There were two things I took away from yesterday evening’s pre-concert talk, and which no doubt I'll take away again tonight. (Don't look at me like that, it’s my job.)
Elgar is sold to us (or maligned) as the quintessential Englishman, the greatest British composer since Purcell, etc., etc. It’s all red, white and blue and rolling green hills, and stiff-upper-lippishness. Pomp & Circumstance and Elgar's own cultivation of a staid and “soldierly” persona (in the face of some wildly emotional music, I might add!) haven’t helped there.
But, as was pointed out, Elgar’s influences and aspirations were deeply cosmopolitan. He sought out and heard a lot of music as he shaped his own musical education and career, and that included the Europeans. In particular, his craft in writing imaginatively for orchestra came from models across the Channel and is one of the things that led to the “greatest British composer since” tag. (As an earlier speaker this week said, we have to be careful that we don’t burden Elgar with our own cultural baggage, and that includes our musical preconceptions.)
More important, we were disabused of any notion we might have that Elgar’s life in the provinces before and after the brief attempt to set himself up in London amounted to being “in the sticks” musically. The quantity and quality of musical activity in Worcestershire at the time was nothing to be sneezed at. The famed Three Choirs Festivals – perhaps not thought to count for much by Australian audiences, who tend not to go for choral music – presented great swathes of music old and new, and introduced important artists and composers. Elgar heard a lot. The speaker himself had attended one of these festivals in his teens and could recount an impressive list of all the music he’d heard, from Elgar to Messiæn and beyond.
Elgar took a while to gain recognition as a composer; he didn’t really make a name for himself until the Enigma Variations, composed in his 40s. But to be fair, he hadn’t written all that much, or much of significance, until then. A late bloomer, therefore, and Malcolm Gladwell has something to say about whether we should equate genius with precocity.