This is the Best of Me....................

[salymap]

Elgar wrote that on the score of Gerontius.

If other great composers could talk to us now, what would they [probably] choose to say that about with the benefit of hindsight ?

[antongould]

Bruckner, yes him salymap, would possibly say that of the 9th and he would, hopefully, also say and here is the final movement.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

"Eh?! Bah! Harumph! The Eroica!"

(Beethoven, reportedly, when asked which was his best symphony.)

Edit: Incidentally, seeing how Gerontius is such a comparitively "early" work (and it's so obviously better than anything he'd written thus far in his career - the Enigmas possibly excepted) I wonder if he kept that opinion at the end of his life?

[MrGongGong]

"It makes a f**king noise" !!

a rather senior academic electroacoustic composer of my acquaintance

[Pabmusic]

...Edit: Incidentally, seeing how Gerontius is such a comparitively "early" work (and it's so obviously better than anything he'd written thus far in his career - the Enigmas possibly excepted) I wonder if he kept that opinion at the end of his life?

No he didn't. Elgar was very much the 'romantic' artist and added the John Ruskin quote as a gesture (one that he meant at the time, of course), but it probably lasted no longer than his next major work. If anything, it sums up how he felt after several months of concentrated ecstasy as he composed the thing - a task that is minutely documented through his (almost) daily letters to Jaeger:

"This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."

Literally minutes after he had added the Ruskin quote (to the full score, on 3 August, 1900), William Eller, a friend, arrived unexpectedly, having cycled from Ledbury. He recalled: “In those days I seldom went abroad without my camera”, and so took the opportunity to capture the historic moment with two photographs, in one of which the composer is reading a vocal score upside down “to keep my eye from wandering”:

[scottycelt]

Bruckner, yes him salymap, would possibly say that of the 9th and he would, hopefully, also say and here is the final movement.

Well, didn't he actually say that of his Te Deum? (or words to that effect).

A work which always leaves me so completely unmoved that it is the one major Bruckner composition that I'd happily ditch from my collection ...

[JohnSkelton]

sums up how he felt after several months of concentrated ecstasy

[Pabmusic]

[ahinton]

Elgar surely meant - and could indeed have meant nothing other than -that he felt that Gerontius was the bes of him to date, which undoubtedly it was; he could have hardly have had more than the faintest of inklings what ideas might come to populate his symphonies, concertos, Alassio, Falstaff and the chamber works at that time. It therefore seems like a perfectly reasonable remark in the context of its time and in the circumstance that gave rise to it.

[cloughie]

"Eh?! Bah! Harumph! The Eroica!"

'If I'd a known 'ow that Napoleon were going to turn out I wouldn't a bothered'

[Serial_Apologist]

'If I'd a known 'ow that Napoleon were going to turn out I wouldn't a bothered'

Here are some from "British Composers in Interview" (1961)

Do you have a favourite composition among your own works?

Ireland: No.
Wellesz: My opera Alkestis.
Bush: My opera Wat Tyler.
Rubbra: Any of my later symphonies.
Walton: None in particular.
Berkeley: My Serenade for Strings.
Tippett: Whatever I'm currently working on.
Lutyens: None. Always the one I'm about to write.
Britten: Generally the latest; or a work bullied by the critics gets special sympathy.
Searle: My first and third symphonies.
Fricker: Rhapsodia Concertante for violin and orchestra.
Arnold: Always the last one I've finished.
Hamilton: Piano Concerto. Scottish Dances.
Goehr: None.
Davies: Always the latest one.

[cloughie]

Here are some from "British Composers in Interview" (1961)

Do you have a favourite composition among your own works?

Ireland: No.
Wellesz: My opera Alkestis.
Bush: My opera Wat Tyler.
Rubbra: Any of my later symphonies.
Walton: None in particular.
Berkeley: My Serenade for Strings.
Tippett: Whatever I'm currently working on.
Lutyens: None. Always the one I'm about to write.
Britten: Generally the latest; or a work bullied by the critics gets special sympathy.
Searle: My first and third symphonies.
Fricker: Rhapsodia Concertante for violin and orchestra.
Arnold: Always the last one I've finished.
Hamilton: Piano Concerto. Scottish Dances.
Goehr: None.
Davies: Always the latest one.

Aren't some of those answers disappointing, surely if you grafted away at producing a half-decent work every now and then you'd have at the back of your mind that one you think was a real cracker - if only I could just put down on Sibelius some of those potential masterpieces in my head.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Aren't some of those answers disappointing, surely if you grafted away at producing a half-decent work every now and then you'd have at the back of your mind that one you think was a real cracker - if only I could just put down on Sibelius some of those potential masterpieces in my head.

Interesting (well, to me at any rate!) that most of the composers whose work I most admire in S_A's list all say "The latest one" or some such.

Composers: it's the act of composing that defines them, isn't it? They may be pleased with a work, but it's never enough - got to get onto the next one; got to be doing.

[Petrushka]

Sibelius lived for 30 years after composing his last work, time enough for a judgement to be made on its merits one would have thought. Is he on record anywhere as saying what was the best of him?

[salymap]

An interesting list from S_A. Where did he find it? Part of my job was getting a list of six names from composers so that I could send copies of a new work to their contacts or friends. Malcolm Arnold always replied to the effect that he had given copies to the two or three people who liked his music and didn't require any more. Others sent a VERY long list

Re post 1, I think Elgar would probably be pleased that Gerontius still holds a place in the repertoire of many choral societies, whereas slightly earlier British choral works have all but disappeared. Stainer, Maunder,Stanford,Bantock, etc ???