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RAPID MUSIC FOR STRINGS | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
When Elgar was a boy, he spent hours on his own, | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
riding on his father's pony along the ridges of the Malvern Hills. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
Elgar was born in 1857, | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
in the shadow of the hills which were to have such an influence on his music all through his life. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:15 | |
There was little enough in his circumstances | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
to suggest the future Sir Edward Elgar, Master of the King's Music. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
He grew up in Worcester, a stuffy enough place in those days, | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
a place for the rich and the well-to-do and the Elgars were neither. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
Their social status was clear. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
They were a lower middle-class family. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:32 | |
Elgar's father kept a little music shop in the high street. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:36 | |
By trade he was a piano tuner. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
Elgar was almost entirely self-taught. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
HE PLAYS TRUMPET | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
His teachers were the books and instruments lying about in the shop. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:49 | |
HE PLAYS THE FLUTE | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
He was apparently one of those people to whom playing an instrument came naturally. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:59 | |
HE PLAYS THE VIOLIN | 0:02:59 | 0:03:01 | |
He said later that his knowledge of orchestration was founded | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
on these childhood experiences. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:03:11 | 0:03:13 | |
PIANO PLAYS | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
The family lived above the shop. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
Father, mother and five children - all musical. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
They had musical evenings twice a week. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
Elgar's first-known composition was a song he wrote for his sister Lucy to sing on her 21st birthday. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:32 | |
He was 15. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:33 | |
He wrote the words as well as the music and it was called The Language Of Flowers. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:38 | |
# The rose is a sign of joy and love | 0:03:38 | 0:03:43 | |
# Young blushing love in its earliest dawn | 0:03:43 | 0:03:49 | |
# And the mildness that suits the gentle dove | 0:03:49 | 0:03:55 | |
# From the myrtle snowy flower is drawn | 0:03:55 | 0:04:00 | |
# And the mildness that suits the gentle dove | 0:04:01 | 0:04:08 | |
# From the myrtle snowy flower is dra-awn. # | 0:04:08 | 0:04:17 | |
He wrote music for everybody in the household, including a two-part fugue | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
which he wrote for a lodger who played the violin and for his brother Frank who played the oboe. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:26 | |
THEY PLAY VIOLIN AND OBOE DUET | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
This was an academic exercise. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:36 | |
But there was no question of his going to any academy or university. | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
And at 15 or 16 he started to serve behind the counter | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
at his father's shop. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:45 | |
He became a high-spirited and very boisterous young man, much given to what he called japes - | 0:04:45 | 0:04:50 | |
dressing up and jumping out of trees on to the backs of his friends and so on. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
CHORAL AND ORGAN MUSIC | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
On Sundays he played the organ at the Catholic church. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
He was born and bred a Roman Catholic | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
and it was no accident that the motets and anthems he wrote for this church | 0:05:04 | 0:05:08 | |
are the first works which reveal the note of an independent musical mind in the making. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:14 | |
THEY PLAY ORCHESTRAL PIECE | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
He also took up small-time conducting. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
His first official conducting appointment | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
was with the band of the local Powick Lunatic Asylum | 0:06:23 | 0:06:26 | |
for whom he also wrote the music. | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
TRUMPET SOLO | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
ORCHESTRA PLAYS | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
Elgar walked the three miles to the asylum | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
twice a week for seven years. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:33 | |
For every quadrille and polka he was paid five shillings. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:36 | |
For accompaniments to the black and white minstrel songs, then in fashion, he got 1/6. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
Serious composing was still a dream. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
By now he was becoming much in demand as a music teacher. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:46 | |
And what with that and his bold good looks, | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
he cut quite a dashing figure. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:51 | |
With four friends he formed a serenading group. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
Elgar wrote the music and played the bassoon | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
and they played, either for their own amusement, or in a mildly flirtatious way to young women | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
of their acquaintance. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
WOODWIND QUINTET PLAYS | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:08:23 | 0:08:25 | |
In 1886 when he was 29 | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
Elgar met the woman who was to transform his life. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
For 10 years his horizon had been firmly bounded by the Malvern Hills. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:51 | |
He was full of music and full of ambition | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
but somehow lacked the drive to cut himself loose. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:56 | |
Miss Roberts was to change all this. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
Caroline Alice was her name and she was a Major-General's daughter. | 0:08:58 | 0:09:02 | |
Eight years older than Elgar, she'd taken lessons on the piano from him | 0:09:02 | 0:09:06 | |
and like many pupils before her she fell in love with him. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
She'd been brought up in a family dedicated to the ideal of service | 0:09:09 | 0:09:13 | |
but hitherto her life, though earnest, had seemed purposeless. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
Now she'd found a cause and a worthy one at that. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
She would marry Elgar and make him a great composer. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
MUSIC: "Salut d'Amour" | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
Her influence on Elgar's music was immediate. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
This piece, Salut d'Amour, was written by Elgar as an engagement present for her. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:56 | |
MUSIC: "Salut d'Amour" - orchestral version | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
"We rode up to the beacon on donkeys," Elgar wrote on a postcard. "Never have I been so happy." | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
"I must tell you," he wrote to another friend, "what a dear, loving companion I have, | 0:10:32 | 0:10:37 | |
"and how sweet everything seems and how understandable existence seems to have grown." | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
It was a long and difficult courtship. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
Alice had the hostility of her family to contend with. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
They disapproved violently of her marrying this music teacher | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
with his boisterous ways and his dubious prospects. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
Who was, moreover, a tradesman's son and a Roman Catholic. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:18 | |
MUSIC: "Salut d'Amour" | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
Against all opposition, they were finally married in 1889. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:17 | |
He was 32 and she was 40 | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
and she was immediately disinherited by her family. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
They spent their honeymoon placidly at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
Elgar gave up all his teaching jobs in Worcestershire | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
and full of hopes for the future they set out for London. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
Their plan, Mrs Elgar's plan, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
was to finish with music teaching and concentrate on composing. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:46 | |
But London in 1890 was not impressed by Mr Elgar from Worcester. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
At his wife's suggestion, he brought with him a whole portfolio of compositions - | 0:12:49 | 0:12:54 | |
solemn music mostly like Salut d'Amour - | 0:12:54 | 0:12:56 | |
and these he sent off to a dozen different publishers. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
There was little he could do except sit back and wait. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
And as the manuscripts were returned with a deadening regularity, their optimism slowly drained away. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:08 | |
It was an anxious time. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:10 | |
There was no income coming in and they couldn't afford their lease. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
Mrs Elgar was now pregnant and couldn't conceal her anxiety and depression from her diary. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:20 | |
All her plans were coming to nothing. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:22 | |
At long last a chance came his way. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:32 | |
Elgar was invited to rehearse one of his pieces with a big London orchestra. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
If it was liked, it would be performed at one of the promenade concerts held at Covent Garden. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
It was a turning point. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:44 | |
Elgar arrived at the opera house | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
and had to wait till the orchestra finished its routine rehearsal. | 0:13:55 | 0:14:00 | |
He'd already been waiting some time when an official spoke to him. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:03 | |
The great Sir Arthur Sullivan had arrived unexpectedly | 0:14:03 | 0:14:07 | |
and wanted to run through things with the orchestra, | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
so there was not question of Mr Elgar's music being tried out. He was so very sorry. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:15 | |
He became ill as well as depressed. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
He suffered a good deal from a septic wisdom tooth | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
and his eyes began to trouble him which would last all his life. He went to as many concerts as he could, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:33 | |
and practised the violin for many hours a day, but recognition as a composer did not come. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
Desperate for work, he advertised in the London press | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
offering himself as a teacher of violin and orchestration. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
He didn't get a single reply. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
Mrs Elgar was no happier | 0:14:51 | 0:14:53 | |
and she was forced to sell some of her own pieces of personal jewellery. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
It was a sacrifice and it wasn't enough to keep them warm. "The winter has been truly awful," wrote Elgar. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:03 | |
"The fogs are terrifying and make us very ill. Yesterday all day | 0:15:03 | 0:15:08 | |
"and today until two we've been in a sort of yellow darkness." | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
Mrs Elgar noted in her diary, | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
"This was the coldest day I have ever felt. It was the last day of 1890. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:19 | |
"I could have died with the cold." | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
There was only one thing to do and that was to cut their losses. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:27 | |
The "house to let" sign went up in their home in West Kensington | 0:15:27 | 0:15:30 | |
and the Elgars, disillusioned and despondent, went back to Worcestershire. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:36 | |
There was no pony any more, but Elgar bought himself a bike | 0:15:43 | 0:15:47 | |
and despite all setbacks, almost certainly felt an enormous relief. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
Elgar's head was still full of great orchestral themes, | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
not one of which he'd so far ever heard played. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around me," | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
he once said. "I do all my composing in the open. At home, all I have to do is write it down." | 0:16:50 | 0:16:56 | |
They re-established themselves in Malvern | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
and Elgar went back to teaching. The long climb to recognition began once more. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:55 | |
Life was dull, provincial and frustrating | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
teaching schoolgirls to play the violin and conducting amateurs in poky choirs and orchestras. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:03 | |
After the birth of their daughter, his wife was always by his side. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
She played the piano at his music lessons, kept the accounts | 0:18:07 | 0:18:10 | |
and neglected no occasion to push her husband forward. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:13 | |
She was absolutely determined that he should be a success. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
Elgar himself was full of doubt about his chances of getting a hearing, | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
but she remained quietly and relentlessly persistent. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
She wrote to music publishers, corrected the proofs of such little pieces that he got accepted | 0:18:24 | 0:18:29 | |
and even ruled out the music staves on plain paper | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
because they couldn't afford the proper manuscript. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:35 | |
She forced him to work when it would have been easy to give up. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
The music began to flow and in A Serenade For Strings | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
written to celebrate their third wedding anniversary, | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
it was a new and richer stream of melody than ever before. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
In the year that he composed the Serenade For Strings, | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
Elgar took a job as a violinist at the Three Choirs Festival | 0:20:21 | 0:20:25 | |
because, as he wrote in his diary, "I could obtain no recognition as a composer." | 0:20:25 | 0:20:31 | |
Four years later, and he was 39 by now, | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
public recognition still hadn't come. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
His background, his lack of connections and his religion were all against him. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:51 | |
Perhaps it was his wife who suggested a new line of attack, who knows? | 0:20:51 | 0:20:54 | |
But in the spring of 1897, working in a bell tent that had belonged to the Major General, his father-in-law, | 0:20:54 | 0:21:00 | |
he composed an Imperial March in honour of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:05 | |
For some reason, this march, now virtually forgotten, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
immediately caught the public imagination in that Jubilee year. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
It was played everywhere and reflected the buoyant spirits and appetite for imperial glory | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
that were very much part of Elgar's complicated make up. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
It was frankly popular music and it matched the mood of the day. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
IMPERIAL MARCH PLAYS | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
The Imperial March was a success. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
It brought passing glory but nothing in the way of hard cash. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
Nevertheless, money or no money, he went on composing. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
He rented a little cottage which looked out onto the Malvern Hills | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
and this was to be his powerhouse for the next ten years. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
Here he wrote Caractacus, the Enigma Variations | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
and in 1900, The Dream of Gerontius. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
They went without fires for 12 months while he was composing it. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
The text was a poem by Cardinal Newman which Elgar had been given on his wedding day. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
It tells of the death of Gerontius | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
and the experiences of his spirit on its way to his god. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
Elgar was moved by it to compose as never before. "This is what I hear all day," he wrote, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:52 | |
"The trees are singing my music or have I sung theirs?" | 0:22:52 | 0:22:56 | |
He worked fast, always composing in the open air, writing it down at night, turning from public pomp | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
towards the private agony and ecstasy of a worldly soul in purgatory and beyond. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
It was an intensely visionary and an intensely Catholic work | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
and Elgar was in no doubt about its stature. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
"This is the best of me," he wrote, quoting Ruskin at the end of the score. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:18 | |
"For the rest, I ate, I drank, I slept, I loved, I hated as another. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
"My life is a vapour and is not. This is what I saw and know. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:27 | |
"This, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
# Sanctus fortis | 0:23:34 | 0:23:39 | |
# Sanctus Deus | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
# De profundis | 0:23:44 | 0:23:49 | |
# Oro te | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
# Miserere | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
# Judex meus | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
# Mortis | 0:24:00 | 0:24:01 | |
# Mortis in discrimine... # | 0:24:01 | 0:24:14 | |
"This, if anything, is worth your memory," he'd said. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
But the first performance of Gerontius was a disaster. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
"I have worked hard for 40 years, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:00 | |
"and at the last, Providence denies me a decent hearing of my work." | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
It was left to Germany and the Germans to confirm what Mrs Elgar had been saying for 12 years - | 0:25:06 | 0:25:11 | |
England had a great composer. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:14 | |
Elgar's music was suddenly discovered by the famous German composer Hans Richter. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
Gerontius was performed at Dusseldorf in the presence of the composer and his wife. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:23 | |
A terrific German enthusiasm flared up, culminating in a speech by Richard Strauss the composer | 0:25:23 | 0:25:29 | |
who hailed Elgar as the first modern genius of English music. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
The Elgars were inveterate postcard writers and their postcards to their daughter at home | 0:25:35 | 0:25:40 | |
told of triumph after triumph. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:42 | |
"Most splendid evening. Beautiful performance received with rapture. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
"Father shouted for again and again. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
"So glad to have your letter. Weather dreadful. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
"A great supper during the festival this evening. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
"At rehearsal they cheered and cheered, | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
"wish you were here. Much love." | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
"Delighted to tell you performance glorious. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
"Last evening, audience so astounded. We are so thankful. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:08 | |
"We had a delightful supper party. Not back until 1.30." | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
At last, Elgar had arrived and with a bang. But only in Germany. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
Back home with his daughter, Elgar took up kite flying | 0:26:22 | 0:26:25 | |
and as usual, went headlong into a new hobby. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
His friends were worried about his career | 0:26:28 | 0:26:31 | |
but he was to confound them by using their very doubts and worries, | 0:26:31 | 0:26:35 | |
their personal characters, as material for a set of variations on an original theme. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:40 | |
It was these Enigma Variations that finally got him recognised in England. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:44 | |
The character of Caroline Alice his wife, inspired the first of the variations. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:49 | |
Richard Arnold, son of Matthew Arnold, | 0:26:53 | 0:26:55 | |
solemn and witty by turns provided another, as did Basil Nevinson | 0:26:55 | 0:27:00 | |
cello player and devoted friend of the composer. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:02 | |
A bulldog belonging to the organist of Hereford Cathedral was the subject of a fourth. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:08 | |
There were 13 all told | 0:27:08 | 0:27:09 | |
but the character that emerged most strongly, the key to the Enigma, | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
was Edward Elgar himself - confident and masterful. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:18 | |
What had happened so sensationally in Germany was now happening in England. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
Almost overnight, the unknown Mr Elgar became the great Sir Edward Elgar. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:35 | |
Within three years, he was firmly established as a major international figure. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:40 | |
His portrait was hung in Windsor Castle, he hobnobbed with kings. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
The great roll call of honours started. He was honoured by universities and states worldwide. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:49 | |
"He deserves all these honours," wrote Sir Hubert Parry. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
"In his music, he has reached to the hearts of the people." | 0:28:52 | 0:28:56 | |
"The triumph is yours as well as his," Elgar's nearest friend told Lady Elgar. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
On the face of it, she now had all she wanted - | 0:30:14 | 0:30:18 | |
a big new house in Hereford - Elgar could live the life of a country gentleman. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
But success having come, Elgar was not happy. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
Behind the facade of new prosperity, there were constant money worries. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
The house was bigger than they could afford. | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
His illnesses became chronic and his inspiration came only in fits and starts. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:37 | |
"I see nothing in the future," he wrote, "except a black stone wall | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
"against which I am longing to dash my head." | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
To his wife he talked sometimes of suicide. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:45 | |
By turns boisterous and lugubrious, impulsive and reserved | 0:30:45 | 0:30:49 | |
he drew apart from the world. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:51 | |
One extraordinary method of withdrawal this time | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
was into a new hobby - a sort of DIY chemistry. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
He tried to make a new kind of soap and actually did invent and patent | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
a thing called the Elgar Sulphurated Hydrogen Apparatus. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:05 | |
EXPLOSION | 0:31:08 | 0:31:10 | |
Yet these were the years of Elgar's finest works - | 0:31:15 | 0:31:18 | |
the symphonies, the Violin Concerto, Falstaff and the rest. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
Side by side with these schoolboy pranks and these black despairs | 0:31:21 | 0:31:25 | |
there was a deep faith in humanity. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:27 | |
"There is no programme in my music," he said, "beyond a wide experience of human life | 0:31:27 | 0:31:32 | |
"with a great charity and love and a massive hope in the future." | 0:31:32 | 0:31:36 | |
Three years later in 1910, he was much less hopeful. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
The period was opulent but he'd become anxious and uneasy. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
These times are cruel and gloomy. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
He'd come to see himself increasingly as a kind of Poet Laureate of music | 0:31:45 | 0:31:49 | |
and in his Second Symphony he'd originally set out to celebrate the idea of monarchy | 0:31:49 | 0:31:54 | |
but with the death of Edward VII and his own mounting feelings of anxiety | 0:31:54 | 0:31:58 | |
it became an elegy, charged with what WB Yeats called Elgar's heroic melancholy - | 0:31:58 | 0:32:03 | |
an elegy for the passing of an age and a warning. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
It was as if he sensed disaster in the air. | 0:32:07 | 0:32:10 | |
"We walk," he said, "like ghosts." | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
SYMPHONY NUMBER 2 PLAYS | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
ELGAR'S SYMPHONY NUMBER 2 CONTINUES | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
In 1914, the tensions were released | 0:35:14 | 0:35:16 | |
and a song which Elgar had written in one of his exuberant moods in 1901 | 0:35:16 | 0:35:21 | |
at the time of the Boer War became a rallying call to a nation. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:25 | |
Elgar was delighted. "I look on the composer's job," he once said, | 0:35:25 | 0:35:29 | |
"as the old Troubadours did. In those days it was no disgrace | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
"for a man to be turned on to step in front of an army and inspire them with a song. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:38 | |
"For my part, I know there are a lot of people who like to celebrate events with music. | 0:35:38 | 0:35:44 | |
"To these people, I have given tunes." | 0:35:44 | 0:35:47 | |
MARCH NUMBER 1 PLAYS: "Land of Hope And Glory" | 0:35:47 | 0:35:50 | |
"A tune like this only comes once in a lifetime," he once said. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:09 | |
He was proud of his marches. The words were not his and he disapproved of them as too jingoistic. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:15 | |
There would come a time when Elgar could no longer bear what would become a second national anthem. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:21 | |
There was a terrible irony in having a march written in the dashing, glinting days of 1900 | 0:36:21 | 0:36:27 | |
used as a battle hymn against the nation he loved so much, | 0:36:27 | 0:36:31 | |
used almost as an accompaniment to the growing horror of World War I. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:36 | |
ELGAR'S MARCH NUMBER 1 PLAYS: "Land of Hope And Glory" | 0:36:36 | 0:36:39 | |
As the gates of Armageddon opened in France, | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
Elgar, too old to serve, left London for Sussex and turned from chamber music to sonatas and quintets. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:11 | |
Nothing, however, could sever the public's association of Elgar with his Boer War marching song. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:17 | |
And the irony to a man who had sensed the disaster to come and felt its impact became abominable. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:24 | |
ELGAR'S MARCH NUMBER 1 CONTINUES | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
CROWD CHEER | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
The relief of the armistice was not shared by Elgar. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
During the early fighting he'd written various patriotic pieces | 0:39:46 | 0:39:50 | |
but fewer and fewer as the war dragged on. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
Now in 1918, he was invited to write an anthem for peace. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:56 | |
He refused point blank. | 0:39:56 | 0:39:58 | |
Official music had become an abomination. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
He had rented a cottage in the middle of a wood and in 1919 | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
he put all his sadness and desolation into a cello concerto, his last great work. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:10 | |
MUSIC: "Cello Concerto in E Minor" by Elgar | 0:40:10 | 0:40:14 | |
In 1920 came the deepest grief of all, | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
the death, quite suddenly, of his wife Alice. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:27 | |
He put their London home in shrouds and lived in a corner of the house. | 0:42:59 | 0:43:03 | |
He buried all his honours in his wife's coffin | 0:43:03 | 0:43:07 | |
and composed nothing, his only musical activity was to arrange a Bach organ work for full orchestra. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:12 | |
He turned now not to chemistry but to biology, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:16 | |
kept three microscopes on an unused billiards table | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
and got some kind of solace from the cold and abstract patterns of life thus revealed. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:24 | |
# Land of hope and glory | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
# Mother of the free... # | 0:44:27 | 0:44:33 | |
In 1924, he was called on to conduct his music at the Royal opening of the Wembley Empire Exhibition. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:39 | |
CROWDS CHEER | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
Elgar had planned to perform some new music, "But the king," he wrote, "insists on Land of Hope. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:51 | |
"Music is dying fast in this country. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
"Everything seems so hopelessly and irredeemably vulgar in court." | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
The whole clatter and bang of Wembley he found intolerable. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:20 | |
He described his feelings during the royal parade. "I was in the middle of the enormous stadium, | 0:45:39 | 0:45:43 | |
"surrounded by all the ridiculous court programme, aeroplanes circling, loudspeakers, amplifiers | 0:45:43 | 0:45:49 | |
"all mechanical and horrible. No soul, no romance and no imagination." | 0:45:49 | 0:45:54 | |
MUSIC: "Land Of Hope And Glory" | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
# Lord who made thee mighty | 0:46:17 | 0:46:23 | |
# Make thee mighty again. # | 0:46:23 | 0:46:31 | |
CHILDREN SING: # Lord who made thee mighty | 0:46:31 | 0:46:37 | |
# Make thee mighty... # | 0:46:37 | 0:46:42 | |
TENOR SINGS: # Lord who made thee mighty | 0:46:42 | 0:46:48 | |
# Make thee mighty again! # | 0:46:48 | 0:47:01 | |
Elgar could stand it no more, and this time he left London for good, | 0:47:37 | 0:47:41 | |
driving back to the Malvern Hills alone except for his dogs. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:45 | |
He had loved dogs all his life. His wife had hated them and wouldn't allow one in the house. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:50 | |
Now he was never without them - his only companions. | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
Elgar had gone back to his roots, to Worcester. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:31 | |
There he lived out his life as a country gentleman. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
Further honours came his way, he'd become a member of the Order of Merit | 0:49:34 | 0:49:39 | |
and had been honoured by a dozen universities. Now he was a baronet | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
and a master of the King's music. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:45 | |
But the cold wind of indifference blew over his public reputation. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:48 | |
When he went occasionally to London to conduct a concert of his music, | 0:49:48 | 0:49:52 | |
it was, wrote Constance Lambert, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:54 | |
"as if one of the classical composers had appeared to conduct a work of another age." | 0:49:54 | 0:50:00 | |
The times were out of sympathy with a full-blooded romantic | 0:50:00 | 0:50:04 | |
and the drum-beating patriot and the religious visionary | 0:50:04 | 0:50:07 | |
and Elgar had been all three. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
In the year he wrote his first symphony | 0:50:10 | 0:50:12 | |
it had been played 82 times all over the world, from St Petersburg to Pennsylvania. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:17 | |
He probably was the last great composer to be in touch with the people, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:22 | |
but now the rare Elgar concerts were half-empty. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
In the early '30s, when he was rising 75, | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
Elgar took on a brief new lease of life - a lively friendship with Bernard Shaw | 0:50:28 | 0:50:32 | |
and the excitement of working once more on his violin concerto with a young Yehudi Menuhin | 0:50:32 | 0:50:37 | |
and sketches for a new symphony and an opera. | 0:50:37 | 0:50:41 | |
But it was too late. The illnesses which had haunted him all his life | 0:50:41 | 0:50:44 | |
took their final grip and he was forced to take to his bed. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:49 | |
He arranged it so that through the window he could see Worcester Cathedral | 0:50:49 | 0:50:54 | |
and the Malvern hills beyond. There, he lay for hour after hour | 0:50:54 | 0:50:59 | |
listening to recordings of his music and according to his own account | 0:50:59 | 0:51:03 | |
drifting through his memories in search of those moments | 0:51:03 | 0:51:07 | |
and people and places that had brought him happiness and fulfilment. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:12 | |
MUSIC: "Enigma Variations" by Elgar | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
STATIC FROM NEEDLE | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 2007 | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
E-mail: [email protected] | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 |