Elgar Music Makers Vocal Score
Vocal Scores for Elgar's Music Makers
The Music Makers, Op. 69, is a work for contralto or mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar
The most popular vocal score for Elgar's Music Makers is shown below.
Rehearsal recordings to help learn your voice part (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) are described below.
Full Video Version to hear the work in full is also below
The Novello edition of Elgar's Music Makers is in English for SATB
Catalogue Number:NOV070107R
ISBN:9780853605133
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The Music Makers, Op. 69, is a work for contralto or mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was dedicated to "my friend Nicholas Kilburn". It was first performed at the Birmingham Festival on 1 October 1912, conducted by the composer, with Muriel Foster as the soloist.
The text of the work is the 1874 poem Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, which Elgar set in its entirety. He had been working on the music intermittently since 1903, without a specific commission.
The words of the poem no doubt appealed to Elgar's nature, as it celebrates the dreaming artist — by 1912, he was established as part of British artistic society, but was ambivalent at best about that society. The mood of the Ode is clear in the first lines, which depict the isolation of the creative artist:
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams...
Later verses celebrate the importance of the artist to his society.
The music is for the most part reserved and personal, and Elgar quotes his own music several times. Sometimes there is a specific verbal cue: for example, the word "dreams" is accompanied by a theme from The Dream of Gerontius, and "sea-breakers" by the opening of Sea Pictures. The music also quotes the first and second symphonies, the Violin Concerto, "Nimrod" (from the Enigma Variations), Rule, Britannia and La Marseillaise.
However, it is possible to make too much of the self-quotations. Most of the music is original, and Elgar more than does justice to O'Shaughnessy, displaying a perfect ear for the sounds of the chorus and the mezzo-soprano.
For further information of Elgar's Music Makers, please click here to visit the Wikipedia website
ChoraLine 'Voice Part' Rehearsal CDs & EasyPlay (Stream & Download)
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