‘In the South’ (Alassio), Op. 50
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Edward Elgar and his wife Alice spent the winter of 1903-4 in the small Italian town of Alassio, hoping to avoid the chill of the UK, and to find inspiration for a symphony. At first, the holiday was a disaster: the weather was every bit as uncongenial as that in Britain, and Elgar felt grumpy. While he was penning letters to friends saying how awful everything was, the sun came out, and stayed out, giving him the stimulus he sought. He cheered up immediately, wrote this piece in a flash, then orchestrated it at high speed when he returned home. Not a symphony, but getting close.
‘In the South’ invites speculation and comparisons. What kind of a piece is it? It is imbued with references, spelled out in correspondence and annotations scrawled within the margins of the original manuscript. These include quotations from poems, descriptions of scenes and activities such as a shepherd boy singing, all of which suggest that ‘In the South’ is a tone poem in the manner of Richard Strauss. Elgar insisted it was not a tone poem because it had no narrative beyond the evocation of moods. He wrote to a friend, ‘I wove this music in the valley of Andorra during a long and lovely day al fresco and it does not attempt to go beyond the impression then received’. Some have proposed that it was a kind of trial run for a symphony, as may also be said of the ‘Cockaigne’ Overture, completed three years earlier. The very existence of such speculation hints at a dilemma. Because we don’t quite know to which genre the work belongs, and because its twenty-minute span could be considered too long to start a concert and too short to finish one, it suffers from undeserved neglect. Regarding comparisons, it is unmistakably Elgar at his most extrovert and expressive, but we can detect hints of Richard Strauss, even Richard Wagner in a few places.
Although this music is largely episodic in character, the most prominent melodies return to underpin the overall structure. The first main section consists of a thrusting upward motif and the subsidiary material deriving from it. Elgar suggested it conjured ‘... the exhilarating out-of-doors feeling arising from the gloriously beautiful surroundings – streams, flowers, hills and distant snowy mountains in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other’. A gentle and more reflective passage, featuring woodwind and veiled strings, provides a contrast to the muscular opening and thrusts the section that follows into even greater dramatic relief. Elgar was struck by the power of the Ancient Roman Empire and the ruthlessness with which its legions trampled upon everything in their path. That sense of brutality is now evoked, featuring the heavy brass in particular. We are over half way through ‘In the South’ before the famous viola solo arrives. Seemingly entranced by the bewitching melody, others in the orchestra toy with it in a loving and almost sleepy way. Abruptly, some of the earlier musical material returns, and the work ends in a magnificent display of joy and exuberance, calling for virtuosity from all the players.
What a privilege it is to hear this magnificent work played live in a concert hall! One must surely agree with Michael Kennedy’s conclusion that this is ‘... the most richly, colourfully and glamorously scored of all Elgar’s works, rivalling Strauss in its arrogant mastery of every kind of orchestral effect’.
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Edward Elgar and his wife Alice spent the winter of 1903-4 in the small Italian town of Alassio, hoping to avoid the chill of the UK, and to find inspiration for a symphony. At first, the holiday was a disaster: the weather was every bit as uncongenial as that in Britain, and Elgar felt grumpy. While he was penning letters to friends saying how awful everything was, the sun came out, and stayed out, giving him the stimulus he sought. He cheered up immediately, wrote this piece in a flash, then orchestrated it at high speed when he returned home. Not a symphony, but getting close.
‘In the South’ invites speculation and comparisons. What kind of a piece is it? It is imbued with references, spelled out in correspondence and annotations scrawled within the margins of the original manuscript. These include quotations from poems, descriptions of scenes and activities such as a shepherd boy singing, all of which suggest that ‘In the South’ is a tone poem in the manner of Richard Strauss. Elgar insisted it was not a tone poem because it had no narrative beyond the evocation of moods. He wrote to a friend, ‘I wove this music in the valley of Andorra during a long and lovely day al fresco and it does not attempt to go beyond the impression then received’. Some have proposed that it was a kind of trial run for a symphony, as may also be said of the ‘Cockaigne’ Overture, completed three years earlier. The very existence of such speculation hints at a dilemma. Because we don’t quite know to which genre the work belongs, and because its twenty-minute span could be considered too long to start a concert and too short to finish one, it suffers from undeserved neglect. Regarding comparisons, it is unmistakably Elgar at his most extrovert and expressive, but we can detect hints of Richard Strauss, even Richard Wagner in a few places.
Although this music is largely episodic in character, the most prominent melodies return to underpin the overall structure. The first main section consists of a thrusting upward motif and the subsidiary material deriving from it. Elgar suggested it conjured ‘... the exhilarating out-of-doors feeling arising from the gloriously beautiful surroundings – streams, flowers, hills and distant snowy mountains in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other’. A gentle and more reflective passage, featuring woodwind and veiled strings, provides a contrast to the muscular opening and thrusts the section that follows into even greater dramatic relief. Elgar was struck by the power of the Ancient Roman Empire and the ruthlessness with which its legions trampled upon everything in their path. That sense of brutality is now evoked, featuring the heavy brass in particular. We are over half way through ‘In the South’ before the famous viola solo arrives. Seemingly entranced by the bewitching melody, others in the orchestra toy with it in a loving and almost sleepy way. Abruptly, some of the earlier musical material returns, and the work ends in a magnificent display of joy and exuberance, calling for virtuosity from all the players.
What a privilege it is to hear this magnificent work played live in a concert hall! One must surely agree with Michael Kennedy’s conclusion that this is ‘... the most richly, colourfully and glamorously scored of all Elgar’s works, rivalling Strauss in its arrogant mastery of every kind of orchestral effect’.