The Firs: Elgar's Birthplace (TBC Visits | S1 : E2)
In real life, for the first time ever!
Here is the second episode of the TBC Visits series, and this takes place in Lower Broadheath, which is not far from the city of Worcester. This is in Worcestershire, and recently National Trust owned the site around September 2017. The whole area is worth a visit, and the people are very nice too. Now, you might commonly see these videos on my main channel, TR3X PR0DÚCTÍ0NS. Well, I'm moving them here, since my main channel has been a bit overcrowded lately.
Elgar Violin Sonata in E Minor - McKenna Glorioso
Elgar Violin Sonata in E Minor, Op. 82
I. Allegro: Risoluto
II. Romance: Andante
III. Allegro ma non troppo
McKenna Glorioso, violin
April Sun, piano
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was an English composer in the Romantic period, known for the close relationship between his music and the English landscape and nature with which he felt so connected. Elgar spent much of his childhood growing up in Worcestershire, England among his many siblings. As a child, he studied violin, piano, and conducting, all of which would later end up being a part of his prominent and successful, while short-lived, performance career. Although he composed from a young age, young Edward never received any formal composition training and left behind no pupils despite his prolific career.
Growing up in Worcestershire and spending summers in isolation of rural Broadheath seems to have greatly influenced Elgar’s compositional style. In many ways, Elgar stands apart from English composers famously inspired by English landscape, such as Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Gustav Holst. While their music seems to relate to nature in a programmatic manner (a flute or oboe song imitating a bird, for example) scholar Matthew Riley argues that Elgar’s seems to be more “prompted by” a specific place, invoking a specific sensation of nostalgia and familiarity. Riley writes that instead creating imitation of nature simply a series of imitated sounds, Elgar understands nature as “a collection of value-laden concepts and oppositions” (4).
The Violin Sonata in E Minor itself was written in the summer of 1918 while Elgar spent his summer at an isolated rented cabin in Sussex, a summer tradition for him as he enjoyed writing in seclusion and in this rural environment. He dedicated the piece to his friend Marie Joshua, who, at the time, was quite ill at the time and died before the work was completed. Elgar finished the composition in September 1918 and made some revisions between multiple private performances before the work was published in the spring of 1919. The original manuscripts are kept at the Elgar Birthplace Museum in Worcestershire with the majority of Elgar’s other manuscripts.
The first movement, marked as Allegro Risoluto, resembles a Brahmsian textural style, complete with complex rhythms blurring the pulse, overlapped and unbalanced phrases, and chromatic harmonies. The rise-and-fall melody that arrives soon after the “resolute” opening seems to mimic the wind rustling pines or through an Aeolian harp, an instrument of English origin that Elgar was known to imitate in his music. Some also attribute this quality to a philosophy among Romantic-era composers referencing a rising wind.
The second movement, a Romance, returns to Elgar’s earlier style, imitating salon and Spanish music. In this movement, Elgar seems to combine references to nature with an element of fantasy. In the outer sections of the movement, listeners may notice ad libitum timing between the two instruments, winding melodies, and other elements of intrigue and mystery. The middle contrasting section, however, introduces a nostalgic theme comprised of the descending fifth interval. Unlike the almost creepy and evasive nature of the previous sections, it feels broad, nostalgic, and expansive. We now know that Elgar wrote this theme in honor of Marie Joshua (to whom the sonata is dedicated). When he found out that she had died before he was able to perform the work for her, he wrote this same theme into the end of the third movement. This final movement, marked as a leisurely Allegro non troppo, alternates between a relaxed, connected melody moving gently in stepwise motion and a more robust and upright melody. This combination seems to reflect Elgar’s sadness at losing his friend combined with a resolute nature that can be traced through each movement of this sonata.
-Program notes by McKenna Glorioso