Sir Edward Elgar,
The Dream of Gerontius, op.38
Cardinal Newman’s Roman Catholic poem, The Dream of Gerontius (1865), depicts an ordinary man’s death, and the subsequent journey of his soul in the afterlife. Elgar, who was also a Catholic, set the poem as a commission for the Birmingham Festival in 1900. The name ‘Gerontius’ comes simply from the Greek γέρων (‘old man’): he is an ‘Everyman’, and while the text is embedded deeply in Catholic faith, what it explores concerns all of us, regardless of religious belief. In Elgar’s words:
'I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner, a repentant one of course but still no end of a worldly man in his life, and now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with Church tunes and rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded Romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear one’s self away from a well-to-do world than from a cloister.' [1]
The orchestral Prelude presents musical ideas that will thread their way through the entire work. Elgar’s publisher and friend, Auguste Jaeger, published an analysis of motifs with names such as ‘Judgment’, ‘Fear’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Sleep’, ‘Miserere’, ‘Despair’ and ‘Committal’. These titles suggest leitmotifs akin to Wagnerian music drama. Elgar’s debt to Wagner, especially Parsifal, is huge, however the relationship between music and text transcends the type of literal labelling which was fashionable in music journalism a century ago.
We first meet Gerontius on his deathbed, surrounded by friends. Elgar abridged Newman’s poem substantially, emphasising the humanity of Gerontius and cutting some of the lengthy descriptive material concerning saints and angels. (This was done for musical reasons, however, and not to appease a largely non-Catholic audience). The depiction of a dying man is vivid: Gerontius begs God ‘to be with me, in my extremity’, and asks his friends to pray for him. He revives for a while, thinking of what is to come, while his friends plead with God for his salvation. Gerontius affirms his faith passionately, leading to a short orchestral interlude taking us to his final death agony. His friends recall God’s mercy towards Noah, Job, Moses and David before Gerontius dies quietly, singing ‘Into Thy hands, O Lord’. In the final section of Part One, Gerontius’ priest and friends bless him and call on him to ‘go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul’.
Part Two shows us the journey which Gerontius’ Soul must now make. We here learn not of a rosy-tinted path to Heaven, but a complex journey to Purgatory, via encounters with demons, angelicals, The Angel of the Agony, and a momentary vision of God. Throughout, the Soul is guided by its guardian angel, reminiscent of Beatrice from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Soul marvels at the ‘inexpressive lightness’ and ‘sense of freedom’ of its new existence, and hears the approach of the Angel. He (sung by mezzo-soprano) reassures the Soul of salvation, celebrating that ‘My work is done’. The Soul questions the Angel about its impending judgement, and both celebrate its lack of fear in the only duet of the work.
The serenity, however, is short lived. Soon we hear the ‘fierce hubbub’ of the demons ‘close on the judgement-court’, claiming those souls destined for hell using music developed from the ‘death agony’ section of Part One. Elgar unleashes the full fury of orchestra and chorus representing the evil spirits, making a perfect dramatic contrast with what occurs before and afterwards.
Gerontius’ Soul, however, is unmoved by the demons, and speeds towards its judgement to the sound of angelicals proclaiming the hymn ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’. At first the sounds are mysterious and ethereal, and the Soul recalls in them the rushing of ‘the summer wind among the lofty pines’. The intensity grows, leading to a full-blooded rendition of the hymn, culminating in the final verse sung by eight-part chorus. After this scene of triumph, the actual judgement is more complex. The Soul hears the voices of friends on Earth, then encounters The Angel of the Agony, who intercedes for him, calling on God to ‘spare these souls which are so dear to Thee’. The guardian Angel – knowing the verdict in advance – gives thanks that the ‘happy suff’ring soul’ is safe. Finally the Soul approaches its momentary encounter with the face of God, when Elgar instructs that ‘for one moment must every instrument exert its fullest force’. The Soul accepts eagerly the period it must now spend in the ‘lowest deep’ and ‘lone nightwatches’ of Purgatory, after which it will be able to ‘rise and go above’ to see God ‘in the truth of everlasting day’. It hears the voices of souls in Purgatory, singing the opening verse of Psalm 90, ‘Lord, Thou hast been our refuge’. The Angel now sings for the last time, escorting the Soul into Purgatory, before bidding ‘farewell, but not for ever’. Angelicals sing ‘Praise to the Holiest’ above, blending with the pleading of the Souls in Purgatory, and the music ends in utter serenity.
Setting Newman’s Dream to music was a labour of love for Elgar, and a deeply personal act. As a child, Elgar saw three siblings die: in remembrance of his younger brother Frederic Joseph, he received an engraving of the Death of St Joseph, inscribed: ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph, pray for me in my own agony’, words he would one day set in The Dream of Gerontius. He had known the poem since at least 1885; four years later, he was given a copy as a wedding present by the priest of his home parish church, St. George’s, Worcester. The first performance in Birmingham Town Hall on 3 October 1900, was a disaster: the performers, including distinguished conductor Hans Richter, were woefully unprepared for the music’s complexity. Elgar was utterly depressed:
' I’ve worked hard for forty years, and at the last Providence denies me a decent hearing of my work; so I submit … I have allowed my heart to open once - it is now shut against every religious feeling and every soft, gentle impulse for ever.'
Sensitive critics, however, recognised the music’s quality. Thompson, in The Yorkshire Post, declared: ‘It is the most powerful and profound utterance of one of the most individual composers’. Jaeger told Elgar that ‘since Parsifal nothing of this mystic, religious kind of music has appeared to my knowledge that displays the same power and beauty as yours.’ The break-through happened not in Britain, but in Düsseldorf on 19 December 1901, where Elgar declared that the performance, given in German translation by conductor Julius Buths, ‘completely bore out my own idea of the work’ and ‘disproves the idea that my work is too difficult’. The Dream was soon recognised as a masterpiece, confirming Elgar’s own judgement:
'This is the best of me. For the rest, I ate, I drank , I slept, I loved, I hated as another. My life was as a vapour, and is not. But this is what I saw, and know. This, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.'
Dr James Ross
[1] Letter: Elgar to Jaeger, 28 August 1900. Gerontius is also the name of a fourth-century bishop, and the Latin form of the obscure early medieval Saint Gerent, or Geraint, of Cornwall.
Cardinal Newman’s Roman Catholic poem, The Dream of Gerontius (1865), depicts an ordinary man’s death, and the subsequent journey of his soul in the afterlife. Elgar, who was also a Catholic, set the poem as a commission for the Birmingham Festival in 1900. The name ‘Gerontius’ comes simply from the Greek γέρων (‘old man’): he is an ‘Everyman’, and while the text is embedded deeply in Catholic faith, what it explores concerns all of us, regardless of religious belief. In Elgar’s words:
'I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner, a repentant one of course but still no end of a worldly man in his life, and now brought to book. Therefore I’ve not filled his part with Church tunes and rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded Romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak. It is, I imagine, much more difficult to tear one’s self away from a well-to-do world than from a cloister.' [1]
The orchestral Prelude presents musical ideas that will thread their way through the entire work. Elgar’s publisher and friend, Auguste Jaeger, published an analysis of motifs with names such as ‘Judgment’, ‘Fear’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Sleep’, ‘Miserere’, ‘Despair’ and ‘Committal’. These titles suggest leitmotifs akin to Wagnerian music drama. Elgar’s debt to Wagner, especially Parsifal, is huge, however the relationship between music and text transcends the type of literal labelling which was fashionable in music journalism a century ago.
We first meet Gerontius on his deathbed, surrounded by friends. Elgar abridged Newman’s poem substantially, emphasising the humanity of Gerontius and cutting some of the lengthy descriptive material concerning saints and angels. (This was done for musical reasons, however, and not to appease a largely non-Catholic audience). The depiction of a dying man is vivid: Gerontius begs God ‘to be with me, in my extremity’, and asks his friends to pray for him. He revives for a while, thinking of what is to come, while his friends plead with God for his salvation. Gerontius affirms his faith passionately, leading to a short orchestral interlude taking us to his final death agony. His friends recall God’s mercy towards Noah, Job, Moses and David before Gerontius dies quietly, singing ‘Into Thy hands, O Lord’. In the final section of Part One, Gerontius’ priest and friends bless him and call on him to ‘go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul’.
Part Two shows us the journey which Gerontius’ Soul must now make. We here learn not of a rosy-tinted path to Heaven, but a complex journey to Purgatory, via encounters with demons, angelicals, The Angel of the Agony, and a momentary vision of God. Throughout, the Soul is guided by its guardian angel, reminiscent of Beatrice from Dante’s Divine Comedy. The Soul marvels at the ‘inexpressive lightness’ and ‘sense of freedom’ of its new existence, and hears the approach of the Angel. He (sung by mezzo-soprano) reassures the Soul of salvation, celebrating that ‘My work is done’. The Soul questions the Angel about its impending judgement, and both celebrate its lack of fear in the only duet of the work.
The serenity, however, is short lived. Soon we hear the ‘fierce hubbub’ of the demons ‘close on the judgement-court’, claiming those souls destined for hell using music developed from the ‘death agony’ section of Part One. Elgar unleashes the full fury of orchestra and chorus representing the evil spirits, making a perfect dramatic contrast with what occurs before and afterwards.
Gerontius’ Soul, however, is unmoved by the demons, and speeds towards its judgement to the sound of angelicals proclaiming the hymn ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’. At first the sounds are mysterious and ethereal, and the Soul recalls in them the rushing of ‘the summer wind among the lofty pines’. The intensity grows, leading to a full-blooded rendition of the hymn, culminating in the final verse sung by eight-part chorus. After this scene of triumph, the actual judgement is more complex. The Soul hears the voices of friends on Earth, then encounters The Angel of the Agony, who intercedes for him, calling on God to ‘spare these souls which are so dear to Thee’. The guardian Angel – knowing the verdict in advance – gives thanks that the ‘happy suff’ring soul’ is safe. Finally the Soul approaches its momentary encounter with the face of God, when Elgar instructs that ‘for one moment must every instrument exert its fullest force’. The Soul accepts eagerly the period it must now spend in the ‘lowest deep’ and ‘lone nightwatches’ of Purgatory, after which it will be able to ‘rise and go above’ to see God ‘in the truth of everlasting day’. It hears the voices of souls in Purgatory, singing the opening verse of Psalm 90, ‘Lord, Thou hast been our refuge’. The Angel now sings for the last time, escorting the Soul into Purgatory, before bidding ‘farewell, but not for ever’. Angelicals sing ‘Praise to the Holiest’ above, blending with the pleading of the Souls in Purgatory, and the music ends in utter serenity.
Setting Newman’s Dream to music was a labour of love for Elgar, and a deeply personal act. As a child, Elgar saw three siblings die: in remembrance of his younger brother Frederic Joseph, he received an engraving of the Death of St Joseph, inscribed: ‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph, pray for me in my own agony’, words he would one day set in The Dream of Gerontius. He had known the poem since at least 1885; four years later, he was given a copy as a wedding present by the priest of his home parish church, St. George’s, Worcester. The first performance in Birmingham Town Hall on 3 October 1900, was a disaster: the performers, including distinguished conductor Hans Richter, were woefully unprepared for the music’s complexity. Elgar was utterly depressed:
' I’ve worked hard for forty years, and at the last Providence denies me a decent hearing of my work; so I submit … I have allowed my heart to open once - it is now shut against every religious feeling and every soft, gentle impulse for ever.'
Sensitive critics, however, recognised the music’s quality. Thompson, in The Yorkshire Post, declared: ‘It is the most powerful and profound utterance of one of the most individual composers’. Jaeger told Elgar that ‘since Parsifal nothing of this mystic, religious kind of music has appeared to my knowledge that displays the same power and beauty as yours.’ The break-through happened not in Britain, but in Düsseldorf on 19 December 1901, where Elgar declared that the performance, given in German translation by conductor Julius Buths, ‘completely bore out my own idea of the work’ and ‘disproves the idea that my work is too difficult’. The Dream was soon recognised as a masterpiece, confirming Elgar’s own judgement:
'This is the best of me. For the rest, I ate, I drank , I slept, I loved, I hated as another. My life was as a vapour, and is not. But this is what I saw, and know. This, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.'
Dr James Ross
[1] Letter: Elgar to Jaeger, 28 August 1900. Gerontius is also the name of a fourth-century bishop, and the Latin form of the obscure early medieval Saint Gerent, or Geraint, of Cornwall.
