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Like many great composers, Elgar's reputation rests on a relatively small number of large
scale, predominantly orchestral works that represent a numerically small proportion of his total
output. But among the lesser known cantatas, chamber works, incidental music and salon pieces
that make up the remainder of the opus is a significant body of songs - approximately one
hundred
in all. Around one half of these are songs for solo voice which, with one or two notable
exceptions such as Pleading (op 48, 1908), are not of great merit. But the
remainder are part songs of great delicacy, beauty and inventiveness. A few were provided,
sometimes retrospectively, with instrumental accompaniment but the majority were written for
unaccompanied voices.
Elgar composed part songs throughout his working life, often, it seems, almost as a form of
relaxation while working on large-scale pieces or on holiday. The earliest that remain in the
standard repertoire are two composed in 1889 shortly after his marriage to Alice - O Happy
Eyes and My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land. Elgar waited some eighteen years
before adding a third part song - Love, in recognition of Alice's devotion and
unswerving support for his music - to complete his Opus 18. As with a number of the early
works, Alice provided the words for O Happy Eyes, and also wrote alternative words
(Afar amidst the Sunny Isles) for My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land when
it seemed as if Andrew Lang would refuse permission for his poem to be used.
Eventually, Lang relented with ill grace.
Although Alice could not be ranked among the great poets, she was not without talent. She
had independent literary ambitions and had published some of her work long before she first
became acquainted with Elgar. Not least among these was an epic poem, Isabel
Trevithoe, published in 1878, which provided the words for the best of Elgar's accompanied
part songs, composed in 1894 - The Snow and Fly,
Singing Bird. Originally written with an accompaniment for two violins and a piano, Elgar
provided a full orchestral accompaniment for both works in December 1903. In this form,
The Snow in particular is an exceptional work, capturing in the space of a few minutes
a full range of emotions from a haunting bleakness to an emphatic joie de vivre.
In most respects, this was probably the happiest period of the Elgars' married life, when
Edward's status as a developing but still comparatively unknown composer allowed him greater
freedom to choose what to work on and with whom. As his reputation, and the pressures of
maintaining it, grew, Elgar might well have abandoned part songs and concentrated on the
composition of more substantial works were it not for the growing popularity during the first
years of the twentieth century of competitive choral festivals, particularly in the North of
England.
Not only did these festivals provide an outlet for performances of his part-songs but also created
a demand for such compositions that allowed Elgar to command fees disproportionate to the
effort required to write them. Novello's bemoaned the high prices Elgar asked but recognised
that, if they did not meet his demands, he could readily find another music publisher prepared
to
pay the asking price.
From 1903, Elgar became particularly closely involved with the festival held at
Morecambe, Lancashire and with its chairman, Canon Charles Gorton, who
provided Elgar with theological assistance with The
Apostles and The Kingdom. These
associations led to Elgar making the injudicious remark, in a letter to Canon Gorton published
in
the Musical Times, that "the living centre of music in Great Britain is not
London, but somewhere farther North". They also led Elgar to write many of his best part-
songs.
Two - the demanding Weary Wind of the West and the peaceful Evening
Scene - were specifically written as test pieces for the 1903 and 1906 festivals while
Blackpool, no doubt anxious not to be left behind by its Lancashire neighbour,
commissioned The Reveille for its 1907 festival. Others, notably the Five Part
Songs from the Greek Anthology and the later Four Part Songs of opus 53, Elgar
wrote for a more general audience. However, the dedication of There is Sweet Music
to Canon Gorton and of O Wild West Wind to fellow Morecambe adjudicator W
G McNaught betrays the influence of the festivals in stimulating Elgar to write the songs.
And choirs eager to demonstrate their competitive edge were quick to seize upon the works.
The songs vary considerably in style, from the hymn-like How Calmly the Evening
to the haunting and impressionistic Owls whose words, written by Elgar himself, are
meant to capture the sounds of a wood at night. In There is Sweet Music, the parts for
female voice are written in a key one semitone higher than those for male voices. True, male
and
female voices generally alternate with little direct harmonisation between the two, but the effect
is both dramatic and pleasing. But the most remarkable and ambitious part-song Elgar ever
wrote
is Go, Song of Mine, which, together with The
Angelus, he wrote while on holiday near Florence in Italy. In the - at times almost
discordant - harmonies, the song displays a level of originality and inventiveness not
subsequently
encountered in the part-songs. It was first performed in the 1909 Three Choirs Festival
at Hereford.
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