WEEKS 6-7 HERITAGE 2 – BRITISH ARTS

EDWARD ELGAR

At the age of 42 Elgar finally began to gain the recognition his fine classical music
compositions deserved when he produced the "Enigma Variations", which today is considered
one of his most famous works. The composition was based upon the moods of several of his
friends, something he thought very amusing. It was a large-scale work that received critical
acclaim when it first premiered in London, and was the work that provided him with the
reputation of being the most distinguished composer of his generation.

By the turn of the century Elgar had an avid following, with his newest works being
eagerly awaited. With the passing of Sir Arthur Sullivan in 1900 Elgar became the leading
composer in England, and international recognition soon followed. It was around this time that
the first of the Pomp and Circumstance Marches was written, a piece that today is a tradition to
play at the likes of school graduations and other major award ceremonies, as well as being an
integral part of the annual BBC Proms. Of all the pieces written by Elgar, this is arguably the one
that is the most widely recognized piece by classical music enthusiasts and non-musical people
alike. When lyrics were added to the distinctive musical piece to become ‘Land of Hope and
Glory’ Elgar’s March became a huge hit, so much so that it has often been referred to as the
unofficial national anthem for England, with many advocating for it to replace God Save the
Queen.

My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us! The world is full of it, and you
simply take as much as you require. 
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward Elgar’s impact on the world of classical music was significant, and today his
music is played throughout the world. His name may not be as well known in non-musical
circles as the likes of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner and others, and yet every time a person
stands when the Pomp and Circumstance March is played at a school or university graduation
ceremony the man and his talent as a composer is honored.

In the 1920’s Elgar’s music was no longer "in fashion" but he had built such a loyal
following that whenever the opportunity arose to perform his works enthusiasts of his
compositions would do so. Elgar was no longer in demand as a composer, and upon the death of
his wife in 1920 from lung cancer, he felt such a sense of loss that he wrote very little for awhile.
He did not abandon composing altogether however, and indeed produced several pieces in the 4
years following his wife’s death, including Pageant of Empire for the 1924 British Empire
Exhibition. Shortly after the passing of Sir Walter Parratt Elgar he was appointed Master of the
King's Musick.

Elgar embraced technology in a way that very few classical music composers of the time
was willing to, and from 1926 onwards he dedicated himself to recording his music for the
gramophone. Though he had done so in earlier years the electrical microphone made orchestral
and choral music sound far more realistic. Elgar’s recordings were released on 78-rpm records
produced by HMV (His Master’s Voice) and RCA Victor. In 1932, in part due to a BBC festival
of his works to celebrate his 75th birthday, Elgar’s music experienced a revival. The BBC
commissioned Elgar to write a third Symphony and he also started to compose The Spanish Lady
but due to illness neither works were finished. It was of great concern to Elgar that he was unable
to complete them, but he would vacillate between not wanting anyone to complete them and
yearning for them to be finished. Elgar died in 1934 at the age of 76.

For the Enigma Records compilation album, see Enigma Variations (album).

Edward Elgar composed his Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, popularly known as
the Enigma Variations,[a] between October 1898 and February 1899. It is an orchestral work
comprising fourteen variations on an original theme.
Elgar dedicated the work "to my friends pictured within", each variation being a musical sketch
of one of his circle of close acquaintances (see musical cryptogram). Those portrayed include
Elgar's wife Alice, his friend and publisher Augustus J. Jaeger and Elgar himself. In a
programme note for a performance in 1911 Elgar wrote:
This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches
of the composer's friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the
original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The
sketches are not ‘portraits’ but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular
personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the
composition, but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous
consideration.[1]
In naming his theme "Enigma" Elgar posed a challenge which has generated much speculation
but has never been conclusively answered. The Enigma is widely believed to involve a hidden
melody.
After its 1899 London premiere the Variations achieved immediate popularity and established
Elgar's international reputation. The work has been recorded over 60 times.
The Pomp and Circumstance Marches (full title Pomp and Circumstance Military
Marches), Op. 39, are a series of marches for orchestra composed by Sir Edward Elgar. They
include some of Elgar's best-known compositions.
The title is taken from Act III, Scene 3 of Shakespeare's Othello

Marches

 2.1March No. 1 in D
 2.2March No. 2 in A minor
 2.3March No. 3 in C minor
 2.4March No. 4 in G
 2.5March No. 5 in C
 2.6March No. 6 in G minor

Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 – 19 December 1851) was an English
Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style can be said to have laid
the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his
day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling
history painting.

His work was exhibited when he was still a teenager. His entire life was devoted to his art.
Unlike many artists of his era, he was successful throughout his career.

Turner's will, which was under litigation for many years, left more than 19,000 watercolors,
drawings, and oils to the British nation. Most of these works are in the National Gallery and the
Tate Gallery, London. Many of Turner's oils have deteriorated badly.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was an English painter, watercolourist and printmaker who
lived and worked in the late 1700s and early 1800s. You might know him from his swirling,
light-filled Romantic paintings of land- and seascapes. A famous artist in his own lifetime,
Turner is considered today to be one of the great British painters and has inspired generations of
later artists.
 For example: when French artists Claude Monet (best known for his Water Lilies) and Camille
Pissarro took refuge in London during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, their discovery of
Turner’s atmospheric paintings played a major role in the development of their art. (Monet and
Pissarro were Impressionists: they sought to capture light, colour, and natural effects in their
paintings.) A century after the Impressionists found Turner in London, the American abstract
painter Mark Rothko donated his Seagram Murals to Tate, in part because of his admiration for
Turner’s late painting.

That painters as diverse as Monet and Rothko drew from Turner’s work only goes to show
Turner’s importance then and now. From Romanticism to pre-Impressionism, watercolours to
oils, architectural details to churning seascapes, there is something in Turner’s work for
everyone.

Turner the man

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in London on April 23, 1775, in London, to a barber
and a wig-maker. He remained a Londoner and kept a working-class Cockney accent all his life,
avoiding the veneer of social polish acquired by many artists of the time as they climbed the
professional ladder. Possibly due to the ill health of his mother, the young Turner was sent to
stay with various relatives as a child, and from a young age was captivated by the sea—a subject
that would appear in his paintings again and again.

At the age of 14 he decided to become an artist, and began to study at the schools of
the Royal Academy. Turner exhibited his first oil painting at the Royal Academy, Fishermen at
Sea, in 1796, when he was twenty-one. He continued to exhibit at the RA and remained involved
with the Academy throughout his career.

A fiercely private man, Turner kept the details of his life private from most people,
including his own family. His primary loyalties were to his professional colleagues and friends,
including a few patrons and benefactors who regularly supported and bought his work. In later
life, he became much more of an eccentric individual. His colleague, friend, and great critical
champion John Ruskin described him like this:

"I found in him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, English-minded

gentleman: good-natured evidently, bad-tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd,
perhaps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of his mind not brought out with any
delight in their manifestation, or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word or a
look."

Turner’s health began to fail in 1845, when he was seventy, although he lived and
continued to paint, until the age of seventy-six, when he died at his home in London.

Turner the artist

As an artist, Turner displayed a visible evolution in his painting style throughout his long
career. Although his early focus was on the genre of landscape, as his career progressed he began
to pay less attention to the details of objects and landscape and more attention to the effects of
light and colour. He became increasingly fascinated with natural and atmospheric elements. But
as a young artist, Turner was a keen observer and recorder of the things in his world.

When Turner was a boy, his father encouraged his son’s artistic talent, exhibiting the
young artist’s drawings and watercolours in his shop. At the age of fourteen Turner decided to
become an artist professionally. The young Turner augmented his studies by working for
architects and architectural draughtsmen. In the hundreds of drawings he made of buildings and
towns throughout his career, this early interest and training in architectural drawing can be
clearly seen.

Turner first exhibited at the Royal Academy—a major achievement—in 1790. He

initially exhibited watercolours there, but in 1796 he exhibited his first oil painting, Fishermen at
Sea when he was only twenty-one. In the following years the works he painted and exhibited
delved into history, literature and myth, and saw him challenging the styles of the Old Masters
and making rapid advances in his technique.

In comparison to many other artists of his day, including his contemporary John

Constable, Turner saw success relatively quickly and suddenly. He was helped by a group of
wealthy patrons who were willing to buy, commission, and provide general assistance—
including funding his travels and studies abroad.

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, Turner was unstoppable. He dominated
British landscape painting in a thoroughly Romantic style which was driven by the immediacy of
personal experience, emotion, and the boundless power of imagination. His landscapes varied
from the sublime to the picturesque, each artwork exploring atmosphere through his careful
attention to light and colour, and an expanding repertoire of techniques.

Turner’s appetite for mountains, notably the Rigi in Switzerland above, and the grander
forms of nature grew from his regular travels. His earliest tours were within Britain during
the 1790s. It was in 1819, when he was forty-four, and at the height of his powers as a painter,
that he made his first trip to Italy, filling twenty-three sketchbooks with drawings and notes. The
city of Venice became a recurring theme of his late work, in oils and watercolours, many of
which were made during a stay in 1840.

He worked in watercolours and drawings as well as oils, but it was the influence of the
first two that would help produce his unique personal style, which often used oil paint in a broad
and translucent manner to create scenes of vast light and colour.

A Turner Top Three

Not sure where to start looking in the 20,000 paintings and drawings Turner left behind?
Here are three of Turner’s most popular works in the Tate collection:

1.)  Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth (exhibited 1842)

 Particularly in his later life, Turner painted many pictures exploring the effects of the
elements: wind, rain, snow, sea, and storms. In this painting, a steamboat struggles to stay afloat
in the heart of the vortex. The swirling shapes, shifting colours, and blurry marks make it seem
as if we’re looking directly into a storm.  It is famously said that Turner came up with this image
while lashed to the mast of a ship during an actual storm at sea. While this boast is probably
fiction, the powerful visual effect and Turner’s great skill remain.

Does Turner’s lie have an effect on your perception of this painting?

2.)  Fishermen at Sea (exhibited 1796)

The first oil painting Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy, this is an image evocative
of the moonlit scenes popularised at the time by artists like Philip James de
Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright of Derby. These painters were largely responsible for fuelling
the 18th-century vogue for nocturnal subjects, which were thought to best convey the
vulnerability of human life in the face of nature. The blast of moonlight outshines the tiny
flickering lamp of the fishermen’s boat, further emphasising this point.

3.)  Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps exhibited 1812

For Turner, the figure of Hannibal—here leading his armies to attack Italy in 218 BC—
had powerful associations with Napoleon Bonaparte, whose campaigns were raging during the
artist’s lifetime. In official portraits of Napoleon, he was depicted as a tremendously heroic
figure, particularly as he was about to lead his own armies across the St Bernard Pass. In contrast
to those images, Snow Storm does not celebrate the power of the individual. Instead, ominous
clouds curl over treacherous landscapes, expressing man’s vulnerability in the face of nature’s
overwhelming force. Attention is focused upon victims of the conflict and the struggling
soldiers, while Hannibal himself is but a tiny smudge atop an elephant on the furthest point of the
horizon.

Late Work
 Turner’s late style, which was characterised by energetic brushwork and relative lack of
descriptive details, combined with the uncompromising nature of his modern subject matter,
surprised even some of his most devoted patrons such as John Ruskin.

In 1843, Ruskin described Turner as “the father of modern art.” His loose brushwork and
vibrant colouring often provoked shocked responses from his contemporaries. One hundred and
seventy years later, Turner’s work still looks surprisingly modern. His experiments in technique
—his dogged investigations into what paint can do—as evidenced particularly by his later work,
place Turner as a visionary forerunner of later developments in painting, such
as impressionism and abstract expressionism.

As well as making rapid advances in his visual technique, Turner was also thoroughly
“modern” in his choice of subject. Alongside painting traditional grandiose subjects from history,
literature, and mythology, Turner captured the everyday life of cities, ports and the countryside
on his sketching tours, depicting the working and leisure activities of ordinary men and women,
and providing a fascinating document of early nineteenth century life.