The Crown of India

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The Crown of India, Suite for Orchestra, Op.66, is a piece of music composed in 1912 by Edward Elgar for a masque celebrating the visit of the preceding December of King George V and Queen Mary to Delhi, commemorating their coronation as Emperor and Empress of India.

The celebratory masque was first performed at the Coliseum Theatre in London on March 11, 1912. For the masque Elgar composed twelve pieces for contralto, bass, chorus and orchestra:

1(a) - Introduction
1(b) - Sacred Measure
2 - Dance of the Nautch Girls
3 - Hail, Immortal India
4 - March of the Mogul Emperors
5 - Entrance of John Company
6 - Rule of England
7 - Interlude
8 - Warriors' Dance
9 - Cities of India
10 - Crown of India March
11 - Crowning of Delhi
12 - Ave Imperator

The incidental music Elgar put together for the masque ran around sixty minutes in length. He then extracted five of the pieces -- 1(a), 2, 5, 8 and 4 -- and added an intermezzo for solo violin to create the Crown of India Orchestral Suite. This Suite gained immediate popularity. During Elgar's lifetime, there were 102 live performances of it on the BBC.^[1]

The Crown of India March -- piece 10 from the incidental music for the masque -- is also performed separately.

The complete score for the Crown of India incidental music was only published in a piano-vocal version by Elgar's friend Hugh Blair. The remaining orchestral parts were destroyed in the 1960s. In 2007 the Elgar Society commissioned the composer Anthony Payne to complete the orchestration of the music for The Crown of India. Payne is to "complete the scoring of the piano-vocal version and combining this, where appropriate, with the orchestral suite and march."^[2]