England's emblematic composer felt like a permanent outsider
Edward Elgar wrote the Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance marches that still soundtrack British ceremony. Yet he drew more from continental models than English schools, stayed self-taught among academics, Catholic in a Protestant culture, and lower-middle-class in a hierarchy that noticed. Even the gramophone found him early.
Born 2 June 1857 in Lower Broadheath near Worcester, fourth of seven children of piano-tuner and music-shop owner William Elgar and Ann, a Catholic convert who had Edward baptized against his father's preference. Childhood meant piano and violin lessons and countryside walks that biographer W. H. Reed said permeated the music. Formal schooling ended at fifteen; beyond local teachers, only brief London violin study with Adolf Pollitzer in 1877–78. He learned German hoping for Leipzig Conservatory, but the family could not afford it—a miss The Musical Times later called lucky, sparing him school dogma.
Best-known works include the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, violin and cello concertos, two symphonies, and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. In his fifties a symphony and violin concerto were huge successes; the Second Symphony and Cello Concerto took years to settle in the repertory. Later audiences typed him as mainly for British ears; after his death on 23 February 1934 his stock stayed low for a generation before a major revival.
He has been called the first composer to take the gramophone seriously, conducting acoustic recordings of his music between 1914 and 1925 and, after moving-coil microphones arrived in 1923, remaking most major orchestral works and Gerontius excerpts. The ceremonial English sound was a shopkeeper's son's continental craft, recorded by the man himself for machines that would outlast the class anxiety.
Source: Edward Elgar
