Elgar (1857-1934)

[pastoralguy]

I seem to recall reading somewhere - possibly on this Forum - a prediction that the Third Symphony would be rarely heard again, if at all, in public once the initial flurry of performances was over.

I think that’s fair comment. I’d leave the house on a cold night to get the bus into town to hear Elgar 1 or 2. Not sure I’d do the same to hear No.3.

[smittims]

Yes, I enjoy the Payne 'third' as a work in its own right, though I think it's important to remember that it's not by any means a 'completion' , but a symphony in the style of Elgar using some of his themes. Elgar left sketches only and had only just begun the composition. It's a very different sort of job from, for instance,the Deryck Cooke Mahler 10.

The so-called Elgar piano concerto strikes me as a poor and unconvincing attempt. I heard that there was some disagreement and even rancour duing its productiion, one colaborator walking out .

[Pabmusic]

I've made orchestral arrangements of much of Elgar's 'Shed' music. In particular, four "Shed" Symphonies. Nos. 3 and 4 were performed in 2023, one in London, one in Devon. No. 3 is particularly good - and almost completely unknown, because the originals were not included when the Athena Ensemble recorded its selection of wind quintet music in the 1970s. Here they are.

"Shed" Symphony No. 3 (from Shed 6 and Shed 7):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDeRfqXW9DE


"Shed" Symphony No. 4 (from Harmony Music 2 and four dances):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrB40vjLZYo

[Pabmusic]

Yes, I enjoy the Payne 'third' as a work in its own right, though I think it's important to remember that it's not by any means a 'completion' , but a symphony in the style of Elgar using some of his themes. Elgar left sketches only and had only just begun the composition.

Yes indeed. Payne was careful not to call it a completion at all. Elgar always worked from small scraps - kaleidoscopic in fact - so that it's very difficult to judge the finished product from the initial sketch.

But...

He did play the whole thing through (improvising where needed) on the piano at Marl Bank in September 1933 to a select audience, including GBS, Fred Gaisberg, Adrian Boult and others. O for a recorder!

[mikealdren]

Yes indeed. Payne was careful not to call it a completion at all. Elgar always worked from small scraps - kaleidoscopic in fact - so that it's very difficult to judge the finished product from the initial sketch.

But...

He did play the whole thing through (improvising where needed) on the piano at Marl Bank in September 1933 to a select audience, including GBS, Fred Gaisberg, Adrian Boult and others. O for a recorder!

O to know what their reactions were, did they say 'wonderful please finish it' or 'sorry Edward, it isn't really up to the standard of the other two'

[gradus]

Yes indeed. Payne was careful not to call it a completion at all. Elgar always worked from small scraps - kaleidoscopic in fact - so that it's very difficult to judge the finished product from the initial sketch.

But...

He did play the whole thing through (improvising where needed) on the piano at Marl Bank in September 1933 to a select audience, including GBS, Fred Gaisberg, Adrian Boult and others. O for a recorder!

Fascinating, I had no idea that he'd done that, did one of the audience write about it?

[Pabmusic]

Fascinating, I had no idea that he'd done that, did one of the audience write about it?

Fred Gaisberg in (?) On the Record. It had been Gaisberg who'd 'ran with' Shaw's suggestion that the BBC pay Elgar to write the symphony in the first place. Boult would conduct it with the BBC SO and EMI would record it in advance of the 1st performance.

[gradus]

Fred Gaisberg in (?) On the Record. It had been Gaisberg who'd 'ran with' Shaw's suggestion that the BBC pay Elgar to write the symphony in the first place. Boult would conduct it with the BBC SO and EMI would record it in advance of the 1st performance.

Pab thanks. GBS was such a voluminous writer I wonder if there's anything tucked away about this experience or for that matter Boult too.

[smittims]

Michael Kennedy's The Life of Elgar (Cambridge, 2004) tells the story well (pp.188 et seq).

In January 1932 Shaw wrote to Elgar .'Why don't you make the BBC order a new Symphony? It can afford it.' Elgar sent Shaw's postcard to Fred Gaisberg and suggested HMV commission a symphony for £5,000. On 30 September Shaw wrote to Sir John Reith urging him to commission a symphony from Elgar, and it seems this was the catalyst. Landon Ronald negotiated a contract in December.

The rest makes sad reading. Although Elgar abandoned other work to write the symphony it was still not in sight when his final illness struck. There was even a grisly scene where BBC officials suggested cutting his spinal cord to relieve the pain to enable him to finish the work. Elgar would have none of it, and begged his daughter and Willy Reed not to let anyone attempt a completion.

I think it's important to understand Elgar's method of composition. He would sketch short passages , sometimes over years (the earliest sketch of the second symphony dates from 1903) then suddenly one day the mood would take him and the complete score would be finished in a few weeks. He had just got to this moment when he had to stop. That is why his third symphony is such a different proposition from, say, Mahler's tenth, where a complete, if skeletal, sketch of the symphony from beginning to end exists. We can't even be sure which sketches he would use, or where, or how he would elaborate them. That is why I'm still uneasy about Payne's work; it should really be called 'symphony on themes of Elgar'.

[Pabmusic]

To 'flesh out" a previous post pf mine, here are all four of my orchestrations of Elgar's wind music that he wrote for the Brothers Wind between 1878 and 1881. They include all the sonata-form stuff and a lot else. The Brothers Wind rehearsed in a shed behind the music shop, and the music was kept in a number of "Shed" books, now in the BL.

Nos. 1, 3 & 4 have been played; all are published.

Shed Symphony No. 1 in C (from Harmony Music 1 & 4, Promenade 6, and Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRRZlA6c5ts&t=4s

Shed Symphony No, 2 in D (from Harmony Music 5):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBCRrtuf2qY&t=38s

Shed Symphony No. 3 in G (from two mvts of the incomplete Shed 6, and two of the incomplete Shed 7)*:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDeRfqXW9DE&t=4s

Shed Symphony No. 4 in F (from Harmony Music 2, three dances and Hell and Tommy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrB40vjLZYo

* Never previously recorded, though the Scherzo features in Ken Russell's 1962 film. Shed No. 3 is the best of the lot.

[gradus]

Sterling work Pabs! Just listened to the 3rd and it is absolutely splendid and I look forward to listening to the others. I do hope it's taken up and performed at concerts - why not the Proms - as it is deserves.

[teamsaint]

I happened upon this interesting article about performances of Elgar’s work in Russia.

The article mentions that Russian works were quite often played in Britain around 1900.I’m interested in their influence on Elgar too,esp Glazunov and possibly Scriabin .

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/154991857/Personal_friendships_professional_manoeuvres_Edwar d_Elgar_in_Russia.pdf

Hope the link works .

[Serial_Apologist]

I happened upon this interesting article about performances of Elgar’s work in Russia.

The article mentions that Russian works were quite often played in Britain around 1900.I’m interested in their influence on Elgar too,esp Glazunov and possibly Scriabin .

https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/154991857/Personal_friendships_professional_manoeuvres_Edwar d_Elgar_in_Russia.pdf

Hope the link works .

I have to say I've never detected any strong Russian musical influence on Elgar, just occasionally a moment of passion may evoke Tchaikovsky in similar mood, otherwise Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, occasionally Delibes (surprisingly) filtered through Elgar's "English temperament".. The "Five" (Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky, Borodin, Balakirev) can be heard echoing through the music of the next generation, playing its part in escaping Stanford's Brahmsian imperatives and Parry's admiration for Wagner, while proposing folk music treatments. Cyril Scott's First Symphony, from about 1901, is full of "Borodinisms" - a huge distance from either the Holst/Vaughan Williams or Grainger/Delius approaches, particularly in the harmonic sphere which would come to affect him as much as some of his own British contemporaries. One composer I was really astonished to find Russian influences in was Frank Bridge, who I had thought completely in the Brahms/Wagner sphere before turning in the direction of French music around 1911.

[smittims]

Yes, and not just Tchaikovsky's symphonies too. I've heard echoes of the ballets in some of Bridge's music.

Although I think Elgar's taste was completely formed by the time Russian music became fashionable in Britain, largely due to Henry Wood but also conducting visits by the composers themselves, including Tchaikovsky. Safonoff was an Elgar enthusiast and Elgar may have heard him conduct Russian music in London. And during his, sadly, short tenure as principal conductor of the LSO Elgar introduced quite a bit of what was then contemporary msuic, by Vincent D'Indy among others.

One can never unravel everything that goes into a composer's ears and comes out through his subconscious as an echo of some music he heard some time. One possible influence on Elgar, which might be fuel for a PhD thesis, is Chopin. I haven't seen it considered, perhaps because of the very different media they preferred : Elgar wrote little piano music and Chopin little orchestral musc. But if you listen to the opening theme of Chopin's Polonaise-Fantaisie in A flat, op, 61 it does sound like 'And thou art calling me' from The Dream of Gerontius. Later in that work I heard more vague similarities in mood, melody and harmony. I heard that someone pointed this out ot Elgar once and he was furiously defiant about it , insisting he'd never heard the Chopin piece.

I supect if someone who knew their Chopin went through Elgar's works with a fine tooth-comb they might find more. I should add that, after a lifetime's utter devotion to Elgar's music I wouldn't suggest that this is a demerit. After all, look how much Mozart was influenced by Bach, and Bach by Telemann and Vivaldi. There's no shame implied.