While the combination of Chorley and Sullivan may not resonate widely today, it counted for much before the more familiar partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan took hold in the 1870s. Henry Fothergill Chorley, undeniably influential as a music critic and relentlessly ineffectual as a novelist and opera librettist, supplied the words for Arthur Sullivan’s Kenilworth in 1864. Although their next venture, an opera originally entitled The sapphire necklace, was never performed, Chorley and Sullivan scored one of the most enduring hits of the Victorian partsong literature following the 1868 publication of The long day closes. The work’s rich harmonic palette, its sonorous scoring for male voices and contemplative reflection on death’s hour satisfied both the market demand for popular secular choral compositions and prevailing vogue for decorous expressions of mourning and grief.

from notes by Andrew Stewart © 2009