"Pomp and Circumstance" March #1

(Note: for what we're talking about today, skip ahead to 4:55.)

In honor of the thousands of college seniors that put on their caps and gowns in the past week or so (decidedly prematurely to them, of course), today's post is on a piece that has grown to be synonymous with the American graduation.  In fact, the composer of said graduation theme is pretty much the perfect embodiment of the "Plug Away At What You Love And Eventually It'll Pay Off" school of the American dream.  Shame he was British, that.

It's so co-o-o-old.

Edward Elgar (eventually to be Sir Edward William Edgar, 1st Baronet, but these things take time) was born in 1857 in Lower Broadheath, outside of Worcester, England.  Lower Broadheath is just about the most English of English places, all hedgerows, picturesque gardens, and Emily Brontë characters singing about the wiley, windy moors.  Edward's father was a piano tuner, violinist and organist (and so it can be said that music just might have been in his blood).  His mother was a Roman Catholic, which immediately put young Edward at a bit of a different footing in the Anglican country England was by the mid-19th century.  She did, however, also support the arts, and so Edward begun taking violin and piano lessons as a young boy and had composed his first works by the age of ten or so.  In the first of what was to become a series of minor setbacks continuing for the first forty-odd years of his life, Edward's dreams of going to the Leipzig Conservatory were smashed by simply not being able to afford to go.

Instead, young-man Edward took up several jobs in Worcester including (but not limited to) the conductor of the residents' band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum and the Professor of Violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen.  Both positions were instrumental (if you'll excuse my language) in cultivating Elgar's compositional sensibilities, but it must be said that there must have been something in the water in Worcester.  Either that, or English gentlemen had an overwhelming propensity for siring blind male children, because that is a very specific school.  In 1889, he married his wife, Alice - eight years his senior, and from a family who most decidedly did not approve of her marrying a musician/composer with no apparent future.  Theirs was a rather disappointingly normal marriage (particularly for artistic types)- they loved each other very much, and she managed his business affairs until her death.  However, though Elgar worked continuously, he could not help but prove Alice's family correct - he never seemed to catch a break.

If this isn't your idea of turn-of-the-century England, you're doing it wrong.

Until 1899.  That was the year in which his Enigma Variations were premiered.  Each variation was based on the personalities and nicknames of Elgar's close friends, and the most famous of these is the "Nimrod" variation.  Unfortunately for us, "Nimrod" as a nickname was much more positive back in The Day, being the name of an ancient Hebrew king known for being a mighty hunter (and the friend in question's last name was Jaeger, meaning 'Hunter' in German).  In any event, the variations were instantly loved.  His next large work was The Dream of Gerontius, an oratorio on the scale not seen for many years (an oratorio being, for our purposes, a large concert piece for solo singers, choir, an orchestra).  His "Pomp and Circumstance" March #1 was premiered in 1901, by which point he was firmly ensconced in the realm of English musical greats.  Elgar was knighted in 1904, which was the first of many honors bestowed upon him by the British government.  However, after the death of his wife in 1920, he did not focus solely on composition for the rest of his life (though he did make symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel as well as write several smaller-scale pieces).  He died in 1934 at the age of 76 of cancer, one of the most beloved of English composers as well as a perfect example of dogged determination.  After all, it is not every day that a foreign composer creates an American musical icon.

I mean, how much more hopeful and glorious can you get?

The five "Pomp and Circumstance" marches were composed between 1901 and 1930.  The title was taken from Act III, Scene III of Shakespeare's Othello - "The pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war!" - and since the first of these was written before World War I was even a thought, the relative naiveté of the idea can be forgiven.  The marches themselves are an example of ternary form (I promise this is important!), which can also be called A-B-A form.  We've seen ternary form in da capo arias before, in which the first and third sections are identical (or at least close to it) and the second section, sometimes called the trio, is somehow in contrast to 1 and 3.  It is the trio of the first "Pomp and Circumstance" march that is the basis for the graduation march in just about every high school and college in America.  The melody of this trio is called "Land of Hope and Glory," and in the original, features a female soloist (in the Disney version, it is sung by Kathleen Battle, for those of you who are interested in such things).  It was first played at an American graduation in 1905, during a graduation-cum-Elgar Festival at Yale, though it was played as the recessional there, while it is played as the processional just about everywhere else.  And just to rub it in everyone's faces that they were first, Yale to this day uses the march as its recessional.  But then again, I'd be a little proud too if I had started such a huge trend.

In this age of, y'know, economic uncertainty, a job market that's gone down the drain, and general anxiety about the future, it's nice to know that Edward Elgar managed to make it in the world due to sheer perserverance.  But then again, in that case, perhaps I should just move to England.  Seems to have worked out for him.

Further listening:

Like pomp, perhaps even a little circumstance, and the English?  Try "Jupiter," from Holst's The Planets (performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Levine): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo

Like Elgar, but perhaps a little less of the aforementioned adjectives?  Try the "Nimrod" variation, also performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (but conducted by David Barenboim this time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE

Like Elgar, and also the fact that love songs have existed for as long as there have been music?  Try "Salut d'Amour", written for Elgar's wife Alice:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSv3iApK3DQ