Sir Edward was a prolific English symphonist, his country's first major native composer since Henry Purcell.
Background
Sir Edward was born June 2, 1857, in Broadheath, Cheshire, United Kingdom. His parents were William Henry Elgar of Dover and Anne Greening of Herefordshire. Elgar's father was organist of St. George's Roman Catholic Church in Worcester and was one of the violinists in the orchestra for the annual Three Choirs Festival. Elgar himself sometimes deputized for his father at the organ and later followed him as a violinist in the festival orchestra.
Career
Elgar studied the violin and tried his hand at composing. In 1883 he had an intermezzo performed at Birmingham. He was largely self-taught in music and was chiefly attracted by C. P. E. Bach, Tudor church music, Haydn, Mozart, and Giacomo Meyerbeer; in literature, he was drawn to Shakespeare and Voltaire.
Elgar's was a symphonic mind. The alternate opulence and elegance, the spontaneity, energy, and poetic fantasy of his musical thinking were best served in his scorings for full orchestra. Dignity and fastidiousness marked his manner; in conducting his works Elgar was careful to give every phrase its due. It is a truism that the best memorial of a composer is the continued performance of his works, and one can say that in England, as elsewhere, Elgar's major works are regularly given in answer to continued and appreciative public demand.
Though English music-lovers had been tardy in acknowledging Elgar, and G. B. Shaw detested his compositions, there was no lack of honor after the tide had turned. The year 1904 marked this change. That year there was an all-Elgar festival at Covent Garden (no English composer had had such honor done to him); there was also the distinction of being made a member of the literary Athenaeum Club, and, in July, the honor of being knighted. Honorary degrees and a professorship followed. In 1924-- after the war years, the chastening experience of which the chamber works and especially the deeply anguished violoncello concerto poignantly reflect--Elgar became Master of the King's Musick, and in 1931 he was made a baronet.
Orchestrations of J. S. Bach's Organ Fantasy and Fugue in C minor (1921-1922) and of Handel's Overture in D minor (1923), The Nursery Suite (1931), and a brass-band essay called The Severn Suite (1930) are evidence that Elgar had not altogether finished with composition after 1920. At the time of his 75th birthday the British Broadcasting Corporation commissioned him to write another symphony, but this, as well as a projected opera, The Spanish Lady, was left unfinished. He died in Worcester on Feb. 23, 1934.