"Reflect, My Child" was cut for unknown reasons just before the 1878 premiere of the operetta. Gilbert and Sullivan scholars have long known about the song because its words are included in a licensing copy of the operetta submitted to the English government for approval. The copy is kept in the British Museum. But the music was considered lost until it was reconstructed by Bruce Miller, a professor of music at the Worcester college, and Helga Perry, a Gilbert and Sullivan expert from England.

"To discover anything new in Gilbert and Sullivan is an increasingly rare occurrence," Miller said. "It's certainly exciting when you stumble on something like this. We were lucky."

Perry unearthed the first musical pieces of the song last summer when Miller called her for help with a separate Gilbert and Sullivan project. Miller knew she had access to rare band parts in the operetta and suggested the parts might contain sections of the song. Perry called him back about 20 minutes later and recited bits of the lost music over the phone.

"When I called her I had no idea it was going to lead to this discovery,'' Miller said.

After eight months of research, about half of the voice parts were recovered, along with almost all of the refrain, including parts for the violins, violas, cellos, string bass, flutes, clarinets and French horn. Miller and Perry filled in the gaps to create a "conjectural reconstruction" -- more of an educated guess than an exact replica of the original.

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle," Miller said. "Some of it is speculation. I'm sure there will be people who are playing around with this jigsaw puzzle for years to come."

Miller announced the find in New York at the 10th annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the Society for Textual Scholarship last month. He then played a taped version of the song, performed by two Holy Cross graduates.

"Reflect, My Child" was originally scheduled to be the sixth song in the first act of "H.M.S. Pinafore," when Josephine tells her father, Capt. Corcoran, that she's in love with a sailor on his ship. In the song, Corcoran tells Josephine that the sailor is beneath her. The song is meant to show that society values superficial qualities like wealth over a person's intrinsic worth, Miller said.

No obvious clue exists to explain why the song didn't make the final cut, Miller said. Among the theories: The singer playing Capt. Corcoran couldn't handle it; the song was the second of two slow numbers and was thought to be a bit of a drag.

"It's not a lost masterpiece, but it gives us more about 'H.M.S. Pinafore' than we've known for a long time," Miller said. "It fills a gap."

The world premiere of the song with full orchestration is scheduled for July's International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton, England.
salon.com | June 4, 1999

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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