A GRAND sort out of numerous of the hand-written musical sketches of Worcester's most famous son, Sir Edward Elgar, was undertaken at this time exactly half-a-century ago.

Berrow's Journal of 1953 explained: "For 12 years, G. Stacey Henderson, composer and bookseller of Lewes, Sussex and Charing Cross Road, London, has been engaged upon a tremendous bibliography of Sir Edward Elgar.

"He is attempting to make a complete list of every article, every tribute, every photograph, portrait or bust - in fact, everything connected with the life of the great composer. It will not be a biography in any sense of the word, but a large book of reference.

"Mr Stacey Henderson recently spent some time at Worcester and was entrusted by Elgar's daughter, Mrs Elgar Blake with the task of sorting out and cataloguing the mass of original sketches of his compositions - some of them unpublished - as well as the completed manuscripts and proofs.

"He found many sketches for the great oratorios - sometimes on the same piece of paper as outlines for the Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 (Land of Hope and Glory), The Violin Concerto or The First Symphony. He had to determine which design was meant for which work, in the light of his own and other musicians' knowledge of Elgar's published and performed compositions.

"He gained quite a new insight into the composer's large output of music, for in one case he came upon hundreds of pages, in pencil, of a projected opera, a piano concerto and several other works which were never completed. Mrs Elgar Blake describes these as the attempts of a very young man, mostly experimental - not to be compared with the work of the mature Elgar.

"The sketches, now catalogued, will go to the British Museum."