Edward Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius was nearly a lost cause

Edward Elgar’s oratorio Dream of Gerontius is one of those musical creations that could have sunk without trace, but survived and flourished despite serious early and almost fatal setbacks.  

Robin Nelson, who will be conducting the Swindon Choral Society’s performance in the College Chapel on Saturday, March 29, believes its survival and lasting popularity is purely down to its outstanding meld of music and characters: “It is certainly Elgar’s finest choral work.”

The first setback was its disastrous opening performance.  Commissioned in the summer of 1898 by the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, Elgar had two years to complete the work.

But he was busy finishing his Enigma Variations and Sea Pictures, and left himself a year to complete the work. Indeed he decided he could not make the deadline and was only with difficulty persuaded to try.

During that year, the dynamic young conductor for the first performance died of pneumonia and Elgar argued over changes to the score with his publisher.

The orchestration and parts were finally ready on August 3 – with the premiere due on October 30 in Birmingham Town Hall.   It was under-rehearsed and chaotic and the critics were decidedly under-whelmed.

It was rescued by performances in Germany put on by a festival director who had heard the first performance and recognised the work’s true worth.

In Britain there was, however, a second set-back that might have finished Gerontius off for good.  

The words Elgar set to music were a poem written by John Henry Newman after his conversion to Roman Catholicism.  His Dante-inspired poem of the same name is the prayer of a dying man with angelic and demonic responses.

The doctrinal intricacies of purgatory and death raised a storm of protest from Anglicans and others. The Dean of Gloucester banned the work until 1910 and the composer Charles Stanford went public with the view that the work “stinks of incense”.  The Dean of Peterborough banned it well into the 1930s.

Gerontius was rescued again – this time by Elgar’s decision to accept changes to the words.  It is this less controversial, doctrinally bowdlerised version we can hear in the College Chapel on March 29.

Robin Nelson, who was Director of Music at Marlborough College for 21 years, not only has the voices of the Swindon Choral Society for this performance, but has assembled a strong cast of soloists.

Gaynor Keeble (mezzo soprano) sings the Angel.  She sang Auntie in last year’s greatly acclaimed production of “Grimes on the Beach” at Aldeburgh to mark Benjamin Britten’s centenary.

James Oxley (tenor) who sings Gerontius, is as much at home singing the great choral works of Haydn and Mozart as he is on the stages of Europe’s opera houses.

Quentin Hayes (baritone) who will sing the Priest and Angel of the Agony, was for five years a principal artist at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and has a string of recordings to his name.

The line-up is completed by Simon Dinsdale (organ) and players from the Oxford Symphony Orchestra.  And that will be a welcome reunion as Robin Nelson was the orchestra’s permanent conductor in the 1970s.

 

Tickets are £10 from Sound Knowledge.  Or from the Marlborough Brandt Group (01672 861 116) – for which charity this performance is raising funds.