Word: gerontius
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...overall the oratorio is rambling and generic; there is nothing to match the economy and effect of such "classical" McCartney tunes as Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday, and you certainly can't dance to it. Indeed, the piece emerges as a curious cross between Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and the Who's Quadrophenia, but it lacks either the former's ecstatic fervor or the latter's nose-in-the-dirt realism. One waits in vain for the real McCartney to loosen his tie and do something a little rude, but the composer seems overwhelmed by the cassocks and surplices...
ELGAR: THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS (Angel). Sir Edward Elgar pondered Cardinal Newman's noble poem for fully a decade before finally setting it to music, and the result is an unusual confluence of religious and musical feeling. In his last agony an old man is guided past the demons of hell by a protecting angel, who then sadly reveals that he must "dip in the lake of Purgatory" before he can see God. Janet Baker gives a warm performance as the angel, and Richard Lewis' exceptional gifts for phrasing carry him through a very wordy role...
...Meister Elgar," said Richard Strauss, "is the first English progressive musician." The year was 1902, and Strauss had just heard Edward Elgar's massive oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius. Since then, Gerontius has remained one of the most widely praised-and least frequently heard -monuments of English music. Last week Manhattan concertgoers had a chance to hear the full Gerontius score for the first time in a quarter-century. The occasion: a performance by the New York Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir under Guest Conductor Sir John Barbirolli...
Based on the poem by Cardinal Newman, Gerontius is a mystical, minutely detailed vision of man's death and of his soul's fearful but triumphant journey toward judgment. Roman Catholic Elgar first thought of setting the poem to music when he received a copy of it from a priest on his wedding day. But he let ten years elapse, during which he became increasingly aware of the gusts of new music blowing across the Channel from the Continent. When he finally got around to composing Gerontius (for the Birmingham Festival of 1900), he broke away from...
...beginning of the performance, Conductor Barbirolli turned to the audience and remarked that it was about to hear a "sublime masterpiece." Gerontius, as Barbirolli's sympathetic performance demonstrated, is considerably less than a masterpiece. But it is considerably more than the musical antique a generation of concertgoers has taken...