Edward Elgar

1857 – 1934

Personal details

Edward Elgar was born on 2 June 1857 in Broadheath near Worcester. As a child he learnt to play the piano and violin with his father William Henry and local music teachers. As a composer he was self-taught, but he only became really well-known and successful with his compositions in the 1890s. He achieved his first notable successes with his first cantatas The Black Knight (1893) and King Olaf (1896), and his oratorio The Light of Life (1896). But his ultimate breakthrough as a composer came in 1899 with the Enigma Variations op. 36, and a year later with his major work, the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.
Elgar is regarded as an important representative of late Romanticism in music, and was one of the few British composers after Purcell to achieve international recognition.