"The new Diana McVeagh book on Elgar is first-rate," wrote Gerald Finzi of her earlier study of the composer, published in 1955. In the completely new Elgar the Music Maker she harvests five decades of thoughts about his music, scrutinizing the biographical details that have since been discovered and using them to assess the ways in which they affect the compositions. Diana McVeagh explores Elgar's complex personality and his compositional methods, his style and his relationship to his contemporaries, yet it is the music - still played, recorded, loved and discussed as much as ever- that remains her prime focus. Each of Elgar's works is discussed, balancing information and appraisal, from his juvenilia to his unfinished Third Symphony. Diana McVeagh provides a compelling and accessible companion to the music of one of England's greatest composers. Musicians, scholars and CD collectors alike will find much to enjoy in Elgar the Music Maker. Diana McVeagh is the author of the highly acclaimed Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music (2005); of the entries on Elgar and Finzi for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980, 2001); and of the Finzi entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
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Deserves to be read widely, and we should be grateful to Diana McVeagh for producing an immensely readable and always wise handbook to Elgar's oeuvre. MUSIC & LETTERSThe analysis...is observation, discovery of what this music is. You're led to it by feeling, and back to feeling it returns. That is the essential way of good music criticism, and this book is full of it. GRAMOPHONE (John Steane)In associating events of the times with almost all of Elgar's works, McVeagh wears her encyclopedic knowledge lightly: her prose is clean, charming, and clever, and her forays into theory/musicology are brief and to the point...A congenial companion for those who know little about Elgar; a worthy quick read for the knowledgeable. Highly recommended. CHOICEMcVeagh's critical method intertwines description and comment, and it serves her, and the reader, well. ELGAR SOCIETY JOURNAL (Julian Rushton)McVeagh's book, the concentrated essence of a lifetime's care for his music, has much to tell us about even the most familiar scores. INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW (John Warrack)McVeagh is also able to make it clear how much she loves and admires the music without making any extravagant claims on its behalf. It's hard to imagine a more sane approach...the insights...keep coming. BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE (Stephen Johnson)Effortlessly readable, fresh prose. Almost every page has some gem of illumination...An essential listener's companion. CLASSIC FM MAGAZINE (Julian Haylock)Diana McVeagh has produced another gem of a book...a hawk's eye view of Elgar, the subject matter richly distilled...its arrival cheered me immensely in the midst of what has been a rather bleak 150th anniversary year. THE OLDIE (Richard Osborne)McVeagh is indeed an intelligent guide here: her writing is both informed and immaculate. BRITISH MUSIC SOCIETY NEWSOne thoroughly good result of this Elgar year...This is neither a biography nor a technical analysis, but McVeagh has hit on the perfect way of combining the best features of both...There is no superimposition of alien theories or of special interests, and there are no perverse reinterpretations. The last few pages deal with Elgar's posterity and end with a beautifully balanced study of Elgar's personality. TLS (Hugh Wood)This little book is solid gold. NABMSA Newsletter
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Frank Beck
Format:Hardcover
When I started to explore Elgar's music in the 1970s, Diana McVeagh's earlier book about him helped to light the way, so I was keenly interested to see what she would have to say now. I am happy to say that this book is a marvel of perceptive listening. McVeagh covers the full course of Elgar's musical development, surveying all of the major works as well as numerous songs and pieces for violin and piano, and she has valuable, new observations about many of them.
Despite the book's brevity--it runs to just 240 pages, including two detailed indexes--the author finds room for a thorough appraisal of the works she believes are Elgar's best. For example, she devotes 17 pages to "The Dream of Gerontius," the choral masterpiece that is just beginning to get the attention outside Britain that it deserves. She shows that many of the hallmarks of Elgar's musical idiom appeared early. In the fervent Romance for violin and piano, written when he was just 21, McVeagh hears a foreshadowing of both "King Olaf" and the Violin Concerto. She also uncovers overlooked gems by the mature composer, such as "The Herald," a memorable part song for male voices of 1925.
With its focus firmly on the music, this book is the perfect complement to the biographies by Robert Anderson, Michael Kennedy and Jerrold Northrop Moore. McVeagh's study unfolds chronologically, and she describes the main events of Elgar's life, but her chief biographical concern is in the way the contradictory aspects of his personality shaped his music. "The pull between outward certainty and inward despondency is what makes his mature music endlessly fascinating and rewarding ... The great achievement of his music is how he integrated the uncertainties within it.... Read more ›
Despite the book's brevity--it runs to just 240 pages, including two detailed indexes--the author finds room for a thorough appraisal of the works she believes are Elgar's best. For example, she devotes 17 pages to "The Dream of Gerontius," the choral masterpiece that is just beginning to get the attention outside Britain that it deserves. She shows that many of the hallmarks of Elgar's musical idiom appeared early. In the fervent Romance for violin and piano, written when he was just 21, McVeagh hears a foreshadowing of both "King Olaf" and the Violin Concerto. She also uncovers overlooked gems by the mature composer, such as "The Herald," a memorable part song for male voices of 1925.
With its focus firmly on the music, this book is the perfect complement to the biographies by Robert Anderson, Michael Kennedy and Jerrold Northrop Moore. McVeagh's study unfolds chronologically, and she describes the main events of Elgar's life, but her chief biographical concern is in the way the contradictory aspects of his personality shaped his music. "The pull between outward certainty and inward despondency is what makes his mature music endlessly fascinating and rewarding ... The great achievement of his music is how he integrated the uncertainties within it.... Read more ›
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By S. Durrant
Format:Hardcover
Diana McVeagh's book on Gerald Finzi was justly acclaimed for her
balanced view of the composer's achievement and for the fluency of her
writing style. Her new book, Elgar the Music Maker, is not a
biography, nor should it be viewed as such. The facts of Elgar's life are
included only where they have some bearing on his work. The result is a highly accomplished guide to virtually all of Elgar's
compositions, written with McVeagh's usual fluency and judgement. For
the concert-goer and classical CD buyer I would suggest this delightful book will be indispensable.
balanced view of the composer's achievement and for the fluency of her
writing style. Her new book, Elgar the Music Maker, is not a
biography, nor should it be viewed as such. The facts of Elgar's life are
included only where they have some bearing on his work. The result is a highly accomplished guide to virtually all of Elgar's
compositions, written with McVeagh's usual fluency and judgement. For
the concert-goer and classical CD buyer I would suggest this delightful book will be indispensable.
9 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Anyone who expects this book to even approximate to a biography of our beloved composer will be sadly disappointed. It is a compendium of information for musicologists. There is little to tell one about Elgar the man, his emotions, his loves, his non-musical interests or his actual life history, at least in any substance. The minutiae of musical analysis are the overriding consideration, and snippets about the composer are fitted in between. Even these are minimal and skimp on detail. In the opening paragraphs of chapter one, for example, a chapter which if anything has biography as its aim, we have two paragraphs which move us quickly from his birth to his first composition, a humoreske at the age of ten. Then- "It is a single line in the bass clef....In the answering phrase the first sequential repeat is modified by an accidental, a sharp in Gmajor." Really? A couple of bars of music from his Cello concerto follow. By the fourth paragraph he is fifteen, and "What sounds like an extended final cadence turns out to begin a solemn chant-like central section with running counterpoints." Died-in-the-wool technical music students will presumably love it, it is for them. But do not seek Elgar here.
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