The Elgar Society was founded in 1951 to promote performance of the music of British composer Edward Elgar , especially the more rarely performed items. Registered as a charity on 22 January 1988, It is particularly concerned with introducing the composer and his music to younger audiences and, by making grants to appropriate educational activities, to enhance the quality of life of members of the public. It also supports the Elgar Birthplace Museum with an annual grant with the objective of widening accessibility to the location and its contents and encouraging research.
21-549: In the 1980s the Society encouraged the making of recordings of works such as The Black Knight which remained unrecorded. The current president of the Elgar society is Sir Mark Elder . Previous presidents were Sir Adrian Boult from 1951, Lord Menuhin from 1983 and Richard Hickox from 1999. There are seven UK Branches organised geographically: Great Western, London, North West, Scotland, Southern, Thames Valley and West Midlands; and
42-434: A journal —The Elgar Society Journal—three times a year of Elgar research, and is sold to educational institutions and the general public as well as being sent to members as part of their subscription benefit. There is also a thrice-yearly newsletter sent to members only. Before 2011, The Elgar Medal was awarded only to foreign scholars and musicians who publish or perform, and therefore promote, Elgar’s music abroad. During
63-619: A branch in Vancouver, British Columbia , Canada. The creation of a Branch is at the discretion of the Society’s Council and requires substantive evidence from a sufficiently large group of members that there is a reasonable assurance of viability. Branches are required to report periodically to the Council on their activities and submit their annual accounts to the Treasurer. The society publishes
84-572: A concert in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on 11 December 2008, Steven Halls, Chairman of the Society, presented the medal to Sakari Oramo . The remaining outstanding award, to Vladimir Ashkenazy , presented in 2010. However, in February 2011, the Elgar Medal was presented to Michael Kennedy , CBE, a renowned British journalist, writer, and music critic, for his major contribution to promoting
105-478: A minor home-key for his most disquieting utterances." The opening theme of the Piano Concerto in C minor K491 , features rising diminished sevenths: More startling is the finale of Mozart's G minor Symphony No. 40 , K550, which critic Charles Rosen (1971, p324) calls "a work of passion, violence and grief." The development section features a disorienting sequence of diminished sevenths: The dramatic clout of
126-464: A performance at the Worcester Festival. Cantatas were favoured by choral societies of the time. However, Elgar's desire to organize the loose format of the cantata by shaping it to a more rigid form is apparent. For example, Elgar divides the text into four contrasting scenes corresponding to the four movements of a typical symphony. Basil Maine, a leading Elgar biographer, believes the purpose of
147-464: Is 216:125, which is three minor thirds. However, in 19 equal temperament , it is enharmonically equivalent to a augmented sixth , having a ratio of 2 :1 (approximately 1.7284), or 947 cents. The 128:75 just diminished seventh arises in the C harmonic minor scale between B and A ♭ by combining B-D, D|F, F-A ♭ . Play Since the Baroque era, Western European composers have used
168-414: The chorus and the king erupt with a dramatic cry as the children die. The knight's refusal to kill the king is portrayed by unaccompanied voices. The piece ends dramatically with the return of variations on the knight's theme at forte. At the last seven measures, only two instruments play and the sound dies away. Many believe the composer considers the chorus less important than the orchestra. For example,
189-560: The chorus borrows the orchestra's tunes or will often double the orchestra. The words are often weakly placed and do not seem as important as the underlying music. "Words serve a mechanical purpose ... [there is] no good reason why they should not be removed". The orchestral writing, however, is competent and characteristic. For example, fear at the Black Knight is expressed by harmonic sequences and appoggiaturas which resolve downward. The composer also uses Neapolitan sixth chords to express
210-456: The diminished seventh as a melodic interval to convey intense, sometimes troubled emotion. Richard Taruskin (2010, p. 258) draws attention to the falling melodic figures in the bass (pedal) part of J. S. Bach's organ chorale prelude from the Orgelbüchlein , "Durch Adam's Fall": "What is a powerful surprise, and further evidence of Bach’s unique imaginative boldness, is the specific form
231-410: The four movements of the classical symphony. There are no soloists, and the action is described by the chorus. In the first scene, "The Tournament", Edward Elgar uses a buoyant, "open-air" theme to depict the happy crowd at the tournament. Here the composer uses a triplet figure that falls on the third beat. The second scene begins with the orchestra playing softly. The orchestra then begins to play
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#1732858673637252-400: The interval from A to G is a minor seventh, ten semitones wide, and both the intervals from A ♯ to G, and from A to G ♭ are diminished sevenths, spanning nine semitones. Being diminished, it is considered a dissonant interval. The diminished seventh is used quite readily in the minor key , where it is present in the harmonic minor scale between the seventh scale step and
273-424: The king's feast, but the music changes as the black knight's theme replays as he enters the hall. During the knight's dance with the king's daughter, his theme becomes chaotic: for example, the orchestra replays the original diminished seventh again as the flower in her hair died. "The Banquet" begins frantically as the knight proposes a toast. Then, as the children die, the orchestra calms and plays softly. Abruptly
294-405: The knight's theme louder as he appears. Throughout the scene, the composer uses many diminished sevenths which represent the knight and foreshadow the disastrous events to come. The chorus, representing the crowd, demands to know the knight's name, and there is a moment of silence before the knight answers. In the "Dance", the themes are light and graceful. Initially, the chorus enters to describe
315-428: The obbligato pedal part takes in this chorale setting: almost nothing but dissonant drops of a seventh – Adam’s fall made audible! And not just the fall, but also the attendant pain and suffering are depicted (and in a way evoked), since so many of those sevenths are diminished." The expressive potential of the interval was not lost on Mozart, especially when, as Dennis Matthews (1971, p. iii) puts it, "Mozart reserved
336-400: The poison. The old king begs the knight to kill him as he has nothing left to live for, but he refuses. Music writer Diana McVeagh observes that there seems to be no moral cause or explanation for the gratuitous evil of the stranger. Elgar described the work as a 'symphony for chorus and orchestra', though the publishers, Novello , described it as a cantata. The four scenes correspond to
357-492: The sixth scale step in the octave above. In 12-tone equal temperament , a diminished seventh is equal to nine semitones, a ratio of 2 :1 (approximately 1.6818), or 900 cents, and is enharmonically equivalent to a major sixth . There is no standard just tuning of this interval, but one possibility, assuming the flat submediant is a perfect (5:4) major third below the octave, and the leading tone to be 15:16, would lead to an interval of 128:75, about 925 cents; another interval
378-424: The sky darkening and the castle rocking, the strange knight fights and wins. Later that evening, during the banquet, the black knight returns to ask the king if he can marry his daughter and begins to dance with her, and as they dance, the little flowers in her hair mysteriously die. Later, noticing the paleness of the king's two children, the guest offers 'healing' wine to them, who collapse and die soon after drinking
399-400: The wickedness of the knight. Due to this unexpected compositional technique, The Black Knight is still performed all over the world. Diminished seventh In classical music from Western culture , a diminished seventh ( play ) is an interval produced by narrowing a minor seventh by a chromatic semitone , and its inversion is the augmented second . For instance,
420-431: The work is to create a close mix of vocal and instrumental tones. Elgar's The Black Knight tells the story of the intrusion of a mysterious stranger into a king's court with disastrous and gruesome result. It starts with a medieval jousting competition held in honor of the feast of Pentecost : in the competition, the king's son beats everyone in the lists until a mysterious knight arrives and challenges him, and with
441-447: The works of Elgar. 2019 - Anastasia Vedyakova , the first Russian musician was awarded by The Elgar Medal. The Black Knight (Elgar) The Black Knight , Op. 25 is a symphony/ cantata for orchestra and chorus written by Edward Elgar in 1889–93. The librettist borrows from Longfellow 's translation of the ballad Der schwarze Ritter by Ludwig Uhland . Elgar was motivated to complete work on The Black Knight when offered
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