Falstaff – Symphonic Study in C minor

C minor

C minor is a minor scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. The harmonic minor raises the B to B. Changes needed for the melodic and harmonic versions of the scale are written in with naturals and accidentals as necessary.Its key signature consists of three flats...

, Op.68, is an orchestral work by the English composer Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

. Though not so designated by the composer, it is a symphonic poem

Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...

 in the tradition of Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

 and Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

. It portrays Sir John Falstaff

Falstaff

Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...

, the "fat knight" of Shakespeare's Henry IV

Henry IV, Part 1

Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...

parts 1 and 2.

The work was well received at its première in 1913, but did not inspire the great enthusiasm aroused by some of Elgar's earlier works. The composer thought it his finest orchestral piece, and many Elgar admirers agree, but it has not become a popular favourite. Compared with other Elgar works is infrequently played in the concert hall, though it is well-represented in the CD catalogues.

Structure

Elgar set out the divisions of the score

Sheet music

Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

 in an "analytical essay" in The Musical Times

The Musical Times

The Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...

in 1913:

• I. Falstaff and Prince Henry
  Henry V of England
  Henry V was King of England from 1413 until his death at the age of 35 in 1422. He was the second monarch belonging to the House of Lancaster....
  
  

• II. Eastcheap
  Eastcheap
  Eastcheap is a street in the City of London. Its name derives from cheap, market, with the prefix "East" distinguishing it from the other former City of London market of Westcheap . In medieval times Eastcheap was the City's main meat market, with butchers' stalls lining both sides of the street...
  
   – Gadshill – The Boar's Head. Revelry and sleep – Dream Interlude: 'Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk
  Duke of Norfolk
  The Duke of Norfolk is the premier duke in the peerage of England, and also, as Earl of Arundel, the premier earl. The Duke of Norfolk is, moreover, the Earl Marshal and hereditary Marshal of England. The seat of the Duke of Norfolk is Arundel Castle in Sussex, although the title refers to the...
  
  ' (Poco allegretto)

• III. Falstaff's march – The return through Gloucestershire
  Gloucestershire
  Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
  
   – Interlude: Gloucestershire. Shallow's orchard (Allegretto) – The new king – The hurried ride to London

• IV. King Henry V's progress – The repudiation of Falstaff, and his death

In the first section, Elgar establishes the two main themes of the piece, that for Prince Hal (marked grandioso) being courtly and grand, and that for Falstaff himself showing "a goodly, portly man, of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage."' Boito adapted these words of Falstaff for his libretto for the Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

 opera of the same name

Falstaff (opera)

Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...

, but the Falstaff of the opera is essentially the buffo character from The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...

, whereas Elgar's is the Falstaff of Henry IV.

The subsequent development of the score follows closely the key events of the two parts of Henry IV in which Falstaff features. The Gadshill section shows him attempting a gold bullion robbery but being himself attacked and robbed by the disguised Hal and his companions. Falstaff returns to his base at the inn and drowns his sorrows in drink. In his drunken sleep, he dreams of his youth, when he was a slim page to the Duke of Norfolk. Here too Boito/Verdi and Elgar treat the same material quite differently: in the opera, Falstaff's nostalgic reminiscence is a lively aria ("Quand' ero paggio"), but Elgar's treatment is slow and wistful.

Part III of the score moves to Shakespeare's Henry IV, part 2

Henry IV, Part 2

Henry IV, Part 2 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed written between 1596 and 1599. It is the third part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1 and succeeded by Henry V.-Sources:...

. After Falstaff's summons to court and commission to raise soldiers for the King's army, there is a battle scene and then a second interlude, an English idyll

Idyll

An idyll or idyl is a short poem, descriptive of rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus' short pastoral poems, the Idylls....

 in a Gloucestershire orchard. This is dispelled by the news of the King's death and Prince Hal's accession. As in the play, Falstaff hurries to London, confident of favours from the new monarch, but is instead dismissed and banished. Finally the broken Falstaff, having crept away, lies dying – "the king hath killed his heart" – and after a return of the theme of the second interlude, a piano

Dynamics (music)

In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...

 C major

C major

C major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....

 chord in the brass and a hushed roll on the side-drum portray Falstaff's death. The work ends with a very brief version of Prince Hal's theme showing, in the composer's words, that "the man of stern reality has triumphed."

History and critical reception

In 1912 the Leeds

Leeds

Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...

 Festival commissioned Elgar to write a new work to be performed the following year. Before the première Elgar told a reporter, "I have, I think, enjoyed writing it more than any other music I have composed and perhaps for that reason it may prove to be among my better efforts". It was first performed at Leeds on 1 October 1913, conducted by the composer. The Musical Times commented, "the work is unsurpassed in modern music for variety, effectiveness and sureness of orchestral writing." The London première was on 3 November 1913, at the Queen's Hall

Queen's Hall

The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...

, conducted by the dedicatee, Landon Ronald

Landon Ronald

Sir Landon Ronald was an English conductor, composer, pianist, singing teacher and administrator...

. The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

said of the London première that it was played to "a not very large but very enthusiastic audience" and subsequently Falstaff has remained less popular than other major Elgar works, though much loved by aficionados. Music and Letters noted in its obituary of Elgar that though "a majority would call Falstaff his greatest work" most people would "say they like the Enigma

Enigma Variations

Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...

best." Even during Elgar's lifetime, the musical scholar Percy Scholes wrote of Falstaff that it was a "great work" but "so far as public appreciation goes, a comparative failure."

Sir Donald Tovey

Donald Francis Tovey

Sir Donald Francis Tovey was a British musical analyst, musicologist, writer on music, composer, conductor and pianist...

 viewed Falstaff as "one of the immeasurably great things in music" with power "identical with Shakespeare's," and the 1955 reference work The Record Guide

The Record Guide

The Record Guide was an English reference work, listing, describing and evaluating gramophone recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was the precursor of modern guides such as The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music-Publication history:...

described Falstaff as "the only tone poem of its day that suffers nothing by comparison with the best of Richard Strauss's works in the genre". George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 wrote that "[Elgar] made the band do it all, and with such masterful success that one cannot bear to think what would have been the result of a mere attempt to turn the play into an opera."
Others were less impressed with the work. The dedicatee, Landon Ronald, admitted to John Barbirolli

John Barbirolli

Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...

, "Never could make head or tail of the piece, my dear boy." After a performance by the New York Philharmonic

New York Philharmonic

The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...

 in 1983, the critic of The New York Times opined that the conductor "could not do much, in fact, to rescue the character's spirited braggadocio from the programmatic detail that smothered the music." The well-known Elgarian writer Michael Kennedy

Michael Kennedy (music critic)

Dr. George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE is an English biographer, journalist and writer on classical music. He joined the Daily Telegraph at the age of 15 in 1941, and began writing music criticism for it in 1948...

 criticised the work for "too frequent reliance on sequences

Sequence (music)

In music, a sequence is the immediate restatement of a motif or longer melodic passage at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice. It is one of the most common and simple methods of elaborating a melody in eighteenth and nineteenth century classical music...

" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters. Even Elgar's great friend and champion, W. H. Reed

William Henry Reed

William Henry "Billy" Reed was an English violinist, teacher, minor composer, conductor and biographer of Sir Edward Elgar...

, thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works. Reed acknowledged, nevertheless, that Elgar himself thought Falstaff the highest point of his purely orchestral work.

Recordings

Though concert performances have been comparatively rare, the work has been well served in recordings. There were no fewer than 20 recorded versions of the work by 2007. The composer's own 1931/1932 recording with the London Symphony Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...

, produced by Fred Gaisberg

Fred Gaisberg

Frederick William Gaisberg was an American-born musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He himself did not use the term 'producer' and was not an impresario like his protégé Walter Legge of EMI or an innovator like John Culshaw of Decca...

 of HMV, was widely praised both at the time of its release and when it was remastered for LP and then for CD. Sir John Barbirolli's 1964 Hallé

Halle

Halle is a noun that means hall in the German language. It may also refer to:-In Germany:* Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, official name Halle , also called Halle or Halle an der Saale...

 recording on HMV was chosen by BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

's Record Review as the recommended version, even over the composer's own. In 2007, the classical music magazine Gramophone compared 20 recorded versions of Falstaff and selected Barbirolli's recording as "the essential choice" and "one of the pinnacles of the Elgar discography."

Sir Adrian Boult

Adrian Boult

Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...

 was closely associated with the work and made three recordings of it. His final version, set down in 1973, was praised by critics for emphasising the "symphonic'" aspect. In 1978, Vernon Handley

Vernon Handley

Vernon George "Tod" Handley CBE was a British conductor, known in particular for his support of British composers. He was born of a Welsh father and an Irish mother into a musical family in Enfield, London. He acquired the nickname "Tod" because his feet were turned in at his birth, which his...

 and the London Philharmonic Orchestra

London Philharmonic Orchestra

The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...

 recorded a version for Classics for Pleasure that Gramophone praised for its "spacious yet purposeful conception" and "meticulous fidelity to the letter and spirit of the score and architectural splendour." In 2005, the BBC also recommended a Naxos

Naxos Records

Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...

 recording by David Lloyd-Jones

David Lloyd-Jones

David Matthias Lloyd-Jones is a British conductor who has specialised in British and Russian music. He is also an editor and translator, especially of Russian operas.- Biography :...

 and the English Northern Philharmonia, and in 2007 Gramophone marked it as the "bargain choice" recording of Falstaff.