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