“The Spirit-Stirring Drum”: Elgar and Populism

Abstract

Cultural tourists in the South Midlands, tired perhaps of trawling for edification around the well-trodden circuit of Shakespearean sites in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, are now invited to follow a similar but less familiar itinerary. The Elgar Route, devised and promoted by Worcester City and Malvern Hills District Councils, links together forty-eight different locations with various Elgarian associations along a tour signposted throughout southwest Worcestershire. Bounded on the western side by the Malvern Hills, on the eastern by the River Severn, and radiating outward from Worcester cathedral in the northeast corner, the route offers a condensed historical geography of Elgar’s life and musical career. The tour is designed, the brochure suggests, so that motorists “may join it at any convenient point,” and though it begins at the Elgar Birthplace Museum in Lower Broadheath, the official numbering of sites along the way cuts across a simple chronological sequence of events in Elgar’s biography. Hence, the second location after leaving Lower Broadheath is Birchwood Lodge (the summer cottage Elgar rented between 1898 and 1903, and where he scored The Dream of Gerontius), followed by his previous residence, Forli, in Malvern Link (1891–99), where he composed King Olaf and The Black Knight. The Elgars’ somber final resting place, the grave at St. Wulstan’s Church, is then passed (site 10), after which motorists double back on themselves disconcertingly and head toward a more cheerful location, Craeg Lea (Elgar’s home between 1899 and 1904, while he rented Birchwood Lodge), where he wrote the Variations on an Original Theme, op. 36 (Enigma Variations). The route therefore pursues a spatial, rather than linear-temporal, logic. Other sites visited include the Worcester County Cricket Ground at New Road, where “it is thought that Elgar was a regular supporter,” and an oddly placed, rather uncanny final destination which lies awkwardly away from