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27 April 2012 Accessibility help Text only
BBC Homepage Wales Home Edward Elgar - The Welsh Connection more from this section Last updated: 13 June 2007 Gregynog Dr Rhian Davies is Artistic Gregynog Music Festival 2007 Gregynog Hall Director of the annual Gwyl Gregynog Walk Gregynog Festival and the The Davies Sisters Legacies: Gregynog BBC Local triennial Gwyl Peter Warlock Festival in her native Gregynog Young Musician Mid Wales Newtown Life Montgomeryshire. In June Things to do The Musical Sisters 2007 she wrote about the 75th anniversary People & Places connection between Edward Nature & Outdoors Elgar and Wales. related bbc.co.uk links History History Mini Site Religion & Ethics Arts & Culture "A recent Gramophone editorial questioned the 'churlish and Music at worst stupefying decision' to remove Edward Elgar's image TV & Radio from the £20 note.
Local BBC Sites The Bank of England may well have made a mistake in failing News to continue to honour this archetype of Englishness during Sport the 150th anniversary year of his birth, but Gwyl Gregynog Weather Festival 2007 culminates in an Elgar Day on Sunday, 24 Travel June, to celebrate the composer's music and his little-known Neighbouring Sites links with Montgomeryshire. North East Wales North West Wales Elgar stayed at Gregynog as a guest of the Misses South East Wales Gwendoline and Margaret Davies in June 1924 and ongoing South West Wales research is revealing more about his visit and his wider links with Wales. Related BBC Sites Wales Cymru The son of a Worcester piano tuner, Elgar slipped naturally Canolbarth between England and Wales like all who live their lives in the fluid hinterland of the Marches.
One of the composer's closest friends was Arthur Troyte Griffith, a Malvern architect whose father was from Carmarthen, and they enjoyed bantering about the exploits of their supposed ancestors, the renegade Saxon Aelfgar ('fairy spear') and Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, who sacked the city of Hereford.
Welsh Border influence may be traced in the composer's cantata Caractacus, written at the suggestion of his mother, and the Severn Suite for brass band.
Elgar's correspondence also reveals an interest in the Welsh language and he joked to another friend, August Jaeger, in 1901 that he had just returned from a week in Llangringoggywoggypygwyssil.
The composer had actually been staying at Llangrannog on the Ceredigion coast, where he sea-bathed in a pair of old pyjamas and jotted down musical motifs later to appear in his Introduction and Allegro for strings.
Elgar often visited Wales for quiet work or complete rest. He scored The Apostles at Minafon, Betws-y-Coed, in 1903 and completed part of The Kingdom at New Radnor in 1906.
There were various trips to Llandrindod Wells where Elgar enjoyed the golf as well as the sulphur water, and family holidays at Harlech in 1907 and Penmaenmawr in 1913, where the composer completed the score and proofs of Falstaff, visited Conwy and Caernarfon Castles and enjoyed 'much paddling' with his wife Alice and daughter Carice.
Elgar also fulfilled many professional engagements in Wales, directing a 280-strong chorus in The Kingdom at Cardiff's Triennial Festival in 1907, conducting The Dream of Gerontius at Mountain Ash in 1913, and Falstaff at Cardiff and Swansea in 1920. And in June 1924, six months after travelling 1000 miles up the Amazon, the 67-year-old composer undertook what would also prove to be a strenuous tour of mid Wales.
At the fifth Aberystwyth Festival, Elgar directed the Welsh Symphony Orchestra in his 'Enigma' Variations and 'Cello Concerto before proceeding to the annual Festival at Harlech Castle.
Just as he was about to begin conducting The Apostles, the local mayor sprang up and started making a speech. Elgar is reported to have endured a few minutes of this before hissing, 'Shut up, you fool,' and bringing down his baton to launch into the oratorio regardless!
Having fulfilled engagements at two Festivals in quick succession, it was little wonder that Elgar welcomed the idea of a retreat at Gregynog. He was taken there 'tired but happy', according to Henry Walford Davies, Professor of Music at Aberystwyth, and 'melted into a good temper at last and enjoyed himself'.
Little else is presently known of Elgar's time at Gregynog on 27 June 1924, but Walford Davies reminded him of the Hall in their subsequent correspondence, suggesting that the 'Enigma' Variations might easily be enjoyed by a crowd of 10,000 on the front lawn.
But unlike Ralph Vaughan Williams, who directed performances of his music at Gregynog in 1932, and Gustav Holst, who attended the first Festival of Music and Poetry in 1933 and dedicated his choral work O spiritual pilgrim 'For Gregynog', Elgar was never involved in formal music-making at the Hall, although his compositions have always been popular there.
The Gregynog Choir performed The Music-Makers several times during the 1930s and 1950s and excerpts from The Apostles, The Dream of Gerontius and Nimrod were programmed at the 1934 Festival to mark Elgar's death the previous February.
Another link between the composer and Gregynog was the viola player Raymond Jeremy who took part in the premières of Elgar's String Quartet and Piano Quintet in 1919 and played at the 1930s Festivals as a member of Aberystwyth University Music Department's resident chamber ensemble.
Performances of the Quartet, Quintet and Violin Sonata by five rising stars, the Sacconi Quartet and pianist Gary Matthewman, are central to the 2007 Festival's Elgar Day on 24 June, together with a talk by the composer's biographer, Diana McVeagh (Elgar: man of his time, our time), and a screening of rare contemporary footage of Elgar by Amanda Huntley of Huntley Film Archives.
Tickets and further information from the Festival Box Office on 01686 625007 and www.gwylgregynogfestival.org.
Article written by Dr Rhian Davies.