Elgar’s Imperial March
catapulted him to fame. It caught the
Londoner’s imagination in 1897 and made
Elgar’s name well known. Before the
Imperial March, Elgar was little
known outside the West Midlands. The
Imperial March was composed in
a bell-tent in front of Forli, the Elgar’s
home in Malvern. As Percy Young says
in Elgar O.M. - "It was the popular
music for a popular mood, broad, simple,
and richly garnished. It was played
by massed bands at the Crystal Palace
on April 25th; at a Royal Garden Party
on June 28th, the anniversary of the
Queen’s coronation, (by special command
of the Queen); at a State Jubilee Concert
on July 15th; and at the Albert Hall
by the Royal Artillery band on October
24th."
Elgar was then 40 years
old. Behind him were his early choral
works and one or two small orchestral
works: Froissart, Serenade for Strings;
The Black Knight and King Olaf
etc. Ahead of him was: Caractacus,
and then in the next decade or so the
majority of his greatest works, beginning
with the ‘Enigma’ Variations
and The Dream of Gerontius.
The life of Elgar spanned
the years of, perhaps the most considerable
and tumultuous change in our history.
He saw the introduction of motor vehicles,
of aeroplanes, telephones, films, radio
and television. Less than ten years
before his birth, Marx and Engels were
writing their Communist Manifesto. When
he was born, the Crimean War had just
ended and the American Civil War was
four years into the future, and Darwin’s
Origin of the Species two. Only the
English upper and middle classes had
the right to vote.
It was the trade-seeking
voyages beginning with John Cabot’s
discovery of New Foundland, in the reign
of Henry VI, that marked the beginnings
of the Empire. In the following centuries,
due to the exploits of men like Raleigh
in the Americas, Wolfe in Canada, Clive
in India, and Cook in Australia, plus
the activities of the trading institutions
such as The Hudson’s Bay Company and
the East India Company, that a string
of colonies was founded across the globe.
At the beginning of the 19th Century,
after the Napoleonic War, the British
Government began to recognise a deepening
commitment to these colonies and so,
in 1814, a separate Colonial Office
was created. There was a new feeling
of confidence as England began to forge
ahead as the leading industrial nation
and there was also a growing sense of
responsibility. It was Britain’s duty
to take up "the white man’s burden"
- to outlaw the slave trade and to take
enlightenment, in the form of education
and Christianity, to the "natives."
Throughout the earlier
years of the 19th Century, most Englishmen
thought little of Empire or of the colonies
which had come together "in a fit
of absence of mind" as was said
of the process, in a famous phrase.
Many felt that the possession of an
Empire was an irrelevance, or an eighteenth
century anachronism.
Six years before Elgar’s
birth, in 1851, the Great Exhibition
was held in the Crystal Palace specially
erected in Hyde Park. It symbolised
and boasted to the world of the staggering
material progress achieved since the
beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
From this time until the 1880s, Britannia
did indeed rule the waves. The Crystal
Palace was, of course, later transferred
to its site in Sydenham, South London
but not before Queen Victoria had personally
to intervene to persuade the lady who
owned the land to sell it after all
previous attempts had failed. The lady
was the mother of Frank and Adela Schuster!
(The Crystal Palace was burnt down on
30 November 1936).
We should remember that
most of Elgar’s life was spent in the
reign of Victoria and that he witnessed
the ascendancy of the Empire. Elgar
was born in 1857; a momentous year in
the Empire’s history. The Indian Mutiny
occurred in the weeks surrounding the
date of his birth (June 2nd). The uprising
began in Meerut on May 10th. The sepoys,
long considered loyal, rose in rebellion.
The flash-point was the use of cartridges
with ends greased with either cow fat
(sacred to Hindus) or pig fat (unclean
to Muslims). This was the last straw;
for many years the East India Company
had been offending by imposing Western
traditions with increasing arrogance
and detachment. The revolt spread quickly
to Delhi and Cawnpore where the massacre
of hundreds of British men, women and
children caused considerable outrage
in England and equally barbarous reprisals.
The following year, 1858, the East India
Company was obliged to hand over the
administration of India to the British
Government. It was both the real beginning
of the British Empire and the beginning
of its end. It signalled the end because
the 1857 revolt was the first step on
the long road to Indian independence
won in 1947.
After the shambles of
the Indian Mutiny, the Empire became
more organised and recognised as an
entity. India would become the Jewel
in the Crown of the British Empire and
Queen Victoria would become its Empress
in 1876. Earlier in 1861, construction
had begun of an imposing new headquarters
for the British Empire between Whitehall
and St James Park.
In 1870, John Ruskin,
art historian, painter and social reformer,
had just been appointed Slade Professor
of Fine Art at Oxford. He expressed
his views with a magical conviction,
and he was one of the most compelling
and popular speakers in Britain. His
inaugural lecture at Oxford was on the
theme of Imperial Duty. In a packed
hall, Ruskin delivered his call for
the ideology of Empire:-
"...Will you youths
of England make your country again a
royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle,
for all the world a source of light,
a centre of peace; mistress of learning
and of the Arts, faithful guardian of
time-honoured principles? That is what
England must either do or perish; she
must found colonies as fast and as far
as she is able ... teaching these her
colonists that their chief virtue is
to be fidelity to their country, and
their first aim is to be to advance
the power of England by land and sea
..."
James Morris, writing
in the first volume, Heaven’s Command
of his brilliant British Empire trilogy,
Pax Britannica, commented: "Such
a view of the imperial summons placed
the Empire in the very centre of national
affairs ... around which the whole of
British life should revolve. Few who
heard him (Ruskin) that day could have
been unmoved by the appeal, and some
we know were influenced by it for the
rest of their lives (Cecil Rhodes, for
instance); for the first time the imperial
idea now seemed to satisfy some craving
in the British consciousness. .... In
the 1870s, there were signs that the
British conviction of merit was growing
into a conviction of command. Ruskin’s
vision was partly an inspiration, partly
a symptom: and during the next decade
two astonishing statesmen forced the
issue of imperialism into the forefront
of British affairs, capping the Victorian
age with its passions. Benjamin Disraeli
became the maestro of Empire: William
Gladstone, its confessor." And
the increasing competition for overseas
colonies amongst the European nations,
epitomised by the scramble for Africa,
further stoked imperial fervour.
(As a young man, Elgar
had been given books by Ruskin, including
Sesame and Lilies and Fors
Clavigera by the owner of Severn
Grange, an old house about two miles
from Worcester. Elgar was later to quote,
famously, from John Ruskin’s Sesame
and Lilies on the final page of’
’Gerontius - "This
is the best of me ..." It is also
worth remembering that the mother of
‘Windflower’ (Alice Stuart Wortley)
was the wife of the Pre-Raphaelite painter,
Millais, but had been married first,
disastrously, to John Ruskin.
Throughout the 1870s
and into the 1880s, Elgar was taking
his first tentative steps in composition
making arrangements, experimenting with
chamber and orchestral works and composing
pieces for the church such as Salve
Regina, and writing music for Powick
Asylum.
Meanwhile, news reached
Worcester about the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869 and Disraeli’s purchase
of shares in it, six years later, so
guaranteeing Britain a swifter route
to India. News also came of the successful
search, in 1872, by American journalist
H.M. Stanley for David Livingstone -
ardent anti-slavist, missionary, doctor
and explorer - who had been lost and
feared dead, seeking the source of the
Nile; and news arrived, too, of tragedy
and heroism associated with the wars
against the Zulus at Isandhlwana and
Rorke’s Drift in 1879. Worcester would
also have read about the activities
of Ned Kelly hanged in Melbourne in
1880 and of Cecil Rhodes founding the
DeBeers mining company in that same
year. And, more significantly, for Elgarians,
news reached home about the martyrdom
of General Gordon at Khartoum in January
1885.
Gordon had been a hero
of the wars in China. He had also been
a former Governor-General of the Sudan.
When the Mahdist revolution in the Sudan
became a serious threat, Gladstone,
against his better judgement, was forced
by a press campaign, to place Gordon
in charge of the evacuation of Khartoum.
Gordon, who had always been something
of an eccentric and a loose cannon,
went against orders and entrenched himself
in Khartoum refusing to leave the Sudan
to Mahdism. After a ten month siege,
the situation was becoming desperate
so a relief force, under Sir Garnet
Wolseley set off down the Nile to the
rescue. But their progress was slow
and an advance party reached Khartoum
just two days late after the city had
fallen and Gordon had been killed.
(Later, in 1898, Kitchener
would avenge the death of Gordon by
annihilating the Mahdist army at the
battle of Omdurman; but, more importantly
for the future of the British Empire,
Kitchener went on down the Nile to confront
the French, in what came to be known
as the Fashoda Incident, and effectively
curbed French ambitions in that part
of Africa.)
G.W.
Joy’s famous painting, General Gordon’s
Last Stand, 1885 touched a nerve
in England and Gordon became the popular
image of a Christian martyr facing death
calmly for the cause of humanity. He
epitomised the heroic British soldier
and his exploits were greatly celebrated
in Boys Own Paper-type publications
and in many others. Pride of Empire
and Victorian values were also prized
and lauded in novels by authors such
as H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon’s
Mines - 1885 and She - 1887)
A.E.W. Mason (The Four Feathers -
1902), John Buchan (Prester John
- 1910), Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis
Stevenson and G.A. Henty and others.
Then, of course, there were the writings
of Kipling himself: Plain Tales from
the Hills (1888), the Jungle
Books (1894-5) and Kim (1901).
The spirit of Gordon
would touch the creation of Elgar’s
Gerontius and be part of the
inspiration for both of his symphonies.
Alice Elgar became one
of Elgar’s Malvern pianoforte pupils
on 6 October 1886 and despite intense
opposition from her family, they married
on 8 May 1889. Alice had been born in
India, in 1848 (probably, the date is
uncertain). Henry Gee Roberts, her father,
had served with distinction there as
a Lieutenant-Colonel active on the northern
frontier under Napier and afterwards
he was caught up in the reprisals after
the Indian Mutiny. He was promoted to
Colonel in 1852, then to Major-General
in 1854. In recognition of his services,
he was created a Knight Commander of
the Bath. He died in 1860 when Alice,
youngest of four children, was only
twelve.
Clearly, Alice’s family
and the distinguished service record
of her father would have influenced
Elgar and further increased his awareness
and pride in the Empire. Indian artefacts
- ivory elephants and the like - were
always prominently displayed in their
homes (but then, these ornaments were
prized in so many other houses too).
Elgar was proud of Major-General
Roberts’ career. Nevertheless, he was
sometimes peevish because of his feelings
of social inferiority which probably
caused him to make impulsive outbursts
or hold quirky principles. For instance,
Rosa Burley relates that when Alice
told her that she had been barred from
shopping at the Army and Navy Stores,
Elgar had said - "No, because I
don’t make it my business to kill my
fellow men!"
Edward
and Alice were married at Brompton Oratory
in London. Father Knight, the priest
of St George’s Church, Worcester gave
Edward a copy of Cardinal Newman’s poem,
The Dream of Gerontius as
a wedding present. Earlier, in
1887, when Alice’s mother had died,
Edward had lent Alice his own copy of
Cardinal Newman’s poem which had Gordon’s
markings on it. (Copies of the markings
circulated all over the Midlands when
Gordon’s own copy, which had been with
him in Khartoum, was sent to the old
Cardinal Newman, in Birmingham.)
In 1890, Elgar composed
Froissart while the couple were
living in London, the heart of the Empire,
at Avonmore Road, West Kensington. On
the score, Elgar inscribed a line from
Keats, ‘When Chivalry lifted up her
lance on high’. Here, already, were
flashes of the mature Elgar and here,
too, was the assertive, nobilmente,
heroic voice predating the music that
would be written across the turn of
the century; music that would be associated
indelibly with Empire.
By the time of Victoria’s
Diamond Jubilee, in 1897, this heroic
element had manifested itself in other
works such as The Black Knight
(1892-3), Sursum Corda (1894)
and King Olaf (1896) in parallel
with the progress of the Empire.
In this Diamond Jubilee
year, British statesman boasted publicly
of Britain’s "splendid isolation",
but, secretly, they were apprehensive
about it, and the Empire’s future safety
in an increasingly competitive world
where Britain had no allies. Britain
was no longer the supreme industrial
and commercial nation. Her share of
global trade had plummeted. In the decade
that Elgar was born, England had some
65%, 70% and 50%, respectively, of the
world’s coal, steel and cotton production.
By 1897 these figures had slumped to
33%, 20% and 22.5%. Britain had already
been overtaken by the USA and was about
to be overtaken by Germany - and, worse,
the countries in the Empire were beginning
to develop their own manufacturing industries
and trade with them was falling significantly.
The escalating costs of policing the
Empire were crippling - the naval estimates
alone soared from £13 to £22 million
between 1886 and 1896.
Quoting James Morris
again, this time from the central volume,
The Climax of Empire from his
Pax Britannica trilogy
in which he writes about Elgar in Jubilee
Year, he writes:-
"Elgar reached middle
age in the heyday of the New Imperialism,
in that provincial society which was
perhaps most susceptible to its dazzle,
and for a time he succumbed to the glory
of it all. In Elgar’s Worcestershire
of the nineties, the innocent manifestations
of imperial pride must have been inescapable,
drumming and swelling all around him:
but if at first his response was conventional
enough, in the end it was to give the
imperial age of England its grandest
and saddest memorials .... His was not
the clean white line, the graceful irony,
the scholarly allusion. He plunged into
the popular emotions of the day with
a sensual romanticism .... He was forty
years old in the year of the Diamond
Jubilee, and he saw himself then as
a musical laureate, summoned by destiny
to hymn Britannia’s greatness."
On 22 June, Diamond Jubilee
Day, Elgar was in Malvern. His diary
page for that day included the entry,
"After dinner, Edward and Alice
to common to see bonfires." (the
beacons which were lit on prominent
hills such as the Worcester Beacon).
In Jubilee year Elgar
wrote another patriotic work besides
his Imperial March - The Banner
of St George - a setting
of words by, a Bristol man, Shapcott
Wensley, with no other claim to fame.
It was completed in March 1897. Apparently
Elgar, himself, never heard it during
the first years of its existence. The
work’s Epilogue is a paean to Empire
ending with this verse:-
....Great race, whose empire
of splendour,
Has dazzled a wondering world!
May the flag that floats o’er
thy wide domains,
Be long to all winds unfurled!
Three crosses in concord blended,
The banner of Britain’s might!
But the central gem of the ensign
fair
Is the cross of the dauntless
knight!
It is interesting to
compare these words with those of H.A.
Acworth for another paean to Empire
at the end of Caractacus (dedicated
to Queen Victoria) which was composed
during the following year, 1898. (See
the end of this article). Acworth, is
more concerned with emphasising the
more altruistic concerns of Empire -
and how much better Elgar responds to
such noble sentiments!
Actually, Elgar had wanted
to write a large-scale orchestral work
in preference to Caractacus.
He had suggested a symphony written
round the subject of General Gordon,
but there was no interest. The demand,
then, was for choral works for the large
choirs that were popular in those days.
In 1898, Elgar also composed
a Festival March which was first
performed, under the baton of August
Manns, in London at the Crystal Palace
on 14 October. Michael Kennedy in his
Portrait of Elgar writes that
only a fragment of this work remains.
It is thought that this Festival
March is the Triumphal March
from Caractacus (both are in
C Major.)
Following the success
of the Enigma Variations (again
with a noblimente finale), two
of the songs from the recently completed
Sea Pictures were performed, in
October 1899, by Royal Command at Balmoral.
Earlier that year Queen Victoria had
favoured Elgar by requesting performances
of his works on two occasions. Also,
in 1899, Edward was asked to compose
a madrigal in honour of Queen Victoria’s
birthday on 24 May. He was summoned
to Windsor for that occasion and so
it was that Elgar saw the Queen. It
was the beginning of Elgar’s associations
with royalty which would develop significantly
with the reign of Edward VII. (Queen
Victoria died on 22 January 1901.)
After Elgar had recovered
from the disappointment of the premiere
of Gerontius in October 1900,
he turned to the composition of Cockaigne
(first performed on 20 June 1901) -
stout and steaky as he described
it to Jaeger. Here again the nobilmente
and pomp and circumstance elements are
prominent. Surely, this is a proud,
affirmative, affectionate portrait of
the capital of Empire?
In that summer of 1901,
Arnold Bax met Elgar at Birchwood. In
his autobiographical Farewell,
My Youth, Bax commented that
Elgar’s appearance, at that time, "was
rather that of a retired army officer
turned gentleman farmer than an eminent
and almost morbidly highly strung artist."
Was this image of a retired army officer
cultivated? Cultivated, perhaps, partly,
for Alice’s benefit? Alice was always
one to preserve the proprieties and,
after all, she had married "beneath
herself", as they put it in those
days. She supported and guided Elgar
towards the pinnacle of his success
now practically upon him. Soon they
would be equals with the cream of society
and would be meeting people influential
in business, the military, the arts
and politics. Bax’s impression of Elgar
as a highly strung artist is likewise
perceptive. How much, one wonders, in
addition to those mysterious and prophetic
forces that compel the pens of geniuses
like Elgar, did the violent mood-swings
that burdened him, etch into sharp relief
for us, the high processional proclamations
and the contrastingly deep recessional
lamentations in his music?
In October 1901 the First
Pomp and Circumstance March in D
Major, received a tumultuous ovation
at the Queen’s Hall. Henry Wood recalled
the scene:- "The people simply
rose and yelled. I had to play it again
with the same result. In fact they refused
to let me get on with the programme.
To restore order, I played the march
a third time."
Elgar knew its worth.
To Dorabella he had said, "I’ve
got a tune that will knock ’em - knock
’em flat!" and to King Edward VII
- "I’ve been carrying that around
in my pocket for twenty years."
It was the King who first
suggested that the air from this Pomp
and Circumstance March should be sung.
It was first incorporated into the Coronation
Ode as the Final Movement but then
became a work on its own. Land of
Hope and Glory swept the country
in 1902 and it practically became a
second national anthem.
Elgar was proud of his
stately music. In 1904, he said: "I
like to look on the composer’s vocation
as the old troubadours did. In those
days it was no disgrace to a man to
be turned on to step in front of an
army and inspire the people with a song.
For my part, I know there are a lot
of people who like to celebrate events
with music. To these people I have given
tunes. Is that wrong? Why should I write
a fugue or something which won’t appeal
to anyone, when people yearn for things
which can stir them."
Parry recognised this
ability. Speaking of Elgar when he was
awarded the O.M. in 1911, Parry said,
"He deserves it. You see he has
touched the hearts of the people."
Elgar was particularly proud of his
Order of Merit and he valued it above
all his other honours. Sir Edward Elgar
(knighted in July 1904) had most definitely
overtaken Alice’s father the old Major-General
who had been a KCB. The Order of Merit
(O.M.) was instituted by King Edward
VII, in 1902, to be awarded personally,
by the sovereign, to those who excelled
in the arts, in public life or in other
fields. There can only be 24 O.M.s at
any one time.
The Edwardian era - and
we must include the years up to 1914
- was an age of transition. The foundations
as well as the surface of a long familiar
world were moving - although few people
realised it at the time. King Edward
did. So, too, did Elgar, for not only
was he on friendly terms with the King
himself, but he was also meeting political
and military leaders including Admiral
Lord Beresford who showed Elgar something
of the fleet in the Mediterranean, and
who was outspoken about naval unpreparedness
in comparison to the growing naval strength
of Germany. Elgar saw the changes evolving
and sensed the implications. And this
is conveyed in the music - the shadows
lurking behind the Pomp and Circumstance.
Before his accession,
Edward VII’s reputation for unconventional
behaviour and dubious associations gave
rise to concern about the future of
the monarchy. They were unfounded. Edward
became a conscientious monarch who made
pleasure his servant not his master.
He revived pageantry and moved his court
from Windsor to Buckingham Palace. He
took immense interest in affairs of
state (including the forging of the
Entente Cordiale with France, leading
Britain away from her dangerous "splendid
isolation"), and he sought every
opportunity to improve the state of
the armed forces.
Although it was not a
colony, Ireland had been dominated and
exploited, as though it had been
one, for centuries and the clamour for
Home Rule had grown more and more insistent
since the last years of the old century
until it would climax in open rebellion
with the Easter Rising of 1916. Elgar,
himself, was caught up in the controversy
of Home Rule for Ireland for in March
1914, as the Liberal government prepared
to pass the Home Rule Bill through Parliament
for a third time to override the Lords’
veto, he was persuaded, with "twenty
other distinguished men (including Rudyard
Kipling)", to sign a "solemn
covenant" against Home Rule for
Ireland and the implied subordination
of Ulster to an uncongenial government
in Dublin. The pledge appeared in The
Times and The Daily Telegraph
and it very quickly gathered more than
a million supporters. It was widely
felt that the granting of Home Rule
to Ireland might cause an unfortunate
precedent that could threaten the stability
of the Empire.
In spite of the great
inspiration of Empire, Elgar saw remarkably
little of it. He visited the colonies
the Empire lost, that constituted the
USA, which he appears to have loathed,
four times in 1905, 1906 and 1911 and
on the latter occasion, he took in Montreal
and Toronto. Apart from that, Elgar
seems to have only come close to what
had been a Mediterranean British protectorate
(between 1815 and 1864 before it was
ceded to Greece) - Corfu. (In 1905,
Elgar and Frank Schuster were invited
by Lady Charles Beresford, whose husband
had recently been made Commander-in-Chief
of the Mediterranean Fleet, to join
a party on HMS Surprise to cruise
with the Fleet in the Mediterranean
for a fortnight. Elgar and Schuster
travelled by train and thence by ship
from Brindisi, in Southern Italy, across
to Patras via Corfu and thence on to
Athens, Lemnos, Istanbul and Smyrna
which of course inspired Elgar’s piano
piece, In Smyrna.
Three more Pomp and Circumstance
Marches were to follow from Elgar’s
pen: No 2 in the same year as No. 1
(1901), No. 3 in 1904 and the magnificent
No. 4 in 1907.
But Elgar had ambitions
to write a symphony. This ambition had
been nurtured since 1898 (or earlier)
when he had the idea of composing a
symphony based on the idea of the life
of General Gordon. Sketches and ideas
had been accumulating for years. At
length, in June 1907, Elgar felt ready
to commence composition of his Symphony
No. 1 in A flat major which was completed
in September 1908 and first performed
in Manchester by the Hallé Orchestra
conducted by Richter who said of it,
"Let us now rehearse the greatest
symphony in modern times and not only
in this country." Elgar writing
of the Symphony to Walford Davies said,
"There is no programme beyond a
wide experience of human life with a
great charity (love) and a massive hope
in the future." The Symphony’s
music is forceful and confident. The
nobilmente, heroic elements are
very pronounced and one senses that
it proclaims the greatness of Britain
and her Empire. It also includes an
exquisite Adagio, evoking the serenity
and beauty of the Worcestershire countryside,
which Jaeger considered to be the best
of its kind since Beethoven.
The Symphony was outstandingly
successful. In 1909, it received nearly
100 performances - all over Europe and
in America, in parts of the Empire and
in Russia. Londoners even heard it played
by palm court orchestras in the large
department stores. But from then on
Elgar’s music took on an increasingly
sadder, and much less confident tone.
King Edward VII died
on 6 May 1910. He had been greatly depressed
about the constitutional crisis into
which he had been drawn following the
rejection of the People’s Budget, and
about his fears of war with Germany.
The shadows were beginning to lengthen.
Quoting Morris again:-
"His (Elgar’s) Jingo
period was short and delusory, for very
soon there entered into his music, once
so bellicose, a sad and visionary note
... Greater matters than pomp and circumstance
engaged his spirit, those manly tunes
deepened into more anguished cadences,
and there seemed to sound through his
works premonitions of tragedy - as though
he sensed that all the pride of Empire,
expressed at such a comfortable remove
in the country drawing-rooms of the
West Country, would one day collapse
in bloodshed or pathos."
The shadows were prominent
in Elgar’s Second Symphony first performed
on 24 May 1911. The second movement
was a funeral march - a lament for the
passing of King Edward (and Rodewald)
and the small audience at its first
performance was puzzled by the quiet
ending of the Finale. They were undoubtedly
expecting the work to end on a high
note of confidence. They were disappointed
- especially when they were in a mood
to celebrate the coronation of the new
King (George V), scheduled a month later
on June 22 … and for which Elgar composed
a Coronation March.
In 1912, Elgar wrote
the music for a masque The Crown
of India. He drew upon surplus material
from The Apostles, sketches for
a second Cockaigne overture and
other ideas that would not fit into
the symphonies. The Crown of India
was staged at the London Coliseum to
mark the Royal visit to India. For the
most part, and despite some exotic rhythms
and harmonies, The Crown of India
music was rather more "Malvern-flavoured"
than Indian. Of it, Elgar remarked ruefully,
"When I write a big serious work
like Gerontius, we have to starve
and go without fires ... this small
effort allows me to buy scientific works
I long for." The masque proved
to be enormously popular and through
the first fortnight of its run, Elgar
himself conducted two performances a
day.
Only two years later,
Land of Hope and Glory was to
become the rallying cry to the Great
War - causing Elgar great anguish. The
First World War cost 1,115,000 lives,
many of them from all over the Empire
- 4,000 Empire troops died at Gallipoli
alone. Appositely, in The Spirit
of England (1916-17) the sentiments
of Laurence Binyon’s words were made
almost unbearably poignant by Elgar’s
music:-
They shall grow not old, as we
that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the
years condemn
... At the going down of the sun
and in the morning,
We will remember them.
In 1917, too, Elgar was
approached by Lord Charles Beresford
to set some verses by Kipling entitled
Fringes of the Fleet. The pairing
of the two laureates of Empire - the
author of Recessional with the
composer of Land of Hope and Glory
seemed too good a chance to miss. Kipling’s
verses drew breezy pictures of life
aboard small commercial vessels now
mounted with guns for minesweepers,
the submarines and the patrol boats
in outlying waters. Elgar sketched hearty
tunes for baritone and men’s chorus
but then Kipling objected to his verses
being turned into entertainment after
his son had been reported missing in
action. Attempts were made to get Kipling
to change his mind, and a year later
they seemed to be successful. The completed
Fringes of the Fleet was signed
up for a fortnight’s run at the Coliseum,
with Elgar conducting, in June 1917.
It was a big success and the cycle was
recorded with Charles Mott - who sang
on-stage. The run of performances was
extended but eventually, Kipling succeeded
in stopping further performances.
Elgar also composed a
number of patriotic songs for the War
effort. Big Steamers,
1918, again a setting of Kipling verses,
is a song for children in praise of
the merchant ships risking enemy fire
to bring home their cargos. It is simple
direct and wholly charming. Of it, Elgar
wrote, "I have endeavoured to bring
the little piece within the comprehension
of very small people indeed."
Quoting the first two
verses:-
"Oh, where are you going
to, all you Big Steamers,
With England’s own coal, up and
down the salt seas?"
"We are going to fetch you
your bread and your butter,
Your beef, pork, and mutton, eggs,
apples and cheese."
"And where will you fetch
it from, all you Big Steamers?
And where shall I write to you
when you are away?
"We fetch it from Melbourne,
Quebec, and Vancouver,
Address us at Hobart, Hong Kong,
and Bombay"
In the latter days of
the War, Elgar sought peace and solitude
in Sussex where he composed his last
great masterpieces: the chamber works
and his Cello Concerto. Here was an
autumnal and reflective Elgar. The pomp
and circumstance of Empire was but a
memory.
Picking up the threads
of the history of the course of the
British Empire, as James Morris shrewdly
observed in the third volume, Farewell
the Trumpets of his Pax Britannica,
"the British Empire more than survived
World War I ... The straightforward
annexation of colonies was unacceptable
now; it was as distasteful to the mass
of the British people as it was to the
world at large. Instead, the British
Empire took shrewd advantage of the
peace terms to extend its power and
safeguard its security .... Nearly a
million square miles were added to the
Empire with 13 million new subjects
... In Africa the Empire gained control
not only of South-West Africa, satisfactorily
rounding off Imperial South Africa,
but also of Tanganyika, at last fulfilling
the vision of an all-red Cape-to-Cairo
corridor. In the Middle East, Iraq,
Transjordan, and Palestine became British
Mandates and Persia was virtually a
British protectorate, so that India
was linked with Egypt and the Mediterranean
by a continuous slab of British-controlled
territory, and one could travel overland
from Cape Town to Rangoon without once
leaving the shelter of British authority."
But in the 1920s the
British were losing interest in their
Empire. H.G. Wells estimated that nineteen
out of twenty knew no more about the
British Empire than they did about the
Italian Renaissance. It is amazing how
quickly events that seem so imperative,
become dusty, forgotten history. People
were disillusioned after the Great War.
The times were changing, leaving behind
the old world Elgar knew and revered.
This feeling of being out of joint with
the times coupled with his depression
after the death of Lady Elgar in 1920,
inhibited the composition of new works.
The British Empire Exhibition
at Wembley in 1924 was meant to remind
people of the importance of Empire but
many went to the Exhibition for the
wrong reasons preferring the dodgems
and the dance halls to the exhibits
of New Zealand or Ceylon. Elgar, now
Master of the King’s Musick, and the
most celebrated musician of the Empire,
conducted the massed choirs at the opening
ceremony and they sang Land of Hope
and Glory; but by now the
very sound of that work was anathema
to its composer’s ears. Writing to ‘Windflower’
on 16 April about the preparations for
the Exhibition, Elgar had commented,
"the K. insists on Land of Hope
& there were some ludicrous suggestions
of which I will tell you ... But everything
seems so hopelessly & irredeemably
vulgar at Court .... I was standing
alone (criticising) in the middle of
the enormous stadium in the sun: all
the ridiculous Court programme, soldiers,
awnings etc: 17,000 men hammering, loudspeakers,
amplifiers - four aeroplanes circling
over etc. - all mechanical and horrible
- no soul & no romance & no
imagination ..."
For the Wembley Exhibition,
Elgar wrote Pageant of Empire
- eight songs to words by Alfred Noyes
for solo or S.A.T.B. The songs’ titles
reveal all: Shakespeare’s Kingdom,
The Islands, The Blue Mountains, The
Heart of Canada, Sailing Westward, Merchant-Adventurers,
The Immortal Legions, and A Song
of Union.
Elgar was also asked
to write a March for the Pageant
of Empire to open the huge Exhibition
on St George’s Day 1924. The idea of
the March appealed to him rather more
than the songs. When he finished it,
he was told that it would not be performed
at Wembley because of the difficulty
of all the contingent bands rehearsing
a new piece separately. He was asked
to conduct the old Imperial March
instead, together with Land of
Hope and Glory, Parry’s Jerusalem,
and the National Anthem.
A Pearl recording (SHE
CD 9635) by The Tudor Choir directed
by Barry Collett - who is also the pianist
on this recording - with Teresa Cahill
(soprano) and Stephen Holloway (bass),
includes Sailing Westward and
The Immortal Legions. Barry Collett
in his booklet notes writes, "Incidental
music for the masque The Pageant
of Empire occupied Elgar during
1924. Much of the score seems to be
lost, although the Empire March,
a song and these two choruses remain."
Elgar would eventually
retreat from London, and the heart of
the Empire, to retire to his beloved
Worcestershire. Then, in 1930 came the
final Pomp and Circumstance March
No 5 in C Major.
The germ of it went back
fifty years to a sketch from his Powick
days. It was as brilliant as any of
its four predecessors - a recalling
of the glories of Empire in an Indian
summer of composition. It was at this
time that Elgar felt a renewed vigour
for composition but the promise of an
opera and the Third Symphony was never
to be realised.
T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia)
whose World War I adventures had played
no little part in the overthrow of the
Ottoman Empire and the spread of British
influence in the Middle East, was a
great admirer of Elgar. In August 1932,
Lawrence, with George Bernard Shaw,
visited Elgar at Marl Bank and was able
to hear the first test pressings of
the HMV recording of the Violin Concerto
with Yehudi Menuhin. Vera Hockman wrote
of this occasion:-
"… we all sat spellbound
... Aircraftsman Shaw - Lawrence was
then hiding in the Air Force under that
name - serious and silent, looking straight
ahead with those unforgettable blue
eyes which seemed to see into the life
of things ..."
Lawrence was to go to
his rest, a year after Elgar, in 1935.
Rudyard Kipling died the following January,
1936.
The end of Empire was
in sight even though it reached its
greatest extent in 1934 as Elgar passed
away. Ireland had become an independent,
self-governing Dominion in January 1922;
then in 1937, as Eire, the country abolished
all symbolic ties with Britain; and
finally, in 1949, it became the Republic
of Ireland. In India, Gandhi’s campaign
of passive resistance eventually led
to independence but the road to it was
long and bloody. The Amritsar massacre
of 1919 was probably the most notorious
incident in that struggle. Then the
rest of the Empire would break free
as the 20th Century progressed.
In conclusion, I would
again quote from John Keegan writing
in The Daily Telegraph’ s The
British Empire: "The
test of the greatness of the British
Empire is that its former subjects treat
its surviving servants as friends, and
not only them but the British as a people
also. Of what other Empire is that true?
The French dare not go to Africa. The
Hapsburg Empire has little but unresolved
ethnic hatreds. The Russians are at
war with their ex-imperial provinces.
The Ottoman Turks are unloved by the
Arab successor states. Latin America
is another world away from Spain. By
contrast, the British, as they wander
backpacking about Rajasthan, or in the
Himalayas, are welcomed as old familiars."
(British law, custom and culture still
thrive throughout the territories that
were once occupied.)
This benevolence is reflected
in those words that Elgar set at the
end of Caractacus, and which
are too often forgotten or chosen to
be ignored by insensitive critics or
sub-editors -
"And where the flag of
Britain
Its triple crosses rears,
No slave shall be for subject
No trophy wet with tears
But folk shall bless the banner
And bless the crosses twin’d
That bear the gift of freedom
On ev’ry blowing wind...
.........................................
For all the world shall learn
it
Though long the task shall be
The text of Britain’s teaching,
The message of the free."
Looking back on Elgar
and Empire from the perspective of the
late 1990s, and thinking of the Finale
of the Second Symphony that puzzled
audiences at its premiere in 1911, surely
this is a radiant vision of a sun setting
on an Empire sometimes cruel but more
often benevolent and paternalistic.
The last word comes from Morris - "Elgar,
who wrote the paean of Empire, lived
to compose its elegy."
