Editing Edward Elgar (section)

===Peak creative years===
[[File:Elgar-LSO-1911.jpg|thumb|300px|alt=large orchestra and their conductor seen on the platform of Victorian concert hall in long shot|Elgar and the [[London Symphony Orchestra]] at the [[Queen's Hall]]]]
Elgar's best-known works were composed within the twenty-one years between 1899 and 1920. Most of them are orchestral. Reed wrote, "Elgar's genius rose to its greatest height in his orchestral works" and quoted the composer as saying that, even in his oratorios, the orchestral part is the most important.<ref>Reed, pp. 148–50</ref> The ''Enigma Variations'' made Elgar's name nationally. The variation form was ideal for him at this stage of his career, when his comprehensive mastery of orchestration was still in contrast to his tendency to write his melodies in short, sometimes rigid, phrases.<ref name=grove/> His next orchestral works, ''[[Cockaigne (In London Town)|Cockaigne]]'', a concert-overture (1900–1901), the first two ''[[Pomp and Circumstance Marches|Pomp and Circumstance]]'' marches (1901), and the gentle ''[[Dream Children (Elgar)|Dream Children]]'' (1902), are all short: the longest of them, ''Cockaigne'', lasting less than fifteen minutes. ''[[In the South (Alassio)|In the South]]'' (1903–1904), although designated by Elgar as a concert-overture, is, according to Kennedy, really a [[tone poem]] and the longest continuous piece of purely orchestral writing Elgar had essayed. He wrote it after setting aside an early attempt to compose a symphony.<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 30</ref> The work reveals his continuing progress in writing sustained themes and orchestral lines, although some critics, including Kennedy, find that in the middle part "Elgar's inspiration burns at less than its brightest."<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 32</ref> In 1905 Elgar completed the ''[[Introduction and Allegro (Elgar)|Introduction and Allegro for Strings]]''. This work is based, unlike much of Elgar's earlier writing, not on a profusion of themes but on only three. Kennedy called it a "masterly composition, equalled among English works for strings only by [[Ralph Vaughan Williams|Vaughan Williams]]'s ''[[Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis|Tallis Fantasia]]''."<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 42</ref>

During the next four years Elgar composed three major concert pieces, which, though shorter than comparable works by some of his European contemporaries, are among the most substantial such works by an English composer. These were his [[Symphony No. 1 (Elgar)|First Symphony]], [[Violin Concerto (Elgar)|Violin Concerto]], and [[Symphony No. 2 (Elgar)|Second Symphony]], which all play for between forty-five minutes and an hour.{{refn|In a series of transfers of the composer's electrical recordings available in 2010, the timings are: Symphony No. 1: 46:28 (''Naxos Historical'' CD 8.111256); Symphony No. 2: 48:30 (''Naxos Historical'' CD 8.111260); Violin Concerto: 49:57 (''Naxos Historical'' CD 8.110902).| group= n}} McVeagh says of the symphonies that they "rank high not only in Elgar's output but in English musical history. Both are long and powerful, without published programmes, only hints and quotations to indicate some inward drama from which they derive their vitality and eloquence. Both are based on classical form but differ from it to the extent that&nbsp;... they were considered prolix and slackly constructed by some critics. Certainly the invention in them is copious; each symphony would need several dozen music examples to chart its progress."<ref name=grove/>

[[File:Elgar-cello-concerto-manuscript.jpg|thumb|left|Fragment of manuscript of the opening of the second movement of the [[Cello Concerto (Elgar)|Cello Concerto]]|alt=manuscript music score, faded with age]]
Elgar's Violin Concerto and [[Cello Concerto (Elgar)|Cello Concerto]], in the view of Kennedy, "rank not only among his finest works, but among the greatest of their kind".<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 43</ref> They are, however, very different from each other. The Violin Concerto, composed in 1909 as Elgar reached the height of his popularity, and written for the instrument dearest to his heart,<ref name="Reed, p. 149"/> is lyrical throughout and rhapsodical and brilliant by turns.<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 45</ref> The Cello Concerto, composed a decade later, immediately after World War I, seems, in Kennedy's words, "to belong to another age, another world&nbsp;... the simplest of all Elgar's major works&nbsp;... also the least grandiloquent."<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 50</ref> Between the two concertos came Elgar's symphonic study ''[[Falstaff (Elgar)|Falstaff]]'', which has divided opinion even among Elgar's strongest admirers. [[Donald Tovey]] viewed it as "one of the immeasurably great things in music", with power "identical with Shakespeare's",<ref>Tovey, Donald F., "Elgar, Master of Music", ''Music and Letters'', January 1935, p. 1</ref> while Kennedy criticises the work for "too frequent reliance on [[Sequence (music)|sequences]]" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters.<ref>Kennedy (1970), p. 35</ref> Reed thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works.<ref>Reed, p. 151</ref> Elgar himself thought ''Falstaff'' the highest point of his purely orchestral work.<ref>Reed, p. 113</ref>

The major works for voices and orchestra of the twenty-one years of Elgar's middle period are three large-scale works for soloists, chorus and orchestra: ''[[The Dream of Gerontius]]'' (1900), and the oratorios ''[[The Apostles (Elgar)|The Apostles]]'' (1903) and ''[[The Kingdom (Elgar)|The Kingdom]]'' (1906); and two shorter odes, the ''[[Coronation Ode]]'' (1902) and ''[[The Music Makers (Elgar)|The Music Makers]]'' (1912). The first of the odes, as a ''pièce d'occasion'', has rarely been revived after its initial success, with the culminating "Land of Hope and Glory". The second is, for Elgar, unusual in that it contains several quotations from his earlier works, as Richard Strauss quoted himself in ''[[Ein Heldenleben]]''.<ref>Burn, Andrew, [http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.557710&catNum=557710&filetype=About%20this%20Recording&language=English Notes to Naxos recording of ''The Music Makers''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210321063942/https://www.naxos.com/mainsite/blurbs_reviews.asp?item_code=8.557710&catNum=557710&filetype=About+this+Recording&language=English |date=21 March 2021 }} (CD 8.557710)</ref> The choral works were all successful, although the first, ''Gerontius'', was and remains the best-loved and most performed.<ref>Reed, p. 58</ref> On the manuscript Elgar wrote, quoting [[John Ruskin]], "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw, and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."<ref name=grove/> All three of the large-scale works follow the traditional model with sections for soloists, chorus and both together. Elgar's distinctive orchestration, as well as his melodic inspiration, lifts them to a higher level than most of their British predecessors.<ref>Reed, p. 150</ref>

Elgar's other works of his middle period include incidental music for ''[[Diarmuid and Grania|Grania and Diarmid]]'', a play by [[George Moore (novelist)|George Moore]] and [[W. B. Yeats]] (1901), and for ''[[The Starlight Express]]'', a play based on a story by [[Algernon Blackwood]] (1916). Of the former, Yeats called Elgar's music "wonderful in its heroic melancholy".<ref>McVeagh (2007), p. 78</ref> Elgar also wrote a number of songs during his peak period, of which Reed observes, "it cannot be said that he enriched the vocal repertory to the same extent as he did that of the orchestra."<ref name="Reed, p. 149"/>