This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we mark the passing of an era in English history with music that had its origin in the twilight of another.
Sir Edward Elgar produced no major works following the death of his wife in 1920. It was his friend and champion, George Bernard Shaw, who, in an attempt to keep one of England’s greatest composers from withering on the vine, persuaded the BBC to commission from Elgar a Third Symphony.
Elgar, who died in 1934, worked at the piece during the last year of his life, jotting down his ideas – some merely a few bars in length; others, pages in full score. As his health deteriorated, he realized he would never be able to complete the work, and he made contradictory remarks concerning his intentions over the fate of the sketches.
Another of his friends, the violinist W.H. Reed, passed many hours playing through what existed of the piece, with the composer at the piano. After Elgar’s death, Reed published 40 pages’ worth of sketches into a memoir, which kept the work at the periphery of the public consciousness.
Several attempts were made over the decades to make something more of the sketches, but musicians and musicologists have always been stopped short by the Elgar estate.
The composer Anthony Payne became interested in the fragments in 1972. For many years, he worked at a realization of the symphony, again meeting resistance from Elgar’s heirs, until it became apparent that, due to the publication of the sketches in Reed’s book, the material would soon fall into the public domain. The family opted to capitalize on what control it had left and finally authorized Payne’s efforts.
Payne’s realization was given its premiere in 1998 and granted broad exposure through performances by major orchestras, particularly in England and the United States (including the Philadelphia Orchestra), and the piece has been recorded at least four times.
The formal title is “Edward Elgar: The Sketches for Symphony No. 3 Elaborated by Anthony Payne,” or the “Elgar/Payne Symphony No. 3,” for short. It’s an uncanny piece of work, and you’ll have a chance to hear it tonight.
It’s hard to believe, but the lives of Elgar and the long-lived Elizabeth actually did overlap. In 1930, the composer was commissioned to write a “Nursery Suite” for then-Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret. And what do you know, Payne actually quotes from one of the suite’s movements, “The Waggon Passes,” to conclude what would have been Elgar’s valedictory symphony. There are also quotations from the composer’s incidental music to Laurence Binyon’s dramatic account of “King Arthur.”
Lots of history packed into this piece, then, which serves as a musical farewell – from our perspective, in more ways than one.
I hope you’ll join me for “No Payne, No Gain,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.