The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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СКАЧАТЬ live in London for the first time, and to discover how unready were musicians, publishers, and concert givers to take any interest in his music. The neglect of genius is always a fruitful theme for commentators who are wise after the event. Elgar was a genius, he lived two years in London unrecognized; these commentators cry ‘shame!’ but it is difficult to see what there was to recognize between 1889 and 1891. He had written none of the great works which have made him famous since. It may be remarked that Mr Bernard Shaw’s recently published Music in London, 1890–1894 does not contain the name of Elgar. True his overture ‘Froissart’ was produced at the Worcester Festival in 1890, and some people realized that here was something fresh and original.

      Festival Works

      In 1891 Elgar returned to the West Country and settled at Malvern, where he began his serious work in the composition of a number of pieces for choir and orchestra which were produced at various festivals in the succeeding years. The Black Knight, characteristically described as ‘a symphony for chorus and orchestra’, came out in 1893. Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf, Scenes from the Bavarian Highlands and an oratorio, The Light of Life, all appeared in 1896, the first at the North Staffordshire Musical Festival, the other two at Worcester. Here indeed was proof positive of the new voice in music, more than a hint of that mystical imagination, that sensitiveness to tone-colour, and that elusive yet individual gift of melody which were to seize his hearers so powerfully a little later. A patriotic cantata, The Banner of St George, for the Diamond Jubilee year, and Caractacus, written for the Leeds Festival of 1898, emphasized another side of Elgar’s musical character, an alert and nervous energy, the love of pageantry, the discovery of the poetry underlying external splendour. One finds here the Elgar of the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ marches, the Coronation march, and the Scherzo of the Second Symphony.

      The invitation to write for the Leeds Festival (this was the last festival conducted by Sullivan) was in Elgar’s case, as in that of several other English composers, the sign that he had ‘arrived’. A still more decisive landmark in his career was the production by Richter of the ‘Enigma’ Variations for orchestra in London in the following year, and it is indeed difficult to understand how, amid these signal proofs of his qualities, The Dream of Gerontius could have missed fire as it did at Birmingham in 1900. No doubt its very originality stood in its way. Choral singers accustomed to solid oratorio choruses could not understand these paeans of angels and frenzied outcries of demons. It was held to be extremely difficult. Common opinion declared that while it had beautiful moments it was a failure as a whole. That opinion has now been reversed. Every one realizes that The Dream of Gerontius has some perilously weak moments, but that as a whole it is one of the great imaginative creations of musical art.

      The failure at Birmingham, however, was a step towards Elgar’s recognition outside his own country. A. J. Jaeger, an early enthusiast for Elgar’s music, and at that time reader to Messrs. Novello and Co., was instrumental in getting Gerontius accepted for performance at the Lower Rhine Festival at Düsseldorf, where it was most enthusiastically acclaimed. The approval of a keenly critical German public led to its revival at Worcester in 1902, with the result that everyone knows. Birmingham made amends by producing the two companion oratorios, The Apostles and The Kingdom, at its two subsequent festivals (1903 and 1906); the London Choral Society was formed to give the first public performance of The Dream of Gerontius in London (1903), and a special festival consisting entirely of Elgar’s music was arranged at Covent Garden in 1904. In the following year he paid his first visit to the United States, where his works were received with enthusiasm.

      The Symphonies: Public Acclaim

      With these triumphs the first period of Elgar’s success as a composer of choral and orchestral works on the largest scale was completed. A second and equally brilliant instrumental period was to begin with the production of the first symphony in 1908. The Variations and several concert overtures, notably the popular ‘Cockaigne’ and ‘In the South’, together with the beautiful ‘Introduction and Allegro’ for strings, had contributed to the assurance that Elgar would reach his most individual expression in some work of the symphonic type; but he was even slower than Brahms in committing himself to a symphony. When the first symphony in A flat was announced for a concert of the Hallé Orchestra under Richter at Manchester excitement ran high. The broad melody with which it opens, the restless surge of its first allegro, the delicate merging of the scherzo into the slow movement and the triumphant progress of the finale to an apotheosis of the opening theme, would have carried away an audience less thrilled with expectancy than was that which crowded the Free Trade Hall on December 3, 1908.

      Never has a symphony become so instantly ‘the rage’ with the ordinary British public as did this. For some time the regular orchestras of London could not play it often enough, special concerts were arranged for it, enterprising commercialists even engaged orchestras to play it in their lounges and palm courts as an attraction to their winter sales of underwear. The ‘boom’ was as absurd as such things usually are, and as short-lived, but it was based on something real. Here at last the public had found a composer whom experts acknowledged to be a master and whom they could understand. Elgar had caught the ear of the public for big music, apart from words or voice or drama.

      That the violin concerto produced by Kreisler in 1910 should have been received in the same spirit is less remarkable, for the solo work has all the advantage of personal virtuosity which the symphony lacks. Both it and the second symphony in E flat, dedicated to the memory of King Edward vii, were felt by musicians to be of a finer fibre than the first, but the quiet, reflective ending of the second symphony was in itself sufficient to prevent the work being sought for as the first had been. The majestic funeral march of this symphony and the lofty but restrained dignity of the finale make it rank very high, however, in the estimation of musicians.

      The War and After

      It is not surprising that a period of comparative unproductiveness should have followed on these years. The Music Makers, a short choral work of a sentimental cast, in which themes from all Elgar’s chief works were freely quoted, rather emphasized his decline in energy. One further orchestral work, the symphonic poem ‘Falstaff’, however, showed that his invention was by no means exhausted. The War came, and various pièces d’occasion, sincerely felt and fervently expressed, occupied him. Such were the music to Cammaerts’s poem ‘Carillon’ and three commemorative odes (Laurence Binyon), of which ‘For the Fallen’ was the most impressive. He turned also to the composition of chamber music, and brought out together several works of that class, a violin sonata of rather unequal texture, a delicate string quartet, and a fine quintet for piano and strings. With these came in 1919 the concerto for violoncello, which though scored for a normally full orchestra has more in common with the intimate mood of the chamber works than with that of his big orchestral period.

      In the spring of 1920 the death of Lady Elgar broke the composer’s life. For some time he lived very much in retirement; but among the few occasions on which he was willing to make a public appearance were always the Three Choirs Festivals of his native West Country. But for him those festivals might not have been restored after the War, and certainly could never have enjoyed the prosperity of the last decade without the attraction of Elgar’s music given under his own direction. In 1924 the King appointed him to the traditional office, without specific duties, of Master of the King’s Musick.

      There was presently some talk of his finishing the trilogy of oratorios begun with The Apostles, possibly for a Gloucester festival, but that scheme did not mature. A few minor compositions, however, were thrown off, and in the summer of 1932 Elgar mentioned casually in conversation the existence in his desk of a Third Symphony. He was persuaded to promise it to the bbc Orchestra, and it was announced for production this year. The Third Symphony, however, was not in his desk, but in his head, when he spoke of it, and, like many a great composer before him, he spoke of it as ‘practically written’ when he had made only a few sketches. Though Elgar made considerable progress with it after the offer of the bbc was accepted, ill-health last year prevented him from bringing it into a condition from which СКАЧАТЬ