About Elgar
Elgar: A Pen Picture
The picture often painted of Elgar is of the social outsider, a devout Catholic, snubbed by the English musical establishment but eventually, through the force of his music, reaching the pinnacle of British society and close friendship with royalty. As with all caricatures, there is some truth in this, but it is far from the whole his close contemporaries Parry and Stanford, Elgar’s was not a privileged background. He was born on 2nd June in the small Worcestershire village of Lower Broadheath, to a mother of farming stock and a father who was a piano tuner and proprietor of a music shop close to Worcester Cathedral. When recognition arrived, Parry and Stanford, at that time both composers of some esteem, were quick to speak out in support of him. And if their support seemed at times ambivalent, it should be remembered that Elgar, conscious of his lack of social standing, was acutely sensitive to any perceived hint of criticism.
After a number of abortive attempts to gain acknowledgment, first as a violinist and later as a composer, Elgar finally achieved fame both in Britain and abroad, with his Variations on an Original Theme ‘The Enigma’. T
SIR EDWARD ELGAR
A Short Biography
Elgar was born on 2nd June at Broadheath, a village some three miles from the small city of Worcester in the English West Midlands. His father had a music shop in Worcester and tuned pianos.
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Throughout the s and the s his experience grew and his style matured as he conducted and composed for loc
The Choral Singer’s Companion
Biography
Although he eventually became the leading British composer of his day, Edward William Elgar had a background that did not suggest such a destiny. He was born in the English Midlands, near Worcester (pronounced “wooster,” obviously), rather far from the center of British musical life in London; he was from the wrong social class (his father was in “trade”—the horror!); and he was Catholic at a time when Catholics were still very much a minority in Britain and looked upon with some suspicion (readers born before the election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States may remember fears that his first allegiance would be to the Pope rather than to the Constitution). Rather more significantly, he had almost no formal musical training and also lacked the connections that an Oxbridge education could bring.
But Elgar was not without his own set of advantages. Worcester was one of the venues of the important Three Choirs Festival, which was held there each three years, and it served as an important training ground for Elgar (he played violin in the festival orchestra, for example; he also played bassoon).
Edward William Elgar was born on June 2 in Lower Broadheath, a small village near Worcester, England and was the fourth of seven children. His father William was a piano tuner by trade and owned a music store where he sold sheet music and musical instruments, as well as being a professional violinist. His mother Ann had a keen interest in the arts and encouraged an interest in music within all of her children. Elgar spent many hours with his father, and by age 8 he was taking both piano and violin lessons, though he also taught himself to play other instruments. He began composing at the early age of 10 when he composed the music for a play written and performed by the Elgar children.
Elgar attendedthe Littleton House School until the age of 15, all the while studying every music book and organ instruction manual he could get his hands on. He learned German in the hope that when he finished school he would further his violin studies at Leipzig Conservatory but his father was unable to afford to send him. Elgar took up a position as a clerk at a local solicitor’s office which he disliked so spent every spare moment reading. It was around this time that he first per
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