Edward Elgar

From Philosopedia

Edward (William) Elgar (Sir) (2 June 1857 - 23 February 1934)

Elgar, known to most as a composer who was Roman Catholic, may not have been as religious as most have thought.

He was born in Lower Broadheath near Worcester, Worcestershire, England. The fourth of six children (Henry, Frederick, Francis, Lucy, Susannah - there may have been an 8th sibling), he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic. Ann, his mother, had converted to Catholicism shortly before his birth. His father was a piano tuner and music dealer.

Self-taught in music, he got a job when 22 as bandmaster of the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, where he is said to have enjoyed playing violin and the works of Antonin Dvořák. At the St. George's Roman Catholic Church n Worcester, he became the organist.

When 29, he met (Caroline) Alice Roberts, daughter of a Major-General, who wrote verse and fiction. She was one of his piano pupils. The two married against her family's wishes when he was 32, they moved to London to be close to the center of British musical life, then returned to Great Malvern for financial reasons. She became a Catholic, and they had a child, Carice.

The Enigma Variations (1899) and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (1900) helped make him a leading figure in English music and after the Elgar Festival (London, 1904) he was made a Knight Bachelor and in 1933 he was promoted within the Royal Victorian Order to Knight Grand Cross, at which time his title became 'Sir Edward Elgar Bt OM GCVO'. His further works included oratorios, symphonies, concertos, and incidental music. From 1923 to 1927, he lived in the village of Kempsey, where he was made Master of the King's Musick.

He is best-known for the Pomp and Circumstances Marches (1901), after which he was asked to set the first march to words by A. C. Benson as a Coronation Ode to mark the coronation of King Edward VII.

His portrait appears on the Bank of England £20 note.

According to NNDB, an "intelligence aggregator," Elgar was bisexual and is believed to have had a homosexual affair with August Jaeger.

The Elgar Society suggests his Catholicism was mainly nominal. When The Dream of Gerontius failed, he remarked, "I always knew God was against art. . . . I have allowed my heart to open once - it is now shut against every religious feelings." As a youth, he attended (Anglican) Worcester Cathedral services, admiring the muic and architecture. According to the Society, Elgar died of a malignant tumor:

• As he grew older, his belief gradually withered. Although on his deathbed he is reported to have reaffirmed his commitment to the Roman Catholic faith and, while unconscious, received the last rites, he had not attended a church service for many a year. He claimed to have no belief in a life after death and to have taken exception to the dogma of the Catholic liturgy. The ambivalence of his faith makes it somehow fitting that, while he and Alice are buried in St Wulstan's Catholic Church at Little Malvern, his memorial window is in Worcester Cathedral.