Elgar the Music Maker

By (author) Diana McVeagh

Ebook (VitalSource) - £5.99

Publication date:

21 June 2007

Length of book:

264 pages

Publisher

Boydell Press

ISBN-13: 9781782042518

An expert and informative appraisal of all of Elgar's works - from his juvenilia to the unfinished 3rd symphony - by the author of the acclaimed Gerald Finzi.

The new Diana McVeagh book on Elgar is first-rate, wrote Gerald Finzi of her earlier study of the composer, published in 1955. In the completely new Elgar the Music Maker she harvests five decades of thoughts about his music, scrutinizing the biographical details that have since been discovered and using them to assess the ways in which they affect the compositions.
Diana McVeagh explores Elgar's complex personality and his compositional methods, his style and his relationship to his contemporaries, yet it is the music - still played, recorded, loved and discussed as much as ever- that remains her prime focus.
Each of Elgar's works is discussed, balancing information and appraisal, from his juvenilia to his unfinished Third Symphony. Diana McVeagh provides a compelling and accessible companion to the music of one of England's greatest composers. Musicians, scholars and CD collectors alikewill find much to enjoy in Elgar the Music Maker.
Diana McVeagh is the author of the highly acclaimed Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music [2005]; of the entries on Elgar and Finzi for The New Grove Dictionaryof Music and Musicians [1980, 2001]; and of the Finzi entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [2004].