The despair that turned to triumph

A host of hitches combined to make the world premiere a flop and, though in no way responsible, the composer was cast into despair.

Elgar had described the score as "the best of me," but he was so devastated by the woeful first performance of his sacred piece that he declared: "I always said God was against art and I still believe it."

This was clearly a desperate statement from a Roman Catholic, and there were fears that the body blow might well destroy the creativity of this musical genius. Fortunately, however, this was not to be so and, within two years, Gerontius had enjoyed widely acclaimed performances, first in Germany and then at the Worcester Three Choirs Festival of 1902.

Elgar himself conducted the hugely successful performance in Worcester Catherdral in September 1902, and was seen to have tears streaming down his cheeks. He wrote afterwards to a close friend: "You must come to Worcester and hear what 'Gerontius' MIGHT be - the building will do it."

It was in November 1898, that Elgar accepted the £200 commission to write a new work for the Birmingham Triennial Festival of October 1900, and he soon decided that it should be an oratorio based on the lengthy poem, The Dream of Gerontius by Cardinal John Newman.

He had been given a copy of this in 1889, as a wedding present from Father Knight of St George's Roman Catholic Church at Sansome Place, Worcester where both Elgar and his father had served as organist and choirmaster.

Elgar began sketching the score of Gerontius during the summer of 1899, when he, his wife Alice and daughter Carice were living at Craeg Lea, Malvern Wells. At the time too, the Elgars had use of a country cottage - Birchwood Lodge at Storridge - where the composer was able to escape into greater solitude to work on his oratorio. Some of The Dream is also believed to have been composed when Elgar cycled to a favourite spot beside the Teme near Knightwick and Ankerdine.

Cardinal Newman's Gerontius was obviously a great inspiration to him. He told a family friend: "The poem has been soaking in my mind for at least eight years."

Throughout the glorious summer of 1900, Elgar worked at Birchwood on correcting proofs and in finalising the full score including the magnificent climactic chorus Praise to the Holiest.

The fateful day of the dreadful first performance was October 3, 1900, at Birmingham Town Hall. As Elgar biographer Michael Kennedy has written: "It was the most famous, or notorious, bad performance in the history of English music."

The chorus were given too short a time to learn the work and, after one rehearsal, they were ticked off by Elgar in front of the orchestra. He said it all sounded "no better than a drawing-room ballad." Alice Elgar wrote in her diary the same day: "Chorus dull and wretched."

The great German conductor Hans Richter also failed to assimulate the score fully, and not only were he and the chorus ill-equipped to do do justice to the masterpiece but two of the three soloists were also well below par on the day. Tenor Edward Lloyd, two months off retiring from the concert platform, was a lack-lustre Gerontius, while the bass Harry Plunkett Greene sang flat for most of the time. Only mezzo-soprano Marie Brema seems to have redeemed the affair.

Elgar expressed his bitterness in astonishing terms in a letter to a friend: "Providence denies me a decent hearing for my work so I submit - I always said God was against art and I still believe it. Anything obscene or trivial is blessed in this world and has a reward. I ask for no reward - only to live and to hear my work. I still hear it in my heart and in my head so I must be content."

Just over a year later, however, despair had turned to triumph for Elgar when Gerontius was superbly performed, not in Britain but at Dusseldorf. The audience gave the oratorio rapturous ovations and it also won lavish praise from German composer Richard Strauss who immediately became a great friend and promoter of Elgar and his music.

A second performance at Dusseldorf a few months later was an equal success. Alice Elgar sent a postcard to daughter Carice: "A most splendid evening. Beautiful performance and received with rapture. Father shouted for again and again."

Then came further joy for Elgar with the fine performance of Gerontius in his beloved Worcester at the Three Choirs Festival of 1902 when he was at the rostrum.

Berrow's Journal of September 13, 1902 declared: "It must have been peculiarly gratifying for Mr Elgar to witness the large concourse of people that came to hear his Dream of Gerontius.

"Already in its short life the work has received the approval of two nations, and its acceptance without reservation by the people of Germany, the most truly musical of people, at once stamped the work as of unusual character. The approval of the composer's native city was alone wanting to complete the sum of approbation. This has now been accorded in the rapturous response to the fine performance at our musical festival this week."

The soloists were mezzo-soprano Muriel Foster, tenor John Coates and bass Harry Plunkett Greene who, of course, sang in the woeful first performance.

From the 1902 Three Choirs Festival onwards, The Dream came to be recognised as the great masterwork that it is and, as we know, it now commands a firm place in the world's choral repertoire.

6 Birmingham is to be the scene of two prestigious centenary performances of The Dream on the evenings of Tuesday and Wednesday, October 3 and 4. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under conductor Sakari Oramo will be performing the masterpiece in Symphony Hall, and the international line-up of soloists will include one of the world's greatest mezzo-sopranos of our time, Anne Sofie Von Otter.