Elgar and his publishers : letters of a creative life

Abstract

Throughout his career sought confidants in the publishing world and the resultant exchange of letters was a barometer of his moods and feelings. In this comprehensive collection Jerrold Northrop Moore has included every letter of importance between and his publishers that is known to survive. He has transcribed and annotated the letters and has written a linking commentary in the manner of his Elgar on Record. Here for the first time are printed all the documents of his closest friendship, that with the publishing manager of Novello, A.J. Jaeger ('Nimrod' of the Enigma Variations ), including Jaeger's letters to Elgar. The growth of another important friendship, with the Novello chairman Alfred Littleton, is newly revealed. There are new insights, too, in the letters to the Boosey family and to Elgar's final publisher, Keith Prowse. These letters reach far back into the creative process, often to the formation of ideas and projects. They form a rare record of the vital relationship between a composer and his publisher, but perhaps more valuable still is the picture that emerges of himself, for when he came upon someone to whom he could open his heart, the letters which he wrote are among the most arresting documents of a creative life. Readership: Elgarians; anyone interested in the relationship between a composer and publisher, or in the social and economic conditions of musical composition and publishing in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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