Synopsis

On today’s date in 1930, in Kingsway Hall in London, the British composer Sir Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5, the last in this popular series.

Two of the previous marches had been dedicated to organist friends of the composer, and so when organist Percy Hull asked Elgar for a new work for the 1930 Hereford Festival, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 is dedicated to him.

In 1930, Elgar was 73 years old and he liked to go for automobile rides in the country. Hull had given Elgar some driving lessons, and, appropriately enough, Elgar got the idea for the musical themes of his new march on a drive through the countryside with a friend. Elgar suddenly asked for something on which he could jot down his ideas. All the driver could produce was a road map of Worcestershire—so on its margins the first notes of Elgar’s new score were scribbled.

The march proved to be one of his last new orchestral works. Elgar planned to write a sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, a kind of soldier’s funeral march, he said, but Elgar himself died in 1934.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934) Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 Royal Philharmonic; André Previn, cond. Philips 454 250