Customer Reviews

Elgar: A Life in Photographs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Moore's book shows that elements of Elgar's mature works, including the Enigma Variations, The Dream of Gerontius and the Cello Concerto, can be found in the pieces of music the composer wrote as a young boy growing up in Worcester. He demonstrates that these early efforts reveal characteristic rhythms and harmonies--a kind of musical DNA--that reasserted themselves throughout a lifetime of musical composition.

But music is more than a series of notes, and Moore is equally concerned with the vision that animates Elgar's work. He begins by asking how music can conjure up a specific landscape, and, after showing how one Elgar composition after another reflects the light and contours of the Worcestershire countryside, he concludes by placing the composer in a long line of English pastoralists stretching back through Constable, Shakespeare and Chaucer.

As the author of the definitive Elgar biography, Moore has an encyclopedic knowledge of the composer and his world, and he brings to bear years of thinking about this music. No matter how well you know Elgar's music, this book will let you hear it afresh, and you may be surprised at what you'll find.