The Music Makers Op. 69

Elgar had several commissions for choral works for the Birmingham Triennial Festival - The Dream of Gerontius (1900) The Apostles (1903), and The Kingdom (1906) are best-known. The Music Makers was commissioned for the 1912 festival. In the meantime Elgar’s life had changed dramatically. In the realm of music he had become a national figure such that new works created a sense of expectation, and newspapers carried long analyses of them. In his personal life, he had moved to London, living in a huge home in Hampstead that he named Severn House. But he was not very happy there, and his health – especially his mental health – suffered. He became prone to depression, migraines and problems with his hearing.

Despite all this, it was during this period that Elgar wrote some of his greatest works – the two symphonies (1908 and 1911) and the Violin Concerto (1910). In particular, he made it clear all three were partly autobiographical. So it was hardly surprising that he chose to set for Birmingham a text about the loneliness of the creative artist. The poet was Arthur O’Shaunessy (1844-1881). And moreover, Elgar chose to illustrate passages using self-quotation. He was not the first composer to do this – Richard Strauss used self-quotation heavily in Ein Heldenleben (1898) which had attracted much criticism for doing it.

This is the main problem with The Music Makers. Elgar’s style was changing, becoming more ‘spare’, and would culminate in the Cello Concerto of 1919. Part of that change involves a heavy reliance on very short sequential figures (much the same happens in later Fauré) and this newer style contrasts with the more melodic style of the works Elgar quotes. This contrast can be too much for some, and The Music Makers has always been the poor relation among Elgar’s mature works.