Sir Edward Elgar

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Lifespan:
June 2, 1857 - February 23, 1934, he died aged 76 and was British.
Birthname:
Edward William Elgar.
Snapshot:
An Artist with 96 releases, and credited 45 times on others' music. 153 collaborations.

Biography

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Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (2 June 185723 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have achieved enduring popularity. 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 oratorios, 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 quintessentially 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 self-taught; 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 into his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius, based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some unease 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.

In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful; his second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came in his later years to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death and did not begin to revive significantly until the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have in recent years been taken up again internationally, but the music remains more played in Britain than overseas.’

Elgar has been described as "the first composer to take the gramophone seriously." In the early days of recording, he made a series of discs of his works between 1914 and 1925. After the microphone was invented, making realistic recording possible, he conducted new recordings of most of his major orchestral works, and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius. These recordings were reissued on LP record in the 1970s and on CD in the 1990s.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Elgar. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

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Sir Edward Elgar - Elgar Getty Images

Elgar

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Sir Edward Elgar - Edward Elgar Getty Images

Edward Elgar

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Music

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Genres

Classical, Opera. Vote on Genres

Discography

140 releases – 96 under his own name and 45 credits on others' music Edit
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Collaborations, Groups and Family
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Sir Edward Elgar

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Trivia

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  • Elgar was bestowed with several titles & awards during his life; knight bachelor, Order of Merit (OM), Master of the King's Musick, Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO), Baronet (Bt), Knight Grand Cross. He was also awarded honorary degrees from several notable educational establishments.

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