Six miles from Worcester on the Hereford road, at the northern end of the Malvern Hills, a narrow, winding lane rises steeply through woods to an old cottage called Birchwood Lodge.
Sheltered to the west by the trees, it commands spectacular views east over the Severn Valley. A scarcely legible plaque commemorates the composer Edward Elgar as the occupant of the cottage between 1898 and 1901.
When I stopped by, the present resident, perhaps an architect, sat working at a desk by the window, and studiously ignored my pleading look to be allowed in to cast my eye over the tiny upstairs study where my favourite piece of music had been written. For it was mainly here, by the "lovely woods I'm madly devoted to", that Elgar composed his choral masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius, in 1900. In this work too "there is ever a breath of the West Country invading Elgar's music", as his fellow composer Arnold Bax put it. Behind the cottage the trees waved and sighed in the breeze on a cold, clear, sunny February morning. I was reminded of Elgar's words from Birchwood during the composition of Gerontius: "Am I singing the trees' music, or are they singing mine?"
In the late 1880s, Elgar had acquired a copy of Cardinal Newman's poem concerning a man's death and the progress of his soul in the afterlife. A devout Catholic in the early part of his life, Elgar was deeply touched by the mystical, meditative spirit of the poem, and his musical imagination was gripped by it over the course of many years. So when he received a commission from the Birmingham Festival in January 1900, it took him just five months to compose the work, and a further two months to complete the orchestration.
He had written his "heart's blood into the score", he said; it had come "out of my insidest inside". But the music which emerged from this source was not exclusively the expression of the composer's religious beliefs and a "good, healthy, full-bloodied romantic remembered worldliness". Some of it is imbued with the spirit of Elgar's frequently tormented self, of "Me when ill".
The première on October 3rd, 1900 was a disaster: as Elgar complained bitterly, neither conductor nor choir knew the work properly because of a shortage of rehearsal time. Despite this, Gerontius, together with the Enigma Variations of 1899, established Elgar's reputation at home and abroad. Both displayed his gift for tunefulness and rich orchestration, as well as the warmth, nobility and emotionality which are particularly characteristic of his music.
It is as a musical drama seamlessly unfolding through a series of musical peaks within a melodically integrated structure that Gerontius is most satisfying, perhaps more so than his later oratorios The Apostles and The Kingdom. This holds true from the thrilling orchestral prelude, with its two mighty climaxes, to the beauty and solace of the Angel's Farewell.
Along the way we encounter the dissonant, sneering outbursts of demons and then, in total contrast, the "harmonious hymning" of angelic voices in a chorus of Handelian splendour, "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" ("The great Blaze", as Elgar referred to it). For the chorister it can be difficult to ward off the emotion and curb the excitement.
Following the death of his wife, Alice, in 1920, Elgar's creative fires dimmed, and his musical activities were largely confined to conducting and making gramophone records. In particular he was the star attraction at the annual Three Choirs Festival, with which he was associated for over 50 years, as orchestral player, composer and conductor. In the 1920s and 1930s my grandparents sang at these festivals as members of the "Hereford contingent", and in many performances of Elgar's oratorios directed by Elgar himself. By 1933 my mother had also joined the ranks of the Festival Chorus. My grandmother was enthusiastic in her praise of Elgar. He was always immaculately turned out, splendid in his robes as Master of the King's Music.
He conveyed to the musicians what he wanted through his facial expressions, even the look in his eyes, as much as through his hand and baton. I asked my mother about her impressions of Elgar. Clearly the great man's charisma was lost on her, a very young woman in those days: "He was like a pig on its hind legs!"
They told me that a thunderstorm raged during the 1933 Hereford performance of Gerontius. At one point a dove, which had somehow found shelter in the Cathedral, came down and flew around Elgar's head. Within four months he was dead.
I trust that there will be no such incident in the National Concert Hall next Thursday week, November 4th, when Our Lady's Choral Society, under its music director Proinnsías
Ó Duinn, perform The Dream of Gerontius. They will be joined by the UCD Choral Scholars, soloists Alison Browner, John Elwes and Ian Caddy, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. The concert is part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of University College Dublin, whose first rector was John Henry Newman.
Our Lady's Choral Society has a long tradition of singing Gerontius, starting with a performance in 1952 conducted by John Barbirolli, in which the incomparable Kathleen Ferrier was the contralto soloist.
This tradition has been carried on by Proinnsías O Duinn, a dedicated Elgarian, who has also added The Apostles, The Kingdom and other works by Elgar to the repertoire of OLCS. So Elgar can rest assured: this conductor and choir know and cherish his glorious music.