The Music Makers

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The Music Makers, op.69, is a work for contralto, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was first performed on October 1, 1912.

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Ode (O'Shaughnessy)

The text of the work is the 1874 poem "Ode" by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, which Elgar set in its entirety. He had been working on the music intermittently since 1903, without a specific commission.

The Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály also made a setting of the poem.

[edit] Analysis

The words of the poem no doubt appealed to Elgar's nature, as it celebrates the dreaming artist — by 1912, he was established as part of British artistic society, but was ambivalent at best about that society. The mood of the Ode is clear in the first lines, which depict the isolation of the creative artist:

We are the music makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams...

Later verses celebrate the importance of the artist to his society.

The music is for the most part reserved and personal, and Elgar quotes his own music several times. Sometimes there is a specific verbal cue: for example, the word "dreams" is accompanied by a theme from The Dream of Gerontius, and "sea-breakers" by the opening of Sea Pictures. The music also quotes the First and Second Symphonies, the Violin Concerto, Nimrod (from the Enigma Variations), Rule, Britannia and La Marseillaise.

However, it is possible to make too much of the self-quotations. Most of the music is original, and Elgar more than does justice to O'Shaughnessy, displaying a perfect ear for the sounds of the chorus and the mezzo-soprano.

[edit] Criticism

It was commissioned for, and first performed at, the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, 1912. Early criticism of the work were directed more at the words than at the music, but it was also dismissed as tawdry and self-centered. It is true that performances are rare, particularly outside England. The self-quotations inevitably bring to mind Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, but with different intent; Elgar is not depicting the artist as hero but as bard.