REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE FULL SCORE OF "THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS."
To resume. "Don't suppose, however," Dr. Elgar said, "that after that recognition as a composer things were easy for me. The directors of the old Promenade Concerts at Covent Garden Theatre were good enough to write that they thought sufficiently of my things to devote a morning to rehearsing them. I went on the appointed day to London to conduct the rehearsal. When I arrived it was explained to me that a few songs had to be taken before I could begin. Before the songs were finished Sir Arthur Sullivan unexpectedly arrived, bringing with him a selection from one of his operas. It was the only chance he had of going through it with the orchestra, so they determined to take advantage of the opportunity. He consumed all my time in rehearsing this, and when he had finished the director came out and said to me, 'There will be no chance of your going through your music to-day.' I went back to Worcester to my teaching, and that was the last of my chance of an appearance at the Promenade Concerts.
"Years after I met Sullivan, one of the most amiable and genial souls that ever lived. When we were introduced he said, 'I don't think we have met before.' 'Not exactly,' I replied, 'but very near it,' and I told him the circumstance. 'But, my dear boy, I hadn't the slightest idea of it,' he exclaimed, in his enthusiastic manner. 'Why on earth didn't you come and tell me? I'd have rehearsed it myself for you.' They were not idle words. He would have done it, just as he said. He never forgot the episode till the end of his life.
"Two similar occurrences took place at the Crystal Palace: rehearsals were planned which never came off, so I was no nearer to getting a hearing for big orchestral works.
"Mr. Hugh Blair, then the organist of Worcester Cathedral, saw some of the cantata, 'The Black Knight,' and said: 'If you will finish it I will produce it at Worcester.' I finished it, and it was produced by the Worcester Festival Choir. This cantata then came under the notice of Dr. Swinnerton Heap, to whom I owe my introduction to the musical festivals as a writer of choral works. He had known me for a good many years as a violinist, but it had never occurred to him to talk to me about my composing, and he knew nothing of it.
"It was through Dr. Heap that I was asked to write a cantata for the Staffordshire Musical Festival, and, shortly after, the committee asked me to provide an oratorio for the Worcester Festival. They were 'The Light of Life,' performed in Worcester Cathedral, and 'King Olaf,' at Hanley.
"Since then it has been a record of the production of one composition after another until we come to 'The Apostles,' and my new overture 'In the South,' produced at Covent Garden; the one great event that particularly stands out is the production of the 'Variations' by Dr. Richter, to whom I was then a complete stranger.
"For a long time I had had the idea of writing 'The Apostles' in pretty much the form in which I hope it will eventually appear. As you know, there have been oratorios on many points of Jewish and Christian history, but none had shown how Christianity has risen. I take the men who were in touch with Christ, the Apostles in fact, and show them to be ordinary mortals rather than superhuman men, as they are generally represented in art. I was always particularly impressed with Archbishop Whately's conception of Judas, who, as he wrote, 'had no design to betray his Master to death, but to have been as confident of the will of Jesus to deliver Himself from His enemies by a miracle as He must have been certain of His power to do so, and accordingly to have designed to force Him to make such a display of His superhuman powers as would have induced all the Jews—and, indeed, the Romans too—to acknowledge Him King.'
"In carrying out this plan I made the book myself, taking out lines from different parts of the Bible which exactly express my conception. How it was done the following chorus will show you, for you will notice that the references to the text are printed in the margin:—