Slideshow Transcript

Alexander Mackenzie was almost ten years older than Elgar. Born in Edinburgh, he was the son of a well-respected violinist. Sent to Germany - at the tender age of ten - to further his musical education, he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London, before spending the early part of his career teaching and conducting in Edinburgh. Mackenzie eventually returned to London; at the age of 41 he was elected principal of the Royal Academy of Music, having already achieved national acclaim as a composer earlier. His cantata The Bride - written when he was 35 - made his name: it was a work Elgar would have known well, not least because he played the violin at the premiere; years later, Elgar recalled that meeting Mackenzie was 'the event of my musical life'.

Born into a distinguished Dublin family, Charles Villiers Stanford was raised in an intellectual environment where amateur and professional musicians gathered. He began studying composition as a child, and went on to study music at Cambridge, and began to make waves as a composer. In 1883, Stanford became professor of composition and orchestra conductor at the newly created Royal College of Music, where he went on to influence the next generation of composers, including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Of all his composer contemporaries, Elgar is perhaps most closely linked to Hubert Parry. Educated at Eton, Parry gained a degree in music before going on to study law and modern history at Oxford. After leaving university, he became an underwriter at Lloyds, a career he soon abandoned in favour of music. Parry was employed by George Grove as a sub-editor for his new 'Dictionary of Music and Musicians,' a work which Elgar turned to for his own musical education and which is still regularly updated and used today. Joining Stanford at the Royal College of Music in 1883 as professor of musical history, Parry consolidated his reputation with a series of oratorios in the late 1880s and early '90s. He was so popular that, during the 1890s he was bbc.co.uk/iwonder © Copyright 2014

considered a sort of unofficial composer laureate. Today, he is best known for his setting of Jerusalem, and the choral classic, Blest Pair of Sirens - both of them Last Night of the Proms favourites.