by Adams, Byron
68. Exemplars of these songs are held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the British Library, and date from 1916 and 1917.
69. See the Times, 10 February 1917, for a report on the Royal College event; for the quoted passage concerning the military band burlesque, see the Times, 19 January 1918. I am grateful to Duncan Boutwood for drawing my attention to the Parry rendition.
70. Elgar to Newman, 17 June 1917 in Moore, Letters of a Lifetime, 307.
71. The Musical Times (1 July 1917): 295–97. See esp. 295 and 296.
72. Ibid., 296. The text here is of course “Low-born clods / of brute earth, / They aspire / to become gods.”
73. Herbert Thompson, review of The Dream of Gerontius and The Spirit of England (complete), Yorkshire Post, 1 November 1917; and review of The Dream of Gerontius, Yorkshire Post, 5 March 1917. These observations were based on a long familiarity with Gerontius: by Thompson’s own reckoning, the latter was the thirty-ninth performance he had attended. See Leeds University, Brotherton Library Special Collections, Diary of Herbert Thompson MS 80, and press cuttings collection MS 164.
74. Thompson, Yorkshire Post, 5 October 1917; press cuttings collection MS 164.
75. Goethe, who saw and who foretold
A world revealed
New-springing from its ashes old
On Valmy field,
When Prussia’s sullen hosts retired
Before the advance
Of ragged, starved, but freedom-fired
Soldiers of France;
If still those clear, Olympian eyes
Through smoke and rage
Your ancient Europe scrutinize,
What think you, Sage?
Are these the armies of the Light
That seek to drown
The light of lands where freedom’s fight
Has won renown?
Will they blot also out your name
Because you praise
All works of men that shrine the flame
Of beauty’s ways,
Wherever men have proved them great,
Nor, drunk with pride,
Saw but a single swollen State
And naught beside,
Nor dreamed of drilling Europe’s mind
With threat and blow
The way professors have designed
Genius should go?
Or shall a people rise at length
And see and shake
The fetters from its giant strength,
And grandly break
This pedantry of feud and force
To man untrue
Thundering and blundering on its course
To death and rue?”
Hubert Parry, director of the Royal College of Music, shared Binyon’s view and likened Germany’s actions to the fall of Lucifer; see his speech to Royal College of Music students, September 1914, in College Addresses, ed. H. C. Colles (London: Macmillan Publishing, 1920), 215–29. Bridges also wrote of the willing connivance of German intellectuals “at the contradictory falsehoods officially imposed upon their assent” in his preface to The Spirit of Man.
76. See Matthew Riley’s chapter in this volume for further connections between H. G. Wells’s writings and Elgar.
77. Wells, Journalism and Prophecy, 56–57. In Wells’s God and the Invisible King (London: Cassell, 1917) insanity is associated with extreme sin and disharmony arising from man’s dark evolutionary past; see chapter on “Modern Ideas of Sin and Damnation.” On Wells’s religious beliefs, see Willis B. Glover, “Religious Orientations of H. G. Wells: A Case Study in Scientific Humanism,” Harvard Theological Review, 65 (January 1972): 117–35.
78. The chorus comprises an alla marcia setting of the lines “Then loosen thy sword in the scabbard / and settle the helm on thine head. / For men betrayèd are mighty, / and great are the wrongfully dead.” Elgar dedicated this score to Francis Edward Younghusband’s Fight for Right movement, the foundation of which moved Robert Bridges to commission Parry’s Jerusalem in March of the same year; see Jeremy Dibble, C. Hubert H. Parry: His Life and Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 483. Moore notes that Elgar’s song was requested by the tenor Gervase Elwes; see Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life, 700.
79. Elgar Diaries, EBM; Atkins, The Elgar-Atkins Friendship, 267; Charles Mott would later be killed at the front; see Charles A. Hooey, “An Elgarian Tragedy: Remembering Charles Mott,” in Foreman, Elgar and the Great War, 313.
80. Elgar Diaries, EBM.
81. Alice Elgar’s diary, quoted in Bird, “An Elgarian Wartime Chronology,” 411.
82. For Basil Maine’s recollection of the impact of the war on musical life, see Elgar, 1:205. Choral performances were hampered by the scarcity of male voices. Other forms of concert life appear to have continued, however; see Foreman, “The Winnowing-Fan: British Music in Wartime,” 91–92, 94–95. See also Christopher Fifield, Ibbs and Tillett: The Rise and Fall of a Musical Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2005), 92–105.
83. The Musical Times (1 June 1916): 296, quoted in Hodgkins, Best of Me, 247–50. A program for this oratorio series is held at the Centre for Performance History, Royal College of Music.
84. Letter of R. A. Streatfeild to Alice Elgar, 14 May 1916, EBM L3732.
85. Winifred Ponder, Clara Butt, Her Life-Story […] with a Foreword by Dame Clara Butt (London: George G. Harrap, 1928), 167–68.
86. Frances Colvin to Elgar, [8 May 1916], EBM L3460. On May 14, 1916, R. A. Streatfeild wrote to Lady Elgar calling for the first movement to be brought out at last: “I feel very strongly, & I wonder if you do too, that we ought to have ‘The Fourth of August’ as soon as possible. ‘To Women,’ divinely beautiful as it is, is not in its place as a beginning. It is perfect as the slow movement of the trilogy, but is too intimate & personal in feeling to be the start of the whole. We want something dealing with broader and more generalized emotions for that, & then ‘To Women’ will gain enormously by coming as a contrast”; see EBM L3732.
87. Maine, Elgar, 1:205. Emphasis added.
88. Wilkinson, The Church of England in the First World War (London: SPCK, 1978), 178.
89. Guy Chapman, A Passionate Prodigality: Fragments of an Autobiography (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1933), quoted in Wilkinson, Church of England in the First World War, 111. Wilkinson describes it as “tragic” that the chaplain-general from 1901 to 1925 was Bishop John Taylor Smith, “a pietistic Evangelical with no university theological training” (124). Furthermore, there were complaints that under Bishop Smith’s jurisdiction Anglo-Catholics were discriminated against in the appointment of chaplains; see Wilkinson (126).
90. Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 358–81.
91. George W. E. Russell had anticipated that this would be the case: in his book The Spirit of England of 1915, he observed that “to several generations of Englishmen, a hatred of Roman Catholicism seemed a national virtue. They were apparently unable to discern even a trace of Christianity in the form of religion which we encounter when we travel in France or Italy or cross the Irish Channel. We long vaunted our resolve to ‘knit the hearts of the Empire into one harmonious concord,’ but (until the other day) we declined to let Irish Catholics have the schools or universities suited to them, because their religion was, as we gracefully put it, ‘a lie and a heathenish superstition.’ If the war has done nothing else for us, it has shown us scenes in France and Belgium before which this particular prejudice must, I should think, give way.” Russell, Spirit of England, 282.
92. The explicit prayers for the dead contained in the 1549 Prayer Book had been almost entirely excised in the 1552 and 1662 revisions; see William Keiling, Liturgiae Britannicae, or the Several Editions of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, From Its Compilation to the Last Revision [...] Arranged to Show their Respective Variations, 2nd ed. (London: William Pickering; Cambridge: J. Deighton, 1851). Wilkinson, Church of England, 176–77.
93. See, for example, P
aul B. Bull’s powerful sermon “Beyond the Veil,” in Peace and War: Notes of Sermons and Addresses (London: Longmans, 1917), 86–92. Anglican support for the erection of street shrines (both to those serving and those lost in action overseas) can be seen as a similar moment of accommodation. Some Anglicans opposed the shrines because of their Catholic connotations—that is, their imagery, especially the use of the cross or crucifix and religious acts associated with them—but at least one clergyman who spoke out against them suffered physical assault, seemingly the reverse of the popular anti-Catholic violence seen during the mid-Victorian period. See Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, Ltd., 1998), 47–60.
94. See Cannadine, “War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain,” 219–21, citing National Archives: Public Record Office (Kew), CAB 23/11, 1 July 1919.
95. For the phrase “redemption by the shedding of blood” see Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, pp.283–84.
96. Ibid., 114–15, 284. See also Bridges, preface to The Spirit of Man, quoted in n. 51 above.
97. Wilkinson, Church of England, 190–91. This found an echo in the activities of the Society for Raising Wayside Crosses, which were probably encouraged by photographs and letters sent home from the front. On this organization, founded in 1916 with the Earl of Shaftesbury as its president, see King, Memorials of the Great War, 73–74; Rev. Sidney F. Smith, Wayside Crosses and Holy Images (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1917), 1–24; and Rev. E. Hermitage Day, “Wayside Crosses and War Shrines,” in The Crucifix: An Outline Sketch of Its History, ed. Katherine Kennedy (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1917), 77–84.
98. Siegfried Sassoon, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, (London: William Heineman, 1917). The final stanza reads as follows: “He faced me, reeling in his weariness, / Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear. / I say that he was Christ, who wrought to bless / All groping things with freedom bright as air, / And with His mercy washed and made them fair. / Then the flame sank, and all grew black as pitch, / While we began to struggle along the ditch; / And someone flung his burden in the muck / Mumbling: ‘O Christ Almighty, now I’m stuck!’”
99. Reproduced in Roy Strong, The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts (London: Pimlico, 1999), 603. See also Art of the First World War, item 104, http://www.artww1.com. The saturation of imagery associated with Christ helps to explain why rumors of German soldiers crucifying a Canadian officer with bayonets against a barn door at Ypres in 1915 aroused such a hysterical response across all levels of British society; see Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 41–42. For how this legend and others arose among the troops at the front, see also Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 115–25. Due to centuries of Protestant suspicion of idolatry, the cross had only recently begun to be rehabilitated as a religious symbol and funerary monument in late nineteenth-Century England (though it was often expressed in Celtic form to avoid Roman Catholic associations); see King, Memorials of the Great War, 129. On the battlefields, however, it was the preferred form for the hastily constructed markers of the graves of dead comrades, and after the war, there would be considerable popular resistance to the decision by the Imperial War Graves Commission not to use the cross as the template for the official war cemetery headstone. Cyril Winterbotham, who was killed in action on August 27, 1916, ended his poem “The Cross of Wood” with the words “Rest you content; more honourable far / Than all the Orders is the Cross of Wood, / The symbol of self-sacrifice that stood / Bearing the God whose brethren you are.” E. B. Osborn, ed., The Muse in Arms: A Collection of War Poems, for the Most Part Written in the Field of Action, by Seamen, Soldiers, and Flying Men Who Are Serving, or Have Served, in the Great War (London: John Murray, 1917), 159–60. It falls beyond the scope of this current study to discuss The Spirit of England in relation to the images of the resurrection and Passion of Christ that recur in literary and artistic responses to the Great War elsewhere in Europe; for a relevant study, though one that mostly overlooks music, see Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. For more general insights into the relationship between religio-military identity and the story of Christ’s Passion, see Jon Davies, “The Martial Uses of the Mass: War Remembrance as an Elementary Form of Religious Life,” in Ritual and Remembrance: Responses to Death in Human Societies, ed. Jon Davies (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 152–64.
100. See reviews submitted to and published in The Graphic, 2 January 1915, by the Bishops of Bath & Wells, London, Hull, Stepney, Lichfield and Wakefield. The picture also inspired a range of poetic interpretations that appeared in subsequent issues of The Graphic.
101. See, for example, St. Mary Magdalene Church, Windmill Hill, Enfield, and St. John’s Church, Windermere. St. John’s was recently converted into assisted housing and the memorial window has been placed in storage by the Diocese of Carlisle. On the art and design of British war memorials in general, see the United Kingdom Inventory of War Memorials, http://www.uknim.org.uk.
102. Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, A Day of God, Being Five Addresses on the Subject of the Present War (London: Wells, Gardner, 1914), 10, 41, 42, 58; Times Recruiting Supplement, 3 November 1915; Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, The Potter and the Clay (London: Wells, Gardner, Darton, 1917), 11, 36.
103. Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, Rays of Dawn (London: Wells, Gardner, 1918), 66. On Winnington-Ingram’s conduct during the war years, including his notorious sermon of hate in which he advocated the killing of Germans from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, see Wilkinson, Church of England, 217–18, 251–54.
104. Daniel M. Grimley, “‘Music in the Midst of Desolation’: Structures of Mourning in Elgar’s The Spirit of England,” in Elgar Studies, ed. J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). I am grateful to Daniel M. Grimley for making a draft of his essay available to me prior to publication. Ivor Atkins records how Elgar was “deeply moved” when he conducted a performance of “For the Fallen” followed immediately by the sounding of “The Last Post” from the Lady Chapel of Worcester Cathedral during a memorial service (“Recital of Solemn Music”) given by the Worcester Festival Choral Society on March 15, 1917. The full “programme” was: Psalm 23 “The Lord Is My Shepherd”; “For the Fallen”; “The Last Post”; Russian Contakion of the Departed; Prelude, The Dream of Gerontius; J. S. Bach, Chorale Jesu Meine Freude”; Handel, “I Know that My Redeemer Liveth,” Messiah; hymn, “O God Our Help in Ages Past”; and the national anthem, “God Save the King.” See Atkins, Elgar-Atkins Friendship, 281–84.
105. Wells, Mr. Britling Sees It Through, 432–33. Wells had three sons, the last of whom was born in 1914; none were lost in the First World War.
106. See Herbert Thompson’s review in the Yorkshire Post, 1 November 1917; Charles A. Hooey, “Spirit Insights,” Elgar Society Journal 9 (November 1996): 296–302. “The Fourth of August” had been premiered by Elgar three days earlier on October 28, 1917; see Atkins, Elgar-Atkins Friendship, 286. On the BBC broadcasts, see n. 17 above.
107. It is worth noting the extraordinary pressure placed on Elgar by Binyon, among others, when Elgar temporarily halted work on The Spirit of England over his dispute with Rootham (see n. 23 above): “Think of England, of the English-speaking peoples, in whom the common blood stirs now as it never did before; think of the awful casualty lists that are coming, & the losses in more & more homes; think of the thousands who will be craving to have this grief glorified & lifted up & transformed by an art like yours—and though I have little understanding of music, as you know, I understand that craving when words alone seem all too insufficient & inexpressive—think of what you are witholding [sic] from your countrymen & women. Surely it would be wrong to let them lose this help and consolation.” Letter from Binyon to Elgar, 27 March 1915, EBM L6350.
108. John Foulds, A World Requiem, op. 60 (London: Paxton, 1923). Foulds’s Wor
ld Requiem was recommended for national performance by the British Music Society and adopted by the British Legion for its Festivals of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, Armistice Days from 1923 to 1926. See Lewis Foreman, From Parry to Britten: British Music in Letters, 1900–1945 (London: Batsford, 1987), 166–67 and Malcolm MacDonald, John Foulds: His Life and Music (Rickmansworth: Triad Press, 1975), 26–31. Inserted in the copy of the score housed in Special Collections at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, is a program for the first of these performances, featuring a white cross on a red background and pronouncing the requiem “A Cenotaph in Sound” (see Music E–2 FOU).
109. Radio Times, 7 November 1924, 296.
110. Radio Times, 6 November 1925, 300.
111. BBC, Programme-as-Broadcast, National Programme, 11 November 1932, BBC Written Archives.
112. Writing of “For the Fallen” in the 1969 Aldeburgh Festival program book, Britten recalled that Elgar’s score “has always seemed to me to have in its opening bars a personal tenderness and grief, in the grotesque march an agony of distortion, and in the final sequences a ring of genuine splendour”; quoted in Michael Kennedy, A Portrait of Elgar, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), 181.
PART IV
SUMMATION
Transcending the Enigmas of Biography:
The Cultural Context of Sir Edward Elgar’s Career
LEON BOTSTEIN
There has been a sustained and growing interest in Edward Elgar and his music since the late 1960s, notably beyond the borders of Britain.1 In light of the wealth of distinguished English composers since Elgar’s death, the historical question regarding the interplay between musical culture and national identity comes readily to mind. Why—before Elgar achieved international recognition—had England been viewed internally as well as on the Continent as “a land without music”?2 This phrase, made popular in its German form as part of a derisive anti-English cultural chauvinism, sums up the nearly universal conceit that the English had not, by the late nineteenth century, nurtured a school of musical composition in which regional and local markers of national particularity—even invented ones—could win the affections of a transnational audience and public, much as other “national” traditions and schools (e.g., the Czech and Russian) had throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.3
