Synopsis

Despite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the UK, where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”

Here's Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”

Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals.

But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) — The Dream of Gerontius (John Shirley-Quirk, bar.; London Symphony Chorus; King's College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, cond.) London/Decca 448170