page_title: The Dream of Gerontius
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: The Dream of Gerontius / History
caption_attribution_description: English: English composer Edward Elgar, likely in the early 1900s.
context_page_description: The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by Saint John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. Elgar disapproved of the use of the term "oratorio" for the work, though his wishes are not always followed. The piece is widely regarded as Elgar's finest choral work, and some consider it his masterpiece.
  The work was composed for the Birmingham Music Festival of 1900; the first performance took place on 3 October 1900, in Birmingham Town Hall. It was badly performed at the premiere, but later performances in Germany revealed its stature. In the first decade after its premiere, the Roman Catholic dogma in Newman's poem caused difficulties in getting the work performed in Anglican cathedrals, and a revised text was used for performances at the Three Choirs Festival until 1910.
context_section_description: Edward Elgar was not the first composer to think about setting John Henry Newman's poem "The Dream of Gerontius". Dvořák had considered it fifteen years earlier, and had discussions with Newman, before abandoning the idea. Elgar knew the poem well; he had owned a copy since at least 1885, and in 1889 he was given another copy as a wedding present. This copy contained handwritten copies of extensive notes that had been made by General Gordon, and Elgar is known to have thought of the text in musical terms for several years. Throughout the 1890s, Elgar had composed several large-scale works for the regular festivals that were a key part of Britain's musical life. In 1898, based on his growing reputation, he was asked to write a major work for the 1900 Birmingham Triennial Music Festival. He was unable to start work on the poem that he knew so well until the autumn of 1899, and did so only after first considering a different subject.
  Composition proceeded quickly. Elgar and August Jaeger, his editor at the publisher Novello, exchanged frequent, sometimes daily, letters, which show how Jaeger helped in shaping the work, and in particular the climactic depiction of the moment of judgment. By the time Elgar had completed the work and Novello had printed it, there were only three months to the premiere. The Birmingham chorus, all amateurs, struggled to master Elgar's complex, demanding and somewhat revolutionary work. Matters were made worse by the sudden death of the chorus master Charles Swinnerton Heap and his replacement by William Stockley, an elderly musician who found the music beyond him. The conductor of the premiere, Hans Richter, received a copy of the full score only on the eve of the first orchestral rehearsal. The soloists at the Birmingham Festival on 3 October 1900 were Marie Brema, Edward Lloyd and Harry Plunket Greene. The first performance was, famously, a near disaster. The choir could not sing the music adequately, and two of the three soloists were in poor voice. Elgar was deeply upset at the debacle, telling Jaeger, "I have allowed my heart to open once – it is now shut against every religious feeling & every soft, gentle impulse for ever." However, many of the critics could see past the imperfect realisation and the work became established in Britain once it had had its first London performance in 1903, at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral.
  Shortly after the premiere, the German conductor and chorus master Julius Buths made a German translation of the text and arranged a successful performance in Düsseldorf on 19 December 1901. Elgar was present, and he wrote "It completely bore out my idea of the work: the chorus was very fine". Buths presented it in Düsseldorf again on 19 May 1902 in conjunction with the Lower Rhenish Music Festival. The soloists included Muriel Foster, and Elgar was again in the audience, being called to the stage twenty times to receive the audience's applause. This was the performance that finally convinced Elgar for the first time that he had written a truly satisfying work. Buths's festival co-director Richard Strauss was impressed enough by what he heard that at a post-concert banquet he said: "I drink to the success and welfare of the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar". This greatly pleased Elgar, who considered Strauss to be "the greatest genius of the age".
  The strong Roman Catholicism of the work gave rise to objections in some influential British quarters; some Anglican clerics insisted that for performances in English cathedrals Elgar should modify the text to tone down the Roman Catholic references. There was no Anglican objection to Newman's words in general: Arthur Sullivan's setting of his "Lead, Kindly Light", for example, was sung at Westminster Abbey in 1904. Disapproval was reserved for the doctrinal aspects of The Dream of Gerontius repugnant to Anglicans, such as Purgatory. Elgar was unable to resist the suggested bowdlerisation, and in the ten years after the premiere the work was given at the Three Choirs Festival with an expurgated text. 
caption: Elgar, around the time of composition
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