Vol. 18, No 4 April 2014
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Journal April 2014 Vol.18, No. 4 The Elgar Society Journal The Society 18 Holtsmere Close, Watford, Herts., WD25 9NG Email: [email protected] April 2014 Vol. 18, No. 4 Editorial 3 President Elgar’s Dream Children 4 Julian Lloyd Webber FRCM Lynn Richmond Greene Herbert Sumsion – Personal reminiscences of a remarkable musician 26 Vice-Presidents Donald Hunt Sir David Willcocks, CBE, MC Powick People 40 Diana McVeagh Martin Bird Michael Kennedy, CBE Michael Pope CD reviews 48 Martin Bird, Andrew Carter, Barry Collett, Andrew Neill Dame Janet Baker, CH, DBE Leonard Slatkin Letters 55 Sir Andrew Davis, CBE Julian Rushton, Robin Taylor Donald Hunt, OBE Christopher Robinson, CVO, CBE 100 Years Ago 57 Andrew Neill Sir Mark Elder, CBE Chairman Steven Halls Vice-Chairman Stuart Freed Treasurer Clive Weeks Secretary The Editor does not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, Helen Petchey nor does the Elgar Society accept responsibility for such views. Front Cover: Master and pupil – Herbert Sumsion with Donald Hunt – Worcester 1981 (premiere of ‘In exile’) (Collection of Donald Hunt). Notes for Contributors. Please adhere to these as far as possible if you deliver writing (as is much preferred) in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format. A longer version is available in case you are prepared to do the formatting, but for the present the editor is content to do this. Copyright: it is the contributor’s responsibility to be reasonably sure that copyright permissions, if Editorial required, are obtained. Illustrations (pictures, short music examples) are welcome, but please ensure they are pertinent, cued into the text, and have captions. Like the proverbial number 11 bus of old, you wait ten years for a recording of the Duett for Trombone and Double Bass and then two come along at once. More to the point, though, one of Presentation of written text: them is a lollipop added to Barry Collett’s new, and very splendid, recording of the Powick music. If you’ve ignored these pieces until now, thinking them to be mere trifles turned out to order, think Subheadings: longer articles benefit from judicious use of these. again. They teach us much about Elgar’s development as an orchestrator, and are highly enjoyable Dates: use the form 2 June 1857. Decades: 1930s, no apostrophe. in their own right. I’ve penned a short essay in this issue to tell you a little about the people involved in music at Powick at the time and, I hope, to whet your appetite for the forthcoming Plurals: no apostrophe (CDs not CD’s). volume in the Collected Correspondence series: An Elgarian Who’s Who. Foreign words: if well established in English (sic, crescendo) in Roman, otherwise italics. Donald Hunt knew Herbert Sumsion over many years, and was his assistant at Gloucester Cathedral, so I’m delighted that he has given us his memories of this very fine all round musician. Numbers: spell out up to and including twenty, then 21 (etc.) in figures. Sumsion was born in Gloucester, was a chorister there and became a pupil of Herbert Brewer. Quotations: in ‘single quotes’ as standard. Double quotes for quotes within quotes. He was appointed organist at Gloucester on the death of Brewer in 1928, retiring in 1967. His association with Elgar, therefore, goes back to the days before the Great War. Longer quotations in a separate paragraph, not in italic, not in quotes; please leave a blank The Elgars’ use of the initials A.W.B. (sometimes expanded to A.W.Braut), and their line before and after. meaning, has long been a mystery. Various theories have been put forward over the years, none Emphasis: ensure emphasis is attributed as ‘[original emphasis]’ or ‘[my emphasis]’. of them convincing, and in my ‘Elgar-English Dictionary’ I could do no more than describe the Emphasized text italic. circumstances of their use. Now Lynn Greene has done some remarkable detective work, and her conclusions as to the true meaning behind this code of Alice’s I find utterly compelling. References: Please position footnote markers after punctuation – wherever possible at the end of Three essays on Elgar and not a word of analysis of the music! Still, we can always listen to a sentence. that: I think that was why Elgar wrote it. In footnotes, please adhere as far as possible to these forms (more fully expounded in the longer version of these notes): Books: Author, Title (Place of publication: Publisher, year of publication), page[s]. Thus: Robert Martin Bird Anderson, Elgar (London: Dent, 1993), 199. Periodicals: Author, ‘Title of article’, Title of periodical, issue number and date sufficient to identify, page[s]. Thus: Michael Allis, ‘Elgar, Lytton, and the Piano Quintet, Op. 84’, Music & Letters, 85 (May 2004), 198. End a footnote with a full stop, please, and never put a comma before a parenthesis. Titles that are ‘generic’ in Roman: e.g. Violin Concerto. Others in italics (e.g. Sea Pictures; the Musical Times). Units within a longer work in single quotes, e.g. ‘Sanctus fortis’ from The Dream of Gerontius. 2 The Elgar Society Journal Vol.18 No.4 — April 2014 3 life – a fascination that has intensified with time. One of my more memorable experiences with the Variations was when I first understood how integral Alice Elgar is to ‘E.D.U.’, Elgar’s self-portrait – and, indeed, to the work as a whole. Other Elgar’s Dream Children aspects of the piece generally receive more attention than its depiction of Alice, but I’m certainly not alone in finding this glimpse into Elgar’s marriage intriguing. The conductor Norman Del Mar, for example, said of the first variation, ‘The pictures we have of Alice Elgar suggest a homely, old- fashioned lady but the return to the main theme after the brief middle section reveals an unexpected degree of passion in their relationship which quickly and suddenly boils up 3 bars before 4’.2 Julian Lynn Richmond Greene Rushton also described the C.A.E. variation as showing ‘a passion not normally imputed to Alice’.3 C.A.E.’s climactic musical outburst doesn’t emerge within a picture of solitary Alice; Elgar included himself as a near-constant presence in his wife’s variation. The triplet figure that runs discreetly through C.A.E.’s accompaniment was identified by Dora Penny as Elgar’s habitual whistled signal to his wife, ‘his call to her’ upon returning home.4 The call reappears quite Introduction prominently in E.D.U. – whose title comes from a nickname only Alice used – and it leads into a In June 1889, a little more than a month after his wedding, Edward Elgar placed an inscription on his substantial quotation from C.A.E. 73 - 74 . In the work’s first and last variations, then, Elgar didn’t manuscript of Queen Mary’s Song, a composition from two years earlier. Writing perpendicularly picture either one of them without including the other. Moreover, E.D.U.’s original ending fell just to the music, he added a message to his new wife: seven measures after 76 , quite soon after the C.A.E. quotation.5 Thus, in its first performance the whole piece almost literally began and ended with Alice. C. Alice Elgar, When I first realised these things, I was filled with joy for the woman who apparently was so June 14 : 1889. A.W.B! loved. In time, however, I learned this tender musical tribute is at odds with much that is written from Edwd. E.1 about the Elgars’ marriage – as the remarks of Dr Rushton and Maestro Del Mar, quoted earlier, make plain. Filled with curiosity about the ‘real’ Alice Elgar (and sensing glimpses of a playful, intelligent, and passionate companion even in some of the more critical appraisals of her), I became determined to know her through her own words. I read Marchcroft Manor first, followed quickly by the narrative poem Isabel Trevithoe, as well as other bits of her writing that have appeared in her biography and in other publications. The author who hovered behind these works struck me as bright, funny, and romantic – and I came to like her. Eventually, because of my great interest in both of them, I felt inspired to examine the Elgars through the lens of fiction. My intended novel covers the years 1886 to 1889, years that are little documented, and my goal for my fictional and speculative vision is to violate no known or knowable facts. Perhaps more than any other spouse in music history, Alice is often credited with ‘making’ her husband a great composer, so I am mindful of the relationship’s historic importance. I’ve now made repeated trips to England to do research for the book. This process has led to an unexpected discovery that falls outside the scope of my novel: These are the exuberant opening lines of a story that appears to end in sorrow. I stumbled upon evidence suggesting the Elgars experienced repeated miscarriages and, like many couples in that this story – or at least upon the evidence that suggests this story – quite by accident, while doing situation, felt the effects of their grief for years. research with the aim of writing a historical novel focused on the Elgars. The fact that I am trying my hand at a novel sometimes surprises even me, but I am driven 2 Norman Del Mar, completed and ed. by Jonathan Del Mar, Conducting Elgar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, by love of my topic. My degrees are in music, and I spent many years as a professional cellist. 1998), 4.