2006
9’
2.picc.2.corA.2.bcl.2.dbn/4331/timp.4perc/str
Published by Boosey & Hawkes
Recording
Programme Note
Compared to the two decades I spent contemplating the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony before r felt ready to start work on its completion, the six weeks needed to realise Pomp and Circumstance March No.6 came as a relief and a surprise. The march, of course, turned out to last a mere 8 minutes as against the 55 minute symphony, but the nature of the work involved was largely similar, and the speed with which I despatched the task had much to do with the fact that I was re-entering familiar psychological territory, that of enacting the role of another composer. This was not to be an exercise in pastiche, but composition proper.
One thing I had learned during my work on the Third Symphony was that precedents or the lack of them should not dominate one's thinking. One conductor, for instance, otherwise sympathetic to my work, had suggested that the symphony's final cadence should be altered. When did Elgar ever close a work with a gong stroke, he reasoned. My riposte was that an inspired composer is always liable to do the unexpected.
Regarding P&C no.6, whlch I saw as concluding, perhaps even celebrating one of the most remarkable sets of short pieces in the repertory, I felt that I should re-invent the Elgarian march, and not slavishly follow the practices he'd so far established, leading, naturally, to the ultimate paradox, for Elgar's characteristic thinking involved not repeating himself. The variety of processes and structures found among the five marches he completed is truly remarkable. Only once did he repeat a process that had proved its worth, when in P&C no.4 he invented a 'nobilmente' trio melody to match the already celebrated 'Land of Hope and Glory' of No.l. In other respects, these, the two most popular of the marches, are quite different in structure. The main section of no.l , with its four pregnant subjects, is thematically the richest of the marches, while No4's is monothematic - uniquely in the set.
Nor are the expressive worlds of the five marches in any way similar to each other. No.l is the fiercest of them, its closest relation, No.4, serenely majestic, while No.2 inhabits a world of restless poetry which makes it , in the opinion of many, the most original of the set. Stanford, for instance, admired it greatly. No.3 juxtaposes funereal and triumphal strains, while the buoyant six-eight of No5's quick-march sections is offset by the most intriguing of the set's central trio melodies, a mosaic-like aggregation of phrases that builds uniquely to a grand arching statement. To bring this sequence of splendidly structured pieces to a conclusion promised to be an exhilarating and challenging task.
The whole process was launched by a phone call from Robert Montgomery, lawyer for the Elgar Will Trust, who wanted to know whether l would look at a bundle of sketches for a Sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, and say if l thought there was enough material to make a completion possible. If so, would I do it myself. Photocopies of the sketches duly arrived by post, together with a Musical Times article on their provenance by the Elgar scholar Christopher Kent. A good number of them had been lying in the British Library for some years, and probably would not have given me enough to go on, if another small treasure trove had not come to light during the move of the Royal School of Church Music's Colles Library. It took the form of a miscellaneous group of manuscripts including three pages, clearly in Elgar's hand, marked P&C 6. This last and most valuable find raises the question of the dating of the sketches. The pages marked P&C6 probably post-date P&C5, which was completed in 1930, although this is questionable, and the other sketches are even more difficult to assign. Some are marked simply P&C, and could even date from the time of the first four marches 1901-7; while another is marked P&C5 but bears no relationship to No.5 as we now know it. As for the theme marked just P&C, which is a more extended but obviously incomplete version of a subsidiary subject from the Empire March of 1924: was it a re-working of that melody's simpler phrase structure, or did Elgar raid an earlier sketch book when the Empire Exhibition commission arrived, and reduce the theme to his needs. The answer to these conundrums will probably remain a mystery, but whatever the provenance of this fascinatingly varied collection of ideas, I saw a way of welding them together, and, comforted by the composer's unpredictability, plunged in at the deep end and composed..
At the outset, however, after a casual inspection of the material, I did not find my enthusiasm whetted, and it was only after being pressed to take a second look that the penny dropped. As with the Third Symphony, I suddenly found ideas falling into place, and my interest became fully engaged. The 2-4 quick march theme in G minor, found among the Colles Library sketches, just needed filling out texturally, and could launch the main section, leading to a restless and tonally ambivalent section in 6-8 found among the British Library holdings. Its highly characteristic mixture of energy and wistfulness extended for some fifty bars, but the writing was very hard to decipher, and I had to take the decision to ignore the well nigh illegible concluding bars and bring the paragraph to a close in my own way. It is worth saying at this stage that none of the sketches is allotted a place in any notional structure by Elgar, and in none of the other P&C marches does he combine 2-4 and 6-8 rhythms within a single section. By doing just this I felt I could help give the march its own unique character.
Elsewhere in the sketches was the beginning of a fine 'nobilmente' trio , as it seemed to me, related to the Empire March, but developing along different and more stately lines. Elgar had broken off in mid-stream, leaving his E flat theme in G minor, and obviously intending to bring it back to the home key with further eight bar phrases. These I provided to complete a grandly arching cantabile. It remains to mention two short but arresting ideas (one marked 'jolly good' by the composer) which I used to construct a patrol-like introduction over a marching tread. Again, no other P&C march does this. I enriched this process by foreshadowing the main 2-4 section at one point in temporarily melancholic terms. A seed is planted here that later bears fruit in fleeting moments of nostalgia, which I felt anchored the march in the world explored by the Third Symphony.
Anthony Payne
9’
2.picc.2.corA.2.bcl.2.dbn/4331/timp.4perc/str
Published by Boosey & Hawkes
Recording
Programme Note
Compared to the two decades I spent contemplating the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony before r felt ready to start work on its completion, the six weeks needed to realise Pomp and Circumstance March No.6 came as a relief and a surprise. The march, of course, turned out to last a mere 8 minutes as against the 55 minute symphony, but the nature of the work involved was largely similar, and the speed with which I despatched the task had much to do with the fact that I was re-entering familiar psychological territory, that of enacting the role of another composer. This was not to be an exercise in pastiche, but composition proper.
One thing I had learned during my work on the Third Symphony was that precedents or the lack of them should not dominate one's thinking. One conductor, for instance, otherwise sympathetic to my work, had suggested that the symphony's final cadence should be altered. When did Elgar ever close a work with a gong stroke, he reasoned. My riposte was that an inspired composer is always liable to do the unexpected.
Regarding P&C no.6, whlch I saw as concluding, perhaps even celebrating one of the most remarkable sets of short pieces in the repertory, I felt that I should re-invent the Elgarian march, and not slavishly follow the practices he'd so far established, leading, naturally, to the ultimate paradox, for Elgar's characteristic thinking involved not repeating himself. The variety of processes and structures found among the five marches he completed is truly remarkable. Only once did he repeat a process that had proved its worth, when in P&C no.4 he invented a 'nobilmente' trio melody to match the already celebrated 'Land of Hope and Glory' of No.l. In other respects, these, the two most popular of the marches, are quite different in structure. The main section of no.l , with its four pregnant subjects, is thematically the richest of the marches, while No4's is monothematic - uniquely in the set.
Nor are the expressive worlds of the five marches in any way similar to each other. No.l is the fiercest of them, its closest relation, No.4, serenely majestic, while No.2 inhabits a world of restless poetry which makes it , in the opinion of many, the most original of the set. Stanford, for instance, admired it greatly. No.3 juxtaposes funereal and triumphal strains, while the buoyant six-eight of No5's quick-march sections is offset by the most intriguing of the set's central trio melodies, a mosaic-like aggregation of phrases that builds uniquely to a grand arching statement. To bring this sequence of splendidly structured pieces to a conclusion promised to be an exhilarating and challenging task.
The whole process was launched by a phone call from Robert Montgomery, lawyer for the Elgar Will Trust, who wanted to know whether l would look at a bundle of sketches for a Sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, and say if l thought there was enough material to make a completion possible. If so, would I do it myself. Photocopies of the sketches duly arrived by post, together with a Musical Times article on their provenance by the Elgar scholar Christopher Kent. A good number of them had been lying in the British Library for some years, and probably would not have given me enough to go on, if another small treasure trove had not come to light during the move of the Royal School of Church Music's Colles Library. It took the form of a miscellaneous group of manuscripts including three pages, clearly in Elgar's hand, marked P&C 6. This last and most valuable find raises the question of the dating of the sketches. The pages marked P&C6 probably post-date P&C5, which was completed in 1930, although this is questionable, and the other sketches are even more difficult to assign. Some are marked simply P&C, and could even date from the time of the first four marches 1901-7; while another is marked P&C5 but bears no relationship to No.5 as we now know it. As for the theme marked just P&C, which is a more extended but obviously incomplete version of a subsidiary subject from the Empire March of 1924: was it a re-working of that melody's simpler phrase structure, or did Elgar raid an earlier sketch book when the Empire Exhibition commission arrived, and reduce the theme to his needs. The answer to these conundrums will probably remain a mystery, but whatever the provenance of this fascinatingly varied collection of ideas, I saw a way of welding them together, and, comforted by the composer's unpredictability, plunged in at the deep end and composed..
At the outset, however, after a casual inspection of the material, I did not find my enthusiasm whetted, and it was only after being pressed to take a second look that the penny dropped. As with the Third Symphony, I suddenly found ideas falling into place, and my interest became fully engaged. The 2-4 quick march theme in G minor, found among the Colles Library sketches, just needed filling out texturally, and could launch the main section, leading to a restless and tonally ambivalent section in 6-8 found among the British Library holdings. Its highly characteristic mixture of energy and wistfulness extended for some fifty bars, but the writing was very hard to decipher, and I had to take the decision to ignore the well nigh illegible concluding bars and bring the paragraph to a close in my own way. It is worth saying at this stage that none of the sketches is allotted a place in any notional structure by Elgar, and in none of the other P&C marches does he combine 2-4 and 6-8 rhythms within a single section. By doing just this I felt I could help give the march its own unique character.
Elsewhere in the sketches was the beginning of a fine 'nobilmente' trio , as it seemed to me, related to the Empire March, but developing along different and more stately lines. Elgar had broken off in mid-stream, leaving his E flat theme in G minor, and obviously intending to bring it back to the home key with further eight bar phrases. These I provided to complete a grandly arching cantabile. It remains to mention two short but arresting ideas (one marked 'jolly good' by the composer) which I used to construct a patrol-like introduction over a marching tread. Again, no other P&C march does this. I enriched this process by foreshadowing the main 2-4 section at one point in temporarily melancholic terms. A seed is planted here that later bears fruit in fleeting moments of nostalgia, which I felt anchored the march in the world explored by the Third Symphony.
Anthony Payne