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Elgar first became friendly with Lawrence Binyon, the celebrated British First World
War poet, through his setting of three of Binyon's poems as The
Spirit of England, Elgar's last cantata first performed in 1917. When, towards the end
of 1922, Binyon was commissioned by London's Old Vic theatre to write a play on the life of
King Arthur, Binyon turned to Elgar to provide incidental music for the play. Elgar
responded somewhat reluctantly, claiming that since Alice's death in 1920 his ability to compose
had also died. He nevertheless produced a substantial score for the play which he himself
conducted at the play's premiere at the Old Vic in March 1923.
Like most incidental music, the score is limited both by the size of orchestra that could be
accommodated in the theatre and by the confines of the play itself, in places requiring snatches
of no more than a few bars in length. But Elgar wrote more substantial introductions to all but
one of the play's nine scenes. It is a suite formed from six of these which are usually heard
today.
Ignore the incidental music tag - the label is inappropriate, for the score contains some of
Elgar's most powerful and convincing post-1920 music. (Michael Kennedy, in his book
A Portrait of Elgar, describes it as 'a superb
score'.) The introductions to scenes 2 (Arthur and Sir Bedivere) and 8
(Arthur's Journey to Avalon), the latter a variant of the former, capture both the
majesty of medieval knighthood and the mystery of the holy grail, while the introduction to scene
4 (The Banqueting Hall at Westminster) is set to become more widely known:
Elgar reworked it to form the basis of the second movement of his
Third Symphony which composer Anthony Payne has been commissioned
to complete.
This is an underrated work, rarely performed in the concert hall but well worth hearing.
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