This is very sad news, but let us celebrate a true authority on, and enthusiast for, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss, Walton, Britten, Barbirolli and much else... I had an inkling that he had another role at The Daily Telegraph aside from music critic, but was surprised to learn that from 1960 to 1986 he had been the newspaper's Northern Editor.
There is a fascinating parallel between his own life and RVW's relationship with his severely arthritic wife Adeline and his lover Ursula: 'In 1947 Michael Kennedy married Eslyn Durdle, who developed multiple sclerosis. In 1976 he met Joyce Bourne, who worked on the Oxford Dictionary with him. An honourable man, he continued to care for his first wife, marrying Joyce, who survives him, only after Eslyn’s death in 1999.' (Telegraph obit.)
I particularly recall a wide-eyed Michael Kennedy being shown, for the first time, a love letter to Elgar from a young student, written after EE's death, in John Bridcut's 2010 film Elgar: The Man Behind the Mask: "Gosh! Well that is quite a [?fascination?] - we'll all have to rewrite our biographies now...what an extraordinary letter!" **
May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
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**[However, that must have been a gentlemanly tongue-in-cheek response, as he had, for more than forty years, been researching Elgar's apparent love child born in 1907 to a 'Mrs' Dora Adeline Nelson, a pretty young Welsh red-headed music-hall dancer, whose daughter (of the same name) became a cook to Lord Berners, Sir Oswald Mosley and Sir Kenneth Clark (!) Elgar had inscribed 'A.N.' over the five dots in the score of his Violin Concerto after the enigmatic inscription "Herein is enshrined the soul of .....", now thought to be 'Mrs' Adeline Nelson. An argument can also be made for 'Mrs' Nelson being the 13th of the Enigma Variations. Clark had written to MK: "She said, and her mother confirmed, that she was a daughter of Elgar, and indeed her name appeared as Elgar on the passport. I only saw Elgar once or twice, but to judge by earlier photographs she certainly had a strong physical resemblance to him." The author of Bridcut's love letter would have been far too young to have been the muse of the Violin Concerto, 30 years before.]
There is a fascinating parallel between his own life and RVW's relationship with his severely arthritic wife Adeline and his lover Ursula: 'In 1947 Michael Kennedy married Eslyn Durdle, who developed multiple sclerosis. In 1976 he met Joyce Bourne, who worked on the Oxford Dictionary with him. An honourable man, he continued to care for his first wife, marrying Joyce, who survives him, only after Eslyn’s death in 1999.' (Telegraph obit.)
I particularly recall a wide-eyed Michael Kennedy being shown, for the first time, a love letter to Elgar from a young student, written after EE's death, in John Bridcut's 2010 film Elgar: The Man Behind the Mask: "Gosh! Well that is quite a [?fascination?] - we'll all have to rewrite our biographies now...what an extraordinary letter!" **
May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _______________________
**[However, that must have been a gentlemanly tongue-in-cheek response, as he had, for more than forty years, been researching Elgar's apparent love child born in 1907 to a 'Mrs' Dora Adeline Nelson, a pretty young Welsh red-headed music-hall dancer, whose daughter (of the same name) became a cook to Lord Berners, Sir Oswald Mosley and Sir Kenneth Clark (!) Elgar had inscribed 'A.N.' over the five dots in the score of his Violin Concerto after the enigmatic inscription "Herein is enshrined the soul of .....", now thought to be 'Mrs' Adeline Nelson. An argument can also be made for 'Mrs' Nelson being the 13th of the Enigma Variations. Clark had written to MK: "She said, and her mother confirmed, that she was a daughter of Elgar, and indeed her name appeared as Elgar on the passport. I only saw Elgar once or twice, but to judge by earlier photographs she certainly had a strong physical resemblance to him." The author of Bridcut's love letter would have been far too young to have been the muse of the Violin Concerto, 30 years before.]
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