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The Elgar Society Edition Ltd is pleased to announce the publication of the 24th
volume in the Elgar Complete Edition - Volume 14: Solo Songs with Orchestra. With an official
publication date of 1 October 2012, we expect to take delivery of the volume early in the last
week of September. Elgar's solo songs are not among his best known or best loved works and
yet, among those for which he provided an orchestral accompaniment, there is a song cycle of
world renown: Sea Pictures. In view of the significance of the cycle in Elgar's output and
her close association with the work, the volume has been dedicated to Dame Janet Baker.
Considering the popularity of Sea Pictures, his
first venture into the genre, it is surprising that Elgar did not attempt to repeat his success with
further song cycles. As the volume shows, he abandoned the two subsequent song cycles he
embarked upon - those of Op.59 and Op.60 - when both were only half complete, and two of his
stand-alone orchestral songs - Follow the Colours and The Kingsway - rank
among those which many feel are better left unheard. And yet one of the other two completed
songs which make up the volume is the moodily dramatic The Wind at Dawn, his earliest
setting of words by his wife Alice and, again in the views of many, arguably his best.
One noticeable absentee from the volume is Elgar's
consummately restrained setting of Arthur Salmon's poem Pleading. Published first in
1908 an arrangement for voice and piano, it has long been believed that Elgar added an
orchestral accompaniment later the same year. But in the course of editing this volume, it
became apparent that Elgar intended his later arrangement to be performed as a song without
words, an orchestral miniature akin to his Three Bavarian Dances (which will thus
appear in Vol.23). A further discovery in the course of editing was the autograph score of the
orchestral arrangement of Follow the Colours, finally removing a long-held uncertainty
that the orchestral accompaniment might not be Elgar's own.
The volume is completed by the novelty `Smoking
Cantata', which claims to be written for a cast of thousands including a `Grand Chorus of
Repentent Smokers' but in fact contains a vocal line only for Elgar's friend and host Edward
Speyer; together with all known surviving fragments of three unfinished songs, two of which -
Ozymandias and Callicles - clearly engaged Elgar's sporadic attention over many
years, leaving us with two incomplete settings of each. Edited by Emeritus Professor Julian
Rushton, the volume also contains the customary academic apparatus of detailed source
descriptions, commentaries and an introductory foreword. Another volume containing more than
its fair share of fascinations for the academic, the performer and for those who simply enjoy
Elgar's music, it comes complete with the customary apparatus of detailed source descriptions, commentaries and an introductory foreword, and can be obtained through all good book
stores and specialist music shops, or directly from the publisher. For details, visit the How to Purchase page.
Series II : Solo Vocal Works
Publication History
- Publication date : 1 October 2012
- Publisher : Elgar Works
- ISBN : 978-1-904856-14-6 (hardback)
Detailed Description
- Editor : Julian Rushton
- Number of pages : xx + 260
- Page size : 350 mm x 250 mm (portrait)
- Binding : cloth (hardback)
- Number of illustrations : 5 (monochrome)
- Contents :
- The complete full scores, re-originated in their entirety, of :
- the song-cycle Sea Pictures, comprising Sea Slumber Song', 'In Haven', 'Sabbath Morning at Sea', 'Where Corals Lie' and 'The Swimmer';
- the completed songs of the song-cycles Op.59 ('O, soft was the song', 'Was it some golden star' and 'Twilight') and )p.60 ('The Torch' and 'The River');
- 'The Wind at Dawn', 'The Pipes of Pan', 'Follow the Colours' (Marching Song) and 'The Kingsway' (set to the trio from Pomp and Circumstance March No.4);
- An appendix containing all known sketches and fragments of three unfinished works for solo voice and orchestra : 'Callicles', 'Ozymandias' and 'Tarantella'
- A scholarly foreword recording the history of Elgar's composition of the works;
- A comparative description of all known source material;
- A comprehensive commentary detailing editorial decisions and amendments;
- The full texts of the poems set by Elgar, with editorial amendments.
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