|
Although Elgar composed at the piano, it is the violin with which he had the strongest
professional associations, both as a performed with various Worcestershire ensembles including
the Worcester Philharmonic, and as teacher. The wind quintet music helps us remember that he was also
a competent bassoonist, but there remains little to remind us that, during the formative stages of
his musical development, he also held the post of organist at St George's Church in
Worcester. In fact, this post is remembered more for Elgar's claim that he composed much of his
wind quintet music during sermons in the organ loft at St George's than for any work for organ
written at this time. Although Elgar composed numerous small religious works with organ
accompaniment and no doubt arranged and adapted many others for solo organ, to be played
before or after services at St George's, he did not do so primarily with a view to publication. Few
of these works survive except where they were later reworked for inclusion in more
substantial works.
Throughout his life, Elgar wrote only two works specifically for unaccompanied organ. The
first of these
was a set of eleven Vesper Voluntaries. In contrast to the five Pomp
and Circumstance Marches whose composition spanned a period of nearly thirty years,
the eleven voluntaries were composed in quick succession immediately after his
marriage to Alice in 1889, although one was taken from a string quartet Elgar had started the
previous year but never completed. Although composed as a set, their total length of around
thirty minutes often leads to them today being performed separately or as selections from the
complete set.
The second, and much better known, work is the Organ Sonata in G of 1895 which
Elgar composed for the four-manual Hill organ in Worcester Cathedral. Amazingly, the
work took only two weeks from conception to first performance. Elgar started to assemble the
work from sketchbook jottings in late June 1895. Composition was completed by 3 July (with
Elgar writing on the score "One week's work"), five days before the first performance which
Hugh Blair, the cathedral organist and dedicatee of The
Black Knight, gave to an American Organists' convention meeting in Worcester.
Apparently the haste with which Blair had learnt the work showed in a somewhat muddled
rendition, but the work itself shows no sign of a hasty composition. It is the most significant of
his instrumental compositions preceding the Enigma
Variations, containing clear precedents for the major symphonic works, notably the two symphonies and the Variations
themselves, that were to come. Those hearing the work in the excellent 1947 orchestral
arrangement
by Gordon Jacob (chosen for the role on the recommendation of Sir Adrian
Boult
who conducted the orchestral première in a BBC Home Service radio broadcast with the
BBC
Symphony Orchestra) will be surprised that Elgar had not conceived the work in its orchestral
form.
Although not originally composed for organ, three other works are normally considered to
fall within the genre. The first is Cantique, a piece
which Elgar composed in 1879 as the adagio of his five Intermezzos for wind quintet. In 1912, he orchestrated
the adagio, renaming it Cantique and giving it
the opus number 3 which places it firmly in the period of its original (the music for wind quintet
never having received opus numbers). In parallel, he provided an organ arrangement which
remains available in recorded form and is occasionally heard in live performance.
The second of the three works is the self-explanatory Memorial Chimes for a
Carillon, more commonly referred to as the Loughborough Memorial Chimes.
Having produced the Chimes to a commission for the opening of the Loughborough War
Memorial Carillon in July 1923, Elgar must have realised the limited scope for further
performance imposed by the unusual instrumentation. He therefore produced an organ
transcription which, like Cantique, is still occasionally
performed. However, Elgar clearly did not
feel moved to make a similar transcription of the Obbligato for Carillon which
he wrote as an accompaniment to Land of Hope and Glory in 1927 for celebrations to
mark the diamond jubilee of the Canadian confederation.
The third, and by far the most substantial, work of the three is the second Organ
Sonata. This
is a transcription of the Severn Suite, which Elgar was
commissioned to write as a test piece for the 1930 national brass band championships and which
he subsequently arranged for orchestra. It was not Elgar but his close friend Ivor
Atkins, successor to Hugh Blair as organist at Worcester Cathedral, who transcribed the
work for organ, adding his own cadenza and coda. These differences led to the work being given
the modified opus number 87A to distinguish it from the
brass band and orchestral arrangements which both retain the opus number 87. But in
other respects the organ transcription is an honest transcription of the original, the opening
movement (Worcester Castle) adapting particularly well to the organ.
There are, of course, other, shorter works by Elgar which others have adapted for organ
including the five Pomp and Circumstance Marches and,
inevitably, Nimrod from the Enigma Variations.
|
