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Programme Notes

EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)

SEA PICTURES, Op 37

  • Sea Slumber-Song
  • In Haven - Capri
  • Sabbath Morning at Sea
  • Where Corals Lie
  • The Swimmer

 

Elgar's Sea Pictures belong to the high noon of his creative life. They were written in 1899, the year after the first performance of the Enigma Variations and in the same year as The Dream of Gerontius, and Elgar's reputation stood high. A memorable event of that year was an invitation to provide one of a group of songs dedicated to Queen Victoria after the manner of The Triumphes of Oriana created for Queen Elizabeth I. Elgar's contribution, performed at Windsor Castle in May, was a part-song, To Her Beneath whose Steadfast Star.

With his fame at such a pitch, Elgar was next invited to write a work for the 1899 Norwich Festival, and he decided on the group of songs with orchestra which he would call Sea Pictures. One of them, No 2, was already in existence, a song he had composed in 1897 to words by his wife Alice: it had originally been called Love Alone Will Stay but was published in 1898 as Lute Song. Now it took its place among the Sea Pictures as In Haven, subtitled Capri, although Elgar had not yet travelled to Italy, nor was he to do so until 1903.

The remaining five songs, to words by a veritable anthology of more or less minor Victorian poets, were written in the summer of 1899, at a faster pace than was Elgar's custom, and they were ready for the first performance at the Festival at the beginning of October, 101 years ago. Elgar himself was the conductor. The soloist was a promising young singer, Miss Clara Butt, later in her career to become Dame Clara Butt, and with her wondrous booming contralto the embodiment of a whole epoch of imperial song: no one sang Land of Hope and Glory like Dame Clara Butt. 'If all the statues of old Queen Victoria,' wrote one critic, 'standing or sitting in all her Dominions, could have burst into song, it was felt, this is how they should sound.' In 1899 Clara Butt was 26. Elgar wrote to Arthur Troyte Griffith ('Troyte' of the Enigma Variations) that 'she dressed like a mermaid,' but he told August Jaeger ('Nimrod') 'She sang really well.'

The Sea Pictures were a great success, and two days after the Norwich performance they were given in London. Then, at the end of the month, they were sung by Ada Crossley at Balmoral - by Royal command.

Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©

 

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