“The Dream of Gerontius”, Edward Elgar
It is 3 October 1900. That morning, the renowned Birmingham Triennial Music Festival stages *The Dream of Gerontius* for the very first time. The premiere is a failure – and is described by critics as a “poorly executed performance”. Yet the audience cheers.
Almost 2,000 people call the composer onto the stage after the first part of the work. They celebrate Edward Elgar with applause that is anything but customary in the sacred setting of the festival. Enraptured by the world premiere, Düsseldorf’s music director Prof. Julius Buths sees The Dream of Gerontius as “one of the most beautiful works I know”.
A botched premiere – and yet a success? What is the story behind “Gerontius”?
A poem about a man’s death and salvation
In 1900, Edward Elgar set to music the English original, The Dream of Gerontius, a poem that deeply moved him and many others in those years. It is the last and most extensive poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–1890), written in 1865. Formerly a priest in the Church of England, Newman had converted to Catholicism in 1845 and, from 1877 onwards – after much hostility – had found recognition. In his ‘Gerontius’, he described a person’s death and salvation in a manner that was exceptionally moving for its time.
Too little time
Elgar had only been able to deliver his work shortly before the festival began. The full score reached the conductor Hans Richter, who was also working at the Bayreuth Festival, just ten days before the performance. The first rehearsal took place four days before the concert – too little time for the choir and orchestra to rehearse adequately. Elgar had also hesitated when adapting the text. Commissioned works for the festival typically featured Christian-biblical or historical texts, traditionally set with recitatives, solos and choruses. But ‘Gerontius’ was different.
…the subject matter was too unfamiliar
The musical language was also unfamiliar. “Newman’s poem was completely foreign to most of the choristers at the premiere,” writes the author and ‘Gerontius’ expert Andreas Friesenhagen. “Nor could they find any information about it.” One contemporary expressed his bewilderment thus: “Surely it would have been better to end with something like the Hallelujah Chorus.” In other words: a Hallelujah Chorus at the end would probably have been better.
A turning point for the composer
The failed premiere proved to be a turning point for Edward Elgar. He was so despondent afterwards that he began to doubt his vocation: “I took the liberty of opening my heart once,” Elgar wrote in a letter a few days after the premiere. “Now, however, it is forever closed to any religious feeling and every tender and delicate emotion.” God is against art – he continues to believe this.
Elgar almost turned down the commission
For a long time, Elgar’s contribution to the Birmingham Festival had been ill-fated. Initially, the festival committee rejected an oratorio about Augustine. Then Elgar felt that the idea of composing an oratorio about the Apostles would be too time-consuming. So he returned the commission. Ten months before the performance, on New Year’s Day 1900, the committee chairman G. H. Johnston proposed The Dream of Gerontius. Elgar, a Catholic, agreed immediately. After all, Newman’s poem about a man’s death and salvation had been on his mind for years.
An “act of courage and consolation”
Some see Elgar’s decision to choose “Gerontius” as an “act of courage and consolation” – a personal identification at a time when the Catholic faith faced significant hostility in England. This is also illustrated by the following curiosity: just 15 years earlier, the festival committee had vetoed a setting of “Gerontius”, even though the idea had come from none other than the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Newman’s poem was deemed “too Catholic for the festival”. By 1900, these concerns had evidently vanished.
Overwhelming success around the world – particularly in Germany
Performances of ‘Gerontius’ from 1900 onwards proved to be great successes. The libretto was translated into German, and in December 1901 the Düsseldorf Musikverein performed ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ as part of its subscription concert series. The success was outstanding. The performance at the Lower Rhine Music Festival in 1902 also ended to frenetic applause. The Rheinische Musik- und Theaterzeitung commented effusively: “It was a dream. That of GERONTIUS!”
The composer Richard Strauss, who had attended the music festival in person, proposed a toast to Elgar at the banquet: “I raise my glass to the health and success of the first English progressive, Master Edward Elgar.” Further performances in England, as well as in New York and Chicago in 1903, continued the success story of “Gerontius”.
Gerontius, the ‘Everyman’, moves everyone
Newman’s poem on the death and redemption of ‘Gerontius’ moves everyone who reads it. Friesenhagen speaks of a ‘contemplative mysticism’ in the verses. The descriptions are so rich in detail that a detached reading is hardly possible. The name ‘Gerontius’, from the Greek geras, gerontos, is to be understood as ‘old man’ and thus as ‘everyman’.
The original poem comprises seven sections totalling around 900 lines. Elgar condensed it to about half its length, primarily by shortening sections two to seven and structuring the entire poem into two parts of the oratorio. Since then, the first part has dealt with death, the second with salvation.
Church rites instead of biblical texts
Through this abridgement, Elgar gave greater weight to church rites. According to Friesenhagen, the liturgy employed becomes a central element in Elgar’s revision. It takes on the function that biblical texts would otherwise fulfil in oratorios. Edward Elgar himself, however, regarded the musical setting and textual streamlining as secondary. He prefaced the score with the words: ‘The Dream of Gerontius by Cardinal Newman set to music by Edward Elgar, Op. 38’.
Part 1: The Dying Man Asks for Intercession
Whereas in Newman’s original text the dying Gerontius served merely as a prologue to the description of the afterlife, in Elgar’s work the process of dying became the first main section of the musical composition. In it, Gerontius prays on his deathbed (tenor solo) and, in his final hour, asks for the intercession of his friends who stand by him. A priest (bass) bestows the final blessing upon him.
Part 2: The Journey in the After life
The second part describes the journey of the deceased’s soul in the afterlife. Guided by a guardian angel (mezzo-soprano), it encounters – in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church – Purgatory and demonic beings who fight for the soul of the dead. Choirs of angels rescue it, and finally it reaches the Angel of Death (bass), who pleads for the soul to be led to the vision of God. After its purification in Purgatory, the soul of Gerontius is ultimately received among the righteous.
The vision of God demands the full power of the orchestra
Whilst the soul is carried to the throne of God, the angels sing the monumental hymn ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height’. It is an expression of jubilation and preparation for the Judgement. At the point where the soul approaches the profound encounter with the Divine, Elgar notes in the score: “For one moment must every instrument exert its fullest force.” For a moment, every instrument is to unleash its utmost power. The actual moment of encounter with God, however, follows in silence – symbolising the soul’s brief, dazzling glimpse of the Divine.
Through-composed in both parts
Following the example of Richard Wagner’s music dramas, Elgar composed his “Gerontius” as a through-composed work in both parts and employed leitmotifs to create connections within the work. Elgar’s friend and editor August Jaeger (1860–1909) described five of these as central leitmotifs. Of particular significance is the “Judgement” motif, which opens the work and recurs at various points.
Elgar’s last deeply moving theme
After ‘The Dream of Gerontius’, Edward Elgar never again worked on such a deeply moving theme. Whether this was due to exhaustion following this composition, his depression, spiritual doubts, the First World War, the rise of Nazism, or the increasing profitability of popular works remains a mystery.
