Elgar Symphony No 1

[ahinton]

But what is "an Edwardian sensibility"? Where is this to be found in the Music?

That's just what I want to know - or at least I would if I thought that such a thing exised and was identifiable as such; this is why I also mentioned that Elgar's music doesn't strike me as redolent of identifiable "Englishness", whatever that might be and so I'd be curious to read anyone's thoughts on what supposedly makes his music "English".

To what extent is this absent in the Music of Elgar's European contemporaries? And in what sense might such a criticism suggest that the listener's reaction is constrained by a neoElizabethan sensibility that a future Williamanian/neoGeorgean sensibility might look back upon and find quaint?

To the first question, the answer surely has to be "wholly, just as it is in Elgar's"; to the second, if it might suggest any such thing to any noticeable extent, said listener would appear to hve given no thought to how that might be affected by the possible break-up of the UK and its impact on its royal family, but that's for another time and place, I guess...

[ahinton]

Codswallop.

I'm struggling to forge a connection between Elgar's symphonies and being slapped with a piece of white fish; somehow I think that Elgar might have found that somewhat problematic, too...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm struggling to forge a connection between Elgar's symphonies and being slapped with a piece of white fish;

As you say in your previous post - another time and another plaice.

[ahinton]

As you say in your previous post - another time and another plaice.

Indeed, although thyme's not the first herb that I'd think of to accompany plaice; the piece of cod that parsleyth all understanding would seem far better, methinks (specially in the context of Gerontius)...

That said, I'm reminded of Sorabji, who was raised mainly in Edwardian England (and who was a great admirer of Elgar's best work) and who once described the pla[i]ce as "the land on which the sun ought never have been permitted to rise" (a view largely prompted, I imagine, by what he perceived as the kind of bumptiously arrogant, retrogressive, narrow-minded and semi-isolated nation that caused the seeking out so much of the contemporary European music with which he wished to acquaint himself to be so dismayingly onerous a task.

[Nimrod]

Dear Alpensinfonie

Yes, indeed, I was at Kings Lynn thanks to friends encouraging me to go. I had planned to only go to the Friday Elgar concert, but further encouragement had me buy a ticket for Saturday, finding a B&B and as it all happened when I was in Kings Lynn, I think I must have been in the same clothes two days running!!
Martin Milner took rehearsal on the Friday as JB was tired and not too well; I suspect that drove me to stay the night. People who were close to JB were very worried he'd survive the trip to Japan with the NPO due to the high humidity, heat etc. As it turned out the Saturday concert was every bit as enthralling as the Elgar.
Programmes like this don't seem to happen anymore:- Hebrides Ov. Mother Goose Suite; Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet and Beethoven 7th. It was the only time I heard him conduct a Beethoven symphony and I will never forget the way he brought the cellos and violas in at bar 28 of the Allegretto, sheer magic! But so was the whole evening.
You are correct, the Intaglio issue was from that concert and BBC Legends also issued the Elgar symphony, which, if I'm not mistaken took top place in a BAL a few years ago??

[Nimrod]

Oh, forgot to mention, Beethoven's 7th was his favourite of those symphonies; his last at Kings Lynn was the 249th time he'd conducted it. The 5th being the runner up at 144 performances.

[cloughie]

I have just read this astonishing piece of history in the Telegraph obituary of organist and choirmaster Martindale Sidwell, who had established the St Clement Dane's Choral Society after the post-war reopening of the rebuilt church. Sir John Barbirolli had agreed to become president of the choral society, having been a chorister at the church, "but had been turned out on the grounds that he was 'unmusical'".

I've got to say that's not surprising as his singing along in the Introduction & Allegro in his recording with Sinfonia of London is not the most tuneful!
Nimrod's mention of Beethoven 7 as a favourite - if EMI knew that why is there no commercial recording.

[Keraulophone]

I've got to say that's not surprising as his singing along in the Introduction & Allegro in his recording with Sinfonia of London is not the most tuneful!

...though probably not in the Colin Davis, Tommy Beecham or Glenn Gould ('Plays and Hums Bach') league.

[Barbirollians]

Dear Alpensinfonie

Yes, indeed, I was at Kings Lynn thanks to friends encouraging me to go. I had planned to only go to the Friday Elgar concert, but further encouragement had me buy a ticket for Saturday, finding a B&B and as it all happened when I was in Kings Lynn, I think I must have been in the same clothes two days running!!
Martin Milner took rehearsal on the Friday as JB was tired and not too well; I suspect that drove me to stay the night. People who were close to JB were very worried he'd survive the trip to Japan with the NPO due to the high humidity, heat etc. As it turned out the Saturday concert was every bit as enthralling as the Elgar.
Programmes like this don't seem to happen anymore:- Hebrides Ov. Mother Goose Suite; Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet and Beethoven 7th. It was the only time I heard him conduct a Beethoven symphony and I will never forget the way he brought the cellos and violas in at bar 28 of the Allegretto, sheer magic! But so was the whole evening.
You are correct, the Intaglio issue was from that concert and BBC Legends also issued the Elgar symphony, which, if I'm not mistaken took top place in a BAL a few years ago??

Unbounded envy here - there is a very good Beethoven 7 from Barbirolli on a BBC Legends release but this sounds very special indeed .

[EdgeleyRob]

I think Elgar did actually grab this music out of the English air,or it came to him direct from heaven.
I swear that I heard the 2nd subject of the scherzo as the breeze was blowing through long grass in the Herefordshire countryside,many years ago,I was really taken aback.

Re Edwardian sensibility,I don't know what that is but I wonder if the word Nobilmente doesn't do the music any favours.
Far be it from me to question the great man,and I can't come up with anything better,but the opening music suggests to me proudly rather than nobly.

What does Andante,Nobilmente et Semplice actually mean anyway ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ooh ... "proudly" is far worse than "nobly": perhaps "with dignity"? (Ma non "pomposo"?)

"Moving in its own good time, Nobly and Simply" (ie, don't tart it up, keep it moving and let it speak for itself; respect, man: don't diss!)

[Pabmusic]

Ooh ... "proudly" is far worse than "nobly": perhaps "with dignity"? (Ma non "pomposo"?)

"Moving in its own good time, Nobly and Simply" (ie, don't tart it up, keep it moving and let it speak for itself; respect, man: don't diss!)

Again, you have it spot on. There's nothing wrong with 'nobly', given that it's all very personal Elgar.

[Pulcinella]

Stately (as in a stately procession)?

Much as I like the Haitink performance, it is a little too stately and not sufficiently andante at the start, perhaps.
But it works, and that is perhaps an indication of a great piece of music: it can endure such differences of interpretation.

[Pabmusic]

Stately (as in a stately procession)?...

Nobilmente first occurs in Cockaigne. About the A-flat symphony, Elgar said that the 'motto' theme (Andante nobilmente e semplice) represented "great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future". It's about ecstasy rather than stateliness.

[Maclintick]

Re Edwardian sensibility,I don't know what that is but I wonder if the word Nobilmente doesn't do the music any favours.

OO - er ! Excuse me while I don my tin hat & start back-pedalling. Bin working so unable to defend my comments until now. Beefy’s admission that he “struggled” with EE’s symphonies, chimed with reactions I’ve encountered among younger musicians & music-lovers who will rave about Enigma & the concertos. My suggestion that the symphonies are imbued with an “Edwardian sensibility” which some found difficult to grasp or alienating seems to have been viewed by some as (a) an attempt to wrest this great composer from his pedestal, rather as the Oxford students tried to do with Cecil Rhodes, and (b) that I was attempting to tar him with largely discredited accusations of jingoism & imperial glorification. Not so. But here goes my attempt to defend the “Edwardian sensibility” comment.


Firstly, there’s no question that EE remains his own man in all his works, in the sense of recognisable continuity of style & musical fingerprints in the symphonies & ,say, Enigma or Cockaigne, & the concertos. In the former the audience has a colourful narrative, & in the latter a soloist as intermediary & explicator to assist on their journey. Part of the greatness of the symphonies is that here Elgar deliberately excludes any distracting extra-musical narratives, having junked the “General Gordon’ theme in his original conception of the Ab, for instance, and faces us with his complex & contradictory personality, which is at once hugely aspirational - “ a massive hope for the future” , “heir to Brahms” - & simultaneously mired in self-doubt & his own personal neuroses.


By the mid-1900s Elgar was hugely successful, but his ascent as a composer was facilitated by assiduous social-mountaineering, the poor catholic musical genius from the sticks who marries the colonel’s daughter, grows a military moustache & plays the country squire as disguise. Here there’s an affinity with E.M. Forster’s character in “Howard’s End”, Leonard Bast. Forster was one of the most acute chroniclers of Edwardian England’s Belle Epoque, & he sees to it that Bast pays for his hubris in attempting to surmount social barriers. Like Bast, groomed by the arty & decidedly “continental” Schlegel sisters, Elgar enjoyed the patronage of German musical giants like Hans Richter, & the confidence of his friend & publisher August Jaeger, in a sphere where barriers to social and artistic advancement were slowly being challenged. Unlike the unfortunate Bast, Elgar triumphed, but his complicated relationship to this new social environment could be described as conforming to an “Edwardian sensibility” — a mixture of aspiration, an admirable & newly-graspable ambition, mixed with self-doubt & social queasyness, that seems to permeate the symphonies.