Edward Elgar was born in an area of beautiful English countryside near Malvern in Worcestershire and spent his formative years in Worcester living above his father's music shop. Here he had unlimited access to music scores and painstakingly taught himself the rudiments of composition. His lack of a formal musical education, except for lessons from a local violin teacher, and the social stigma attached to being a tradesman's son left deep marks in his psyche and he never fully acquired the confidence to match his talent.
At the age of 15 he left school and began to earn a living in a solicitor's office. However, he soon realized his true vocation and left to pursue the career of a free- lance musician. Taking advantage of an abundance of local work, he taught himself to play many different instruments, adding to his prowess on the violin a working knowledge of the piano, cello, bassoon, double-bass and trombone. In 1882 he took his first regular job outside Worcester. As a violinist in a Birmingham orchestra conducted by W. C. Stockley, he saw some of his earliest compositions first performed. Three years later he succeeded his father as organist at a local church.
In 1889 Elgar married into a family far superior to his own in social status. Alice, daughter of Major-General Sir Henry Gee Roberts, KCB, would provide the temperamental composer with firm support through the bouts of depression that periodically assailed him. The following year they moved to London in an attempt to broaden Elgar's career prospects, but the venture proved a failure and the couple returned to Worcestershire in 1891. He returned to his old life and took pupils in order to earn a living but felt truly happy only when composing - he once said that teaching was akin to turning a grindstone with a dislocated shoulder!
The 1890s saw Elgar's first successes as a composer. In 1899 the performance in London of his orchestral work,
Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), brought national prominence. Each variation depicts one of his friends and shows his consummate skill in catching and musically portraying different moods. It is a warm, intimate and indisputably great work that still sounds fresh today. The enigma is the hidden tune that Elgar said the music was based on. Ever since its composition debate has raged over the identity of the theme, suggestions ranging from
'Auld Lang Syne' to 'God Save the Queen'. Recently a new solution was
proposed, that the enigma is in fact a theme from the slow movement of Mozart’s
Prague Symphony (No. 38). It is worthy of note that as his publisher only paid royalties on non-orchestral compositions, Elgar reckoned that by 1904 he had made a grand total of £8 from what is probably his most often performed work.
In 1900 Elgar completed his masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius, based on Cardinal Newman's long
poem. Despite a disastrous first performance, the work quickly gathered widespread acclaim. This extremely emotional and expressive statement amply justifies Elgar's message to his audience written on the final pages of the score:
'This is the best of me; for the rest I ate and drank and slept, loved and hated like another ... this, if anything of mine, is worth your
memory.'
His reputation was assured in 1901 when his Pomp and Circumstance Marches were first performed. The ceremonial glory of the five marches, particularly the first of the set, have proved that good music can also be truly popular. Elgar was knighted in 1904; the following year he composed the
Introduction and Allegro, a lyrical and profound piece for string orchestra. He also finished two symphonies (1908 and 1911) that show the composer at his most powerful and moody - the music is by turns noble, exuberant, melancholy, warmly emotional and frenetic. His changeable and passionate temperament is again seen in the
Violin Concerto (1909-10) and in the Cello Concerto (1918-19). This last work is practically his final utterance; after Alice's death in 1920 Elgar's creative processes dried up almost completely, and until his death he produced only works derived from earlier sketches. However, his reputation, both national and international, was
unshakably established by this time and he remains one of England's greatest composers.
Enigma Variations
Cello Concerto
Symphony No. 1
Symphony No. 2
Cockaigne
Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1
Falstaff
Introduction and Allegro
Violin Concerto
The Dreams of Gerontius
