Edward Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination

A study of nostalgia in the music of the popular twentieth-century composer Edward Elgar.

Matthew Riley (Author)

9780521121835, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 October 2009

256 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.38 kg

Review of the hardback: 'There is a particularly limpid and acute discussion of the relations between music and literature involved…' The Times Literary Supplement

During his lifetime, and in the course of the twentieth century, Edward Elgar and his music became sites for a remarkable variety of nostalgic impulses. These are manifested in his personal life, in the content of his works, in his critical and biographical reception, and in numerous artistic ventures based on his character and music. Today Elgar enjoys renewed popularity in Britain, and nostalgia of various forms continues to shape our responses to his music. From one viewpoint, Elgarian nostalgia might be dismissed as escapist, regressive and reactionary, and the revival in Elgar's fortunes regarded as the symptom of a pernicious 'heritage industry' in post-colonial, post-industrial Britain. While there is undeniably a grain of truth to that view, Matthew Riley's careful treatment of the topic reveals a more complex picture of nostalgia, and sheds light on Elgar and his cultural significance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

1. Nostalgia
2. Memory: thematic reminiscence in Elgar
Hauntings
Epiphanies
Autumnal harmonies
3. Nobility: the ideal in the present
Negative nobility
Faith and ruin
4. Nature: the rural Pan
The wind among the pines
Aeolian visitations
Nature and form
5. Childhood: the Romantic child
Moore's 'Better Land'
Starlight and recollection
The Elgarian child transformed
6. Identity: the feminine element inside
Imperialist nostalgia
A demon for counterpoint
7. Waters: A flowing-awayness
Penal waters
Severn and Amazon
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Music [AV]