26
November 2025

The Enigma of Edward Elgar

Welcome to The Arts Society East Sussex
Wednesday, November 26, 2025 - 09:30
The Hove Club
28 Fourth Avenue Hove BN3 2PJ
Online Event

A look at the life and work of our greatest composer.

One of our greatest composers, Edward Elgar was an extraordinary man.  Brought up in a provincial town, his father a piano tuner and the owner of a music shop, Elgar was completely self-taught as a musician, evidence of the strong determination behind his original and unique genius. His path to recognition was hard and bitter.  He had to contend with the prejudices of the British musical establishment, religious bigotry (he was a Roman Catholic) and with the entrenched class-consciousness of late Victorian provincial society.  However, with his wife Alice as his staunchest supporter, from a hesitant start with pieces written for his local music societies, to cantatas celebrating Britain’s history, “King Olaf” and “Caractacus”, he finally achieved national and international success with his “Variations on an original theme (Enigma)” of 1899.  This work demonstrates remarkable technical mastery of form and orchestration and above all an individual and forceful personality.  He went on to create two of the greatest of the 20th century's symphonies, the magnificent oratorio “The Dream of Gerontius” and two concertos, for violin and cello, among the finest ever written. And of course, he expresses a vigorous patriotism in his “Pomp and Circumstance Marches”. This lecture, illustrated with many notable musical examples, explores the development of this contradictory musician, always wracked with self-doubt, and explains how his music expresses a quintessential Englishness.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Roger Askew

Roger was a chorister at Wells Cathedral School and a choral scholar at Magdalen College,
Oxford, where he graduated with an honours degree in English. He combined a teaching
career with professional singing in London, and after obtaining a further degree in Music
became Director of Music at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College in Edinburgh.
After retiring in 2003 he returned to the south of England. He is President Emeritus of The
Stoke Poges Society.