The Overture in C, "In Memoriam", by Arthur Sullivan, premiered on 30 October 1866 at the Norwich Festival, in honour of his father, who died just before composition began.
[3] It was well received; the reviewer in The Observer wrote that the piece "expresses with wonderful force and clearness of intention the various phases of an all-absorbing, poignant sorrow, from the first overwhelming burst of passionate grief to the calm resignation which time and a higher teaching alone can bring.
[7] The composition is structured as a single multi-tempo movement marked Andante religioso - Allegro molto and lasts around eleven to twelve minutes in performance.
It contains charming melodies, so much so that the work’s major shortcoming is perhaps that its plaintive main theme, heard first on the oboe, does not quite stand up to its grandiose climactic chorale treatment for full orchestra, complete with organ.
The musical scholar Arthur Jacobs comments that the slow hymn-like tune, with its repetition of the single note, "traps Sullivan into banality".