Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius

On Tuesday 24 March the School Choir of the Vaughan, joined by the Cantus Ensemble and the Belgravia Chamber Orchestra, alongside Peter Davoren, Diana Moore and David Soar, will perform Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in a concert being given to mark the Centenary of the Vaughan. 

The concert, being held at St James's, Spanish Place, will start at 7.30 pm. Tickets are available from the School or on the door on the evening. 

 

The following is an extract from the programme for the concert.

Elgar was first given a copy of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius in 1885, on the occasion of his marriage. Greatly moved by the words, Elgar, who was a devout Catholic, was to think on the poem for many years before creating what many consider his finest work.

Not that the poem was a straightforward choice for a libretto. It was far too long to be set in its entirety. More difficult was the subject matter itself as the poem is rich in doctrine that had been emphatically rejected by the Protestant church since the time of the Reformation. Gerontius, on his deathbed in Part 1, prays for assistance to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to other saints and ends the poem not in heaven but asking to be taken to purgatory. There were many objections to this ‘popish’ agenda and the first performance in Worcester Cathedral was only permitted once the text had been modified: the words ‘Jesus’, ‘Lord’ or ‘Saviour’ were substituted for ‘Mary’; ‘souls’ for ‘souls in Purgatory’; ‘prayers’ for ‘Masses’; and so on.

The first performance was by all accounts a disaster. The Chorus had underestimated the difficulty of the choral writing and, unable to sing the work, took against it with a passion. Elgar himself, at the final rehearsal, desperately pleaded with the chorus to concentrate but this caused even greater offence and they approached the performance with little goodwill. The fortunes of the work were soon to change however following a series of successful performances in Germany which brought praise from no lesser a figure than Richard Strauss, then the world’s most celebrated composer. 

 

The idiom of the music, essentially Wagnerian, appealed greatly to German audiences. Elgar took from Wagner his chromatic and expressive musical language but also the sense of music drama. In his operas Wagner had found a way of making dramatic works evolve continuously, seamlessly, like huge symphonies. Elgar achieves something very similar in The Dream of Gerontius. The music flows continuously, not in individual movements and few sections can be removed and performed alone. Elgar employs Wagner’s technique of leitmoitf (where a theme represents a character or an idea), presenting the principal ones in the extended prelude that opens the work. The themes are often closely related, each one a variation on the last. These thematic inter-relations are so ingenious and far-reaching that one can imagine Elgar spending hours of concentrated mental effort on them. But Elgar insisted that it all came about by instinct – none of it was consciously contrived.

A synopsis of The Dream of Gerontius


Gerontius is first to sing, telling us that he is dying and he senses Jesus calling him. The choir, in the role of friends gathered around the deathbed, respond with a setting of the ‘Kyrie Eleison’, almost like a distant memory of Mass attended long ago. After another short solo from Gerontius (Rouse thee my fainting soul) the chorus continues with prayers for the dying man. (Be merciful, be gracious, spare him, Lord.) Gerontius then affirms his faith in words that have become known to all of us in a different setting (Firmly I believe and truly, God is three and God is one.) 

Gerontius then feels a recurrence of his final illness and sees a vision of the demons he will encounter later. The choir intones prayers for Gerontius, asking for him to be rescued as God had rescued some famous figures from the Old Testament – Noah, Job, Moses and David. Gerontius’s life gently slips away as he commends his soul to God (Into thy hands ....). After a brief pause we meet the priest who sends Gerontius’s soul on it’s journey. (Go forth upon thy journey Christian soul.) The choir joins in and Part One ends with a magnificent chorus with the choir divided into no fewer than thirteen parts.



Part Two begins with a gentle pastoral style string prelude – we are now in the afterlife, a very different musical world. (I went to sleep and now I am refreshed.) Gerontius meets the angel sent to guard him on his journey as he is being taken before the throne of God to be judged. But first ‘Hungry and wild, to claim their property, and gather souls for hell’ there are the demons. The choir takes on the role of the dark forces themselves and sings a suitably demonic, wonderfully spectacular chorus. (Low- born clods of brute earth.) The demons vanish into the shadows and the Angel explains to Gerontius that he will see God for ‘a brief moment’ and Gerontius is awed by the prospect.

 



Gerontius and the angel approach the judgement hall and they listen to the most famous chorus in the work build as they get nearer, leading to the blazing tour de force that is Elgar’s setting of Praise to the Holiest in the Height. The end of this Chorus brings about a darkening of the mood as Gerontius and the Angel are now in the presence of God. Distant voices from back on earth are heard and we meet the final character in the drama, the Angel of the Agony. He asks Jesus to spare Gerontius’s soul and Gerontius ‘goes before his judge’. The orchestra produces a shattering, explosive chord - Gerontius is spared, his soul ‘consumed yet quickened by the glance of God’. Gerontius pleads to be taken on to purgatory (Take me away and in the lowest deeps there let me be) and the Angel gently leads him onward. (Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul, in my most loving arms I now enfold thee). The whole work ends as the Angel and the choir bid Gerontius ‘Farewell, but not forever’. 
 



Gerontius and the angel approach the judgement hall and they listen to the most famous chorus in the work build as they get nearer, leading to the blazing tour de force that is Elgar’s setting of Praise to the Holiest in the Height. The end of this Chorus brings about a darkening of the mood as Gerontius and the Angel are now in the presence of God. Distant voices from back on earth are heard and we meet the final character in the drama, the Angel of the Agony. He asks Jesus to spare Gerontius’s soul and Gerontius ‘goes before his judge’. The orchestra produces a shattering, explosive chord - Gerontius is spared, his soul ‘consumed yet quickened by the glance of God’. Gerontius pleads to be taken on to purgatory (Take me away and in the lowest deeps there let me be) and the Angel gently leads him onward. (Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul, in my most loving arms I now enfold thee). The whole work ends as the Angel and the choir bid Gerontius ‘Farewell, but not forever’.