Dream Children (Elgar)

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Dream Children, Op 43 consists of two pieces for small orchestra by Sir Edward Elgar.

No 1 (Allegro maestoso) is in G minor.

No 2 (Allegretto piacevole) is in G major.

These two pieces were written in 1902, when Elgar was approaching the peak of his fame and popularity. Unusually for Elgar they were not written to any commission. Michael Kennedy suggests that they may have been retrieved from the unused material for a symphony celebrating General Gordon which Elgar had been working on since 1898. They are not complete symphonic movements (No 1 takes a little over three minutes in performance; No 2 takes between four and four & a half minutes) but it was Elgar's practice to work in small sections and then put them together into a whole.

The first performance was at the Queen's Hall on 4 September 1902, conducted by Arthur W Payne.

The pieces are inspired by ‘Dream Children’ in the Essays of Elia (Charles Lamb). In the essay the writer tells of the past to his children, but at the end

...both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech; “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been…”

Elgar inscribed on the score words taken from this excerpt. The name ‘Alice’ was important in Elgar’s life: not only was his great friend Alice Stuart Wortley his muse, but his wife was also Alice. ‘What might have been’ reflects a constant nostalgia throughout Elgar’s music, and is the predominating mood of both the Dream Children pieces, particularly the wistful No 1. No 2 is more smiling in tone, but reverts to nostalgia at the end.

[edit] Reference

• Kennedy, Michael (1987). A Portrait of Elgar. Oxford: OUP.