"Sargent's 1945 EMI version and Barbirolli's 1964 EMI recording. Prelude to ""The Dream of Gerontius"", arranged by John Morrison for symphonic wind band, publisher Molenaar Edition. The Dream of Gerontius The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. Elgar disapproved of the use of the term ""oratorio"" for the work (and the term occurs nowhere in"
"The Dream of Gerontius discography The Dream of Gerontius, Edward Elgar's 1900 work for singers and orchestra, had to wait forty-five years for its first complete recording. Sir Henry Wood made acoustic recordings of four extracts from ""The Dream of Gerontius"" as early as 1916, with Clara Butt as the angel, and Henry Coward's Sheffield Choir recorded a portion of the Part I ""Kyrie"" in the same period. Edison Bell recorded the work under Joseph Batten in abridged form in 1924 (the recording, with orchestral and choral forces considerably affected by the limitations of recording methods of the day, was"
"in 1956 when Elgar's music was comparatively neglected, said, ""Anyone who doubts the fact of Elgar's genius should take the first opportunity of hearing ""The Dream of Gerontius"", which remains his masterpiece, as it is his largest and perhaps most deeply felt work."" In the ""Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"", Michael Kennedy writes, ""[T]he work has become as popular with British choral societies as ""Messiah"" and ""Elijah"", although its popularity overseas did not survive 1914. Many regard it as Elgar's masterpiece. ... It is unquestionably the greatest British work in the oratorio form, although Elgar was right in believing that"
"review for the Elgar Society, Walter Essex preferred the EMI Barbirolli set. The Dream of Gerontius discography The Dream of Gerontius, Edward Elgar's 1900 work for singers and orchestra, had to wait forty-five years for its first complete recording. Sir Henry Wood made acoustic recordings of four extracts from ""The Dream of Gerontius"" as early as 1916, with Clara Butt as the angel, and Henry Coward's Sheffield Choir recorded a portion of the Part I ""Kyrie"" in the same period. Edison Bell recorded the work under Joseph Batten in abridged form in 1924 (the recording, with orchestral and choral forces"
"important part in encouraging and organizing the provincial Music Competition Festivals in Lincolnshire (Elwes often conducting or singing), centred upon their family home, the Manor at Brigg. In 1905, at the suggestion of his friend Percy Grainger, an open competition class for folk-singers was included. As a result, many wonderful songs were collected, notably from Joseph Taylor (who made some commercial records for the Gramophone Company). Taylor was the source of the melody used by Delius for his ""Brigg Fair"". Elwes became the greatest living exponent (alongside John Coates) of Edward Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"", which he first performed"
"Variations"" (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, ""The Dream of Gerontius"" (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years"
"but he was dissatisfied with it and destroyed the manuscript. In 1907 the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who admired Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"", asked him to write a violin concerto. Two years earlier, Kreisler had told an English newspaper: If you want to know whom I consider to be the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar... I say this to please no one; it is my own conviction... I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. He is of the same aristocratic family. His invention, his orchestration, his harmony, his grandeur, it is"
"southern ones, and liked singing to audiences of public schoolboys. Plunket Greene was a friend of Elgar's, and appeared in his Malvern Concert Club events. He was the original baritone in the first (October 1900) performance (Birmingham Festival) of Elgar's ""Dream of Gerontius"", alongside Marie Brema (angel) and Edward Lloyd (soul), under Hans Richter. In June 1900 Elgar had written to Jaeger, ""he sings both bass bits and won't they suit him. Gosh."" Although his recordings, and some commentators, suggest the voice was not a large one, it must have been capable of sustaining and projecting a considerable tone at"
"dawn. There is a double chorus with semichorus, and six solo singers representing: The work is in two parts and seven sections, each played without a break. Words were selected by Elgar from the Bible and Apocrypha. The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles, Op. 49, is an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was first performed on 14 October 1903. After his international success with the ""Enigma Variations"" (1899) and ""The Dream of Gerontius ""(1900), Elgar was commissioned by the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which had also produced ""Gerontius"", to write a new choral work. This"
"Edward Elgar Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the ""Enigma Variations"", the ""Pomp and Circumstance Marches"", concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including ""The Dream of Gerontius"", chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England"
"desire of Light on wretches grow?"" At the end of the manuscript score, Elgar wrote this quotation from John Ruskin's ""Sesame and Lilies"": Richter signed the autograph copy of the score with the inscription: ""Let drop the Chorus, let drop everybody—but let ""not"" drop the wings of your original genius."" Henry Wood made acoustic recordings of four extracts from ""The Dream of Gerontius"" as early as 1916, with Clara Butt as the Angel. Edison Bell issued the work in 1924 with Elgar's tacit approval (despite his contract with HMV); acoustically recorded and abridged, it was swiftly rendered obsolete by the"
"career lasted from 1924 to 1958. As a concert singer, Nash was known for his performances in oratorio, and in particular in the title role of Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"", making the first gramophone recording of the work, in 1945. Nash was born in the South London district of Deptford on 14 June 1894, the son of William Nash, master builder, and his wife, Harriet Emma ""née"" Carr. The family was musical, and listening at home to a gramophone record by Enrico Caruso prompted Nash to apply for a scholarship at the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music. He was accepted,"
"such as Hilaire Belloc, Lord Acton, and J. R. R. Tolkien and the composer Edward Elgar, whose oratorio ""The Dream of Gerontius"" was based on a 19th-century poem by Newman. At various points after the 16th century hopes have been entertained by many English Catholics that the ""reconversion of England"" was near at hand. Additionally, with the arrival of immigrant masses of Irish Catholics, some considered that a ""second spring"" of Catholicism across Britain was developing. Rome responded by re-establishing the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, creating 12 Catholic dioceses in England from existing apostolic vicariates and appointing diocesan bishops (to"
"is one of the leaders of musical art of modern times."" ""The Düsseldorfer Volksblatt"" wrote, ""A memorable and epoch-making first performance! Since the days of Liszt nothing has been produced in the way of oratorio ... which reaches the greatness and importance of this sacred cantata."" Richard Strauss, then widely viewed as the leading composer of his day, was so impressed that in Elgar's presence he proposed a toast to the success of ""the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar."" Performances in Vienna, Paris and New York followed, and ""The Dream of Gerontius"" soon became equally admired in Britain. According"
"(1886), John Liptrot Hatton's ""Hezekiah"" (1877), Joseph Barnby's ""Rebekah"" (1870), William Cusins's ""Gideon"" (1871), Alfred R. Gaul's ""The Holy City"" (1882), Charles Gounod's ""Redemption"" (1882) and ""Mors et Vita"" (1885) (produced expressly for the British public), and Sir John Stainer's ""The Crucifixion"" (1887). Arguably the last of the great English Victorian composers to emerge was Edward Elgar (1857–1934), who during the 1890s produced his ""Caractacus"" and ""King Olaf"" cantatas, the ""Enigma Variations"" in 1899, and the revolutionary ""Dream of Gerontius"" in 1900. Between 1880 and 1887 the London Guildhall School of Music was established. The Royal College of Music, originating"
"often singing his orchestration of Brahms's ""Four Serious Songs"". She continued to sing with both of these choirs in all of the oratorios conducted by Sargent until his death in 1967. She was, perhaps, most admired for her performances as Angel in Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"", which she recorded in 1954 with Sargent, the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. ""The Daily Telegraph"" wrote of this recording: ""The luminous beauty of her tone, her perfect diction and the warmth and dignity with which she invested the music are a lesson for young singers."" With Sargent, she"
"work for ""too frequent reliance on sequences"" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters. Reed thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works. Elgar himself thought ""Falstaff"" the highest point of his purely orchestral work. The major works for voices and orchestra of the twenty-one years of Elgar's middle period are three large-scale works for soloists, chorus and orchestra: ""The Dream of Gerontius"" (1900), and the oratorios ""The Apostles"" (1903) and ""The Kingdom"" (1906); and two shorter odes, the ""Coronation Ode"" (1902) and ""The Music Makers"" (1912). The first of the odes, as"
"conducted by Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent. Productions mounted included Ralph Vaughan Williams's ""The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains"", and Charles Villiers Stanford's ""The Travelling Companion"". Wilson became a leading interpreter of the Evangelist in JS Bach's Passions, and of the title part in Edward Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"", which he sang under the baton of the composer and other conductors including Hamilton Harty, Malcolm Sargent, Albert Coates, and Adrian Boult. ""The Times"" called him ""the best exponent of [Gerontius] at the present time"". The tenor Peter Pears said that it was hearing Wilson singing as Evangelist in Bach's"
"August Jaeger August Johannes Jaeger (1860 – 1909) was an Anglo-German music publisher, who developed a close friendship with the English composer Edward Elgar. Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, Jaeger met Elgar through his employment at the London music publisher Novello. His advice and friendship became invaluable to Elgar, causing the composer to rework many famous musical passages, including the finale to his ""Variations on an Original Theme"" (""Enigma Variations"") and the climax of ""The Dream of Gerontius"". Jaeger has been immortalized in the famous ninth variation ""Nimrod"" from the first above-mentioned work, recalling a conversation on the slow movements of"
"made particular reference to it, and Sibelius called him, ""the personification of the true English character in music ... a noble personality and a born aristocrat"". Among Elgar's admirers there is disagreement about which of his works are to be regarded as masterpieces. The ""Enigma Variations"" are generally counted among them. ""The Dream of Gerontius"" has also been given high praise by Elgarians, and the Cello Concerto is similarly rated. Many rate the Violin Concerto equally highly, but some do not. Sackville-West omitted it from the list of Elgar masterpieces in ""The Record Guide"", and in a long analytical article"
"The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles, Op. 49, is an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was first performed on 14 October 1903. After his international success with the ""Enigma Variations"" (1899) and ""The Dream of Gerontius ""(1900), Elgar was commissioned by the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which had also produced ""Gerontius"", to write a new choral work. This encouraged Elgar to start composing a large-scale work on a subject he had been contemplating, according to the composer, since boyhood when he had even started selecting the words. ""The Apostles"", like its successor ""The Kingdom"", depicts"
"which was performed twice. In 1885 Antonín Dvořák provided ""The Spectre's Bride"" and Gounod provided ""Mors et Vita"". In 1891 Dvořák's commission delivered his ""Requiem"" for £650. 1900 saw the commission ""The Dream of Gerontius"" from Edward Elgar. The chorus master, Charles Swinnerton Heap had died suddenly four months before the concert was due, and with ten works in hand and only one copy of the score, rehearsal started only a few days before the performance date. It was not sung well but was strongly applauded and well reviewed as a composition. He returned in 1903 with ""The Apostles"", and"
"sung at Westminster Abbey in 1904. Disapproval was reserved for the doctrinal aspects of ""The Dream of Gerontius"" repugnant to Anglicans, such as Purgatory. Elgar was unable to resist the suggested bowdlerisation, and in the ten years after the premiere the work was given at the Three Choirs Festival with an expurgated text. The Dean of Gloucester refused admission to the work until 1910. This attitude lingered until the 1930s, when the Dean of Peterborough banned the work from the cathedral. Elgar was also faced with many people's assumption that he would use the standard hymn tunes for the sections"
"Concert Allegro (Elgar) The Concert Allegro, Op. 46 by Sir Edward Elgar is a piece of music for solo piano. It takes about 10 minutes to perform. It is the only piano work he wrote that was designed for concert performance. It is in the key of C major and was written in 1901, at the request of the pianist Fanny Davies. Elgar was not a great lover of the piano, and he was busy organising the first performance of his oratorio ""The Dream of Gerontius"" in Düsseldorf. He wrote the piece reluctantly, only after constant pleading from Davies for"
"chorus master for a wide variety of groups and projects, and has also worked as a composer and arranger, notably for American folk singer Arlo Guthrie. Between 2002 and 2009 Burton was Choral Director at the Hallé Orchestra, and became music Director of the Hallé Youth Choir when it was founded in 2003. He prepared both choirs for the award-winning recording of Elgar's ""The Dream of Gerontius"" which won the 2009 Gramaphone Choral Award. In 2002 he became the Music Director of Schola Cantorum of Oxford, the chamber choir established in 1960 and now well known which is made up"
"""The Dream of Gerontius"", Op. 38, many times since it first performed it at the Queen's Hall, London, on 18 May 1931, conducted by Stanford Robinson. A performance of the oratorio was given in the sixth-century St Irene's Church as part of the 1997 Istanbul International Music Festival. Leonard Slatkin conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby, tenor John Aler and baritone Alan Opie. A special performance of the oratorio was given from St Paul's Cathedral on 26 November 1997 to mark the 75th anniversary of the BBC. Andrew Davis conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra and"
"Gerontius"" under Julius Buths in Düsseldorf in May 1902, of which the Manchester Guardian wrote: ""The part of the Angel was given by Miss Muriel Foster with the wonderfully beautiful and genuine voice ..."" She had previously sung in Elgar's ""Sea Pictures"". She was also memorable in Brahms' ""Alto Rhapsody"". She was a personal friend of Elgar and sang in the first performance of his ""Coronation Ode"" of 1902; ""The Apostles"" (1903); ""The Kingdom"" (1906); ""The River"" (1910) and ""The Music Makers"" (1912). Elgar dedicated his song ""A Child Asleep"" to Muriel Foster's son Anthony Goetz 'for his mother's singing'."
"Cockaigne (In London Town) Cockaigne (In London Town), Op. 40, also known as the Cockaigne Overture, is a concert overture for full orchestra written by the British composer Edward Elgar in 1900-01. The success of the ""Enigma Variations"" in 1899 was followed by the initial failure of ""The Dream of Gerontius"", which caused Elgar to become dispirited and declare that God was against art. Nevertheless, he received a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society and began work on a new piece and soon reported that it was ""cheerful and Londony, 'stout and steaky'...honest, healthy, humorous and strong, but not vulgar."""
"included study of both Elgar's ""Enigma Variations"" (1898–99) and his oratorio ""The Dream of Gerontius"" (1900). ""A Sea Symphony"" is among the best-known of a host of sea-related pieces being written around the same time in England, some of the most famous of which are Stanford's ""Songs of the Sea"" (1904) and ""Songs of the Fleet"" (1910), Elgar's ""Sea Pictures"" (1899), and Frank Bridge's ""The Sea"" (1911). Debussy's ""La mer"" (1905) may also have been influential in this apparent nautical obsession. Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel for three months in Paris in the winter of 1907–1908. Though he worked chiefly"
"greatest conductors of his time, including Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Thomas Beecham. When in England he sang in every season of Sir Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts in 1921-51. An acclaimed performer in Elgar's oratorio ""The Dream of Gerontius"", Williams often worked with the composer. He sang at Elgar's memorial service in 1934 as well as at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937. In 1938, he was one of 16 eminent singers invited to take part in the first performance of the ""Serenade to Music"", written"
"of St Pancras when he became Dean of Gloucester, a post he held until his death. As Dean, he banned performances of Edward Elgar's choral work ""The Dream of Gerontius"" from Gloucester Cathedral from 1900 until 1910 because of Roman Catholic references in its text. He adopted, additionally, the surname Jones (his wife's maiden name) in 1904. At some point he became a Doctor of Divinity (DD). Donald Spence Jones Henry Donald Maurice Spence (Spence Jones from 1904; 14 January 1836 - 2 November 1917) was an Anglican dean and author in the last decades of the 19th century and"
"Julius Buths Julius Buths (7 May 185112 March 1920) was a German pianist, conductor and minor composer. He was particularly notable in his early championing of the works of Edward Elgar in Germany. He conducted the continental European premieres of both the ""Enigma Variations"" and ""The Dream of Gerontius"". He also had notable associations with Frederick Delius and Gustav Mahler. Julius Emil Martin Buths was born in Wiesbaden, the son of an oboist. He studied music at Cologne under Ferdinand Hiller and others, in Berlin under Friedrich Kiel, in Italy and in Paris. He worked as a conductor in Breslau"
"acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from ""The Dream of Gerontius"". Edward Elgar was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester, England. His father, William Henry Elgar (1821–1906), was raised in Dover and had been apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music and musical instruments. In 1848 he married"