|
In 1930, Elgar was invited to write a test piece for the twenty-
fifth anniversary national brass band championships at Crystal
Palace, South London. The Severn Suite was the product of that
invitation. As Elgar had no particular experience of writing for
brass bands, the organisers suggested that Elgar produce a short
score for Henry Geehl to arrange. The collaboration proved
unsatisfactory, Geehl rejecting most of Elgar's ideas for the
arrangement in favour of his own. More recently, a fully scored
arrangement for brass band, apparently in Elgar's own hand, surfaced
at auction in 1995 (when the score failed to reach its reserve price) and again in 1996.
Perhaps because of his dissatisfaction with Henry Geehl's arrangement, Elgar
subsequently produced an orchestral version of the suite whose
first performance he conducted at an HMV recording session in
1932. To complicate matters further, Sir Ivor Atkins, organist at Worcester Cathedral
and a close friend of Elgar, also prepared an arrangement of the suite for organ, this arrangement
now being more commonly known as the second organ sonata (and given the separate
opus number 87a).
Elgar composed no completely original music after Lady Elgar's death in 1920, turning
to his sketchbooks for tunes and fragments he had jotted down sometimes many
years earlier. The Severn Suite is a particular example of this, the minuet
coming from a wind quintet he had composed as long ago as 1879 for an informal
ensemble he played in with his friends. The suite, particularly in the brass
band version, is of interest although it is not considered to be one of Elgar's
greatest works.
|
