ARCANGELO CORELLI (1653 - 1713)

     Arcangelo Corelli was Born in 1653, in Fusignano in northern Italy, of an aristocratic family, Corelli moved to Bologna at the age of 13 to study the violin. Four years later he won a place at the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna. The greater part of Corelli`s life, from 1675, was spent in Rome. Under the patronage of Cardinal Ottoboni, he set up weekly instrumental concerts, which soon became a fashionable musical event. Corelli quickly made his reputation both as a violinist and composer, and amassed a small fortune. One of the few trips he made away from Rome, one was to Naples in 1708 to meet the renowned composer Alessandro Scarlatti.
       Unfortunately the trip did not go well for Corelli, who made a number of mistakes on the violin at a public concert. He returned to Rome, only to find that his place as a leading violinist had been taken by another. Corelli spent his remaining years quietly revising his works. He died in 1713 and was buried at the Pantheon in Rome. ...(Read more....)

KEY NOTES.

Corelli`s music has inspired many composers to imitate his style. J. S. Bach and Tortini each based a composition on one of his works, while in the 20th century Rachmaninov and Tippett have also used Corelli`s themes.

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VIOLIN  TEACHER.

Corelli was one of the first great violin teachers and is credited with being the founder of modern violin language. Among his pupils were Italian composers Germiniani and Locatelli. Corelli imposed high standards in his teaching, and although he is remembered mostly for his serene, elegant style, he also played with great emotion.

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                                  Edward Elgar (2nd June 1857 - 23rd February 1943)

    Sir Edward William Elgar, OM, GCVO, 1st Baronet was born on 2nd June 1857 in a small country cottage at Lower Broadheath just outside of Worcester. His birth home has now become the Elgar Birth place Museum of international fame and contains an unrivalled collection of manuscripts, letters, concert programmes, photos and much more revealing the great man behind the music. Elgar was not of a privileged background, his mother of farming stock and his father who was a piano tuner and proprietor of a music shop close to Worcester Cathedral. Elgar was acutely sensitive to any perceived criticism due in part being conscious of his lack of social standing. He tried desperately to gain recognition first as a violinist and later as composer. Elgar married Caroline Alice Roberts, the daughter of  the late Major-General Sir Henry Roberts, in 1889 and they had one child, a daughter Carice Irene Elgar. Carice being a contraction of his wife’s Christian names ,Car(oline) + (Al)ice.
    A devout Catholic, Elgar eventually reached the pinnacle of British Society with close friendships with royalty. Elgar finally achieved fame both in Britain and abroad with Variations on an Original Theme “The Enigma”. Elgar`s interests apart from music were wide and varied. He was a cartoonist, enthusiastic cyclist and golfer, enjoyed horse racing, had a keen interest in literature and was an amateur scientist having a least one patent to his name. Also, Elgar loved the countryside and in particular the Malvern Hills. In 1904 Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII, the first of many awards and honours bestowed upon him before his death in 1934....(Read more........)..........(Biographical video)

            Elgar the Scientist.

      
      The Birthplace at Lower
               Broadheath.

   Elgar at the Empire Exhibition

              KEY DATES

1872 - Left Littleton (now Lyttleton) House school and went to work as a Solicitor`s clerk.
1880 -Made his first trip abroad to Paris.
1882 - Visited Leipzig where he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire.
1883 - Became engaged to Helen Weaver in the summer, but for reasons unknown the engagement was broken off the following year.
1885 - Succeeded his father, William,as organist of St. Georges Catholic Church, Worcester.
1889 - Married Caroline Alice Roberts at Brompton Oratory on 8th May.
1890 - In the September Elgar conducted the first performance of Froissant.
1904 - In March a three day festival of Elgar`s works was presented at Covent Garden, an honour never before given to any English composer. On 5th July, Elgar was knighted at Buckingham Palace and the following month, he and his family moved back to Plas Gwyn, a large house on the outskirts of Hereford.
1905 - Visited America to conduct the Introduction and Allegro for Strings at Yale University and received a doctorate from this University.
1905 - 1908 - Held the post of Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham.
1911 - Was appointed to the Order of Merit.
1912 - Moved back to london, to a large house in Nertherhall Gardens.
1920 - Landon Ronald presented an-all Elgar concert at Queen`s Hall at which Alice Elgar attended only to die shortly afterwards of lung cancer on 7th April aged 72.
1923 - Took a voyage to South America, journeying up the Amazon. In this year he moved back to Worcestershire, to the village of Kempsey.
1924 - He was appointed Master of the King`s Musik on 13th May following the death of Sir Walter Parratt.
1932 - The BBC organised a festival of his works to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday.
1933 - He flew to Paris to conduct the Violin Concerto for Menuhin. On 8th October colorectal cancer was discovered during an operation.
1934 - February, he died aged seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St. Wulstan`s Church in Little Malvern.

KEY WORKS

1890 -  Froissart composed for The Three Choirs Festival.
1892 - The Black Knight composed for the great choral festivals of the English Midlands and Serenade for Strings.
1896 - King Olaf composed for the great choral festivals of the English Midlands.
1897 - Three Bavarian Dances - modestly successful.
1898 - Caractacus - modestly successful.
1899 - Enigma Variations was premiered in London under the baton of the eminent German conductor Hans Richter.
1900 - Cardinal John Henry Newman`s poem The Dream of Gerontius was set for soloists, chorus and orchestra for the Birmingham Triennial Festival.
1901 - The first of the five Pomp and Circumstance Marches were composed.
1905 - Dedicated to Samuel Sanford preofessor at Yale University The Introduction and Allegro for Strings was composed.
1906 - His next large scale work was the sequel to The Apostles - the oratorio The Kingdom.
1908 - His First Symphony was a national and international triumph. Within weeks of the premiere it was performed in New York, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Leipzig, Rome, Chicago, Boston, Toronto and fifteen British towns and cities.
1910 - The Violin Concerto was commissioned by Fritz Kreisler one of the leading violinists of the time.
1912 - His last two large-scale works of the pre-war era, the choral ode, The Music Makers (for the Birmingham festival) and the symphonic study Falstaff  (for the Leeds festival).
1915 - 1917 Incidental music for a children`s play The Starlight Express. A ballet The Sanguine Fan and The Spirit of England, three choral settings to poems by Laurence Binyon.
1918 - 1919 - He produced four large scale works. The first three of these were chamber pieces : the Violin Sonata in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor and the String Quartet in E minor.
1923 - 1927 - He made large scale symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel and wrote his Empire March and eight songs Pageant of Empire for the 1924 British Empire Expedition.
1933/34 - He started work on an opera The Spanish Lady but failed to complete it before his death.