Edward Elgar and His World (68 page)

3. W. H. Reed completely ruled out discussion of Elgar's faith in his memoir,
Elgar as I Knew Him
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1936). Though acknowledging the “very strong trait” of “mysticism” that “came out in all [Elgar] did, and of course found its way into his music,” Reed declared this “is no place to discuss creeds or religions, or what he believed and what he did not.” Citing the third movement of
Spirit of England
and a secular partsong of 1909, he continued, “[Elgar] has more of that quality which we call—for want of a better word—spirituality than perhaps any other composer. One can open the pages of almost any of his works—oratorios, symphonies, or short works like “For the Fallen” or “Go, Song of Mine” [op. 57]—to find this quality evident and unmistakable” (138–39).

4. See Byron Adams, “Elgar's Later Oratorios: Roman Catholicism, Decadence and the Wagnerian Dialectic of Shame and Grace,” and John Butt, “Roman Catholicism and Being Musically English: Elgar's Church and Organ Music,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, ed. Daniel M. Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 81–105; 106–19.

5. Jerrold Northrop Moore,
Spirit of England: Edward Elgar in His World
(London: Heinemann, 1984), 56.

6. Ibid., 150.

7. Donald Mitchell, “Some Thoughts on Elgar,”
An Elgar Companion
, ed. Christopher Redwood (Ashbourne: Sequoia Publishing, 1982), 284. Mitchell's perception has been reinforced through the recording history of the work:
The Spirit of England
is often paired with Elgar's
Coronation Ode
and packaged with cover art based on images of the British monarchy, billowing Union Jacks, etc. See, for example, the 1985 Chandos recording (CHAN 8430) that reproduces an image of “The King as He Will Appear in Coronation Robes” from a Colman's Starch trade card issued just before the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 (Mary Evans Picture Library, ref. 10083782).

8. See also Basil Maine's description of this section, in
Elgar: His Life and Works
, 2 vols. (London: G. Bell, 1933), 2:239. Maine makes a clear distinction, however, between the tone of
The Spirit of England
and that of other, imperialist Elgar works: “The conception is grandiose, but not as the ‘Pomp and Circumstance' Marches are. It moves along with no less splendour, but with a more austere deliberation.”

9. See, for example, Bernard Porter's summary dismissal of
The Spirit of England
in “Elgar and Empire: Music, Nationalism and the War,” in
Oh, My Horses! Elgar and the Great War
, ed. Lewis Foreman (Rickmansworth: Elgar Editions, 2001), 148–49. Porter does concede that the third movement (“For the Fallen,”) “may be thought to compensate for the bitterness (but not the jingoism, still) of the rest.” Porter, “Elgar and Empire: Music Nationalism and the War,” 149.

10. For a detailed discussion of Elgar's early training as a Catholic, see Charles Edward McGuire's essay in this volume.

11. Letter from Elgar to Frank Schuster, 25 August 1914, in
Edward Elgar: Letters of a Lifetime
, ed. Jerrold Northrop Moore, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 276–77.

12. On the fate of the horses at Mafeking, see Robert Baden-Powell,
Lessons from the ‘Varsity' of Life
(London: C. A. Pearson, 1933), 207–9. Robert Anderson also reads Elgar's remark in the light of the mass mustering of horsepower undertaken by Britain, Russia, Germany, and Austria in the first weeks of August; see Robert Anderson,
Elgar and Chivalry
(Rickmansworth: Elgar Editions, 2002), 341.

13. Elgar to Schuster, 25 August 1914, Moore,
Letters of a Lifetime
, 276. Declaring his age (fifty-seven) on a “Householder's Return” for a Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, Elgar stated, “There is no person in this house qualified to enlist: I will do so if permitted”; quoted in Moore,
Letters of a Lifetime
, 283.

14. Cammaerts was a geographer by training (via the University of Brussels and Université Nouvelle) and something of “un
homme de lettres.”
Though Belgian by birth, he was a devout Anglican, and was deeply committed to the Anglo-Belgian Union. He had moved to England in 1908, married the Shakespearean actress Tita Brand, and in 1931 would become professor of Belgian Studies and Institutions at the University of London.
Carillon
was Elgar's contribution to an anthology assembled by the novelist Hall Caine to raise funds for the citizens of occupied Belgium,
King Albert's Book: A Tribute to the Belgian King and People from Representative Men and Women Throughout the World
(London: Daily Telegraph, Christmas 1914), 84–89. For a summary of Elgar's activities during the war years, including the periods in which he was working on
The Spirit of England
, see Andrew Neill, “Elgar's War: From the Diaries of Lady Elgar, 1914–1918”; and Martin Bird, “An Elgarian Wartime Chronology,” in Foreman,
Elgar and the Great War
, 3–69; 389–455. On the revision of “Land of Hope and Glory,” see Moore,
Letters of a Lifetime
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1914), 277–83.

15. According to Robert Anderson, the copy of Binyon's
The Winnowing-Fan: Poems on the Great War
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1914) which Elgar worked from and annotated is held at the library of the Elgar Birthplace Museum (hereafter EBM); see Robert Anderson,
Elgar in Manuscript
(London: British Library, 1990), 197. At present the copy cannot be traced. Elgar's work on
The Spirit of England
began in early February: Alice Elgar records an afternoon visit from Binyon and several other friends on February 7, 1915, two days after which she notes in her diary, “E. put off going to Tree's Dejeune
[sic]
& composed violently.” Bird, “An Elgarian Wartime Chronology,” 397.

16. See Lewis Foreman, “The Winnowing-Fan: British Music in Wartime,” in
Elgar and the Great War
, 125; and David Cannadine, “War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain,” in
Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death
, ed. Joachim Whaley (London: Europa, 1981), 223–24. On
With Proud Thanksgiving
, see Robert Anderson and Jerrold Northrop Moore, foreword to
Elgar Complete Edition
10:x-xi. This commission may have been prompted by Kipling's recommendation that the Whitehall Cenotaph be inscribed with Binyon's quatrain: Kipling had been deeply moved by the poem, which was sent to him by a soldier at the front on hearing that the author's only son, John, was missing in action (in fact, killed) at Loos in 1915; see John Hatcher,
Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 210–11. Elgar produced the orchestral version of
With Proud Thanksgiving
for the jubilee of the Royal Choral Society and the Royal Albert Hall on May 7, 1921.

17. Ronald Taylor lists six live broadcast performances of
The Spirit of England
(and four partial performances, presumably of “For the Fallen” as a self-standing item) between 1922 and 1934; see his “Music in the Air: Elgar and the BBC,” in
Edward Elgar: Music and Literature
, ed. Raymond Monk (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), 336. See also Jenny Doctor, “Broadcasting's Ally: Elgar and the BBC,” in
Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, 202–3.

18. Letter from Elgar to Alice Stuart-Wortley, 12 September 1923, in
Edward Elgar: The Windflower Letters. Correspondence with Alice Caroline Stuart Wortley and Her Family
, ed. Jerrold Northrop Moore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 284. See also Maine,
Elgar
2:240. Ultimately it would be “Nimrod” from the
Enigma
Variations that would be established as Elgar's contribution to the rites of war remembrance. On the music of Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, see Richards,
Imperialism and Music
, 152–64.

19. See James Morgan Read,
Atrocity Propaganda 1914–1919
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 7.

20. Colvin to Elgar, EBM L3453.

21. Quoted in S. Levy, letter to the editor, ‘“For the Fallen,”'
Times Literary Supplement
, 23 November 1946, 577.

22. Hatcher,
Laurence Binyon
, 190–91. On Binyon's own religious beliefs, see 129–34 passim.

23. Ibid., 195. For Binyon's published work, including his studies of Eastern art, Blake, and later studies of Christopher Smart, Dante, and others, see 299–310. Other composers were also drawn to “For the Fallen,” including Cyril Rootham, whose setting slightly predated Elgar's and from whom Elgar encountered considerable obstruction during the composition of
The Spirit of England;
see John Norris, “The Spirit of Elgar: Crucible of Remembrance,” in Foreman,
Elgar and the Great War
, 241–44. The composer and war poet Ivor Gurney toyed with setting the poem for baritone and piano while at the front; see letters from Gurney to Mrs. Voyrich, 16 September 1916, and to Marion Scott, 11 January 1917, in
Ivor Gurney: Collected Letters
, ed. R. K. R. Thornton (Ashington and Manchester: Mid-Northumberland Arts Group and Carcanet, 1991), 148–49,184.

24. Quoted in Hatcher,
Laurence Binyon
, 1. In their experiences of the war, David Cannadine stresses the difference between “those at the front, who saw and purveyed
death
, and those at home, who saw no death, no carnage and no corpses, but experienced
bereavement.”
Cannadine, “War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain,” 213. On this important distinction, see also Jay Winter,
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), passim. From 1915 Binyon used his annual leave from the British Museum to work as a volunteer ambulance driver, hospital orderly, and medical reporter in France; see Hatcher,
Laurence Binyon
, 198–210. It is worth noting here that Binyon's long dramatic poem,
The Madness of Merlin
(London: Macmillan, 1947), based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's tale of a twelfth-Century Welsh prince who waged war on the Picts but was horrified by the slaughter and fled the battlefield to roam the forests, had been offered by him to Elgar as the basis for an opera several years before work began on
The Spirit of England;
see letter from Binyon to Elgar, 11 July [1904/9], EBM L2312.

25. Sidney Colvin considered Ruskin the “idol of my boyhood”: “I used to devour my Scott and Shakespeare, and
Faery Queene
and
Modern Painters
and
Stones of Venice
… and learn long screeds of them, both verse and prose, by heart.” As a student at Cambridge he sought out and was befriended by the Ruskins, and aspired to become “something like a Ruskin and a Matthew Arnold rolled into one.” Sidney Colvin,
Memories and Notes of Persons
and Places, 1852–1912
(London: Edward Arnold, 1921); and retirement speech (1912), quoted in E. V. Lucas,
The Colvins and Their Friends
(London: Methuen, 1928), 5, 8.

26. John Ruskin,
Modern Painters
, vol. 3, last chapter, quoted in Sidney Colvin, letter to the editor, “1855 and 1915,”
Times Literary Supplement
, 31 December 1914, 590.

27. Cannadine, “War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain,” 195.

28. Hatcher,
Laurence Binyon
, 192. Colvin was not the only one to push Elgar to write a “requiem.” Later that year, on November 25, Percy Scholes wrote an “Appeal to Elgar” in the pages of the
Evening Standard
and
St. James's Gazette
, in which he lamented the overreliance on Brahms's
German Requiem
at military funerals and called for Elgar to write a “British Requiem”: “In ‘Gerontius,' Elgar was able to take us into the chamber of death, and the places that lay beyond, to show us death and judgment, to stir us with dread and sooth us with comfort, to move us to sorrow and to final joy. In ‘Carillon,' by certain means of the utmost simplicity, he has expressed the feelings of a nation mourning the woes of the present and rejoicing in the hopes of the happiness to come again, and has done so in a way that has given his work an appeal to audiences in this country such as no other work at present before us enjoys. Elgar is a sincere Catholic, as ‘Gerontius' testifies; but he is a Briton, too. Cannot he write a choral piece which shall be wide enough in its verbal utterance to express the feelings of us all, whatever our faith, something vocally not too difficult for our choral societies … ? Something we would have that can be sung in Westminster Abbey and [the Roman Catholic] Westminster Cathedral, in church, in chapel and in concert-room, which can be sung here and in Canada and Australia and South Africa.”

29. Paul Rodmell,
Charles Villiers Stanford
(Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2002), 192–93. For Scholes, Stanford's “fine” Requiem did not meet the criteria for a “national death song” (see preceding note), because it represented “a ritual not understood by a majority of our countrymen” and the text was in Latin. Stanford had played through the whole of his new Requiem for Elgar while on a visit to Malvern. It is not known how Elgar responded to this performance. Jeremy Dibble, “Elgar and His British Contemporaries,” in
Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, 20–21. On earlier attitudes to musical settings of Roman Catholic texts in England, see Rachel Cowgill, “‘Hence, Base Intruder, Hence': Rejection and Assimilation in the Early English Reception of Mozart's Requiem,” in
Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century British Music
, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Julian Rushton (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2006), 9–27. On other British “requiems” from the war years, see Foreman, “The Winnowing-Fan: British Music in Wartime,” 113–14.

30. For extensive investigation of the deep-seated divisions between Catholics and Protestants in nineteenth-Century English culture, see D. G. Paz,
Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), John Wolffe,
God & Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland 1843–1945
(London and New York: Routledge, 1994); and Michael Wheeler,
The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). These divisions also extended to matters of musical style, as is apparent in Herbert Thompson's review of a Hull Harmonic Society performance of Gounod's
Messe solonnelle, Yorkshire Post
(23 March 1918): “One can understand its popularity as a concert piece, for it is highly attractive music, tuneful and effective, and expressive, in a rather superficial way, of its theme. But that it should have been accepted so much as it has been in the service of the English Church is more remarkable, for one would think its perfumed exotic quality strangely at variance with the Anglo-Saxon temperament, at least in matters of religious observance.” Anglican music should be dignified and sober in comparison, he explains, but not dry or overly erudite. See press-cuttings collection, dated and annotated by Thompson himself, Leeds University, Brotherton Library Special Collections, MS 164.