Now that Elgar piece rings a bell

[Chris Newman]

Recently a snippet of a new piece by Sibelius got an airing. Will we be able to say the same for Elgar?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-17028277

[Nick Armstrong]

Recently a snippet of a new piece by Sibelius got an airing. Will we be able to say the same for Elgar?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-17028277

Not to mention Beethoven.... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz1mNCsgzAX

[Pabmusic]

Recently a snippet of a new piece by Sibelius got an airing. Will we be able to say the same for Elgar?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-17028277

No - because it's not a new piece. It was written for public performance on 22 July 1923, at the opening of the Loughborough War Memorial Carillon, where it was played by the Belgian carilloneur Jef Denyn. He played it twice during the following week as well. It was published in a cyclostyled (stencilled) edition by the Societas Campanariorum of New York, probably from a copy made by Prof. Percival Price that is now in the National Library of Canada. Elgar himself made a version for organ in which he took the original inked version complete and added more notes in pencil below. That score is in the British Library. It has been recorded: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Loughborough...9268713&sr=8-9 and was published in 1987.

We know that Elgar never saw the instrument before writing the piece, and didn't attend the first performance. He allowed the dedicatee, Dr William Starmer, to make a fair copy for the performance from a working sketch - perhaps this is what has been found.

Now, there are some lost pieces of Elgar - the "Introductory Overture for the Christy Minstrels" was performed on 12 June 1878*. There are also the 1883 overture "The Lakes" and the 1885 "Scottish Overture". They would be quite a find! They may never have been completed, though.

[This is the first time in my life that I've written 'carilloneur' or 'cyclostyled'!]

*It seems this does in fact exist in the 1878 sketchbooks. Some enterprising soul might spot this post.

[David Underdown]

The Loughborough Carillon was mentioned in Richard Taylor's programme on BBC4 before Christmas "Still ringing after all these years", I think there was some discussion on this forum after it aired. The bells of the carillon were cast by Taylor's of Loughborough, three sons of the family having been killed in the course of the war (and their father died not long after the memorial was completed)

[3rd Viennese School]

MORE Elgar???

[gradus]

Ringing bells and Elgar reminded me of the lone bell tolling in Arthur's Progress to Avalon one of the pieces from the suite he wrote for Binyon's play. Moving, emotionally charged music in its full orchestral arrangement; not quite lost Elgar but unfortunately mighty close to it.