The Hammock Papers: Elgar

Showing posts with label Elgar. Show all posts

02 June 2022

Happy Birthday, Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar was born on this day in 1857.

VOCE8 performs "Lux Aeterna" ...

31 May 2022

Elgar, Nursery Suite

Eileen Gilligan performs "The Serious Doll" ...

27 February 2022

Elgar, Lux Aeterna

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es.

Requiem aeternam

dona eis, Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord, with Thy saints forever,

for Thou art kind.

Eternal rest

give to them, O Lord,

and let perpetual light shine upon them.

VOCES8 performs ...

21 July 2020

Premiere.

Sir Edward Elgar's Serenade for Strings in E Minor, Op. 20, premiered on this date in 1896.

The Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra performs ...

02 June 2020

Happy Birthday, Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar was born on this date in 1857.

Jacqueline Du Pré, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the London Philharmonic, performs the Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 ...

17 December 2019

23 January 2019

11 July 2018

10 July 2018

Elgar, Sospiri, Op. 70

Sol Gabetta performs with the Radio Denmark Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Stéphane Denève ...

13 March 2018

Elgar, The Wand of Youth, Suite No.2, Op.1b

Osmo Vanska conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra ...

28 February 2018

Elgar, Variations on an Original Theme, "Enigma," Op.36

Sir Colin Davis leads the London Symphony Orchestra in performing "Nimrod" ...

Singing.

Pearson, Sir Edward Elgar, Resident of Hereford, 2005

This is what I hear all day - the trees are singing my music - or am I singing theirs?

Sir Edward Elgar

27 September 2017

Elgar, Enigma Variations, Op. 36

Sir Colin Davis directs the London Symphony Orchestra in performing "Nimrod" ...

02 June 2016

Sir Edward Elgar was born on this day in 1856.

My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.

Sir Edward Elgar

Here's the Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op. 20, performed by the Berlin Mendelssohn Kammerorchester under the direction of Leitung Michail Segler ...

It sounds like this morning.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."