Worcester Moments - Edward Elgar: The British composer whose music became the soundtrack to patriotic pride and fervour
No character in Worcester’s long history is so immediately and so intimately linked with the city as is Edward Elgar. Music lovers all over the world associate him with the Malvern Hills and his beloved Worcestershire. He was a complex figure in whom a craving for social success and recognition vied with a resentment that he would always be considered a provincial outsider. But however famous he became, however many honours were bestowed on him, and however much he was lauded as a society darling, he nevertheless always returned to the well-spring of his creativity, Worcestershire, Worcester and its splendid cathedral. The bronze statue opposite the Cathedral, and the stained-glass window in the Cathedral itself, memorialise one of Worcester’s favourite and most famous sons, the local man who led the renaissance of English music in the twentieth century and whose compositions to this day, more than those of any other musician, popularly embody the emotions of patriotic pride and fervour.