Sir Edward William Elgar (1857 – 1934) was an English
composer, many of whose works have entered the British
and international classical concert repertoire. Among
his best-known compositions are orchestral works
including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and
Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello,
and two symphonies. He also composed choral works,
including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and
songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in
1924.
Although Elga...(+)
Sir Edward William Elgar (1857 – 1934) was an English
composer, many of whose works have entered the British
and international classical concert repertoire. Among
his best-known compositions are orchestral works
including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and
Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello,
and two symphonies. He also composed choral works,
including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and
songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in
1924.
Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English
composer, most of his musical influences were not from
England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to
be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In
musical circles dominated by academics, he was a
self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman
Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some
quarters; and in the class-conscious society of
Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely
sensitive about his humble origins even after he
achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the
daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired
him both musically and socially, but he struggled to
achieve success until his forties, when after a series
of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations
(1899) became immediately popular in Britain and
overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral
work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman
Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican
establishment in Britain, but it became, and has
remained, a core repertory work in Britain and
elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works
were well received but have not entered the regular
repertory.
Elgar composed his Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf to
fulfill a commission that he had received from Dr.
Charles Swinnerton Heap, the founder and conductor of
the North Staffordshire Music Festival. It was at this
festival, on 30 October 1896, in Victoria Hall at
Hanley, that the work received its premier. Set in the
years between 995 and 1000, the saga relates the story
the life and battles of King Olaf, a Norse crusader.
Prior to beginning work on King Olaf, Elgar had spent a
great deal of time immersing himself in the Wagnerian
idiom. This, combined with Elgar's belief that his name
was of Scandinavian origin, must have favored in the
decision to set a Norse saga. Elgar derived his
libretto from the fifth story in Part I of Longfellow's
Tales of a Wayside Inn, a poetic monument modeled
loosely after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Longfellow
had been a favorite poet of the composer's mother, and
as such, the works of the poet had figured strongly on
Elgar's youth. The Saga of King Olaf is the first story
in Longfellow's work to be related by the musician. In
arranging Longfellow's text to suit his needs, Elgar
enlisted the assistance of H. A. Acworth, a retired
neighbor who had published several translations of
Indian Ballads in verse. Acworth was charged with
reducing Longfellow's twenty-two sections to eight with
prologue and epilogue. He also composed several
sections of the narrative, including the conversion and
Sigrid scenes, "The Death of Olaf" and "The gray land
breaks to lively green". In addition, he wrote the text
for what was to become the six recitatives for bass
soloist that Elgar used to link his scenes.
Elgar arranged the text into a cantata for soprano,
tenor ant bass soloists, choir and orchestra. Elgar
specifies the roles of the performers in a paragraph
that he set in the beginning of the full score: "In the
following Scenes it is intended that the performers
should be looked upon as a gathering of skalds (bards);
all, in turn, take part in the narration of the Saga
and occasionally, at the more dramatic points,
personify for the moment some important character." The
work has been criticized by some as having banal lyrics
and a story line that lacks apparent cohesion, but it
has also been regarded as the best of his pre-Enigma
compositions. Each scene provides a brief glimpse at an
event in Olaf's life, while the prologue and epilogue
serve to set the scene and recount the message of the
work, respectively.
The first scene presents the Norse god, Thor, as he
vows to defy Christianity. Elgar's music possesses all
of the power and majesty inherent in the visual imagery
of the text. In "King Olaf's Return", Olaf accepts
Thor's challenge before confronting and killing his
champion, Ironbeard in "The Conversion". This is
followed by the "Gudrun" scene, in which Olaf's bride
is killed on their wedding night. "The Wraith of Odin"
presents some of Elgar's more dashing melodies, as the
ghost of Odin visits Olaf at a feast. In the "Sigrid"
scene, Olaf attempts to convert Sigrid, while in
"Thyri" he and Thyri are wed. Here, Elgar explores the
gentler side of his compositional nature, with joyous
choruses and lilting duets. In "The Death of Olaf",
Olaf meets his end while facing Danish invaders in a
battle at sea. Structurally, the epilogue serves to tie
together a number of the themes from previous
movements, as the chorus proclaims the eternity of
Christ in a moving finale that hardly has an equal
amount the composer's works.
Source: AllMusic
(https://www.allmusic.com/composition/mc0002372044#desc
ription).
Although originally composed for Chorus (SATB) and
Orchestra, I created this Arrangement of "As Torrents
in Summer" from "Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf"
(Op. 30 Epilogue) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola
& Cello).
