Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — “The Lost Chord.” [ARTICLE]

“The Lost Chord.”

A touching life story is told in connection with this popular song. Only a few months after Sir Arthur Sullivan had accepted an important position in a school for music, his brother Frederick, an actor of note, fell fatally ill. For nearly three weeks the young composer watched by the sick man’s bedside night and day. One evening, when the end was rapidly approaching, the sufferer had for a time sunk into a peaceful sleep, and as his faithful attendant was sitting as usual by the bedside it chanced that he took up some verses of the late Miss Adelaide Proctor, with which he had some years previously been much impressed. Now in the stillness of the night he read them over again, and almost as he did so he conceived their “musical equivalent.” A sheet of music paper was at hand, and he began to write. Slowly the music grew and took shape until, becoming absorbed in it, he determined to finish the song, thinking that even if in the cold light of day it should appear worthless it would at least have helped to pass the weary hours, and so he went on till the last bar was added. Thus was composed a song, the sale of which up to the' present time has exceeded a quarter of a million of copies.