Elgar, E :: Pomp and Circumstance No. 1

Musicians Publications presents Edward Elgar s Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 arranged for woodwind quintet by Bill Holcombe and Bill Holcombe Jr. Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, french horn, and bassoon, this quintet is advanced in difficulty.

Born in 1857, Edward Elgar came of age during the purposeful reign of Queen Victoria. This was a period of musical quiescence in England, and Elgar received scant support in his quest to become a composer. Only through considerable determination and sacrifice did he master his craft and grow as an artist, eventually emerging as England s first truly important musician in well over a century.

Despite misgivings about certain aspects of English society and culture, Elgar retained strong patriotic sentiments toward his nation and the crown. These frequently informed his music, nowhere more so than in his five orchestral marches entitled Pomp and Circumstance. These pieces, which Elgar composed over a span of three decades, beginning in 1901, take their collective title from Shakespeare s Othello, whose title character extols the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.

Elgar surely thought of his marches in connection with the martial pageantry those words suggest, for he prefaced his score with part of a poem titled March of Glory. I hear the Nation march, it concludes, ... Moving to victory with solemn noise, / With worship and with conquest, and the voice of myriads. If this seems to romanticize the flexing of military muscle, we should remember that Elgar conceived his Pomp and Circumstance marches, and completed four of them, before the carnage of the First World War made such an attitude untenable. The first of the Pomp and Circumstance marches has become famous for its widespread use at school graduation ceremonies. - Paul Schiavo, 2016