A BORE ONLY A BRIT COULD LOVE

posted by James Reel

    English music critic Jessica Duchen adds to the archive of puff pieces that have helped the Brits persuade themselves that Edward Elgar was a great composer, despite abundant evidence to the contrary in the man’s own music. Let’s get this straight: Elgar was a gifted miniaturist, but the only large-scale work of his that shows technical competence as well as melodic interest is his cello concerto. Duchen alludes to Elgar’s “gift for flowing, inspired melody,” but what you get in the two symphonies and the violin concerto, not to mention Falstaff, are aimless, vaporous themes that refuse to linger in the mind. This is gouty, second-rate music by an unregenerate dullard, and the English continue to embarrass themselves by promoting Elgar as a major composer. Among English-speaking composers active in Elgar’s time and place, Charles Stanford is far more solid, but, as an Irishman, he’s not eligible for Brit boosterism.