Symphony No. 2 (Elgar)

Sir Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 2 in E♭ major, Op. 63, was completed on 28 February 1911 and was premiered at the London Musical Festival at the Queen's Hall by the Queen's Hall Orchestra on 24 May 1911 with the composer conducting. The work, which Elgar called "the passionate pilgrimage of the soul", was his last completed symphony; the composition of his Symphony No. 3, begun in 1933, was cut short by his death in 1934.

The dedication reads:

Dedicated to the memory of His late Majesty King Edward VII. This Symphony, designed early in 1910 to be a loyal tribute, bears its present dedication with the gracious approval of His Majesty the King.

The more personal nature of this work, however, is clear in a letter to friend and close correspondent Alice Stuart-Wortley, in which Elgar states:

I have written out my soul in the concerto, Symphony No. 2 and the Ode and you know it ... in these three works I have shewn myself.

In every movement its form and above all its climax were clearly in Elgar's mind. Indeed, as he has often told me, it is the climax which he invariably settles first. But withal there is a great mass of fluctuating material which might fit into the work as it developed in his mind to finality – for it had been created in the same "oven" which had cast them all. Nothing satisfied him until itself and its context seemed, as he said, inevitable.

These remarks, recounted by Elgar's friend Charles Sanford Terry, shed light on Elgar's creative process. Some sketches of the Symphony No. 2 date back to 1903, a letter from October of that year indicating an idea for a symphony in E-flat major to be dedicated to his friend and conductor Hans Richter. The symphony was set aside during the composition of In the South, Symphony No. 1, and the Violin Concerto. Rejected ideas from the latter work and earlier sketches joined the material Elgar began developing in late 1910 to complete the piece.

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