The Wand of Youth Suite No. 1

Composer: ELGAR, Sir Edward
  • The Wand of Youth Suite no. 1 is Elgar’s Opus 1a, completed in 1907. Slumber Scene is the suite’s 6th mvt.1
  • The music in both Wand of Youth suites is based on melodies Elgar composed as a child. When he was eleven, Elgar and his siblings planned a private play just for children. 11-year-old Elgar wrote a few melodies for this little play, which he later recorded in one of the sketchbooks of musical ideas he kept as a boy.2
    • The Elgar children’s play was an allegorical tale in which the children lured their parents across a brook from the humdrum everyday world to an imaginative fairyland.3
  • Even though Elgar wrote the suites in 1907 (mid-career), he called them his “Opus 1,” since they were based the earliest music he’d recorded from his childhood.4
  • According to Elgar scholar Diana McVeagh, the title The Wand of Youth suggests both magic wands and conducting batons.5
  • Elgar said that Slumber Scene was composed over a three-note ground bass in order that it could be easy for a child to play.6

Sources

  1. Diana McVeagh, “Elgar, Sir Edward,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 18, 2019,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000008709.
  2. “Elgar – His Music: Wand of Youth Suites 1 & 2, op 1,” Elgar Society, accessed September 19, 2019, http://www.elgar.org/3wandy.htm.
  3. Diana McVeagh, “The shorter instrumental works,” in Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59.
  4. “Elgar – His Music: Wand of Youth Suites 1 & 2, op 1,” Elgar Society, http://www.elgar.org/3wandy.htm.
  5. Diana McVeagh, “The shorter instrumental works,” in Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 59.
  6. Ibid.

Cut IDs

18408 41926 43473 44149