WORCESTER'S most famous son, composer Edward Elgar, was very much in the news in the Journal at this time exactly a century ago.

It was reported that a group of the nation's leading composers, musicians and oratorio singers had clubbed together to buy him the expensive robes which went with the recent award to him of a Doctor of Music degree by Cambridge University.

The Journal explained: "A number of Dr Elgar's friends have joined contributions and made him an appropriate and timely gift. As holder of the Cambridge degree, the eminent composer is entitled to wear certain expensive garments of a distinguishing kind. He is, of course, no better a musician because of this right, and it may be that he would decline to spend money upon the raiment.

"It is to the credit of his friends that he will never be called upon to decide the point. They have done it for him by presenting the robes appertaining to his degree."

The Journal listed among the contributors composers Sir Hubert Parry and Granville Bantock, conductors Hans Richter and Henry Wood, and singer Plunkett Green.

The Journal concluded the item: "May Dr Elgar live long to wear the apparel."

Crowquill, in his comment column in the same 1901 edition, also threw the spotlight on the local composer:

"Dr Edward Elgar's 'Enigma Variations' were recently performed at a concert in Berlin. A critic in a musical paper published in that city underlines the already held view here that Dr Elgar 'is a man of the future for English music.'

''The German critic went on: 'Instead of holding fast to the traditions of Handel and Mendelssohn, after the manner of most English composers, Elgar comes forward as an artist who has the courage to be a real personality and whose musical horizon extends further than that of his fellow composers. His chief aim is not to imitate but to create from within, and for what he has to say, he invents his own tone-language'."