To celebrate 150th Anniversary of Edward Elgar’s birth. (1857 – 1934)

ELGAR – THE MUSIC MAKERS Opus 69.
 

Edward Elgar composed The Music Makers in 1912. It is unique in Elgar’s output in the fact that it is a cantata composed for solo contralto, chorus and orchestra and features references from several of his earlier works. Elgar said ‘I have written out my soul – I have put it all in my music’. The libretto is by Arthur O’Shaughnessy whose works were much in fashion at the time but today appear somewhat dated. Nevertheless, Elgar creates a work that is both inspiring and moving and one he particularly liked.
The Music Makers opens with a Leitmotiv or motto theme that appears throughout, linking the various stanzas. Elgar quotes passages from his Enigma Variations, in particular Nimrod, the Dream of Gerontius, his Violin Concerto, Sea Pictures and the two symphonies, as well as fragments from Rule, Britannia! and La Marseillaise. The autobiographical quotations add to the nostalgia as Elgar looks back over his achievements and career. O’Shaughnessy’s Ode conjures a past world but one Elgar felt a strong affinity, particularly with the words of the poem, identifying himself as a ‘dreamer of dreams’

ODE.

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; -
World-losers and world-formers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming –
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their working the house be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man’s soul it hath broken,
A light that does not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man’s heart.

And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day’s late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
And bringing the pass, as they may,
Win the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! It must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you her us cry –
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God’s future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! We cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song’s new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy.
 

DURUFLÉ REQUIEM Opus 9
 

Maurice Duruflé (1902 – 1986) spent most of his life as an organ teacher and soloist, touring extensively, rather than as a composer. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1920 studying the organ and composition under Paul Dukas and from 1930 became the organist of St Etienne-du-Mont. His works are few but his largest and most important is the Requiem composed in 1947. Commissioned by the publishers Durand, the Requiem is dedicated to the memory of Duruflé’s father. It is influenced by and has many similarities to Fauré’s Requiem, with its soft, peaceful nature, its similar choral writing, identical text and the use of two soloists. However, Duruflé’s Requiem uses a larger orchestra and has nine sections to Fauré’s seven.
 

The Requiem holds an inner peace and an ingenious innocence throughout its passage. It is constructed on Gregorian plainsong modes and is generally quiet throughout with just a few dramatic interjections that, at times, give the work a more agitated feeling. The Requiem is overall one of delicacy and tranquillity and the final movement In Paradisum, leaves the listener in the heavenly realms of Duruflé’s celestial music.

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