title: Frank Nitti

text: In 1943, many top members of the Chicago Outfit were indicted for extorting the Hollywood film industry. Among those prosecuted were Nitti, Phil D'Andrea, Louis "Little New York" Campagna, Nick Circella, Charles "Cherry Nose" Gioe, Ralph Pierce, Ricca, and John "Handsome Johnny" Roselli. The Outfit was accused of trying to extort money from some of the largest movie studios, including Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, RKO Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. The studios had cooperated with The Outfit to avoid union trouble (unrest itself stirred up by the mob). At a meeting of Outfit leaders at Nitti's home, Ricca blamed Nitti for the indictments. Ricca said that since this had been Nitti's scheme and that of the FBI informant (Willie Bioff), one of Nitti's trusted associates, Nitti should go to prison. A severe claustrophobe as a result of his first prison term, Nitti dreaded the idea of another prison confinement. It was also rumored that he was suffering from terminal cancer at this time. For these or possibly other reasons, he ultimately decided to take his own life.


title: Frank Nitti

text: The day before his scheduled grand jury appearance, Nitti had breakfast with his wife in their home at 712 Selborne Road in Riverside, Illinois. When his wife was leaving for church, Nitti told her he planned to take a walk; then he began to drink heavily. He then loaded a .32 caliber revolver, put it in his coat pocket, and walked five blocks to a local railroad yard. Conductor William F. Seebauer and switchmen L.M. Barnett and E.H. Moran were riding in the caboose, backing their train slowly southward over an ungated Cermak Road in North Riverside. The workers spotted an oblivious Nitti walking on the track away from them and shouted a warning. Nitti walked off the tracks, staggering towards the fence. Three shots rang out. The workers thought Nitti was shooting at them but then realized he was trying to shoot himself in the head. The first shot fired by Nitti's unsteady hand missed and passed through his fedora. The second bullet slammed into the right side of his jaw and exited through the top of his head, taking a lock of his hair with it and leaving the tuft protruding from the hole in the crown of the fedora. The final, fatal bullet entered behind Nitti's right ear and lodged in the top of his skull. Police Chief Allen Rose of North Riverside, rushing to the scene with a sergeant and several beat patrolmen, recognized Nitti immediately. An autopsy by William McNalley, coroner's toxicologist, showed that Nitti's blood alcohol level was 0.23. A coroner's jury ruled the following day that Nitti "committed suicide while temporarily insane and in a despondent frame of mind".


title: Frank Nitti

text: Frank Nitti died on March 19, 1943, at the age of 57. Nitti is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois. Controversy has persisted regarding the interment of a suicide in a Catholic cemetery. Nitti's grave can be found to the left of the main Roosevelt Road entrance, about from the gate. To the right of the gate is the family plot containing the grave of Al Capone, marked by a white monument stone. Straight up from the gate are the graves of Dean O'Banion and Hymie Weiss, both North Side Gang members who were killed by the Chicago Outfit under Capone.


title: Frank Nitti

text: Ice hockey goaltender Antero Niittymäki has used an image of Nitti on his helmet due to the similarity of their names.


title: British Invasion

text: The British Invasion was a cultural phenomenon of the mid-1960s, when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom and other aspects of British culture became popular in the United States and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Pop and rock groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, the Kinks, Small Faces, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits, the Hollies, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Searchers, the Yardbirds, the Who and Them, as well as solo singers like Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Tom Jones and Donovan, were at the forefront of the "invasion".


title: British Invasion

text: The rebellious tone and image of US rock and roll and blues musicians became popular with British youth in the late 1950s. While early commercial attempts to replicate US rock and roll mostly failed, the trad jazz–inspired skiffle craze, with its do it yourself attitude, produced two top ten hits in the US by Lonnie Donegan. Young British groups started to combine various British and American styles in different parts of the United Kingdom, such as the movement in Liverpool known as Merseybeat or the "beat boom".


title: British Invasion

text: While US acts were popular in the United Kingdom, few British acts had achieved any success in the US prior to 1964. Cliff Richard, who was the best-selling British act in the United Kingdom at the time, had only one top forty hit in the US with "Living Doll" in 1959. Along with Donegan, exceptions to this trend were the US number-one hits "Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart" by Vera Lynn in 1952 (Lynn also had a lower-charting, but more enduring, hit in "We'll Meet Again"), "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" by Laurie London in 1958, and the instrumentals "Stranger on the Shore" by Acker Bilk and "Telstar" by the Tornados, both in 1962. In 1961, Hayley Mills' "Let's Get Together" from "The Parent Trap" reached the top ten. Also in 1962 on the Hot 100, "Midnight in Moscow" by Kenny Ball peaked at number two, Frank Ifield's "I Remember You" became the next British vocal to crack the top five, and the Springfields' version of "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" reached the top forty.


title: British Invasion

text: Some observers have noted that US teenagers were growing tired of singles-oriented pop acts like Fabian. The Mods and Rockers, two youth "gangs" in mid-1960s Britain, also had an impact in British Invasion music. Bands with a Mod aesthetic became the most popular, but bands able to balance both (e.g., the Beatles) were also successful.


title: British Invasion

text: In October 1963, the first newspaper articles about the frenzy in England surrounding the Beatles appeared nationally in the U.S. The Beatles' November 4 Royal Variety Performance in front of the Queen Mother sparked music industry and media interest in the group. During November, a number of major US print outlets and two network television evening programs published and broadcast stories on the phenomenon that became known as "Beatlemania".


title: British Invasion

text: On 10 December, "CBS Evening News" anchor Walter Cronkite, looking for something positive to report, re-ran a Beatlemania story that originally aired on the 22 November edition of the "CBS Morning News" with Mike Wallace but was shelved that night because of the assassination of US President John Kennedy. After seeing the report, 15-year-old Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Maryland, wrote a letter the following day to disc jockey Carroll James at radio station WWDC asking, "Why can't we have music like that here in America?" On 17 December, James had Miss Albert introduce "I Want to Hold Your Hand" live on the air. WWDC's phones lit up, and Washington, D.C., area record stores were flooded with requests for a record they did not have in stock. James sent the record to other disc jockeys around the country sparking similar reaction. On 26 December, Capitol Records released the record three weeks ahead of schedule. The release of the record during a time when teenagers were on vacation helped spread Beatlemania in the U.S. On 29 December, "The Baltimore Sun", reflecting the dismissive view of most adults, editorialised, "America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. Indeed a restrained 'Beatles go home' might be just the thing." In the next year alone, the Beatles would have thirty different listings on the Hot 100.


title: British Invasion

text: On 3 January 1964, "The Jack Paar Program" ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC "as a joke", but it was watched by 30 million viewers. While this piece was largely forgotten, Beatles producer George Martin has said it "aroused the kids' curiosity". In the middle of January 1964, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" appeared suddenly, then vaulted to the top of nearly every top forty music survey in the U.S., launching the Fab Four's sustained, massive output. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" ascended to number one on the 25 January 1964, edition of "Cash Box" magazine (on sale January 18) and the 1 February 1964, edition of the Hot 100. On 7 February 1964, the "CBS Evening News" ran a story about the Beatles' US arrival that afternoon in which Walter Cronkite said, "The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania." Two days later, on Sunday, 9 February, the group appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show". Nielsen Ratings estimated that 45 percent of US television viewers that night saw their appearance.


title: British Invasion

text: According to Michael Ross, "It is somewhat ironic that the biggest moment in the history of popular music was first experienced in the US as a television event." "The Ed Sullivan Show" had for some time been a "comfortable hearth-and-slippers experience." Not many of the 73 million viewers watching in February 1964 would fully understand what impact the band they were watching would have.


title: British Invasion

text: The Beatles soon incited contrasting reactions and, in the process, generated more novelty records than anyone—at least 200 during 1964–1965 and more inspired by the "Paul is dead" rumour in 1969. Among the many reactions, favouring the hysteria were British girl group the Carefrees' "We Love You Beatles" (No. 39 on 11 April 1964) and the Patty Cakes' "I Understand Them", subtitled "A Love Song to the Beatles". Disapproving the pandemonium were US group the Four Preps' "A Letter to the Beatles" (No. 85 on 4 April 1964) and US comedian Allan Sherman's "Pop Hates the Beatles".


title: British Invasion

text: On 4 April, the Beatles held the top five positions on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart, and no other act simultaneously held even the top four. The Beatles also held the top five positions on "Cash Box"s singles chart that same week, with the first two positions reversed from the Hot 100. The group's massive chart success, which included at least two of their singles holding the top spot on the Hot 100 during each of the seven consecutive years starting with 1964, continued until they broke up in 1970.


title: British Invasion

text: One week after the Beatles entered the Hot 100 for the first time, Dusty Springfield, having launched a solo career after her participation in the Springfields, became the next British act to reach the Hot 100, peaking at number twelve with "I Only Want to Be with You". During the next three years, many more British acts with a chart-topping US single would appear. As 1965 approached, another wave of British Invasion artists emerged which usually composed of groups playing in a more pop style, such as the Hollies or the Zombies as well as artists with a harder-driving, blues-based approach like the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones. On 8 May 1965, the British Commonwealth came closer than it ever had to a clean sweep of a weekly Hot 100's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number two instead of "Count Me In" by Gary Lewis & the Playboys. On 1 May 1965, the British Commonwealth nearly swept the "Cash Box" singles chart's Top Ten, lacking only a hit at number six instead of "Count Me In". The British Commonwealth also held down the top six on the Hot 100 on 1 May 1965 and the top six on "Cash Box" singles chart's Top Ten on 24 April 1965. That same year, half of the 26 "Billboard" Hot 100 chart toppers (counting the Beatles' "I Feel Fine" carrying over from 1964) and the number-one position on 28 of the 52 chart weeks belonged to British acts. The British trend would continue into 1966 and beyond. British Invasion acts also dominated the music charts at home in the United Kingdom.


title: British Invasion

text: The musical style of British Invasion artists, such as the Beatles, had been influenced by earlier US rock 'n' roll, a genre which had lost some popularity and appeal by the time of the Invasion. However, a subsequent handful of white British performers, particularly the Rolling Stones and the Animals, would appeal to a more 'outsider' demographic, essentially reviving and popularising, for young people at least, a musical genre rooted in the blues, rhythm, and black culture, which had been largely ignored or rejected when performed by black US artists in the 1950s. Such bands were sometimes perceived by US parents and elders as rebellious and unwholesome unlike parent-friendly pop groups, such as the Beatles. The Rolling Stones would become the biggest band other than the Beatles to come out of the British Invasion, topping the Hot 100 eight times. Sometimes, there would be a clash between the two styles of the British Invasion, the polished pop acts and the grittier blues-based acts due to the expectations set by the Beatles. Eric Burdon of the Animals said "They dressed us up in the most strange costumes. They were even gonna bring a choreographer to show us how to move on stage. I mean, it was ridiculous. It was something that was so far away from our nature and, um, yeah we were just pushed around and told, 'When you arrive in America, don't mention the [Vietnam] war! You can't talk about the war.' We felt like we were being gagged."


title: British Invasion

text: "Freakbeat" is a term sometimes given to certain British Invasion acts closely associated with the mod scene during the Swinging London period, particularly harder-driving British blues bands of the era that often remained obscure to US listeners, and who are sometimes seen as counterparts to the garage rock bands in America. Certain acts, such as the Pretty Things and the Creation, had a certain degree of chart success in the UK and are often considered exemplars of the form. The emergence of a relatively homogeneous worldwide "rock" music style marking the end of the "invasion" occurred in 1967.


title: British Invasion

text: Outside music, other aspects of British arts and engineering, such as BSA motorcycles became popular in the US during this period and led US media to proclaim the United Kingdom as the centre of music and fashion.


title: British Invasion

text: The Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night" marked the group's entrance into film. The film "Mary Poppins" – starring English actress Julie Andrews as the titular character, and released on 27 August 1964 – became the most Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated Disney film in history. "My Fair Lady", released on 25 December 1964, starring British actress Audrey Hepburn as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, won eight Academy Awards. And "Oliver!" released in 1968 won Best Picture, becoming the final musical film to do so until "Chicago" in 2002.


title: British Invasion

text: Besides the Bond series which commenced with Sean Connery as James Bond in 1962, films with a British sensibility such as the "Angry Young Men" genre, "What's New Pussycat?" and "Alfie" styled London Theatre. A new wave of British actors such as Peter O'Toole, Michael Caine, and Peter Sellers intrigued US audiences. Four of the decade's Academy Award winners for best picture were British productions, with the epic "Lawrence of Arabia", starring O'Toole as British army officer T. E. Lawrence, winning seven Oscars in 1963.


title: British Invasion

text: British television series such as "Danger Man" (renamed "Secret Agent" in its US airings), "The Saint" and "The Avengers" began appearing on US screens, inspiring a series of US-produced espionage programs such as "I Spy", "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and the parody series "Get Smart". By 1966, spy series (both British and US versions) had emerged as a favourite format of US viewers, along with Westerns and rural sitcoms. Television shows that featured uniquely American styles of music, such as "Sing Along with Mitch" and "Hootenanny", were quickly canceled and replaced with shows such as "Shindig!" and "Hullabaloo" that were better positioned to play the new British hits, and segments of the new shows were taped in England.


title: British Invasion

text: Fashion and image marked the Beatles out from their earlier US rock and roll counterparts. Their distinctive, uniform style "challenged the clothing style of conventional US males," just as their music challenged the earlier conventions of the rock and roll genre. "Mod" fashions, such as the mini skirt from "Swinging London" designers such as Mary Quant and worn by early supermodels Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and other models, were popular worldwide. Newspaper columnist John Crosby wrote, "The English girl has an enthusiasm that American men find utterly captivating. I'd like to import the whole Chelsea girl with her 'life is fabulous' philosophy to America with instructions to bore from within."


title: British Invasion

text: Even while longstanding styles remained popular, US teens and young adults started to dress "hipper".


title: British Invasion

text: In anticipation of the 50-year anniversary of the British Invasion in 2013, comics such as "Nowhere Men", which are loosely based on the events of it, gained popularity.


title: British Invasion

text: The British Invasion had a profound impact on popular music, internationalising the production of rock and roll, establishing the British popular music industry as a viable centre of musical creativity, and opening the door for subsequent British performers to achieve international success. In America, the Invasion arguably spelled the end of the popularity of instrumental surf music, pre-Motown vocal , the folk revival (which adapted by evolving into folk rock), teenage tragedy songs, Nashville country music (which also faced its own crisis with the deaths of some of its biggest stars at the same time), and temporarily, the teen idols that had dominated the United States charts in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Chubby Checker and temporarily derailed the chart success of certain surviving rock and roll acts, including Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, and Elvis Presley (who nevertheless racked up thirty Hot 100 entries from 1964 through 1967). It prompted many existing garage rock bands to adopt a sound with a British Invasion inflection and inspired many other groups to form, creating a scene from which many major US acts of the next decade would emerge. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based around guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters.


title: British Invasion

text: In February 2021, Ken Barnes, a former "USA Today" radio writer, analysed US musical acts' success before and during the Invasion in an article for "Radio Insight" attempting to confirm or debunk the claim that the British Invasion devastated US music. In his analysis, he noted that several of the acts whose careers were eclipsed by the Invasion—among them Bobby Vee, Neil Sedaka, Dion and Elvis Presley—eventually made comebacks after the Invasion waned. Others, such as Bill Anderson and Bobby Bare, remained successful in the country realm, even as their pop crossover success had waned. Barnes noted that one record company, Cameo Parkway, sustained more permanent damage from the Invasion (and the concurrent rise of Motown) than any other, but also noted that it was also affected by another event that happened the same week as the Beatles' arrival: "American Bandstand", which had been based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Cameo Parkway was based and drew many of its performers from Cameo Parkway, moved to Los Angeles. In summation, he noted that a plurality of the alleged victims of the Invasion (42 percent of most US hit music acts of 1963) were already seeing diminishing returns in 1963 before the Invasion began; 24 percent of US acts that year saw their success continue through the invasion, such as the Beach Boys and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons; 14 percent were the likes of Sedaka, Vee and Presley in that they suffered during the Invasion but recovered afterward; and 20 percent suffered fatal damage to their careers because of it (with Barnes stating that 7 percent of US acts—mostly Cameo Parkway acts and folk revival groups—were wiped out almost entirely due to the Invasion, and the other 13 percent had the Invasion as one of several reasons for their declines). Stylistically, the proportions of US music being made did not change substantially during the Invasion, even as the British acts flooded the charts with a homogenous pop-rock sound; folk, country and novelty music, already small factors in the overall pop realm, dropped to near-nonexistence, while girl groups were also hard hit.


title: British Invasion

text: Though many of the acts associated with the invasion did not survive its end, many others would become icons of rock music. The claim that British beat bands were not radically different from US groups like the Beach Boys and damaged the careers of black US and female artists was made about the invasion. However, the Motown sound, exemplified by the Supremes, the Temptations, and the Four Tops, each securing their first top 20 record during the invasion's first year of 1964 and following up with many other top 20 records, besides the constant or even accelerating output of the Miracles, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Marvin Gaye, Martha & the Vandellas, and Stevie Wonder, actually increased in popularity during that time.


title: British Invasion

text: Other US groups also demonstrated a similar sound to the British Invasion artists and in turn highlighted how the British "sound" was not in itself a wholly new or original one. Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, for example, acknowledged the debt that US artists owed to British musicians, such as the Searchers, but that "they were using folk music licks that I was using anyway. So it's not that big a rip-off." Both the US sunshine pop group the Buckinghams and the Beatles-influenced US Tex-Mex act the Sir Douglas Quintet adopted British-sounding names, and San Francisco's Beau Brummels took their name from the same-named English dandy. Roger Miller had a 1965 hit record with a self-penned song titled "England Swings", in which although its title references the progressive youth-centric cultural scene known as Swinging London, its lyric pays tribute to Britain's traditional way of life. Englishman Geoff Stephens (or John Carter) reciprocated the gesture a la Rudy Vallée a year later in the New Vaudeville Band's "Winchester Cathedral". Even as recently as 2003, "Shanghai Knights" made the latter two tunes memorable once again in London scenes. Anticipating the Bay City Rollers by more than a decade, two British acts that reached the Hot 100's top twenty gave a tip of the hat to America: Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas and the Nashville Teens. The British Invasion also drew a backlash from some US bands, e.g., Paul Revere & the Raiders and New Colony Six dressed in Revolutionary War uniforms, and Gary Puckett & the Union Gap donned Civil War uniforms. Garage rock act the Barbarians' "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl" contained the lyrics "You're either a girl, or you come from Liverpool" and "You can dance like a female monkey, but you swim like a stone, Yeah, a Rolling Stone."


title: British Invasion

text: In Australia, the success of the Seekers and the Easybeats (the latter a band formed mostly of British emigrants) closely paralleled that of the British Invasion. The Seekers had two Hot 100 top five hits during the British Invasion, the number-four hit "I'll Never Find Another You" (recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios) in May 1965 and the number-two hit "Georgy Girl" in February 1967. The Easybeats drew heavily on the British Invasion sound and had one hit in the U.S. during the British Invasion, the number-sixteen hit "Friday on My Mind" in May 1967.


title: British Invasion

text: According to Robert J. Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, the British invasion pushed the counterculture into the mainstream.


title: British Invasion

text: The historical conclusion of the British Invasion is ambiguous. The wave of anglophilia largely faded as US culture shifted in response to the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As the cultural aspects of the British Invasion waned, British musical acts retained their popularity throughout the decade and into the 1970s, competing with their US counterparts as they returned to prominence. British progressive rock acts of the 1970s were often more popular in the U.S. than their native Britain, as the US working class was generally favourable to the virtuosity of progressive rock acts while the bands' British audience was confined to the more genteel upper classes.


title: British Invasion

text: British bands such as Badfinger and the Sweet, and US band the Raspberries, are considered to have evolved the genre into power pop. In 1978, two rock magazines wrote cover stories analyzing power pop as a saviour to both the new wave and the direct simplicity of rock. Along with the music, new wave power impacted fashion, such as the mod style of the Jam or the skinny ties of the burgeoning Los Angeles scene. Several power pop artists were commercially successful; most notably the Knack, whose "My Sharona" was the highest-ranked US single of 1979. Although the Knack and power pop fell out of mainstream popularity, the genre continues to have a cult following with occasional periods of modest success.


title: British Invasion

text: A subsequent wave of British artists rose to popularity in the early 1980s as British music videos appeared in US media, leading to what is now known as the "Second British Invasion". Another wave of British mainstream prominence in US music charts came in the mid-1990s with the brief success of Spice Girls, Oasis, Blur and Robbie Williams. At least one British act would appear somewhere on the Hot 100 every week from 2 November 1963 until 20 April 2002, originating with the debut of the Caravelles' "You Don't Have to Be a Baby to Cry". British acts declined in popularity throughout the 1990s, and in the 27 April 2002 issue of "Billboard", none of the songs on the Hot 100 were from British artists; that week, only two of the top 100 albums, those of Craig David and Ozzy Osbourne, were from British artists.


title: British Invasion

text: The latest movement came in the mid-to-late 2000s when British R&B and soul artists such as Amy Winehouse, Estelle, Joss Stone, Duffy, Natasha Bedingfield, Florence Welch, Adele, Floetry, Jessie J, Leona Lewis, Jay Sean and Taio Cruz enjoyed huge success in the US charts, which led to talk of a "Third British Invasion" or a "British Soul Invasion". Boyband One Direction have also been described as being a major part of a new "British Invasion" due to them being the first British band to have their debut album at number-one on the US charts along with their overall dominance in America.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The seventh-generation Honda Civic is an automobile produced by Honda from 2000 until 2005. It debuted in September 2000 as a 2001 model. Its exterior dimensions stayed similar to the outgoing predecessor, with interior space significantly increased, bumping up it up to the compact car size designation. A notable feature was the flat rear floor that gave better comfort to the rear seat passengers. This generation abandoned the front double wishbone suspension, used previously from fourth to sixth generations, replacing it with MacPherson struts. This generation was the last to offer 4WD variants.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Upon its introduction in 2000, it won the Car of the Year Japan Award for a record fourth time. It also won the Japan Automotive Researchers' and Journalists' Conference Car of the Year award in 2001.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The Civic received a facelift in late 2003 (2004 model year) with new headlights, bumper, and grille; it also received side skirts, and body-coloured bonnet and boot trim. In September 2004, the Special Edition trim level was introduced for the 2005 model year, available as the LX or EX Special Edition.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Spring of 2002 debuted the hybrid version in North America as the 2003 model. It used both a small 1.3-liter I4 main gasoline engine and auxiliary electric motors, producing a combined 93 hp. The electric motors are powered by a battery array which is charged by regenerative braking during deceleration, thus reducing exhaust emissions and extending fuel mileage to 46 mpg city / 51 mpg highway with the manual transmission according to EPA fuel mileage estimates. The Hybrid also had unique lightweight wheels, a rear spoiler, different front bumper, folding mirrors, and aerodynamic enhancements underneath.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: A sporting hatchback model called the Si was unveiled in August 2005 for the European market only. This model featured from launch a 1.4-liter i-DSI and a 1.6-liter VTEC rated at 83 PS (81 hp/61 kW) and 140 PS (138 hp/103 kW) respectively, with 177 and 207 km/h (110 and 129 mph) top speeds and 14.2 and 13.6 s 0–100 km/h sprint. The Sport Hatchback was also available with a 1.7-liter diesel engine.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Starting with this generation, cabin air filters (also known as pollen filters) were installed as standard equipment and are located behind the glove compartment internationally.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Coupe: Trim levels available in North America for the coupe body style were the VP, DX (up to 2003), LX (EM2), EX, LX Special Edition or EX Special Edition, Si and RAJ. The coupe, no longer available in Japan, was still sold in Europe.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Sedan: Trim levels available in the sedan body style were the DX (ES1), VP (ES2), LX (ES1), EX (EN2), LX Special Edition (ES1), EX Special Edition (ES2), GX, and Hybrid (ES9). EX trim includes sunroof. The LX, EX & RAJ Special Edition included a six-disc changer, rear spoiler, ABS, larger 15-inch wheels and a more powerful engine (see below). There was also the EX Special Edition which added a sunroof and rear single cup holder. The Hybrid was the only trim available for the sedan style in Europe.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In Canada, until 2003, there were DX and LX trims for both sedan and coupe, with the coupe additionally having the Si trim, largely equivalent to the US market EX coupe.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In 2002, Honda Canada, in recognition of the one millionth sale of the Civic in Canada, introduced a limited edition version of the Civic called the Civic Coupe Si Veloz ("Veloz" - Spanish word, meaning "fast"). The Veloz edition adds a front, rear and side skirts, rear spoiler, carbon fibre trim pieces, chrome exhaust tip, custom Veloz embroidered floor mats and Veloz badges.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In 2003, a 30th Anniversary Edition was added to all models, as well as a Sport model for sedans. In 2004, the DX trim was replaced by a Special Edition (SE) model and the previous Sport model was replaced by a LX-G trim.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The US (Si) was badged SiR in Canada. Unlike other generations of the Civic Si, this one was not produced in Canada or the United States, and it does not share a body style or interior with the USDM Civic (offered only in sedan and coupé forms) sold there. Instead, the 2002-05 Civic Si/SiR is manufactured in Swindon, England, and exported to Canada and the United States. The Si/SiR was the only trim available for the hatchback style in Canada and the United States.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The Civic Si returned to form as a hatchback, after having been sold only as a coupé in the previous generation. The body shape of this model was based on the "New Bullet-Form" concept, which aimed to create a more dynamic look and provide greater stability while travelling on highways or winding country roads. The interior layout also distinguished itself from other Civic Si generations with a dash-mounted shifter.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Shifting away from the 1.6 liter B-series engine, the seventh generation Civic Si adopted the K-series K20A3 engine used in the Acura RSX base model rated at at 6,500 rpm and at 5,000 rpm. With a redline of 6,800 rpm, the Si distanced itself from the narrow, high-rpm powerband engine of its predecessor, and as a result saw a 20 percent increase in torque. Performance was relatively underwhelming compared to the competition; the switch to MacPherson strut from double wishbone suspension resulted in less responsive handling, and a near- increase in weight to contributed to slower acceleration than the lighter '99-'00 Si. The new front suspension did allow for a tighter turning radius than the better handling wishbone setup used earlier. Much of the weight gain is attributed to the chassis' stouter structure when compared to the previous generation hatchback, with the '02 Si boasting an increase in torsional rigidity by 95 percent and a bending rigidity increase of 22 percent.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The fifth-generation Civic Si saw roughly the same performance numbers as the previous generation Si, with 7.6 seconds to 60 mph and 15.9 seconds at the quarter mile, which were comparable to that of Ford SVT Focus and Hyundai Tiburon GT V6. Other factors adversely impacting performance included the lack of a limited slip differential, having to shift into third gear to get from zero to 60, and increased curb weight due to a stiffer chassis. Other changes include a switch to electric power steering over hydraulic and coil on plug ignition.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Features of this generation Si include: Dash mounted shifter, 15-inch (2002–03) or 16-inch wheels (2004–05), air conditioning, electronic power steering, power windows, power locks, remote keyless entry, AM/FM radio, CD player, clock, cruise control, cloth bucket seats, 4 interior cup holders, center console and folding rear seats.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The EP3's uniquely rare body style in the U.S., having been designed for the Japanese and European markets, has significantly more distinct lighting than most North American designs. While the 2002–03 models have red rear turn signals and combined high/low beam headlights, the 2004 and 2005 models have dual separate high and low beam headlights, individual parking lights in the headlight housings, amber turn signals, amber side fender turn signals, four individual side markers at all corners, and the ability to shut off all lights while driving.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The 2004–05 models received minor revisions. Cosmetic changes included revised headlight (dual bulb setup) and tail light designs, standard side skirts, and an option for a HFP (Honda Factory Performance) upgrade. The suspension was updated with a change from 4 lug to 5 lug bolt pattern, a larger rear sway bar, and a change from 15-inch wheels (195/60-15) to 16-inch wheels (205/55-16). The interior received more silver accents in place of the chrome ones (the lock switch).


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Using the same K20A3 engine block as the US Civic Si, it was sold in sedan body shell only to inside Asia and manufactured by Honda Automobile Thailand in Ayutthaya, Thailand. These Civics were named 2.0 i-VTEC and exported to ASEAN Countries.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: 5-door K20A3 Civic hatchbacks under the name Civic Type-S were sold in some parts of Europe (Not to be confused with the eighth-generation EU Type-S with the R18 engine) with a 2.0 badge in the front grill and Sport in Germany (model code EV1). This Type-S trim of the seventh-generation Civic was the rarest.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The EP3 Civic Si hatchback body shell is also used for the second generation Civic Type R which was sold only in Europe and Japan.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Honda of Europe designed the EP3 Civic Type R hatchback to be marketed in Europe. Then Honda of Japan marketed the EP3 Civic Type R using the more powerful DC5 Integra Japanese-spec K20A powertrain using electric steering rack.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: For the 2002 SEMA show, Honda unveiled the 2003 Civic Si Concept, which showcased the aftermarket versatility of the Si.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Powertrain/chassis modifications included a GReddy T518Z turbocharger with an integral wastegate, a prototype GReddy front-mounted intercooler kit with aluminum piping, a GReddy Airinx high-flow intake system, a GReddy e-manage engine control manager, a GReddy Profec E-01 electronic boost controller (with e-manage programmer), widened track, Factory Performance sport suspension, a center mounted high-flow exhaust system and a four-piston Brembo brake system.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The exterior saw changes including a Rally-inspired body kit, a carbon fiber grill, front intake and rear bumper diffuser, a black chrome-finish headlights and smoked taillights, high-mounted two-stage rear wing. For the interior, Honda included Mugen carbon fiber and Kevlar race seats covered in red Alcantara suede with 6-point racing harness, a sport 3-spoke steering wheel, aluminum pedals and shift knob, Mugen high performance LCD screen gauge package and center mounted information display.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The seventh-generation Civic was introduced in Malaysia in February 2001 where it was only available with the sedan body style powered by a 1.7-litre engine with two variants: EX-i and VTi. In November 2001, a third variant known as VTi (SRS) was introduced. This variant came with dual front airbags, unavailable in the EX-i and VTi variants. In August 2003, the Civic was updated in Malaysia. The Civic was now only available with a sole 1.7-liter VTi-S variant. In May 2004, alongside the introduction of a 2.0L i-VTEC variant, a 1.7-liter VTEC variant unofficially replaced the 1.7-liter VTi-S variant. A couple of limited edition seventh generation Honda Civic was available once in April 2003 with 60 units known as the Civic RX and in January 2005 with 150 units known as the Civic RX2.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The seventh-generation Civic was introduced in the Philippines in 2001 where it is only available in sedan body style. Trim includes; LXi with 1.4-liter D14Z6 l4 engine, and VTi with 1.6-liter D16W7/9 l4 engine. Both came with regular front disk brakes and rear drum brakes. Transmission choice were a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic, available in both trims. During 2003 facelift, the VTi-S was released, with 1.7-liter engine, featuring fabric seats, 4-spoke steering wheel with chrome Honda logo on the center, chrome accents in interior and now with front fog lights. And in 2004, the 2.0 i-VTEC of the Civic was released, with 2.0-liter DOHC 16-valve inline-4 i-VTEC engine, which is the top-of-the-line variant, including leather seats, unique style alloy wheels, and also available in 5-speed automatic transmission.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Most DX and LX models were built with the "D17A1", the HX had the "D17A6" and the EX was powered by the "D17A2". The Si/SiR (EP3) USDM had the "K20A3". The JDM 5-door hatchback (EU) had the "D15B". The GX runs on CNG.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The Philippine and Middle East version of the seventh generation Civic used the 3-stage VTEC mechanism for their VTi/VTi-S/RS and the Pakistan version VTi Civic, equipped with a "D16W9" rated at . There was another seventh generation Civic in Pakistan, which is known as EXi, the non-VTEC variant equipped with a D15Y3 capable of producing 120 HP at 6200 RPM.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The Japanese RS model was equipped with the "D17A". Thai models received the 1.7-liter stroked engine in regular models, with the 2.0 i-VTEC available as the top model.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In Europe, the Civic was sold with a "D16V1" rated at 110 hp and a "D14Z6" rated at 88 hp, also a common-rail diesel engine produced by Isuzu Motors Polska. This engine is a 1.7L 4EE2 Circle L engine with the European Type R Civic was equipped with a "K20A2"


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In the United States and Canada, a engine powered all Civics except the Hybrid, EX, and Si models, up from the previous model. Power in the EX remained at , and all engines except for the Si were stroked to 1.7 liters. The seventh generation North American Civic DX/LX/Value Package (VP) engines were the last Hondas not to use the company's variable valve time system (VTEC); the second to last was the 1996-2004 Acura 3.5RL.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The hybrid version was first introduced to the Japanese market in December 2001. Honda claimed it was the most fuel-efficient 5-passenger gasoline-powered production vehicle in the world at the time. It was introduced to the U.S. in spring 2002 as a 2003 model. It is the first hybrid vehicle to be certified as an Advanced Technology Partial Zero- Emissions Vehicle (AT-PZEV) from CARB.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The first-generation Civic Hybrid was based on the seventh-generation Civic sedan. It was the first mainstream vehicle from Honda equipped with a gasoline-electric hybrid system and became the second hybrid model of the company after Insight. Model with manual transmission was rated city / highway according to United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fuel mileage estimates, about the same combined mileage as for the Toyota Prius, and became the most fuel-efficient five-passenger sedan ever sold in North America at the time.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: An electric motor is sandwiched between the gasoline engine and the transmission, providing up to 13 horsepower. The motor also acts as a generator, to recharge the car's nickel-metal hydride battery located between the rear seat and the trunk, and as a starter motor.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The motor in Civic Hybrid is about a quarter-inch () thicker than that of the Insight. Through improvements to the magnetic coils of the DC brushless motor, it achieves 30% greater assisting and regenerative torque than the previous model without increasing the size.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: It generates more torque (46 versus 36 lb⋅ft) than the motor in the Insight. The electricity is stored in a battery consisting of 120 1.2-volt Ni-MH D-cells wired in series. The battery can charge and discharge more rapidly and efficiently, though the total capacity is reduced from the Insight's (6.0 versus 6.5 Ah). The efficiency of the battery modules is increased, through a reduction in energy losses. The battery is housed with the electrical controller in a package called the Intelligent Power Unit (IPU). The new packaging reduces the size of the system by 50% and allows the IMA equipment to be placed behind the rear seat in the trunk. The unit weighs only and is one-third smaller than that of the Insight.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: The two spark plugs in each cylinder can fire either sequentially or simultaneously, enabling more efficient burning during lean-burn mode and more often lean-burn operation. The engine can operate at a lean 22:1 air-to-fuel ratio more than 60% of the time on a flat road. The VTEC cylinder idling system of the engine closes the valves in three of the four cylinders when the car is decelerating, reduces the power lost to the engine by 50%, and allows the IMA to extract more electrical energy during braking. The rocker arms operating the intake and exhaust valves have two modes: valve-lift mode or idle mode. They are engaged via a synchronizing piston. During deceleration, the synchro piston disengages the lift-mode rocker arm so that the valves remain at rest, effectively sealing off the cylinder.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: An idle-stop feature shuts off the engine automatically when stopped, then restarts immediately when the driver removes their foot from the brake. This auto idle-stop system contributes to both greater fuel efficiency and lower emissions. During stop and go driving, the engine will turn off when the car comes to a stop for the first time, however, if the car does not go above and stops again, the engine will not turn off unless the car is stopped for more than 15 seconds.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: With assistance from the electric motor, the combined torque at below 3,700 rpm is greater than that available from the non-hybrid Civic's 1.7-liter engine.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: Fuel efficiency is further improved by 6% by utilizing a new front air dam and rear spoiler, along with revised underbody panels, reducing the drag coefficient from 0.30 to 0.28; replacing traditional power steering with electrical power result as reduction in parasitic losses and special lower rolling resistance tires. The Dunlop tires improve ride quality and reduce road noise compared with other hybrids like Insight and Prius. When compared with Insight, a wider tire improves stability at highway speed. Car and Driver reported that the car can accelerate in 10.9 seconds.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: There was a minor refresh of the design between the 2003 and 2004 model years which affected the front and rear bumper covers, hood, and headlights. On the interior, a small center console replaced the driver's armrest and the rear seats got adjustable headrests.


title: Honda Civic (seventh generation)

text: In 2004, Honda Civic was the seventh best selling vehicle overall and third best selling passenger car in the U.S.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, (; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the "Enigma Variations", the "Pomp and Circumstance Marches", concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including "The Dream of Gerontius", chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his "Enigma Variations" (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, "The Dream of Gerontius" (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from "The Dream of Gerontius".


title: Edward Elgar

text: Edward Elgar was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath, outside Worcester, England, on 2 June 1857. His father, William Henry Elgar (1821–1906), was raised in Dover and had been apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music and musical instruments. In 1848 he married Ann Greening (1822–1902), daughter of a farm worker. Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edward's birth, and he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic, to the disapproval of his father. William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin. All the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. By the age of eight, Elgar was taking piano and violin lessons, and his father, who tuned the pianos at many grand houses in Worcestershire, would sometimes take him along, giving him the chance to display his skill to important local figures.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development. He inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H. "Billy" Reed wrote that Elgar's early surroundings had an influence that "permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality". He began composing at an early age; for a play written and acted by the Elgar children when he was about ten, he wrote music that forty years later he rearranged with only minor changes and orchestrated as the suites titled "The Wand of Youth".


title: Edward Elgar

text: Until he was fifteen, Elgar received a general education at Littleton (now Lyttleton) House school, near Worcester. His only formal musical training beyond piano and violin lessons from local teachers consisted of more advanced violin studies with Adolf Pollitzer, during brief visits to London in 1877–78. Elgar said, "my first music was learnt in the Cathedral ... from books borrowed from the music library, when I was eight, nine or ten." He worked through manuals of instruction on organ playing and read every book he could find on the theory of music. He later said that he had been most helped by Hubert Parry's articles in the "Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians". Elgar began to learn German, in the hope of going to the Leipzig Conservatory for further musical studies, but his father could not afford to send him. Years later, a profile in "The Musical Times" considered that his failure to get to Leipzig was fortunate for Elgar's musical development: "Thus the budding composer escaped the dogmatism of the schools." However, it was a disappointment to Elgar that on leaving school in 1872 he went not to Leipzig but to the office of a local solicitor as a clerk. He did not find an office career congenial, and for fulfilment he turned not only to music but to literature, becoming a voracious reader. Around this time, he made his first public appearances as a violinist and organist.


title: Edward Elgar

text: After a few months, Elgar left the solicitor to embark on a musical career, giving piano and violin lessons and working occasionally in his father's shop. He was an active member of the Worcester Glee club, along with his father, and he accompanied singers, played the violin, composed and arranged works, and conducted for the first time. Pollitzer believed that, as a violinist, Elgar had the potential to be one of the leading soloists in the country, but Elgar himself, having heard leading virtuosi at London concerts, felt his own violin playing lacked a full enough tone, and he abandoned his ambitions to be a soloist. At twenty-two he took up the post of conductor of the attendants' band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, from Worcester. The band consisted of: piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, three or four first and a similar number of second violins, occasional viola, cello, double bass and piano. Elgar coached the players and wrote and arranged their music, including quadrilles and polkas, for the unusual combination of instruments. "The Musical Times" wrote, "This practical experience proved to be of the greatest value to the young musician. ... He acquired a practical knowledge of the capabilities of these different instruments. ... He thereby got to know intimately the tone colour, the ins and outs of these and many other instruments." He held the post for five years, from 1879, travelling to Powick once a week. Another post he held in his early days was professor of the violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Although rather solitary and introspective by nature, Elgar thrived in Worcester's musical circles. He played in the violins at the Worcester and Birmingham Festivals, and one great experience was to play Dvořák's Symphony No. 6 and "Stabat Mater" under the composer's baton. Elgar regularly played the bassoon in a wind quintet, alongside his brother Frank, an oboist (and conductor who ran his own wind band). Elgar arranged numerous pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and others for the quintet, honing his arranging and compositional skills.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In his first trips abroad, Elgar visited Paris in 1880 and Leipzig in 1882. He heard Saint-Saëns play the organ at the Madeleine and attended concerts by first-rate orchestras. In 1882 he wrote, "I got pretty well dosed with Schumann (my ideal!), Brahms, Rubinstein & Wagner, so had no cause to complain." In Leipzig he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire. They became engaged in the summer of 1883, but for unknown reasons the engagement was broken off the next year. Elgar was greatly distressed, and some of his later cryptic dedications of romantic music may have alluded to Helen and his feelings for her. Throughout his life, Elgar was often inspired by close women friends; Helen Weaver was succeeded by Mary Lygon, Dora Penny, Julia Worthington, Alice Stuart Wortley and finally Vera Hockman, who enlivened his old age.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In 1882, seeking more professional orchestral experience, Elgar was employed as a violinist in Birmingham in William Stockley's Orchestra, for whom he played every concert for the next seven years and where he later said he "learned all the music I know". On 13 December 1883 he took part with Stockley in a performance at Birmingham Town Hall of one of his first works for full orchestra, the "Sérénade mauresque" – the first time one of his compositions had been performed by a professional orchestra. Stockley had invited him to conduct the piece but later recalled "he declined, and, further, insisted upon playing in his place in the orchestra. The consequence was that he had to appear, fiddle in hand, to acknowledge the genuine and hearty applause of the audience." Elgar often went to London in an attempt to get his works published, but this period in his life found him frequently despondent and low on money. He wrote to a friend in April 1884, "My prospects are about as hopeless as ever ... I am not wanting in energy I think, so sometimes I conclude that 'tis want of ability. ... I have no money – not a cent."


title: Edward Elgar

text: When Elgar was 29, he took on a new pupil, Caroline Alice Roberts, known as Alice, daughter of the late Major-General Sir Henry Roberts, and published author of verse and prose fiction. Eight years older than Elgar, Alice became his wife three years later. Elgar's biographer Michael Kennedy writes, "Alice's family was horrified by her intention to marry an unknown musician who worked in a shop and was a Roman Catholic. She was disinherited." They were married on 8 May 1889, at Brompton Oratory. From then until her death, she acted as his business manager and social secretary, dealt with his mood swings, and was a perceptive musical critic. She did her best to gain him the attention of influential society, though with limited success. In time, he would learn to accept the honours given him, realising that they mattered more to her and her social class and recognising what she had given up to further his career. In her diary, she wrote, "The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman." As an engagement present, Elgar dedicated his short violin-and-piano piece "Salut d'Amour" to her. With Alice's encouragement, the Elgars moved to London to be closer to the centre of British musical life, and Elgar started devoting his time to composition. Their only child, Carice Irene, was born at their home in West Kensington on 14 August 1890. Her name, revealed in Elgar's dedication of "Salut d'Amour", was a contraction of her mother's names Caroline and Alice.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar took full advantage of the opportunity to hear unfamiliar music. In the days before miniature scores and recordings were available, it was not easy for young composers to get to know new music. Elgar took every chance to do so at the Crystal Palace concerts. He and Alice attended day after day, hearing music by a wide range of composers. Among these were masters of orchestration from whom he learned much, such as Berlioz and Richard Wagner. His own compositions made little impact on London's musical scene. August Manns conducted Elgar's orchestral version of "Salut d'amour" and the Suite in D at the Crystal Palace, and two publishers accepted some of Elgar's violin pieces, organ voluntaries, and part songs. Some tantalising opportunities seemed to be within reach but vanished unexpectedly. For example, an offer from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to run through some of his works was withdrawn at the last second when Sir Arthur Sullivan arrived unannounced to rehearse some of his own music. Sullivan was horrified when Elgar later told him what had happened. Elgar's only important commission while in London came from his home city: the Worcester Festival Committee invited him to compose a short orchestral work for the 1890 Three Choirs Festival. The result is described by Diana McVeagh in the "Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians", as "his first major work, the assured and uninhibited "Froissart"." Elgar conducted the first performance in Worcester in September 1890. For lack of other work, he was obliged to leave London in 1891 and return with his wife and child to Worcestershire, where he could earn a living conducting local musical ensembles and teaching. They settled in Alice's former home town, Great Malvern.


title: Edward Elgar

text: During the 1890s, Elgar gradually built up a reputation as a composer, chiefly of works for the great choral festivals of the English Midlands. "The Black Knight" (1892) and "King Olaf" (1896), both inspired by Longfellow, "The Light of Life" (1896) and "Caractacus" (1898) were all modestly successful, and he obtained a long-standing publisher in Novello and Co. Other works of this decade included the "Serenade for Strings" (1892) and "Three Bavarian Dances" (1897). Elgar was of enough consequence locally to recommend the young composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to the Three Choirs Festival for a concert piece, which helped establish the younger man's career. Elgar was catching the attention of prominent critics, but their reviews were polite rather than enthusiastic. Although he was in demand as a festival composer, he was only just getting by financially and felt unappreciated. In 1898, he said he was "very sick at heart over music" and hoped to find a way to succeed with a larger work. His friend August Jaeger tried to lift his spirits: "A day's attack of the blues ... will not drive away your desire, your necessity, which is to exercise those creative faculties which a kind providence has given you. Your time of universal recognition will come."


title: Edward Elgar

text: In 1899, that prediction suddenly came true. At the age of forty-two, Elgar produced the "Enigma Variations", which were premiered in London under the baton of the eminent German conductor Hans Richter. In Elgar's own words, "I have sketched a set of Variations on an original theme. The Variations have amused me because I've labelled them with the nicknames of my particular friends ... that is to say I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the 'party' (the person) ... and have written what I think they would have written – if they were asses enough to compose". He dedicated the work "To my friends pictured within". Probably the best known variation is "Nimrod", depicting Jaeger. Purely musical considerations led Elgar to omit variations depicting Arthur Sullivan and Hubert Parry, whose styles he tried but failed to incorporate in the variations. The large-scale work was received with general acclaim for its originality, charm and craftsmanship, and it established Elgar as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation.


title: Edward Elgar

text: The work is formally titled "Variations on an Original Theme"; the word "Enigma" appears over the first six bars of music, which led to the familiar version of the title. The enigma is that, although there are fourteen variations on the "original theme", there is another overarching theme, never identified by Elgar, which he said "runs through and over the whole set" but is never heard. Later commentators have observed that although Elgar is today regarded as a characteristically English composer, his orchestral music and this work in particular share much with the Central European tradition typified at the time by the work of Richard Strauss. The "Enigma Variations" were well received in Germany and Italy, and remain to the present day a worldwide concert staple.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's biographer Basil Maine commented, "When Sir Arthur Sullivan died in 1900 it became apparent to many that Elgar, although a composer of another build, was his true successor as first musician of the land." Elgar's next major work was eagerly awaited. For the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival of 1900, he set Cardinal John Henry Newman's poem "The Dream of Gerontius" for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Richter conducted the premiere, which was marred by a poorly prepared chorus, which sang badly. Critics recognised the mastery of the piece despite the defects in performance. It was performed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1901 and again in 1902, conducted by Julius Buths, who also conducted the European premiere of the "Enigma Variations" in 1901. The German press was enthusiastic. "The Cologne Gazette" said, "In both parts we meet with beauties of imperishable value. ... Elgar stands on the shoulders of Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt, from whose influences he has freed himself until he has become an important individuality. He is one of the leaders of musical art of modern times." "The Düsseldorfer Volksblatt" wrote, "A memorable and epoch-making first performance! Since the days of Liszt nothing has been produced in the way of oratorio ... which reaches the greatness and importance of this sacred cantata." Richard Strauss, then widely viewed as the leading composer of his day, was so impressed that in Elgar's presence he proposed a toast to the success of "the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar." Performances in Vienna, Paris and New York followed, and "The Dream of Gerontius" soon became equally admired in Britain. According to Kennedy, "It is unquestionably the greatest British work in the oratorio form ... [it] opened a new chapter in the English choral tradition and liberated it from its Handelian preoccupation." Elgar, as a Roman Catholic, was much moved by Newman's poem about the death and redemption of a sinner, but some influential members of the Anglican establishment disagreed. His colleague, Charles Villiers Stanford complained that the work "stinks of incense". The Dean of Gloucester banned "Gerontius" from his cathedral in 1901, and at Worcester the following year, the Dean insisted on expurgations before allowing a performance.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar is probably best known for the first of the five "Pomp and Circumstance Marches", which were composed between 1901 and 1930. It is familiar to millions of television viewers all over the world every year who watch the Last Night of the Proms, where it is traditionally performed. When the theme of the slower middle section (technically called the "trio") of the first march came into his head, he told his friend Dora Penny, "I've got a tune that will knock 'em – will knock 'em flat". When the first march was played in 1901 at a London Promenade Concert, it was conducted by Henry Wood, who later wrote that the audience "rose and yelled ... the one and only time in the history of the Promenade concerts that an orchestral item was accorded a double encore." To mark the coronation of Edward VII, Elgar was commissioned to set A. C. Benson's "Coronation Ode" for a gala concert at the Royal Opera House on 30 June 1902. The approval of the king was confirmed, and Elgar began work. The contralto Clara Butt had persuaded him that the trio of the first "Pomp and Circumstance" march could have words fitted to it, and Elgar invited Benson to do so. Elgar incorporated the new vocal version into the Ode. The publishers of the score recognised the potential of the vocal piece, "Land of Hope and Glory", and asked Benson and Elgar to make a further revision for publication as a separate song. It was immensely popular and is now considered an unofficial British national anthem. In the United States, the trio, known simply as "Pomp and Circumstance" or "The Graduation March", has been adopted since 1905 for virtually all high school and university graduations.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In March 1904 a three-day festival of Elgar's works was presented at Covent Garden, an honour never before given to any English composer. "The Times" commented, "Four or five years ago if any one had predicted that the Opera-house would be full from floor to ceiling for the performance of an oratorio by an English composer he would probably have been supposed to be out of his mind." The king and queen attended the first concert, at which Richter conducted "The Dream of Gerontius", and returned the next evening for the second, the London premiere of "The Apostles" (first heard the previous year at the Birmingham Festival). The final concert of the festival, conducted by Elgar, was primarily orchestral, apart for an excerpt from "Caractacus" and the complete "Sea Pictures" (sung by Clara Butt). The orchestral items were "Froissart", the "Enigma Variations", "Cockaigne", the first two (at that time the only two) "Pomp and Circumstance" marches, and the premiere of a new orchestral work, "In the South", inspired by a holiday in Italy.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar was knighted at Buckingham Palace on 5 July 1904. The following month, he and his family moved to Plâs Gwyn, a large house on the outskirts of Hereford, overlooking the River Wye, where they lived until 1911. Between 1902 and 1914, Elgar was, in Kennedy's words, at the zenith of popularity. He made four visits to the US, including one conducting tour, and earned considerable fees from the performance of his music. Between 1905 and 1908, he held the post of Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. He had accepted the post reluctantly, feeling that a composer should not head a school of music. He was not at ease in the role, and his lectures caused controversy, with his attacks on the critics and on English music in general: "Vulgarity in the course of time may be refined. Vulgarity often goes with inventiveness ... but the commonplace mind can never be anything but commonplace. An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white – all over white – and somebody will say, 'What exquisite taste'. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all, that it is the want of taste, that is mere evasion. English music is white, and evades everything." He regretted the controversy and was glad to hand on the post to his friend Granville Bantock in 1908. His new life as a celebrity was a mixed blessing to the highly strung Elgar, as it interrupted his privacy, and he often was in ill-health. He complained to Jaeger in 1903, "My life is one continual giving up of little things which I love." Both W. S. Gilbert and Thomas Hardy sought to collaborate with Elgar in this decade. Elgar refused, but would have collaborated with Bernard Shaw had Shaw been willing.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar paid three visits to the USA between 1905 and 1911. His first was to conduct his music and to accept a doctorate from Yale University. His principal composition in 1905 was the "Introduction and Allegro for Strings", dedicated to Samuel Sanford. It was well received but did not catch the public imagination as "The Dream of Gerontius" had done and continued to do. Among keen Elgarians, however, "The Kingdom" was sometimes preferred to the earlier work: Elgar's friend Frank Schuster told the young Adrian Boult: "compared with "The Kingdom", "Gerontius" is the work of a raw amateur." As Elgar approached his fiftieth birthday, he began work on his first symphony, a project that had been in his mind in various forms for nearly ten years. His First Symphony (1908) was a national and international triumph. Within weeks of the premiere it was performed in New York under Walter Damrosch, Vienna under Ferdinand Löwe, St Petersburg under Alexander Siloti, and Leipzig under Arthur Nikisch. There were performances in Rome, Chicago, Boston, Toronto and fifteen British towns and cities. In just over a year, it received a hundred performances in Britain, America and continental Europe.


title: Edward Elgar

text: The Violin Concerto (1910) was commissioned by Fritz Kreisler, one of the leading international violinists of the time. Elgar wrote it during the summer of 1910, with occasional help from W. H. Reed, the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, who helped the composer with advice on technical points. Elgar and Reed formed a firm friendship, which lasted for the rest of Elgar's life. Reed's biography, "Elgar As I Knew Him" (1936), records many details of Elgar's methods of composition. The work was presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society, with Kreisler and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer. Reed recalled, "the Concerto proved to be a complete triumph, the concert a brilliant and unforgettable occasion." So great was the impact of the concerto that Kreisler's rival Eugène Ysaÿe spent much time with Elgar going through the work. There was great disappointment when contractual difficulties prevented Ysaÿe from playing it in London.


title: Edward Elgar

text: The Violin Concerto was Elgar's last popular triumph. The following year he presented his Second Symphony in London, but was disappointed at its reception. Unlike the First Symphony, it ends not in a blaze of orchestral splendour but quietly and contemplatively. Reed, who played at the premiere, later wrote that Elgar was recalled to the platform several times to acknowledge the applause, "but missed that unmistakable note perceived when an audience, even an English audience, is thoroughly roused or worked up, as it was after the Violin Concerto or the First Symphony." Elgar asked Reed, "What is the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs." The work was, by normal standards, a success, with twenty-seven performances within three years of its premiere, but it did not achieve the international "furore" of the First Symphony.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In June 1911, as part of the celebrations surrounding the coronation of King George V, Elgar was appointed to the Order of Merit, an honour limited to twenty-four holders at any time. The following year, the Elgars moved back to London, to a large house in Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, designed by Norman Shaw. There Elgar composed his last two large-scale works of the pre-war era, the choral ode, "The Music Makers" (for the Birmingham Festival, 1912) and the symphonic study "Falstaff" (for the Leeds Festival, 1913). Both were received politely but without enthusiasm. Even the dedicatee of "Falstaff", the conductor Landon Ronald, confessed privately that he could not "make head or tail of the piece," while the musical scholar Percy Scholes wrote of "Falstaff" that it was a "great work" but, "so far as public appreciation goes, a comparative failure."


title: Edward Elgar

text: When World War I broke out, Elgar was horrified at the prospect of the carnage, but his patriotic feelings were nonetheless aroused. He composed "A Song for Soldiers", which he later withdrew. He signed up as a special constable in the local police and later joined the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve of the army. He composed patriotic works, "Carillon", a recitation for speaker and orchestra in honour of Belgium, and "Polonia", an orchestral piece in honour of Poland. "Land of Hope and Glory", already popular, became still more so, and Elgar wished in vain to have new, less nationalistic, words sung to the tune.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's other compositions during the war included incidental music for a children's play, "The Starlight Express" (1915); a ballet, "The Sanguine Fan" (1917); and "The Spirit of England" (1915–17, to poems by Laurence Binyon), three choral settings very different in character from the romantic patriotism of his earlier years. His last large-scale composition of the war years was "The Fringes of the Fleet", settings of verses by Rudyard Kipling, performed with great popular success around the country, until Kipling for unexplained reasons objected to their performance in theatres. Elgar conducted a recording of the work for the Gramophone Company.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Towards the end of the war, Elgar was in poor health. His wife thought it best for him to move to the countryside, and she rented "Brinkwells", a house near Fittleworth in Sussex, from the painter Rex Vicat Cole. There Elgar recovered his strength and, in 1918 and 1919, he produced four large-scale works. The first three of these were chamber pieces: the Violin Sonata in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor, and the String Quartet in E minor. On hearing the work in progress, Alice Elgar wrote in her diary, "E. writing wonderful new music". All three works were well received. "The Times" wrote, "Elgar's sonata contains much that we have heard before in other forms, but as we do not at all want him to change and be somebody else, that is as it should be." The quartet and quintet were premiered at the Wigmore Hall on 21 May 1919. "The Manchester Guardian" wrote, "This quartet, with its tremendous climaxes, curious refinements of dance-rhythms, and its perfect symmetry, and the quintet, more lyrical and passionate, are as perfect examples of chamber music as the great oratorios were of their type."


title: Edward Elgar

text: By contrast, the remaining work, the Cello Concerto in E minor, had a disastrous premiere, at the opening concert of the London Symphony Orchestra's 1919–20 season in October 1919. Apart from the Elgar work, which the composer conducted, the rest of the programme was conducted by Albert Coates, who overran his rehearsal time at the expense of Elgar's. Lady Elgar wrote, "that brutal selfish ill-mannered bounder ... that brute Coates went on rehearsing." The critic of "The Observer", Ernest Newman, wrote, "There have been rumours about during the week of inadequate rehearsal. Whatever the explanation, the sad fact remains that never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable an exhibition of itself. ... The work itself is lovely stuff, very simple – that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar's music in the last couple of years – but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity." Elgar attached no blame to his soloist, Felix Salmond, who played the work for him again later. In contrast with the First Symphony and its hundred performances in just over a year, the Cello Concerto did not have a second performance in London for more than a year.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Although in the 1920s Elgar's music was no longer in fashion, his admirers continued to present his works when possible. Reed singles out a performance of the Second Symphony in March 1920 conducted by "a young man almost unknown to the public", Adrian Boult, for bringing "the grandeur and nobility of the work" to a wider public. Also in 1920, Landon Ronald presented an all-Elgar concert at the Queen's Hall. Alice Elgar wrote with enthusiasm about the reception of the symphony, but this was one of the last times she heard Elgar's music played in public. After a short illness, she died of lung cancer on 7 April 1920, at the age of seventy-two.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar was devastated by the loss of his wife. With no public demand for new works, and deprived of Alice's constant support and inspiration, he allowed himself to be deflected from composition. His daughter later wrote that Elgar inherited from his father a reluctance to "settle down to work on hand but could cheerfully spend hours over some perfectly unnecessary and entirely unremunerative undertaking", a trait that became stronger after Alice's death. For much of the rest of his life, Elgar indulged himself in his several hobbies. Throughout his life he was a keen amateur chemist, sometimes using a laboratory in his back garden. He even patented the "Elgar Sulphuretted Hydrogen Apparatus" in 1908. He enjoyed football, supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., for whom he composed an anthem, ""He Banged the Leather for Goal"", and in his later years he frequently attended horseraces. His protégés, the conductor Malcolm Sargent and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, both recalled rehearsals with Elgar at which he swiftly satisfied himself that all was well and then went off to the races. In his younger days, Elgar had been an enthusiastic cyclist, buying Royal Sunbeam bicycles for himself and his wife in 1903 (he named his "Mr. Phoebus"). As an elderly widower, he enjoyed being driven about the countryside by his chauffeur. In November and December 1923, he took a voyage to Brazil, journeying up the Amazon to Manaus, where he was impressed by its opera house, the Teatro Amazonas. Almost nothing is recorded about Elgar's activities or the events that he encountered during the trip, which gave the novelist James Hamilton-Paterson considerable latitude when writing "Gerontius", a fictional account of the journey.


title: Edward Elgar

text: After Alice's death, Elgar sold the Hampstead house, and after living for a short time in a flat in St James's in the heart of London, he moved back to Worcestershire, to the village of Kempsey, where he lived from 1923 to 1927. He did not wholly abandon composition in these years. He made large-scale symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel and wrote his "Empire March" and eight songs "Pageant of Empire" for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. Shortly after these were published, he was appointed Master of the King's Musick on 13 May 1924, following the death of Sir Walter Parratt.


title: Edward Elgar

text: From 1926 onwards, Elgar made a series of recordings of his own works. Described by the music writer Robert Philip as "the first composer to take the gramophone seriously", he had already recorded much of his music by the early acoustic-recording process for His Master's Voice (HMV) from 1914 onwards, but the introduction of electrical microphones in 1925 transformed the gramophone from a novelty into a realistic medium for reproducing orchestral and choral music. Elgar was the first composer to take full advantage of this technological advance. Fred Gaisberg of HMV, who produced Elgar's recordings, set up a series of sessions to capture on disc the composer's interpretations of his major orchestral works, including the "Enigma Variations", "Falstaff", the first and second symphonies, and the cello and violin concertos. For most of these, the orchestra was the LSO, but the "Variations" were played by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. Later in the series of recordings, Elgar also conducted two newly founded orchestras, Boult's BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic Orchestra.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's recordings were released on 78-rpm discs by both HMV and RCA Victor. After World War II, the 1932 recording of the Violin Concerto with the teenage Menuhin as soloist remained available on 78 and later on LP, but the other recordings were out of the catalogues for some years. When they were reissued by EMI on LP in the 1970s, they caused surprise to many by their fast tempi, in contrast to the slower speeds adopted by many conductors in the years since Elgar's death. The recordings were reissued on CD in the 1990s.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In November 1931, Elgar was filmed by Pathé for a newsreel depicting a recording session of "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1" at the opening of EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. It is believed to be the only surviving sound film of Elgar, who makes a brief remark before conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, asking the musicians to "play this tune as though you've never heard it before." A memorial plaque to Elgar at Abbey Road was unveiled on 24 June 1993.


title: Edward Elgar

text: A late piece of Elgar's, the "Nursery Suite", was an early example of a studio premiere: its first performance was in the Abbey Road studios. For this work, dedicated to the wife and daughters of the Duke of York, Elgar once again drew on his youthful sketch-books.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In his final years, Elgar experienced a musical revival. The BBC organised a festival of his works to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1932. He flew to Paris in 1933 to conduct the Violin Concerto for Menuhin. While in France, he visited his fellow composer Frederick Delius at his house at Grez-sur-Loing. He was sought out by younger musicians such as Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sargent and John Barbirolli, who championed his music when it was out of fashion. He began work on an opera, "The Spanish Lady", and accepted a commission from the BBC to compose a Third Symphony. His final illness prevented their completion. He fretted about the unfinished works. He asked Reed to ensure that nobody would "tinker" with the sketches and attempt a completion of the symphony, but at other times he said, "If I can't complete the Third Symphony, somebody will complete it – or write a better one." After Elgar's death, Percy M. Young, in co-operation with the BBC and Elgar's daughter Carice, produced a version of "The Spanish Lady", which was issued on CD. The Third Symphony sketches were elaborated by the composer Anthony Payne into a complete score in 1997.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Inoperable colorectal cancer was discovered during an operation on 8 October 1933. He told his consulting doctor, Arthur Thomson, that he had no faith in an afterlife: "I believe there is nothing but complete oblivion." Elgar died on 23 February 1934 at the age of seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St Wulstan's Roman Catholic Church in Little Malvern.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar was contemptuous of folk music and had little interest in or respect for the early English composers, calling William Byrd and his contemporaries "museum pieces". Of later English composers, he regarded Purcell as the greatest, and he said that he had learned much of his own technique from studying Hubert Parry's writings. The continental composers who most influenced Elgar were Handel, Dvořák and, to some degree, Brahms. In Elgar's chromaticism, the influence of Wagner is apparent, but Elgar's individual style of orchestration owes much to the clarity of nineteenth-century French composers, Berlioz, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and, particularly, Delibes, whose music Elgar played and conducted at Worcester and greatly admired.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar began composing when still a child, and all his life he drew on his early sketchbooks for themes and inspiration. The habit of assembling his compositions, even large-scale ones, from scraps of themes jotted down randomly remained throughout his life. His early adult works included violin and piano pieces, music for the wind quintet in which he and his brother played between 1878 and 1881, and music of many types for the Powick Asylum band. Diana McVeagh in "Grove's Dictionary" finds many embryonic Elgarian touches in these pieces, but few of them are regularly played, except "Salut d'Amour" and (as arranged decades later into "The Wand of Youth" Suites) some of the childhood sketches. Elgar's sole work of note during his first spell in London in 1889–91, the overture "Froissart", was a romantic-bravura piece, influenced by Mendelssohn and Wagner, but also showing further Elgarian characteristics. Orchestral works composed during the subsequent years in Worcestershire include the "Serenade for Strings" and "Three Bavarian Dances". In this period and later, Elgar wrote songs and part songs. W. H. Reed expressed reservations about these pieces, but praised the part song "The Snow", for female voices, and "Sea Pictures", a cycle of five songs for contralto and orchestra which remains in the repertory.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's principal large-scale early works were for chorus and orchestra for the Three Choirs and other festivals. These were "The Black Knight", "King Olaf", "The Light of Life", "The Banner of St George" and "Caractacus". He also wrote a "Te Deum" and "Benedictus" for the Hereford Festival. Of these, McVeagh comments favourably on his lavish orchestration and innovative use of leitmotifs, but less favourably on the qualities of his chosen texts and the patchiness of his inspiration. McVeagh makes the point that, because these works of the 1890s were for many years little known (and performances remain rare), the mastery of his first great success, the "Enigma Variations", appeared to be a sudden transformation from mediocrity to genius, but in fact his orchestral skills had been building up throughout the decade.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's best-known works were composed within the twenty-one years between 1899 and 1920. Most of them are orchestral. Reed wrote, "Elgar's genius rose to its greatest height in his orchestral works" and quoted the composer as saying that, even in his oratorios, the orchestral part is the most important. The "Enigma Variations" made Elgar's name nationally. The variation form was ideal for him at this stage of his career, when his comprehensive mastery of orchestration was still in contrast to his tendency to write his melodies in short, sometimes rigid, phrases. His next orchestral works, "Cockaigne", a concert-overture (1900–1901), the first two "Pomp and Circumstance" marches (1901), and the gentle "Dream Children" (1902), are all short: the longest of them, "Cockaigne", lasting less than fifteen minutes. "In the South" (1903–1904), although designated by Elgar as a concert-overture, is, according to Kennedy, really a tone poem and the longest continuous piece of purely orchestral writing Elgar had essayed. He wrote it after setting aside an early attempt to compose a symphony. The work reveals his continuing progress in writing sustained themes and orchestral lines, although some critics, including Kennedy, find that in the middle part "Elgar's inspiration burns at less than its brightest." In 1905 Elgar completed the "Introduction and Allegro for Strings". This work is based, unlike much of Elgar's earlier writing, not on a profusion of themes but on only three. Kennedy called it a "masterly composition, equalled among English works for strings only by Vaughan Williams's "Tallis Fantasia"."


title: Edward Elgar

text: During the next four years Elgar composed three major concert pieces, which, though shorter than comparable works by some of his European contemporaries, are among the most substantial such works by an English composer. These were his First Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Second Symphony, which all play for between forty-five minutes and an hour. McVeagh says of the symphonies that they "rank high not only in Elgar's output but in English musical history. Both are long and powerful, without published programmes, only hints and quotations to indicate some inward drama from which they derive their vitality and eloquence. Both are based on classical form but differ from it to the extent that ... they were considered prolix and slackly constructed by some critics. Certainly the invention in them is copious; each symphony would need several dozen music examples to chart its progress."


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's Violin Concerto and Cello Concerto, in the view of Kennedy, "rank not only among his finest works, but among the greatest of their kind". They are, however, very different from each other. The Violin Concerto, composed in 1909 as Elgar reached the height of his popularity, and written for the instrument dearest to his heart, is lyrical throughout and rhapsodical and brilliant by turns. The Cello Concerto, composed a decade later, immediately after World War I, seems, in Kennedy's words, "to belong to another age, another world ... the simplest of all Elgar's major works ... also the least grandiloquent." Between the two concertos came Elgar's symphonic study "Falstaff", which has divided opinion even among Elgar's strongest admirers. Donald Tovey viewed it as "one of the immeasurably great things in music", with power "identical with Shakespeare's", while Kennedy criticises the work for "too frequent reliance on sequences" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters. Reed thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works. Elgar himself thought "Falstaff" the highest point of his purely orchestral work.


title: Edward Elgar

text: The major works for voices and orchestra of the twenty-one years of Elgar's middle period are three large-scale works for soloists, chorus and orchestra: "The Dream of Gerontius" (1900), and the oratorios "The Apostles" (1903) and "The Kingdom" (1906); and two shorter odes, the "Coronation Ode" (1902) and "The Music Makers" (1912). The first of the odes, as a "pièce d'occasion", has rarely been revived after its initial success, with the culminating "Land of Hope and Glory". The second is, for Elgar, unusual in that it contains several quotations from his earlier works, as Richard Strauss quoted himself in "Ein Heldenleben". The choral works were all successful, although the first, "Gerontius", was and remains the best-loved and most performed. On the manuscript Elgar wrote, quoting John Ruskin, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw, and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." All three of the large-scale works follow the traditional model with sections for soloists, chorus and both together. Elgar's distinctive orchestration, as well as his melodic inspiration, lifts them to a higher level than most of their British predecessors.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Elgar's other works of his middle period include incidental music for "Grania and Diarmid", a play by George Moore and W. B. Yeats (1901), and for "The Starlight Express", a play based on a story by Algernon Blackwood (1916). Of the former, Yeats called Elgar's music "wonderful in its heroic melancholy". Elgar also wrote a number of songs during his peak period, of which Reed observes, "it cannot be said that he enriched the vocal repertory to the same extent as he did that of the orchestra."


title: Edward Elgar

text: After the Cello Concerto, Elgar completed no more large-scale works. He made arrangements of works by Bach, Handel and Chopin, in distinctively Elgarian orchestration, and once again turned his youthful notebooks to use for the "Nursery Suite" (1931). His other compositions of this period have not held a place in the regular repertory. For most of the rest of the twentieth century, it was generally agreed that Elgar's creative impulse ceased after his wife's death. Anthony Payne's elaboration of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony into a complete score led to a reconsideration of this supposition. Elgar left the opening of the symphony complete in full score, and those pages, along with others, show Elgar's orchestration changed markedly from the richness of his pre-war work. "The Gramophone" described the opening of the new work as something "thrilling ... unforgettably gaunt". Its first public performance was given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis in London on 15 February 1998. Payne also subsequently produced a performing version of the sketches for a sixth "Pomp and Circumstance March", premiered at the Proms in August 2006. Elgar's sketches for a piano concerto dating from 1913 were elaborated by the composer Robert Walker and first performed in August 1997 by the pianist David Owen Norris. The realisation has since been extensively revised.


title: Edward Elgar

text: Views of Elgar's stature have varied in the decades since his music came to prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Richard Strauss, as noted, hailed Elgar as a progressive composer; even the hostile reviewer in "The Observer", unimpressed by the thematic material of the First Symphony in 1908, called the orchestration "magnificently modern". Hans Richter rated Elgar as "the greatest modern composer" in any country, and Richter's colleague Arthur Nikisch considered the First Symphony "a masterpiece of the first order" to be "justly ranked with the great symphonic models – Beethoven and Brahms." By contrast, the critic W. J. Turner, in the mid-twentieth century, wrote of Elgar's "Salvation Army symphonies," and Herbert von Karajan called the "Enigma Variations" "second-hand Brahms". Elgar's immense popularity was not long-lived. After the success of his First Symphony and Violin Concerto, his Second Symphony and Cello Concerto were politely received but without the earlier wild enthusiasm. His music was identified in the public mind with the Edwardian era, and after the First World War he no longer seemed a progressive or modern composer. In the early 1920s, even the First Symphony had only one London performance in more than three years. Wood and younger conductors such as Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli championed Elgar's music, but in the recording catalogues and the concert programmes of the middle of the century his works were not well represented.


title: Edward Elgar

text: In 1924, the music scholar Edward J. Dent wrote an article for a German music journal in which he identified four features of Elgar's style that gave offence to a section of English opinion (namely, Dent indicated, the academic and snobbish section): "too emotional", "not quite free from vulgarity", "pompous", and "too deliberately noble in expression". This article was reprinted in 1930 and caused controversy. In the later years of the century there was, in Britain at least, a revival of interest in Elgar's music. The features that had offended austere taste in the inter-war years were seen from a different perspective. In 1955, the reference book "The Record Guide" wrote of the Edwardian background during the height of Elgar's career:


title: Edward Elgar

text: By the 1960s, a less severe view was being taken of the Edwardian era. In 1966 the critic Frank Howes wrote that Elgar reflected the last blaze of opulence, expansiveness and full-blooded life, before World War I swept so much away. In Howes's view, there was a touch of vulgarity in both the era and Elgar's music, but "a composer is entitled to be judged by posterity for his best work. ... Elgar is historically important for giving to English music a sense of the orchestra, for expressing what it felt like to be alive in the Edwardian age, for conferring on the world at least four unqualified masterpieces, and for thereby restoring England to the comity of musical nations."