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Edward Elgar : Collected Correspondence is
published by Elgar Works, a Registered Charity (No.1156953) and a
Company limited by Guarantee (Registration Number: 06040208). Responsibility for publication
of the Collected Correspondence rests primarily with three people: an editorial board of two
– Robert Anderson and Martin Bird
– and the General Manager of Elgar Works, John Norris.
Robert Anderson studied Classics and Egyptology at Cambridge
University and has since pursued careers as both an Egyptologist and musicologist. He has written
numerous books and articles in both roles, notably the Dent Master Musicians series biography
of Elgar, and was for eighteen years an associate editor of The Musical Times. This
led to him becoming a co-ordinating editor of the Elgar Complete Edition in the 1980s and the
editor of several volumes in the Edition. In 2006 he became Chairman of Elgar Works and in early
2007 of the Complete Edition, roles which he has since relinquished to Steven Halls although he
remains a Director of both organisations. He was also a Vice-President of the Elgar Society for
many years. He has conducted extensively, notably with the St Bartholemew's Choral Society, and
continues to work as a music critic and reviewer, and author of books mainly on Egypt.
Martin Bird graduated from the University of Kent at Canterbury,
where he studied Economic and Social History, in the 1960s. After a career spanning nearly thirty
years with the Computer Department of British Airways, he took early retirement in the 1990s.
He has also worked as a musician - singer, conductor, double bass player and teacher - for over
half a century. His interest in Elgar started at school in the days when an Elgar work always
formed part of the A-level music syllabus. For the past fifteen years he has combined his love of
music, Elgar and social history by doing extensive research on Elgar and his life and times. He has
written extensively on the composer, and since 2010 has been Editor of the Elgar Society
Journal.
John Norris, General Manager of the Collected
Correspondence (and also, since 2003, of the Elgar Complete Edition) has
been a member of the Elgar Society for over twenty years. He first became actively involved in
the promotion of Elgar's music in 1996 when he developed the elgar.org website. This led in 1999
to his formation and subsequent running of Elgar Enterprises, the Society's trading arm, and Elgar
Editions, its publishing imprint and recording label. He became a member of the Society's
Executive in 2000 and in 2003 took early retirement from a career as a Civil Servant to enable him
to devote more time to his Elgar interests. In 2006, he relinquished his Elgar Society
responsibilities to become Chairman of Elgar Foundation Enterprises, the trading arm of the Elgar
Birthplace Museum, and also to form Elgar Works shortly before it assumed responsibility for the
continued publication of the Complete Edition.
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