Edward Elgar and His World (66 page)

We shall henceforth listen to the Demons' Chorus with a new imagery flashing across our minds… . We shall have a new appreciation of the “con derisione” that Elgar, with a prophetic intuition, has written in the score of “Gerontius” over the reiterated “gods” [musical example inserted here]—And at the end of it all the Demons' theme, as in the oratorio, goes panting and growling into the depths of hell.
⁷²

Other critics observed a heightened sense of violence in Elgar's own performances of the “Demon's Chorus” from
Gerontius
around this time. Herbert Thompson, reviewing for the
Yorkshire Post
a Leeds Choral Union performance of
The Dream of Gerontius
(programmed alongside
The Spirit of England
, complete) under Elgar's baton on October 31, 1917, noted, “The only thing that jarred was the nasal tone in the Demons' chorus, which was so exaggerated that it ceased to be impressive, and was merely grotesque”; moreover, the critic records that he had begun to notice an increasing cynicism in Elgar's delivery of this passage at least six months earlier.
⁷³
In his response to
The Spirit of England
, however, Thompson made a point of trying to rescue “The Fourth of August” from the taint of anti-German propaganda, as his comments on the premiere of the complete work, conducted in Birmingham by Appleby Matthews, suggest:

The general character of the poems by Lawrence Benyon [sic], which Sir Edward Elgar has chosen to set, is that of patriotism, which rings true, the more so since it is utterly devoid of vulgar bluster, and is dignified and restrained in sentiment… . There is a touch of indignation in an outburst concerning the barren creed of blood and iron, but there is no indication of any futile and childish “Hymn of Hate,” either in the verse or in the music, which never loses control or degenerates into mere abuse.
⁷⁴

Elgar's own words on the subject in his June 1917 letter to Newman, give us a sense of how his thinking on the war had changed over the three years since his 1914 comment to Schuster (yet another of Elgar's friends with German origins), quoted above, and a year after the catastrophe of the Somme. It is the imagery of the madhouse that now seems most eloquent to him, of which he had had firsthand experience as a young man, providing musical distractions to inmates of Powick Lunatic Asylum. The careful distinctions he draws between the innocent, the obliviously mad, and the knowingly corrupt and depraved is a telling one, as is the image of the remnants of noble souls overtaken by demons who, by implication, respect no national boundaries. In this the composer echoed sentiments expressed on the debasement of German culture in another of Binyon's poems from
The Winnowing-Fan
, the seventh, titled “To Goethe.”
⁷⁵
But Elgar also mirrors the thoughts of another writer with whom he is not so readily associated—H. G. Wells (1866–1946), who had delivered the following statement in his pamphlet
The War That Will End War
, issued in August 1914:
⁷⁶

We are fighting Germany. But we are fighting without any hatred of the German people. We do not intend to destroy either their freedom or their unity. But we have to destroy an evil system of government and the mental and material corruption that has got hold of the German imagination and taken possession of German life… . This is already the vastest war in history. It is war not of nations, but of mankind. It is a war to exorcise a world madness and end an age.
⁷⁷

That Elgar shared Wells's vision of an impending Armageddon brought on by the materialism and corruption of those who would cast themselves as gods, and requiring the sacrifice of heroes, is further suggested by his song “Fight for Right” (London, Elkin, 1916)—a setting of Brynhild's words on sending Sigurd off to deeds of glory in William Morris's epic poem
The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs
(1876), which was based on the same sources as Wagner's
Gbtterdammerung.
⁷⁸

Elgar had
The Dream of Gerontius
almost constantly in mind through the early years of the war. On September 8, 1914, Alice wrote in her diary, “It wd. have been ‘Gerontius' tonight at Worcester Fest[ival]—but for Hun Kaiser”; and on November 19, Charles Mott sang the “Proficiscere” from
Gerontius
during an organ recital at Worcester in memory of Lord Roberts, colonel in chief of the empire troops in France, who had succumbed to pneumonia while visiting Indian soldiers at St. Omer. Elgar could not attend the recital, but approved organist Ivor Atkins's “excellent choice.”
⁷⁹
In February the following year, just after Elgar had begun work on the Binyon settings, Alice noted that he met with Clara Butt “to go through Gerontius” in preparation for her first performance of it at the Royal Albert Hall on the twenty-seventh of that month, in the role of the Guardian Angel.
⁸⁰
In March 1916, he and Alice met again with Clara Butt, this time to plan what would become one of the most extraordinary musical events of the war.
⁸¹
At a time when “music-making on a large scale had almost completely ceased,” as Basil Maine recalled, and nocturnal transportation around London was restricted and hazardous due to the blackout, Butt's plan was to present a week of six consecutive oratorio performances at the Queen's Hall (preceded by two performances in Leeds and Bradford respectively) of
The Dream of Gerontius
and the second and third movements of
The Spirit of England
(their initial performances) to raise funds for the Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England.
⁸²
The London performances took place in the week of May 8–13, 1916, with John Booth and Agnes Nicholls taking the solo parts in “To Women” and “For the Fallen” respectively, and Clara Butt herself taking the Guardian Angel in
Gerontius.

The success of these performances was remarkable. King George V, Queen Mary, and Queen Alexandra attended twice, and in total the week of performances netted the then considerable sum of £2,707.
⁸³
In a letter to Lady Elgar, R. A. Streatfeild described the Thursday night performance as “wonderful & unforgettable … I still feel as if I were vibrating all over.”
⁸⁴
For Elgar, this must have been an overwhelming experience. His
Dream of Gerontius
was almost certainly given in its original form (that is, not the bowdlerized version produced for performance in a consecrated Anglican space) at these concerts. With the first movement of
The Spirit of England
, “The Fourth of August,” still unfinished, he must have been greatly encouraged by the reception accorded his interpretations of the Binyon poems, not least by the publicity put out by Clara Butt for these performances, the main points of which were summarized as follows by her authorized biographer:

She had other motives in mind in this unusual enterprise besides the obvious ones of raising money for a patriotic cause. She had a religious motive as well. She felt it was time that the people who were passing through the sorrows and anxieties of war should hear music that was definitely spiritual, and that English art should try to express the attitude of the English mind to the life after death.

She determined to challenge London with something really beautiful and mystic. “We are a nation in mourning,” she said, discussing the project. “In this tremendous upheaval, when youth is dying for us, I want to give the people a week of beautiful thoughts, for I am convinced that no nation can be great that is not truly religious. I believe that the War has given us a new attitude towards death, that many who had no faith before are now hungering to believe that after death there is life.”
⁸⁵

Though the first movement of
The Spirit of England
—the most explicit in its connections with
The Dream of Gerontius
—was not heard at these performances, the combination of
Gerontius
, “To Women,” and “For the Fallen” was a powerful one, as a letter written to Elgar by Sidney Colvin's wife, Frances, after the Monday afternoon performance confirms:

How can I ever tell you dear Edward what we felt today or how deeply moved we both were—it is all quite wonderful & just what one wants at this time—& at all times—it will live always—“For the Fallen” especially will always be the one great inspiration of the War. My heart is full of warm gratitude to you—but my eyes are sore with
tears
and I can't write—but we both send you our heartfelt love and congratulations—Bless you… . How lovely the choir was! Sidney has a bad cold but
nothing
would have kept him from going.
⁸⁶

These Red Cross concerts fused
The Spirit of England
with
Gerontius
in the public imagination, forming the two works into a diptych that provided a communal focus for grief and prayer and assumed a quasi-liturgical function. As Maine relates:

The music of “Gerontius,” during that week in the spring of 1916, shone with a new significance and became
a symbol of intercession;
while in “The Spirit of England” was seen, transfigured, the face of human suffering, and there was as yet no sign of disillusion in that face—not yet had the broken songs of the soldier-poets been heard.
⁸⁷

Clara Butt's claim that death and the future life were among the most pressing issues thrown up by the war matched the perceptions of Anglican clergy, of whom “Is it well with the fallen?” had become one of the most frequently asked theological questions both by laity on the home front and among the troops at the western front.
⁸⁸
For many, the attempts by the national Church to meet the complex spiritual needs of the people were found wanting. Despite individual acts of extraordinary heroism, Anglican chaplains were deemed to be less than fully prepared for their ministry at the front: it was the Roman Catholic padres who earned a reputation for supreme courage, risking their lives to administer extreme unction to the dying while the Anglican clergy, initially at least, were commanded to stay behind the lines and generally did as they were told, without demur. For at least one soldier, confession and absolution meant that “the Church of Rome sent a man into action mentally and spiritually cleansed,” and thus prepared for death, whereas “the Church of England could only offer you a cigarette.”
⁸⁹
In almost two years of war, the violent and premature deaths of so many young men overseas, whose bodies and personal effects were often irrecoverable by their grieving families, rendered traditional mourning practices and rituals irrelevant, inadequate, or impossible. At home, ostentatious expressions of grief by relatives were discouraged as unpatriotic, as was the placing of memorial plaques in churches until after the war for fear of lowering morale. The result was widespread, chronic, and unresolved grief among those “left behind,” for which release was craved no matter how temporary or what conventional or unconventional guise it might take.
⁹⁰
In these extreme, highly charged times, the harder lines of British Protestantism gradually softened in a variety of directions—toward Catholicism, spiritualism, and an evolving ecumenism.
⁹¹
Public prayer for the departed, for example, still stigmatized by the abuses of the medieval chantry system, had not commonly been a part of Anglican worship in 1914, but by 1917 the demand for such orisons had persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to produce a new Form of Prayers, including a discretionary prayer for the dead; even then, one or two of his bishops protested that such prayers were contrary to scripture and Anglican teachings.
⁹²
Anglo-Catholics welcomed this shift in the Church's position, openly offering requiems and issuing cards that bore the portraits of soldiers for whom the requiem was to be given.
⁹³
In this context the early discussion of plans for a temporary monument to the dead in Whitehall is revealing: initially Lloyd George's idea was to build a “catafalque … past which the troops would march and salute the dead”; Lord Curzon, however, considered this “more essentially suitable to the Latin temperament.” Lutyens was finally instructed to produce a nondenominational structure, and it was his suggestion that the name be changed from catafalque to cenotaph, meaning “empty tomb” and implying resurrection, but pointedly avoiding association with the Latin mass for the dead.
⁹⁴

For musically aware listeners of the time, references to the motifs from
Gerontius
associated with “Christ's Peace” and “Christ's Agony” that run through
The Spirit of England
articulated a further meaningful theme for those at the front and at home. A British soldier was called upon to sacrifice himself for the greater good (to be willing to kill and be killed), but also, for some, to atone for a sense of national sin—the selfish materialism, disunity, and moral dissipation of the older generations. Binyon hints at this in the second stanza, line 3, of “The Fourth of August.” Similarly, the protagonist of H. G. Wells's wartime novel,
Mr. Britling Sees It Through
(1916), is haunted by the notion of “redemption by the shedding of blood” once war becomes a reality.
⁹⁵
Wells describes Mr. Britling musing on a few such home truths—among them the complacency of the British government before the war—in the opening scenes of this semiautobiographical novel:

Not only was [Mr. Britling] a pampered, undisciplined sort of human being; he was living in a pampered, undisciplined sort of community. The two things went together… . This confounded Irish business, one could laugh at it in the daylight, but was it indeed a thing to laugh at? We were drifting lazily towards a real disaster. We had a government that seemed guided by the principles of Mr. Micawber, and adopted for its watchword “Wait and see.” For months now this trouble had grown more threatening. Suppose presently that civil war broke out in Ireland! Suppose presently that these irritated, mishandled suffragettes did some desperate irreconcilable thing, assassinated for example! That bomb in Westminster Abbey the other day might have killed a dozen people… . Suppose the smouldering criticism of British rule in India and Egypt were fanned by administrative indiscretions into a flame.
⁹⁶