1999 album Sullivan: The Masque at Kenilworth – Music for Royal and National Occasions, sung by the Oxford Pro Musica Singers.^[9]