Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

It has taken years for Elgar to outlive his reputation as a provincial composer famous only for his ceremonial music: Edward by name and Edwardian by nature. Certainly he had little musical education and emotionally belonged to the Malvern Hills of his childhood. He learned his exceptional skills as he composed, and as he taught and played the violin and the organ. He had social ambitions to move beyond his comparably humble origins (his father owned a music shop), and to be accepted as a major composer. His middle years brought him fame but he died a disappointed man, feeling that he was still without the fame he deserved.

Roy Hattersley in his book ‘The Edwardians’, recalls the mixed welcome given to the first performance of ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ and Elgar’s poignant response. ‘I have worked for forty years and, at the last Providence denies me a decent hearing of my work. ..I ask for no reward, only to live and hear my work.’ Elgar had strong friendships (several of them featured in his first popular work, ‘Enigma Variations’) a good marriage, offers for professorships overseas, and many opportunities to conduct his music (much of it still available on disc).

But he reveals in his music an unmistakable sadness, true perhaps of his character. However whatever battles he fought in himself they were transformed into music that is both hopeful and joyous, and much of it profoundly moving. The tear-laden larghetto movement of his second symphony is for me one of the supreme moments in all music. His symphonies have the stature of Bruckner’s but without that composer’s tendency to divide his music into episodes. There’s a seamless unity about Elgar’s greatest works and although he repeats motifs again and again, each time he does so there is something fresh to say. His brilliant orchestral virtuosity is based on the use of traditional resources unlike many other composers at the turn of the century, but with an unmistakable individuality. A friend who is an amateur conductor once said to me ‘the players love his music because he gives everyone something to do’.

I have just bought a five disc collection of Elgar’s music published and played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and containing all his major orchestral works as well as ‘Sea Pictures’ sung in a performance by the incomparable Janet Baker. Sheer delight and long after the music is over it continues in my head! Michael Kennedy on the Philharmonia Orchestra’s website writes that after his death Elgar’s music went out of fashion. ‘But in the 1960’s the tide began to turn and more than ever before he was regarded as the greatest English composer since Purcell.The tide is still coming in'.

B.R.