Cockaigne (In London Town)
Concert overture by Edward Elgar
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Cockaigne (In London Town), Op. 40, also known as the Cockaigne Overture, is a concert overture for full orchestra written by the English composer Edward Elgar in 1900–1901. It was his first purely orchestral work after his Enigma Variations had propelled him to national celebrity and it was an immediate success and has been much performed in concert and on record ever since.
History
The success of Elgar's Enigma Variations in 1899 was followed by the initial failure of The Dream of Gerontius, which caused the composer to become dispirited and declare that God was against art. Nevertheless, he received a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society and began work on a new piece and soon reported that it was "cheerful and Londony, 'stout and steaky'... honest, healthy, humorous and strong, but not vulgar".[1]
The first performance was in the Queen's Hall, London at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert, on 20 June 1901, conducted by the composer.[2] He dedicated the work to his "many friends, the members of British orchestras."[2] The music was an immediate success and became one of Elgar's most popular works. It continues to appear regularly in the concert hall, on disc and on broadcasts. Elgar's biographer, Michael Kennedy writes that it is "Elgar's finest overture".[3]
Description
In its 15 minutes or so the overture gives a lively and colourful musical portrait of Edwardian London. "Cockaigne" was a term used by moralists at that time as a metaphor for gluttony and drunkenness, while Britain adopted the name humorously for London. The work presents various aspects of turn-of-the-century London and Londoners.[4] It begins with a quiet but bustling theme which leads into an unbroken sequence of snapshots: the cockneys, the church bells, the romantic couples, a slightly ragged brass band (perhaps the Salvation Army) and a contrastingly grand and imperious military band.[4] The broad theme representing Londoners is the first occurrence in an orchestral score of Elgar’s trademark direction, nobilmente (nobly).[5] The work culminates in a characteristically Elgarian blaze of orchestral sound – including a full organ – in E♭, leading to closing bars in C.[4]
Mindful of the way Elgar brings his themes together at the climax of the piece, both Bernard Shaw and W. H. "Billy" Reed compared the work to Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Prelude, which culminates in the combination of several themes. Shaw, in a long article on Elgar in 1920, wrote:
Reed wrote:
The Elgar scholar Julian Rushton writes that although there are echoes of Die Meistersinger, and both overtures "use busy counterpoint within a loose sonata pattern", Elgar’s aural pictures are quite different from Wagner's medieval Nuremberg: "his London is not only the hub of an Empire but the city of music-hall and Covent Garden (market, not opera)".[4]
Recordings
- Source: WorldCat and Naxos Music Library