UK

Edward Elgar vies with Henry Purcell in the competition for Britain’s most revered composer. His music brought British music into the twentieth century, first through his rich vocal compositions and later with his graceful orchestral music.

Born into a musical family, Edward Elgar spent much of his youth in his father’s music shop. He began composing at the age of 10 and showed enormous talent on the piano without ever receiving any formal musical training. His family’s comparative lack of money hampered any attempts at advanced study, but by the age of 16, Elgar decided to embark on his career of choice, as a freelance musician.

Early on Elgar managed to make a living conducting and composing for local groups while teaching violin and playing the organ around the Worcester area. His financial worries came to an end, however, only when he married Caroline Alice Roberts in 1889. A wealthy piano pupil, Caroline who would prove to be not only his constant companion and a source of great inspiration, but also a facilitator of his compositional efforts. The 1890s saw Elgar’s reputation grow with works such as King Olaf (1896) and Caractacus (1898), but it was in 1899 with the composition of Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) that he truly gained national prominence.

His next masterwork, The Dream of Gerontius, followed shortly. Based on a poem by Cardinal Newman, the piece’s October 1900 premiere in Birmingham proved a disaster. Elgar persevered, however, composing the first two Pomp and Circumstance Marches the following year while receiving tardy vindication for Gerontius with its successful performance in Dusseldorf. By 1904, his status was such that an all-Elgar festival took place in Covent Garden and he received a Knighthood for his contribution to British musical life.

In 1905, Elgar began concerning himself with the orchestral idiom, evidence of this lying in the sparkling Introduction and Allegro for Strings. He next moved to the symphonic genre, composing his First Symphony between 1907 and 1908, primarily while staying in Rome. By the outbreak of The Great War, Elgar had added his under-regarded Second Symphony and a symphonic study on Shakespeare’s Falstaff to his musical portfolio.

The outbreak of war seemed to silence Elgar’s musical imagination and when he returned to composing after the war his muse reappeared in a more sombre and melancholic form with the Violin Sonata and String Quartet, both in the key of E minor, as well as his Piano Quintet in A minor and the ever-popular Cello Concerto.

The death of his wife in 1920 brought an end to this fruitful if introspective period and he remained silent for the rest of the decade. A commission by the BBC and the encouragement of George Bernard Shaw was coaxing Elgar out of this self-imposed musical retirement as he began work on his Third Symphony and an opera, but neither were finished before this supreme musician’s death in 1934 at the age of 76.