In 1882 he wrote, I got pretty well dosed with Schumann (my ideal), Brahms, Rubinstein Wagner, so had no cause to complain. 11 In Leipzig he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire.Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies.
He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. Edward Elgar Torrent Series Of ModeratelyShe inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgars music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius. His father, William Henry Elgar (18211906), was raised in Dover and had been apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music and musical instruments. In 1848 he married Ann Greening (18221902), daughter of a farm worker. Edward was the fourth of their seven children. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin. All the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. ![]() However, his only formal musical training beyond piano and violin lessons from local teachers consisted of more advanced violin studies with Adolf Pollitzer, during brief visits to London in 187778. Years later, a profile in The Musical Times considered that his failure to get to Leipzig was fortunate for Elgars musical development: Thus the budding composer escaped the dogmatism of the schools. However, it was a disappointment to Elgar that on leaving school in 1872 he went not to Leipzig but to the office of a local solicitor as a clerk. He did not find an office career congenial, and for fulfilment he turned not only to music but to literature, becoming a voracious reader. Pollitzer believed that, as a violinist, Elgar had the potential to be one of the leading soloists in the country, 15 but Elgar himself, having heard leading virtuosi at London concerts, felt his own violin playing lacked a full enough tone, and he abandoned his ambitions to be a soloist. At twenty-two he took up the post of conductor of the attendants band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, three miles (five km) from Worcester. The band consisted of: piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, three or four first and a similar number of second violins, occasional viola, cello, double bass and piano. Elgar coached the players and wrote and arranged their music, including quadrilles and polkas, for the unusual combination of instruments. The Musical Times wrote, This practical experience proved to be of the greatest value to the young musician.. He acquired a practical knowledge of the capabilities of these different instruments.. He thereby got to know intimately the tone colour, the ins and outs of these and many other instruments. He held the post for five years, from 1879, travelling to Powick once a week. Another post he held in his early days was professor of the violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen. He heard Saint-Sans play the organ at the Madeleine and attended concerts by first-rate orchestras. In 1882 he wrote, I got pretty well dosed with Schumann (my ideal), Brahms, Rubinstein Wagner, so had no cause to complain. In Leipzig he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire.
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