Concert ouverture “In the South (Alassio)” by Edward Elgar: summation of own experience and foreshadowing of upcoming innovations

Abstract

Statement of the problem. Creativity of many composers includes the works proving crucial for understanding evolution of the artist’s individual style. Usually, the scholars’ attention is drawn to the works that become a result of stylistic evolution and that become popularity amongst the audience and the performers. At the same time, it is of no less importance to study the works that became milestones on a path to upcoming achievements, especially if there are heritage lines leading to them from the previous works. This is a situation with E. Elgar’s concert ouverture “In the South (Alassio)”: on the one hand, it summarizes composer’s achievements in this genre, on the other, it is the last composer’s step before creating his First Symphony. Apart from this ambivalence of the status, the work demonstrates the process of mediation of extremities, that can be traced on the levels of genre, structure, harmonic means and approach to extramusical. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. In the studies devoted to E. Elgar’s creativity as a whole or his symphonic compositions, the role of the Ouverture in the indicated evolutionary aspect is not considered, which determines the scientific novelty and relevance of the presented research. The purpose of the study is to reveal intersection points between concert ouverture “In the South (Alassio)” with the composer’s past and future creative achievements. Based on a historical-biographical approach, the history of the Ouverture’s origin is highlighted in view of its place in the artist’s creative evolution; a comparative method was used to juxtapose “Alassio” with other works of the composer; structural-compositional, genre and stylistic, intonation types of analysis were applied to examine the sheet music text of E. Elgar’s composition in detail. Results and conclusion. The study concludes that this concert ouverture is tightly integrated both in the context of development of E. Elgar’s symphonic style and into late-Romantic symphonysm as such. This work becomes the last composer’s preparatory step prior to his First Symphony as it contains germs of its multiple innovations: in harmony, structure and orchestration. Connection between “In the South” and general symphonic context is seen at multiple levels: genre attribution (the work defined by the author as “concert ouverture” has the features of symphonic poem, genre much more relevant for that time); harmonic language (freedom of tonal structure and modulations, juxtaposition of far chords; passages whose key cannot be defined etc.); specifics of themes and thematic development (multi-thematicism, inclusion of “picturesque” episode, intonation links between the themes). But originality of “Alassio” does not allow to regard is as an epigone imitation of late-Romantic symphonic style, but makes us understand it as a new step of this instrumental tradition. At the same time, it is possible to define more traditional traits at each of these levels: despite all the diversions from the sonata-form it is not fair to conclude that it is changed by another structure or is combined with it; three out of four themes of principal part, except for “Nobilmente”, are purely diatonic both in melody and harmony; programmatic approach does not lead to a large number of illustrative episodes, as it was done later by R. Strauss in “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” or “Don Quixote”, or later by E. Elgar himself in “Falstaff”.