The Dream of Gerontius, Op. 38

Program notes

About the Work

The Dream of Gerontius is Edward Elgar’s choral masterpiece and one of the supreme achievements of British music: a vast, deeply felt setting for soloists, chorus and orchestra of a poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman. (Elgar himself disliked calling it an oratorio; the word appears nowhere in the score.) Newman’s poem traces the journey of a soul: Gerontius, a devout man, dies; his soul leaves his body and is carried by his Guardian Angel through the realms beyond death, encountering demons and angelic choirs, toward the moment of judgement before God, and finally to the threshold of Purgatory and eventual salvation. It is a profoundly Catholic vision of death not as an end but as a passage, and Elgar, himself a Catholic, poured his whole soul into it.

Completed in 1900, the work had a famously troubled premiere in Birmingham that year (the chorus master had died suddenly, the amateur chorus was unprepared, and the conductor Hans Richter received the full score only on the eve of the orchestral rehearsals), which deeply wounded Elgar. But it was soon rescued by triumphant performances in Germany (in Düsseldorf in 1901 and 1902, after which Richard Strauss toasted ‘the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar’) and went on to become a cornerstone of the British choral tradition, performed by choirs and orchestras across the world. Musically it is continuous and through-composed, more like a sacred music-drama than a sequence of separate numbers, built from a web of recurring leitmotifs (Elgar had absorbed the lessons of Wagner) that represent ideas like Sleep, Fear, Prayer, Judgement and Divine Mercy. Running about an hour and forty minutes without interval, it is a journey of overwhelming emotional and spiritual power, and a perfect vehicle for the LSO, its chorus and a great conductor like Antonio Pappano.

What to Listen For

The work falls into two parts. Part I takes place at Gerontius’s deathbed: listen for the hushed, mysterious orchestral Prelude that lays out the main leitmotifs you will hear throughout. The tenor (Gerontius) sings of his fear and faith as death approaches (listen for the great outpouring ‘Sanctus fortis,’ his profession of belief), while the chorus of friends prays around him, and the bass (the Priest) finally sends his soul on its way with the noble ‘Proficiscere, anima Christiana’ (‘Go forth, Christian soul’).

Part II is set in the world beyond. Listen for the magical change of atmosphere as the Soul awakes, weightless and wondering, accompanied by the serene mezzo-soprano (the Angel) who guides him. Listen for the snarling, sneering chorus of Demons (a brilliant, biting fugal episode); for the radiant ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height,’ the work’s great choral climax, a tremendous hymn of praise; for the bass’s awe-struck ‘Angel of the Agony’; and for the overwhelming orchestral blaze at the instant the Soul glimpses God, followed by its anguished, transformed cry. Finally, listen for the Angel’s tender farewell, the ‘Softly and gently,’ as the Soul is laid to rest in Purgatory and the music dies away in consolation and peace. Throughout, follow the interplay of the three soloists, the great chorus (here the London Symphony Chorus) and Elgar’s glowing, Wagnerian orchestra, and surrender to one of the most moving spiritual journeys in all music.