by Adams, Byron
23. For further discussion of The Crown of India, see Corissa Gould, “Edward Elgar, The Crown of India, and the Image of Empire,” Elgar Society Journal 13, no. 1 (2003): 25–35; J. P. E. Harper-Scott, “Elgar’s Unwumbling: The Theatre Music,” in Cambridge Companion to Elgar, 172–73; and Deborah Heckert, “Contemplating History: National Identity and the Uses of the Past in the English Masque,” Ph.D. diss., SUNY at Stony Brook, N.Y., 2003. See also the chapters in this volume by Nalini Ghuman and Deborah Heckert.
24. Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 154.
25. Dora M. Powell, Edward Elgar: Memories of a Variation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 35–36.
26. Quoted in Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 234.
27. Quoted in Richards, Imperialism and Music, 64.
28. Gray, A Survey of Contemporary Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), 78.
29. Arnold Bax’s opinion of the work is similar, and motivated by similar feelings following the cataclysm of the First World War: “Difficult as it may be to reconcile these contradictions, the fact remains that the impulse to turn out such things as ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ the Imperial March, the Coronation Ode and the regrettable final chorus of Caractacus was an integral part of the makeup of this man, a representative, even an archetypal Briton of the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign.” Farewell My Youth and Other Writings, ed. Lewis Foreman (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1992), 125.
30. Gray, Ssurvey of Contemporary Music, 79–80.
31. Brian Trowell, “The Road to Brinkwells: The Late Chamber Music” in “Oh, My Horses!”: Elgar and the Great War, ed. Lewis Foreman (Rickmansworth: Elgar Editions, 2001), 351.
32. Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 24.
33. Bernard Porter, “Elgar and Empire: Music, Nationalism and the War” in Foreman, Elgar and the Great War, 156.
34. Porter, Absent-Minded Imperialists, 144.
35. Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 338–40. Moore also links the melody to Elgar’s work on a symphony based on the life of General Gordon, for which the representation of a “noble defeat” would have seemed equally apt.
36. Rudolph de Cordova, “Elgar at Forli,” The Strand Magazine (May 1904), repr. in Elgar Companion, 123.
37. Aidan Thomson, “Elgar and Chivalry,” 19th-Century Music 28 (2005): 254–75; see also Robert Anderson, Elgar and Chivalry (Rickmansworth: Elgar Editions, 2002).
38. Sunday Times, 25 February 1934, repr. in Redwood, Elgar Companion, 155.
39. On Elgar’s devastated reaction to Rodewald’s sudden early death, see Byron Adams, “The ‘Dark Saying’ of the Enigma: Homoeroticism and the Elgarian Paradox,” in Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 218–19.
40. James Hepokoski, “Finlandia Awakens,” in Grimley, Cambridge Companion to Sibelius, 90–91.
41. The final measure of the third climactic statement of the tune is elided with the reprise of the march (tempo primo, rehearsal letter T), so that, strictly speaking, the melody never actually achieves full cadential closure.
42. The complete march recordings took place on June 26, 1914; April 27, 1926; November 12, 1931 (trio alone); and October 7, 1932. “Land of Hope and Glory” recordings made in 1924 and 1931 were never commercially released, but a recording from 1928 with the Philharmonic Choir was issued.
43. Quoted in Foreman, “The Winnowing Fan: British Music in Wartime,” Elgar and the Great War, 121.
44. On Elgar’s creative response to the First World War, in particular his attempts to create a popular ritualistic musical representation of intense grief and collective and personal loss, see my “‘Music in the Midst of Desolation’: Structures of Mourning in Elgar’s The Spirit of England,” in Elgar Studies, ed. J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Such works occupy a separate Elgarian category of popular music, principally because of their particular historical context.
45. There is no evidence that Elgar ever quoted an actual folk song in any of his works, even though the composition of the Introduction and Allegro coincided with the sudden explosion of interest in folklore in Britain among musicians such as Vaughan Williams, who trained at the Royal College of Music under Stanford and Parry. Elgar seems to have been aesthetically opposed to this kind of activity, and once remarked, “I write the folk songs of this country,” an attitude that could perhaps be regarded as further evidence of his desire to appeal to popular appreciation over and above membership of formal academic musical institutions. Quoted in Michael Kennedy, Portrait of Elgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 74. For a rich contextual analysis of this passage, see James Hepokoski in Harper-Scott and Rushton, Elgar Studies.
46. Matthew Riley, “Rustling Reeds and Lofty Pines: Elgar and the Music of Nature,” 19th-Century Music 26, no. 2 (2002): 177.
47. Interview with Gerald Cumberland [Charles Kenyon], The Daily Citizen, 18 July 1913, quoted in Christopher Kent, “Falstaff: Elgar’s Symphonic Study,” in Edward Elgar: Music and Literature, ed. Raymond Monk (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), 105.
48. Anonymous review, Pall Mall Gazette, 4 November 1913, Elgar Birthplace Museum, EB Box 1332 (June 1911–June 1914).
49. J. P. E. Harper-Scott, “Elgar’s Invention of the Human: Falstaff, op. 68,” 19th-Century Music, 28, no. 3 (2005): 230–53; see esp. his formal summary of the work, 240.
50. Edward Elgar, “Falstaff,” The Musical Times 54 (1913): 575–79.
51. Significant differences, however, given the programmatic context, are the “Prince Hal” tune’s modal instability (its second strophe shifts toward E minor) and the fact that Elgar never marks it nobilmente, a direction that occurs frequently throughout the Pomp and Circumstance marches. These details suggest that musically, from the outset, Elgar’s representation of “gracious” Prince Hal is at least tonally ambivalent.
52. Letter dated 26 September 1913, quoted in Anderson, Elgar in Manuscript, 127.
53. Diana McVeagh, “Elgar and Falstaff,” in Elgar Studies, ed. Raymond Monk (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1990), 141.
54. Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 29.
55. This narrative silencing of Falstaff is all the more savage for its betrayal of Shakespeare’s promise at the end of the final act of Henry IV Part 2, that Falstaff’s story would be resumed in the succeeding play. In Laurence Olivier’s wartime film version of Henry V, Falstaff’s death becomes an extended moment of wistful reflection, accompanied in Walton’s score by a Purcellian chaconne with descending bass line.
56. William Empson, Essays on Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 37.
57. George Bernard Shaw, Shaw’s Dramatic Criticism, 1895–98, ed. John F. Matthews (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971), 165.
58. J. Dover Wilson, The Fortunes of Falstaff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943, repr. 1953), 20.
59. Elgar does not appear to have been aware of Bradley’s work, but the essay was an important source for Tovey’s analysis, which Elgar certainly read. He made no attempt to correct where Tovey had relied on Bradley’s reading of the play, although he had more general reservations about Tovey’s approach.
60. A. C. Bradley, “The Rejection of Falstaff” (1909), repr. in Shakespeare, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2: A Casebook, ed. G. K. Hunter (London: Macmillan, 1966), 69.
61. Empson, Essays on Shakespeare, 67–68.
62. Ibid. This reading, of course, conceals another more common prejudice, namely that homosexual behavior can be dismissed as youthful experimentation, something to be abandoned and rejected in adulthood.
63. Elgar, “Falstaff,” The Musical Times 54 (September 1913): 579.
64. Ibid. The quotation is from Henry IVPart 2, 2.2.134–35; also quoted by McVeagh, �
��Elgar and Falstaff,” 137.
65. Peter Burger and Christa Burger, The Institutions of Art, trans. Loren Kruger, introduction by Russell A. Berman (Lincoln, Neb., and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 10.
66. Ibid., 11.
PART II
DOCUMENTS
Early Reviews of The Apostles in British Periodicals
SELECTED, INTRODUCED, AND ANNOTATED BY AIDAN J. THOMSON
The success of The Dream of Gerontius in Germany in December 1901 and May 1902 propelled Elgar into Britain’s national consciousness on a scale that would have seemed unimaginable just two years earlier. Gerontius soon became a favorite with audiences at the larger English provincial choral festivals, ranking alongside Messiah and Elijah in popularity. Consequently, when it was reported in the musical press in 1903 that Elgar was composing an oratorio for the Birmingham Festival on the life of the apostles, public interest in the project was considerable. The composer, characteristically, played his part in generating publicity. An exchange of letters that took place in late February and early March of 1903 between Elgar and Alfred Littleton, the chairman of his publishers, Novello, reveals the composer’s concerns about when the print media should be informed about The Apostles; Littleton suggested that The Musical Times, Novello’s house journal, should be given the right to make the first official announcement of the new work. Elgar responded by meeting the editor, F. G. Edwards, on March 14, 1903, the result of which was two articles: one concerning the libretto of the oratorio, which appeared in the April issue of the periodical; and one about the work’s music, which was published in July.1 These pieces were supplemented in the October issue of the periodical by an essay about the plot and theological implications of The Apostles by Canon Charles Vincent Gorton (who had recently founded the Morecambe Festival and through that had befriended Elgar) and complemented by a series of interviews Elgar gave to The Sketch (September 16, published on October 7) and to R. J. Buckley of the Daily Dispatch (September 24). The Pall Mall Gazette, meanwhile, published a piece about the composer on the day of the premiere, October 14.2 Most importantly, at the composer’s suggestion, Novello brought out two guides to the work in time for the premiere: an interpretation of the text by Gorton and an analysis of the music by August Jaeger.3 In short, Elgar had done as much as he could to ensure that the audience at the premiere would be as well informed about his new work as possible, in the hope of a favorable reception.
With its premiere, The Apostles passed from the domain of its composer—who to some extent could dictate how the piece should be perceived—to that of its audiences, whose views, though mostly positive, were certainly more varied. This fact has been obscured by the existing Elgar literature, which has concentrated on critiques of the work at its premiere but not at subsequent performances. Such neglect is unfortunate, for the early reception history of The Apostles suggests that though most critics generally admired the piece, their admiration was often tempered with reservations—about Elgar’s use of leitmotif, his style of word setting, the subject matter of the oratorio, and possible shortcomings compared with other similar works. These reservations are an uncomfortable reminder that Elgar’s music did not meet with universal approval, even in Britain, but as part of the early “post-history” of the work they should not be ignored.
The articles below attempt to remedy this state of affairs. These documents are a series of reviews of particular performances of The Apostles between 1903 and 1905: the Birmingham premiere, the performance in Manchester shortly before the Elgar Festival at Covent Garden in March 1904, the Elgar Festival presentation, the performance at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in September 1904, and the London Choral Society’s rendition at Queen’s Hall in February 1905. (These were by no means the only performances of the work in the sixteen months that followed its premiere; for reasons of space, reviews of concerts in such venues as Leeds and York have been omitted, along with performances that took place later in 1905, notably at Worcester and Norwich.) The reviews appear in four British music periodicals: Monthly Musical Record, Musical News, Musical Opinion and Musical Trades Review (hereafter Musical Opinion), and The Musical Standard. These journals are less widely available to scholars than The Musical Times, thus the reviews below serve a practical purpose. A more important reason for their inclusion, however, is that all four periodicals could claim to be genuinely disinterested about Elgar: unlike The Musical Times, none were published by Novello, who, as publisher of The Apostles, had a vested interest in promoting the oratorio.
The oldest of the four, The Musical Standard, was founded in 1862 as the “only independent representative of music in the London weekly press”—an allusion to the contemporary power not only of Novello’s The Musical Times but of the Davison publishing house’s journal, The Musical World.4 Originally appearing twice monthly (though by the period of The Apostles it ran weekly), the Standard specialized particularly in “applying itself to church music and musical literature in some degree … [because] there is little or no musical literature, and none of a kind at all adapted for the churchman or the advanced amateur.” This emphasis on religious music manifested itself in, for instance, regular columns on organ building or correspondence about organists’ positions, but the periodical also offered reviews of new music, concerts, and operas (in London, the provinces, and, from 1868 onward, abroad), news of particular artists and events, and occasional humorous numbers.5 A new series of the Standard began in 1871 and was replaced in turn by an illustrated series in 1894, which ran until 1912. The focus of the periodical changed somewhat over the years, but interest in church music was never entirely eradicated. It is perhaps no coincidence that the first biographical sketch of Elgar appeared in the Standard in 1896, shortly after the premiere of his early oratorio, Lux Christi (premiered as The Light of Life), op. 29.6
The year 1871 saw not only the new series of the Standard but the first volume of Monthly Musical Record, a periodical published by Augener that survived until 1960 under the editorship of such figures as Ebenezer Prout, J. S. Shedlock, Richard Capell, Sir Jack Westrup, and, later, Gerald Abraham. The raison d’être of the Record was aesthetic, not commercial. As Prout explained in his opening editorial, it was aimed
solely at the advancement of the science to which they are specially devoted, [by those who] strongly desire that it should be understood by the public, and particularly by those more immediately interested in the publication of music, that works issued by any other house will be reviewed with the same independent appreciation and impartiality as those issued by themselves. It is their earnest desire that this Journal shall not degenerate into a mere trade advertisement.7
Within this aesthetic sphere, Prout explained, the Record existed “in the first place to furnish ample intelligence on musical matters, both British and Foreign,” through reviews, scholarly writing on historical, analytical, and critical matters, and translations of leading French and German scholars. This interest in Continental music making and criticism may reflect the inferiority complex felt by musical figures in mid-Victorian Britain and the perceived need to improve the level of public discourse on music. Certainly, the prevailing tone of the Record is scholarly, in the reviews of new music as much as in the historical essays.
The third music periodical founded during this period was Musical Opinion, whose first issue appeared in October 1877. A monthly publication until as recently as 1994, the Opinion was in some ways the opposite of Monthly Musical Record. A typical issue would consist largely of current musical news, including perhaps an article on a featured composer and concert reviews. A regular feature was “Musical Gossip of the Month,” a column by the pseudonymous “Common Time” (it is unclear whether “Common Time” was one author or many, although the consistency of the writer’s views would suggest the former). This column took an overview of a particular issue (such as the state and perception of music in Britain), often in a manner that was far more nuanced than its somewhat frivolous ti
tle might suggest. Despite this perceptive columnist, Musical Opinion was noted primarily not for its weighty musicological scholarship but for its coverage of church music—like The Musical Standard, a feature of the magazine was coverage of organists’ vacancies and other organ-related matters—and, above all, the quotidian concerns of the music business. Around a third of the periodical was concerned with the sale of musical instruments and music publishing: a practical antidote to the more esoteric aesthetic concerns covered in the Record.
The youngest of the four periodicals was Musical News, a weekly founded in 1891 in response to the “distinct call for a new journal which shall, at the popular newspaper price of ‘One Penny,’ furnish news from all parts of the civilised world and supply original articles, not only upon current topics but upon those subjects of permanent interest upon which new light may be thrown from time to time.”8 Indeed, when necessary it became a campaigning newspaper, notably (according to the critic Charles Maclean) under its first editor, T. L. Southgate, who “led some excellent crusades against charlatanries in the teaching world.”9 The format of the periodical followed the pattern established in Musical Opinion and The Musical Standard of editorial comment, reviews of concerts in London and the provinces, “Foreign Intelligence,” correspondence, and miscellaneous items of interest—again with an emphasis on church music, for the syndicateowned Musical News was the organ of the Royal College of Organists.10 Its style was consciously journalistic rather than academic, and this populist tone was reflected in a price that, its editors hoped, would “interest not only the few, but the many.”11 It also aimed to fill the gap in the market caused by the demise, in 1891, of The Musical World, one of whose former journalists, F. Gilbert Webb, became sub-editor of the new periodical.