page_title: The Lost Chord
section_title: Text
hierarchical_section_title: The Lost Chord / Text
caption_attribution_description: English: Reduced fascimile of the Closing bars of "The Lost Chord by Arthur Sullivan
context_page_description: "The Lost Chord" is a song composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1877 at the bedside of his brother Fred during Fred's last illness. The manuscript is dated 13 January 1877; Fred Sullivan died five days later. The lyric was written as a poem by Adelaide Anne Procter called "A Lost Chord", published in 1858 in The English Woman's Journal.
  The song was immediately successful and became particularly associated with American contralto Antoinette Sterling, with Sullivan's close friend and mistress, Fanny Ronalds, and with British contralto Clara Butt. Sullivan was proud of the song and later noted: "I have composed much music since then, but have never written a second Lost Chord."
  Many singers have recorded the song, including Enrico Caruso, who sang it at the Metropolitan Opera House on 29 April 1912 at a benefit concert for families of victims of the Titanic disaster. The piece has endured as one of Sullivan's best-known songs, and the setting is still performed today.
context_section_description: Seated one day at the organ,
  
  I was weary and ill at ease,
  
  And my fingers wandered idly
  
  Over the noisy keys.
  
  I know not what I was playing,
  
  Or what I was dreaming then;
  
  But I struck one chord of music,
  
  Like the sound of a great Amen.
  
  It flooded the crimson twilight,
  
  Like the close of an angel's psalm,
  
  And it lay on my fevered spirit
  
  With a touch of infinite calm.
  
  It quieted pain and sorrow,
  
  Like love overcoming strife;
  
  It seemed the harmonious echo
  
  From our discordant life.
  
  It linked all perplexèd meanings
  
  Into one perfect peace,
  
  And trembled away into silence
  
  As if it were loth to cease.
  
  I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
  
  That one lost chord divine,
  
  Which came from the soul of the organ,
  
  And entered into mine.
  
  It may be that death's bright angel
  
  Will speak in that chord again,
  
  It may be that only in Heav'n
  
  I shall hear that grand Amen.
caption: The closing bars, with Sullivan's signature and the date "13 Jan. 1877"
exif: {}