The Long Day Closes (song)

The Long Day Closes is a part song with lyrics by Henry Fothergill Chorley and music by Arthur Sullivan, published in 1868. It has become Sullivan's best-known part song, and is one of seven that he published that year. Sullivan wrote most of his twenty part songs prior to the beginning of his long collaboration with W. S. Gilbert. Chorley had also collaborated with Sullivan on other songs, on Sullivan's first (but never-produced) opera, The Sapphire Necklace (completed in 1867), and on a piece for chorus and orchestra, The Masque at Kenilworth (Birmingham Festival, 1864).

With the growth of choral societies during the Victorian era, part songs became popular in Britain. The plaintive harmonies of The Long Day Closes and the text's touching meditation on death have made the song a frequent selection at events of mourning. Musicologist Jeremy Dibble observes that in particular, it was often sung at funerals of members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

On 16 December 1879, Sullivan attended a concert at the Mendelssohn Glee Club in New York, where the song was on the programme. He remarked in his diary that it had been 'admirably sung and encored'.

Jeremy Dibble believes that one of the work's most attractive qualities is the way Sullivan has skilfully manipulated Chorley's text to create a modified ternary scheme. He says that it has remained popular in both its original version for men's voices, and the later arrangement for mixed choir.

Terence Davies's 1992 film The Long Day Closes uses a recording of the song by Pro Cantione Antiqua singing the song a cappella. Carl Davis included the theme from the song in his instrumental score for the 1999 Mike Leigh film Topsy-Turvy, along with themes from most of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Another recording was included in the 1999 album Sullivan: The Masque at Kenilworth – Music for Royal and National Occasions, sung by the Oxford Pro Musica Singers.