Elgar and “The Dream of Gerontius”
The season is underway, and we’re getting ready for a weekend of concerts that feature a piece especially close to my heart. I doubt many of you know it since it’s rarely played outside the British Isles, yet it contains music that offers some of the concert hall’s deepest spiritual experiences. I’d like to spend this column telling you a little about Elgar’s masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius. Edward Elgar was the first great English composer since Henry Purcell. Almost two hundred years elapsed between their births, causing Germans to refer to England as “The Land Without Music”. Born in 1857, we often associate Elgar with his Pomp and Circumstances marches and all things imperial. Yet he was anything but the quintessential Edwardian gentleman. He