Lost Gilbert and Sullivan Musical Number discovered by Holy Cross Professor and British Colleague

WORCESTER, Mass. – Bruce I. Miller, a member of the music department at Holy Cross, and Helga J. Perry, a Gilbert and Sullivan scholar from England, have discovered the song, "Reflect, My Child," which was originally part of Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. An announcement about this discovery, which involves one of the most important and well known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, will be made today at the 10th annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the Society for Textual Scholarship in New York City. Miller, a member of the editorial board of the Broude Brothers Limited Critical Edition of Gilbert and Sullivan Operas, called Perry last summer looking for information concerning various editorial problems in H.M.S. Pinafore and mentioned a lost song which was believed to have once existed. He asked if she had found any evidence in orchestra parts, to which she had access, of its existence. After further research, they discovered that most of the orchestration for this song had survived, including parts for the violins, violas, cellos, string bass, flutes, clarinets, and French horns. Using the words, which had survived at the British Library, in conjunction with the newly discovered orchestration, Miller and Perry were able to complete a conjectural reconstruction, which was recently recorded by two Holy Cross graduates, Nicole Bard '96 and Jonathan Mack '97. The official world premier with the full orchestration will be this July at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England. "We are excited about this discovery," says Miller. "The survival of this number was not expected. It has been decades since a Gilbert and Sullivan discovery of this magnitude has occurred."