EdwardElgar

Elgar grew up among the instruments and sheet music in his father’s Worcester shop. William tuned pianos and played the organ at St George’s Catholic Church; Edward studied the scores, learned several instruments and earned money with his violin. Born at Lower Broadheath on 2 June 1857, he had hoped to study at Leipzig, but the family could not afford it. Playing in the Three Choirs Festival orchestra, he learned the choral music of Handel and Mendelssohn as a member of the string section.

1889–⁠98Alice and the teaching years

Caroline Alice Roberts came for piano lessons in 1886. A major-general’s daughter, nine years older than Elgar, she had published a novel and wrote poetry. They married in May 1889, against the objections of relatives who disliked both his religion and his standing as a tradesman’s son. Their only child, Carice, was born in London in August 1890. In London Elgar found little work, and the family’s hardship grew. By June 1891 they were living at Forli, a house in Malvern Link, and Edward was teaching again.

Alice ruled bar lines on his manuscript paper and walked to the post with parcels of music and proofs. At Forli he finished The Black Knight and wrote King Olaf; Caractacus followed in 1898. These choral works made his name known beyond Worcestershire while the lessons continued. The Serenade for Strings was first played privately, by the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class under his direction, in 1892. Its three movements last about twelve minutes, with the Larghetto at their centre.

1898–⁠99The Enigma Variations

Alice comes first among the fourteen portraits, and Elgar’s self-portrait comes last. Isabel Fitton’s variation begins with a string-crossing exercise for viola. In the thirteenth variation a clarinet quotes Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. Nimrod is the portrait of August Jaeger, Elgar’s friend at Novello, and refers to their conversations about Beethoven’s slow movements. Jaeger also offered practical criticism. After the première he persuaded Elgar to enlarge the finale, and the ending heard today was first performed in Worcester that September.

1900The Dream of Gerontius

The première, on 3 October 1900, went badly. The experienced chorus trainer Charles Swinnerton Heap had died during the preparations, and the singers were inadequately rehearsed. Richter conducted, but could not rescue the performance. Julius Buths took the work to Düsseldorf in 1901 and again in 1902. After the second German performance, Richard Strauss publicly praised Elgar.

1901–⁠11Pomp and Circumstance and the symphonies

The first Pomp and Circumstance march appeared in 1901; A. C. Benson’s words for Land of Hope and Glory were later set to its broad middle tune. Elgar was knighted in 1904 and took up the Birmingham professorship in 1905. The Introduction and Allegro of that year set a solo string quartet against the orchestral strings, with the viola playing the melody Elgar associated with Wales. He was writing for the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra.

The First Symphony was played in Manchester on 3 December 1908, with Richter conducting the Hallé. Its opening melody, in A♭ major, moves at a steady pace; the main Allegro is in D minor. Between the middle movements a fast violin phrase slows and leads without a pause into the Adagio. The opening tune returns at full strength at the end. There were about a hundred performances in the first year.

Fritz Kreisler gave the first performance of the Violin Concerto in November 1910, with Elgar conducting. Near the end, the violin returns to earlier themes while the orchestral strings thrum with the soft parts of their fingers. The Second Symphony followed in May 1911, dedicated to the memory of Edward VII. Its slow movement is a funeral march, and the finale ends quietly. Its first audience received it with much less excitement than the audience for the First Symphony had shown.

1918–⁠19Brinkwells and the Cello Concerto

During the war Elgar set Laurence Binyon’s poems as The Spirit of England. By 1918 he was recovering from a painful tonsil operation at Brinkwells, the family’s Sussex retreat. In August he asked for an old Steinway upright to be brought from storage. The day after it arrived, he began the Violin Sonata. The String Quartet and Piano Quintet followed, the latter finished early in 1919. The quintet opens with a bare piano phrase and interruptions from the strings; its slow movement begins with the viola.

That summer he worked on the Cello Concerto, sometimes getting up at four or five to write. In late July 1919 he told Sidney Colvin that he had nearly finished “a real large work and I think good and alive”. On 8 August Alice posted the completed score from Fittleworth. Felix Salmond played the première at Queen’s Hall on 27 October, with Elgar conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Rehearsal time had again been inadequate. The concerto opens with the cello alone. Near the close the opening chords return after a recollection of the Adagio, and the orchestra then ends the work abruptly.

1920–⁠34HMV recordings and the Third Symphony

Alice died in April 1920. Elgar composed much less, though he continued to conduct and made an extensive series of recordings for HMV. In these recordings he was ready to hurry a crescendo or slow a phrase. His Nimrod moves through several speeds within its few minutes. On 14–⁠15 July 1932 he recorded the Violin Concerto with Yehudi Menuhin and the London Symphony Orchestra.

The BBC commissioned a Third Symphony that year. Elgar tried its sketches with his violinist friend Billy Reed, playing the piano himself and filling the gaps as they went. Cancer stopped the work in 1933. He died at home in Worcester on 23 February 1934 and was buried beside Alice at Little Malvern. Reed kept the sketches. Anthony Payne’s elaboration of them received its first performance in 1998.