Sea Pictures

Sea Pictures, Op. 37 is a song cycle for contralto and orchestra by Edward Elgar. It consists of settings of a poems by five different authors. It also exists in a version for solo voice with piano accompaniment. The songs are:Kennedy (1987), pp. 344345 "Sea Slumber Song" by Roden Noel "In Haven (Capri)" by Alice Elgar, the composer's wife "Sabbath Morning at Sea" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Where Corals Lie" by Richard Garnett "The Swimmer" by Adam Lindsay Gordon

History Elgar finished scoring his Enigma Variations in February 1899 and immediately began work on an orchestral song-cycle for the Norwich Festival that October. He composed the cycle around "Love alone will stay", a short song for voice and piano he had written some years earlier to words by his wife, Alice. She revised the poem to give it a maritime flavour and changed the title to "In Haven (Capri)". This became the second song in the cycle. Elgar then set four other poems to do with the sea, each by a different poet, in the manner of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été, and later favoured by Mahler.Burton, Anthony. Notes to Chandos CD set CHSA 5140(2)

The composer's literary taste in selecting the verse has been adversely criticised: his biographer Michael Kennedy has written, "Today these songs have only to appear in a programme for someone to castigate the words of the poems Elgar chose to set", and adds that so far as Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sabbath Morning at Sea" and Adam Lindsay Gordon's "The Swimmer" are concerned the criticism is justified.Kennedy (1987), p. 101 The music critic Andrew Farach-Colton describes these two poems as "creaky and overblown" and Roden Noel's 'Sea Slumber-Song' as "excessively alliterative" and "simply mediocre". Elgar took the view that it was preferable to set second-rate poetry to music, "for the most immortal verse is music already".Moore, p. 280

The premiere took place on 5 October 1899 at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival with Elgar himself conducting and Clara Butt singing, dressed as a mermaid.Kennedy (1987), p. 101 The work was a success with the critics and the public. "The cycle went marvellously well", Elgar reported afterwards. The reviewer in The Musical Times wrote:

Butt gave the first London performance two days later at St James's Hall, with Elgar at the piano. On 20 October Ada Crossley performed the work for Queen Victoria at Balmoral.Kennedy (1987), p. 102 Programmes at the Elgar Birthplace Museum document eleven performances between the premiere and June 1901. Soloists included Butt, Crossley, Muriel Foster, Gertrude Lonsdale and Helene Valma.

At the time he was composing Sea Pictures Elgar had temporarily fallen out with his usual publishers, Novello and Co, and he offered the new work to Boosey and Co, who bought the copyright for £50, with a royalty payment of 3d a copy for any of the songs published separately.Moore, p. 288 They also secured the Cockaigne overture, and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches Nos. 1 and 2.Anderson, p. 28

Elgar's music went out of fashion in the mid-twentieth century, and Sea Pictures fell out of the regular concert repertoire. The Record Guide, published in 1955, gives no recordings of the work among the sparse Elgar listings.Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, pp. 253–257 The leading contralto of the post-war years, Kathleen Ferrier, did not like the work,Kennedy (1971), p. 221 although other singers performed individual numbers from it at five Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in the 1950s. The conductor Sir John Barbirolli continued to champion the work. He said to Kennedy, "He [Elgar] makes you see the sea lapping over the beach, you can almost feel the pull of the tide."Kennedy (1971), p. 235 It was his recording of Sea Pictures with Janet Baker and the London Symphony Orchestra made in 1965 and coupled with the Cello Concerto with Jacqueline du Pré that reintroduced the cycle to popularity.

Recordings The first recordings of "In Haven" and "Where Corals Lie" were made on 10 November 1922, by Leila Megane (contralto) with Elgar conducting the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra.Kennedy (1987), p. 366 The same artists recorded the remaining three songs on 8 January 1923. These acoustic recordings were made for The Gramophone Company and appeared under the His Master's Voice label, on two discs D674-5. The five recordings were reissued on CD by Pearl Records in 1992. Later recordings: SoloistOrchestraConductorYear Muriel Brunskill unnamed orchestra unnamed conductor 1926 Gladys Ripley Philharmonia George Weldon 1946 Gladys Ripley London Symphony George Weldon 1954 Constance Shacklock Hallé Sir John Barbirolli 1958 Janet Baker London Symphony Sir John Barbiroll 1965 Kerstin Meyer Hallé Orchestra Sir John Barbirolli 1970 Yvonne Minton London Philharmonic Daniel Barenboim 1977 Larisa Avdeyeva USSR State Symphony Yevgeny Svetlanov 1977 Lauris Elms Sydney Symphony John Hopkins 1978 Bernadette Greevy London Philharmonic Orchestra Vernon Handley 1981 Margreta Elkins Queensland Symphony Werner Andreas Albert 1983 Dame Janet Baker London Philharmonic Orchestra Vernon Handley 1984 Maureen Forrester McGill Symphony Orchestra Richard Hoenich 1986 Felicity Palmer London Symphony Richard Hickox 1987 Linda Finnie London Philharmonic Bryden Thomson 1991 Rosemarie Lang Helsingborg Symphony Hans-Peter Frank 1991 Birgitta Svendén Orchestre philharmonique de Nice John Carewe 1991 Della Jones Royal Philharmonic Charles Mackerras 1994 Jard Van Nes Residentie Orkest Yevgeny Svetlanov 1994 Elizabeth Campbell Adelaide Symphony Nicholas Braithwaite 2002 Catherine Wyn-Rogers BBC Symphony Sir Andrew Davis 2003 Sarah Connolly Bournemouth Symphony Simon Wright 2006 Roderick Williams BBC Concert Martin Yates 2010 Sarah Connolly BBC Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis 2014 Jennifer Johnston BBC National Orchestra of Wales Francesco Angelico 2015 Alice Coote Hallé Sir Mark Elder 2015 Elīna Garanča Staatskapelle Berlin Daniel Barenboim 2019 Marie-Nicole Lemieux Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine Paul Daniel 2019 Kathryn Rudge Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Vasily Petrenko 2019 Dame Sarah Connolly Philharmonia Oliver Zeffman 2022

Recordings with piano accompaniment Birgit Finnilä, Geoffrey Parsons, 1975 Claire-Louise Lucas, Jonathan Darnborough, 2002 Konrad Jarnot Reinild Mees, 2007 Amanda Pitt, David Owen Norris, 2007 Amanda Roocroft, Reinild Mees, 2007

Other Version for SATB choir and string orchestra arr. Donald Fraser, Rodolfus Choir, English Chamber Orchestra, Kenneth Woods. 2013. Individual numbers from the cycle have been recorded by singers including Clara Butt,Dutton CDAX8020 Aafje Heynis, Mary Jarred,Elgar Society EECD003-005 and Maartje Offers.Philips Dutch Masters 464,385-2

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Sea Pictures

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