Elgar's Hillside

[Brian]

Brian, you've got me playing the whole of that Monteux recording again, now. It makes me hurt, it's so damn beautiful.

And I have had no choice but to put it on for a second time consecutively!

I'm glad you hear the child's cry; I think the squeak you hear at 0.45 is the most prominent of what I think are birds - I had my head directly between my speakers listening carefully for the sounds, which may account for this. But then you had to mention W.N. and I had to listen to the whole recording again...

[71 dB]

Perhaps the fundamental thesis is in error?

Or it isn't a thesis at all! Just an obsession.

I estimate that 95% or more of all my purchases are for works I have never heard (ignoring fillers). That means that only a small percentage are repeats. And then I have 'rules' for buying additional copies of the same work:

For most classical music I avoid multiple performances but with Elgar and Bach (my two supreme favorites) I allow different performances.

1. I must be dis-satisfied with the original in some way (sound, performance, etc).
2. If I like a performance, I don't worry what others say about it (sure, I may be interested in what others do with a work, but one could spend a lot of money and time collecting certain works), and I don't get a repeat.
3. It's ok to collect a repeat if a) it is part of a box, and b) it is not the main reason for buying the box
4. Exceptions (just 6, for works I totally love): Alexander Nevsky, Spirit of England, Marriage of Figaro, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, La Boheme, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No30 (op 109).

Good rules.

When it comes to Elgar, I have not gotten more than Boult's 1&2. I am just perfectly happy with them. Sure, I could get others, and I might squeeze a bit more enjoyment out of them, but I find that Boult's Elgar elicits a full range of reactions for me, so there really is no need to go further. Sure, it leaves me out of some discussions, but I enjoy just reading others experiences.  I may one day get others just to change things up and see what they have to say or maybe I will just go to a concert instead.

Boult is very good with Elgar. I can recommend Elgar's symphonies on Naxos if you want another performances for low price. But, Boult might be all you need.

[Elgarian]

But then you had to mention W.N. and I had to listen to the whole recording again...

Yes. It has that 'one more time' quality about it.

I've been trying to get at the root of the W.N. business, but I'm inclined to put it down as marvelous musical magic. Apparently Winifred's laugh was a real characteristic of hers - something everyone recognised and felt affectionate about. And Elgar used to tease her, deliberately, until eventually she'd laugh - just so he could hear it. In most recordings I don't hear that affection; I get a feeling of a kind of musical simulation of a laugh, though it's more of a cackle than a laugh in most cases.

What's so different with Monteux is that there's no trace of cackle. There's such delicacy to the musical symbolism of the laughter that I can almost imagine her, head slightly forward catching the light, eyes gently creased at the corners, chuckling with an indulgent smile. One may say, of course  - what does this have to do with the music? But in reply I'd say it has everything to do with the spirit in which the music was composed: 'my friends pictured within' is pretty explicit. Same goes for the revealing discussions between Elgar and some of the variationees at the time, of which quite a few have come down to us in various memoirs. So while my mini-obsession with W.N. may seem to be about an 'extra-musical' focus, it's very much part of what Elgar himself was focusing on, together with the friends he was playing the music to as he composed it. A conductor who can bring that out as Monteux does, so persuasively, and so sensitively, is laying out a rare treasure indeed, and of a very particular kind.

[Karl Henning]

Meanwhile, I've managed to get a bit closer to Falstaff, via a listen with score in hand.  It were hard for me to say just why I find this an indespensible aid with some pieces (certainly — we might even say, happily — not with every piece) but, well, I do find it a great help now and again.  (Come to think of it: it helped with the Elgar First Symphony, too.)  Let me marshal my thoughts, and heck, I just might assay an intelligent post at some point soon.

[TheGSMoeller]

Meanwhile, I've managed to get a bit closer to Falstaff, via a listen with score in hand.  It were hard for me to say just why I find this an indespensible aid with some pieces (certainly — we might even say, happily — not with every piece) but, well, I do find it a great help now and again.  (Come to think of it: it helped with the Elgar First Symphony, too.)  Let me marshal my thoughts, and heck, I just might assay an intelligent post at some point soon.

Marshal those thought, Karl. And let's talk some Falstaff, I'm in the mood for another listen myself.

[mc ukrneal]

Meanwhile, I've managed to get a bit closer to Falstaff, via a listen with score in hand.  It were hard for me to say just why I find this an indespensible aid with some pieces (certainly — we might even say, happily — not with every piece) but, well, I do find it a great help now and again.  (Come to think of it: it helped with the Elgar First Symphony, too.)  Let me marshal my thoughts, and heck, I just might assay an intelligent post at some point soon.

Falstaff is a new acquisition for me. I got the recording on Apex (posted below, BBC SO/Andrew Davis), because I didn't have virtually any of the pieces. Which did you listen to?
[asin]B0009OBYV6[/asin]

[Mirror Image]

Meanwhile, I've managed to get a bit closer to Falstaff, via a listen with score in hand.  It were hard for me to say just why I find this an indespensible aid with some pieces (certainly — we might even say, happily — not with every piece) but, well, I do find it a great help now and again.  (Come to think of it: it helped with the Elgar First Symphony, too.)  Let me marshal my thoughts, and heck, I just might assay an intelligent post at some point soon.

I look forward to your comments about Falstaff. It will be nice to get a composer's perspective on it.

[Mirror Image]

Elgar's Symphony No. 2 is a gift from God. Everything about this symphony just hits the right spots for me. It has extreme mood changes and goes down some darker corridors but it always resolves to a breathtaking conclusion.

[Brian]

Elgar's Symphony No. 2 is a gift from God.

I prefer to think of it as a gift from Elgar!

[Mirror Image]

I prefer to think of it as a gift from Elgar!

You're actually quite right and here's why:

It is his attitude to Roman Catholicism and to religion in general that is perhaps the hardest to unravel. Elgar's mother, Ann, converted to Catholicism some years before Edward was born. Edward was brought up in the Catholic faith and played the organ at St Georges Roman Catholic Church in Worcester (although so did his father William, a Protestant until he too converted to Catholicism on his deathbed in 1906). It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, when he produced The Dream of Gerontius, a setting of a poem by a Roman Catholic Cardinal which explores various tenets of the Catholic faith, people should jump to the conclusion that his Catholicism underlay his whole life. But his faith was never that strong.

Ironically, it was the early failure of The Dream of Gerontius itself that led him to make the oft-quoted remark "I always knew God was against art...", continuing "I have allowed my heart to open once - it is now shut against every religious feeling...", this shortly before beginning work on The Apostles and The Kingdom, two oratorios viewed from an admittedly more neutral religious perspective. Even in his youth in Worcester, however, he attended services in the (Anglican) Worcester Cathedral as regularly as those at his own church, although he may have been motivated to do so more by the music and architecture of the cathedral than by any religious persuasion. As he grew older, his belief gradually withered. Although on his deathbed he is reported to have reaffirmed his commitment to the Roman Catholic faith and, while unconscious, received the last rites, he had not attended a church service for many a year. He claimed to have no belief in a life after death and to have taken exception to the dogma of the Catholic liturgy. The ambivalence of his faith makes it somehow fitting that, while he and Alice are buried in St Wulstan's Catholic Church at Little Malvern, his memorial window is in Worcester Cathedral.

[Taken from elgar.org]

[Karl Henning]

Falstaff is a new acquisition for me. I got the recording on Apex (posted below, BBC SO/Andrew Davis), because I didn't have virtually any of the pieces. Which did you listen to?

Hallé, Elder. The BBC/A. Davis is mighty fine, as well!

[snyprrr]

Just noticing that 'Lincoln' actor (wazzizname) would make a good Elgar.

[Mirror Image]

Just noticing that 'Lincoln' actor (wazzizname) would make a good Elgar.

Daniel Day Lewis.

[DavidRoss]

Not Benjamin Walker?

[Leo K.]

The 1st symphony continues to amaze me. I've never heard anything like it. I've been listening to the account shown above.

And maybe it's refreshing for me anyway to get back to that sense of melody and beauty of line that Elgar brings to us in his 1st symphony. Definitely. You know, it's all about narrative. Music is so much about narrative. And I think Elgar is a great storyteller, particularly in this symphony. It also sounds very contemporary at the beginning, doesn't it? I think the brilliance he exhibits in the two symphonies that he completed, since he started writing symphonies so late in life - even later than Brahms, who was pretty tardy on that front - he didn't get to complete his third symphony, so it's so hard to judge that microscopic output compared to, you know, the nine Beethoven symphonies, the nine and a half Mahler symphonies. But I find these pieces really stand on their own, they make a statement. You feel that they're British through and through, and yet they're universal.

So I feel very strongly about these pieces I think the audiences really respond to them. has to be some kind of battle music always. But, of course, at the beginning of this movement it sounds rather furtive and, you know, sneaking around and this is a very traditional form. We should say that having the "1st Movement" and then followed by a scherzo movement, which this is, but, of course, this sense of the military and the battles, that is interwoven into this movement. This is when the smoke is clearing and the sacrifice is assessed. I really think the second movement is one of the most gorgeous in the history of orchestral music, if I dare say that. And the amazing thing, he has taken that little opening of the "2nd Movement," the scherzo movement, and he's slowed it down really exponentially. It's the exact same music. You can't recognize that immediately unless you actually go through and study the notes.

But there's something that you feel. There's a unity about the piece. And I think the brilliance of turning that scherzo motive, which was so furtive and evasive, into this emotional, straightforward, lyrical melody is quite amazing. I would say perhaps he's naive in terms of that sophisticated, emotional spectrum and conditions that we live under today. But feeling of tradition and history and nobility, you know, which undeniably is related to the fact of their history being a monarchy. Well, and you do use words like occasion and nobility. Is this all necessarily a British sound because every country in Europe more or less had a monarchy? That's true. You know, that's an interesting question. I think though, for British composers there is a shared history about music written for occasion. Like weddings, births, major battles. That sort of thing. You know, I always like to try to put myself in the year in which a piece was written. So this is 1908 and Elgar has not written any symphonies yet. He's 50 years old. So there's a real sense of anticipation about this piece. And, you know, you have to think at the time - so Mahler's writing symphonies but many composers have abandoned - as they do cyclically - the form of the symphony, saying it's outdated, outmoded. But Elgar really wants to take that traditional form and somehow imbue it with his own sense of proportion, majesty, thematic unity. It does, doesn't it? I really think that's a hallmark of all great British music.

There is a sense of maturation and arrival at the beginning of the first movement. But, of course, the fact its marked in an andante tempo, which means a walking tempo, and has this sense of occasion and nobility. And just hearing that music makes me sit up straighter or stand up straighter!

[mc ukrneal]

The 1st symphony continues to amaze me. I've never heard anything like it. I've been listening to the account shown above.

And maybe it's refreshing for me anyway to get back to that sense of melody and beauty of line that Elgar brings to us in his 1st symphony. Definitely. You know, it's all about narrative. Music is so much about narrative. And I think Elgar is a great storyteller, particularly in this symphony. It also sounds very contemporary at the beginning, doesn't it? I think the brilliance he exhibits in the two symphonies that he completed, since he started writing symphonies so late in life - even later than Brahms, who was pretty tardy on that front - he didn't get to complete his third symphony, so it's so hard to judge that microscopic output compared to, you know, the nine Beethoven symphonies, the nine and a half Mahler symphonies. But I find these pieces really stand on their own, they make a statement. You feel that they're British through and through, and yet they're universal.

So I feel very strongly about these pieces I think the audiences really respond to them. has to be some kind of battle music always. But, of course, at the beginning of this movement it sounds rather furtive and, you know, sneaking around and this is a very traditional form. We should say that having the "1st Movement" and then followed by a scherzo movement, which this is, but, of course, this sense of the military and the battles, that is interwoven into this movement. This is when the smoke is clearing and the sacrifice is assessed. I really think the second movement is one of the most gorgeous in the history of orchestral music, if I dare say that. And the amazing thing, he has taken that little opening of the "2nd Movement," the scherzo movement, and he's slowed it down really exponentially. It's the exact same music. You can't recognize that immediately unless you actually go through and study the notes.

But there's something that you feel. There's a unity about the piece. And I think the brilliance of turning that scherzo motive, which was so furtive and evasive, into this emotional, straightforward, lyrical melody is quite amazing. I would say perhaps he's naive in terms of that sophisticated, emotional spectrum and conditions that we live under today. But feeling of tradition and history and nobility, you know, which undeniably is related to the fact of their history being a monarchy. Well, and you do use words like occasion and nobility. Is this all necessarily a British sound because every country in Europe more or less had a monarchy? That's true. You know, that's an interesting question. I think though, for British composers there is a shared history about music written for occasion. Like weddings, births, major battles. That sort of thing. You know, I always like to try to put myself in the year in which a piece was written. So this is 1908 and Elgar has not written any symphonies yet. He's 50 years old. So there's a real sense of anticipation about this piece. And, you know, you have to think at the time - so Mahler's writing symphonies but many composers have abandoned - as they do cyclically - the form of the symphony, saying it's outdated, outmoded. But Elgar really wants to take that traditional form and somehow imbue it with his own sense of proportion, majesty, thematic unity. It does, doesn't it? I really think that's a hallmark of all great British music.

There is a sense of maturation and arrival at the beginning of the first movement. But, of course, the fact its marked in an andante tempo, which means a walking tempo, and has this sense of occasion and nobility. And just hearing that music makes me sit up straighter or stand up straighter!

I am really enjoying your comments, both here and your recent look at the new Beethoven sonata set. I think your comments about writing a symphony so late in life have some real relevence too. At times, you can almost hear him trying to wow the audience, whereas in the second symphony, he looked inward more. Perhaps I am imposing my own feelings and impressions on the works, but the idea that he really wanted this to do well (and it seems to me this was indeed a part of the background to how it was eventually composed if memory serves) meshes with the result.

[Leo K.]

I am really enjoying your comments, both here and your recent look at the new Beethoven sonata set. I think your comments about writing a symphony so late in life have some real relevence too. At times, you can almost hear him trying to wow the audience, whereas in the second symphony, he looked inward more. Perhaps I am imposing my own feelings and impressions on the works, but the idea that he really wanted this to do well (and it seems to me this was indeed a part of the background to how it was eventually composed if memory serves) meshes with the result.

Thank you!

At times, you can almost hear him trying to wow the audience, whereas in the second symphony, he looked inward more.

I agree with you there, for me, the 2nd is more difficult to crack and I'm going to return to it soon, but what you say above is probably why. It's definitely sounds more personal.

[Leo K.]

When "Pomp and Circumstance" was played in my high school it brought something that few other pieces could bring to my being. Elgar caused an aura of excellence, emotion, and passion to be projected to all of my soul. Allowing views to connect with everything I have ever felt within my life. Great thought and pure genius are underlying each seemingly simple measure of this piece. Elgar could not help but put a vein of noble melancholy into the more military music, as in the famous slow sections in the First and Fourth marches. It was never true that Elgar was universally regarded simply as a Colonel Blimp, epitomizing England, Empire and Establishment, his music confident and grandiloquent. Certainly, "Land of Hope and Glory" (better known to Americans from the "Pomp and Circumstance" March of countless graduations), As the end of June steadily approaches, the roaring excitement caused by the thought of graduation is found in all seniors. Each day they get closer to graduation and the sounds of Pomp and Circumstance become louder and louder.

A once-in-a-lifetime graduation setting was when Elgar received an honorary Doctorate from Yale University in 1905. At the end of the ceremony, the March no.1 in D was performed as recessional music. It was so well received that it was soon expected to be played during graduation ceremonies at many other prominent schools. Today it is rare to hear "The Graduation March" played outside of commencement ceremonies. It is a doomed enterprise. None of this detracts from his music, but there is no point denying it. the once-in-a-lifetime tune that entered the national consciousness and brought him popular fame, also acted partly as a barrier. Emphasizing the melancholy, tormented undertow to Elgar's music has brought a danger that his life-affirming, exuberant, glowing side is now underestimated. He may have wished to "curse the power that gave me gifts," as he once said, but he also knew the "Spirit of Delight" invoked in the epigraph to his Second Symphony.

[Leo K.]

Elgar's First Symphony, especially the first movement, has numerous organized events within time. Does the future influence the present, or the present shape the future? Is the past attached or detached from the present? These concepts shape human culture and music. Understanding a composer's relationship to time provides insights into the language, constructs, context, and metaphor of their music –of this journey. Music is the journey from first note to last. Rather than being a glib cliché, in music, the journey – the time of the piece - is truly more important than the destination. As a climax to the exposition, such a release of energy brings a thrill to the listener. These moments of tension and energy release in Elgar's music are also familiar gestures in the vibrant swagger and joy of In the South.

Examples of these changes: At rehearsal 9 the music shifts from duple to triple while the over-all beat pattern (in two) remains the same. The horns gather and increase energy and provide a gesture of gusto. At rehearsal 17, after a rush of inner rhythms, sometimes eight notes per pulse, the music shifts into triple meter, Elgar's concepts of time are played out in his frequent meter changes as he moves fluently between duple and triple meters. In doing so his music often gathers energy or relaxes energy, depending on whether it shifts to more inner-rhythm pulses or relaxes with fewer inner-rhythm events.

Time allows the music to shift from a gesture of scuttling texture to one of full emotional warmth and color. present musical material in very different characters is also in the 2nd movement. The scurrying Allegro Molto violin line of the 2nd movement morphs into the beautiful Adagio espressivo melody of the of rehearsal 17 mentioned above. The hint of this idea to come is subtle; it may qualify as an instance of foreshadowing. As a means to the structure of the 1st movement, where a 'grazioso theme' initially in the clarinet line at rehearsal 11, bursts out in a horn line now stretched over four measures - the gusto tutta forza, Elgar will also use time as a way to expose new character within the same material.

Just some ramblings as I fall more into deep-love with this work!

[Mirror Image]

Thanks for your "ramblings," Leo. A good read for sure. I always liked Elgar's 1st, but, for me, it doesn't reach the same kind of plateau as the 2nd. This plateau I'm speaking of is spiritual transcendence. There's something remote and other-worldly about the 2nd that that I just can't even put into words. I can listen to that symphony over and over again and never tire of it. The Larghetto movement may be one of his most gorgeous creations, although he has many of these moments in his oeuvre. I definitely would try to get Symphony No. 2 under your grasp, Leo. It has turned out to be one of the most rewarding works I've returned to in a long time.

(FYI, I used to rate the 1st higher than the 2nd but this has certainly changed.)