Music Notes for Harvest Thanksgiving — October 13, 2024

 

Fear not, O land – Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

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Edward Elgar’s (1857-1934) church music is firmly rooted in his Roman Catholicism and in his early years as an organist. Yet, paradoxically, it is also inseparably associated with the great Anglican Cathedral of his native city of Worcester. There he played among the tombs as a child, there he listened awestruck to the anthems and motets, there he played the violin in the orchestra at concerts of the Three Choirs Festival and there he conducted his own mighty choral and orchestral works. Today his statue faces the cathedral and the street where his family lived before they moved out to the village of Broadheath and the cottage in which Elgar was born in 1857. Behind him is the High Street, where his father’s music shop once stood and where you would have found Elgar serving behind the counter, perhaps the day after he had conducted one of his own works somewhere in the city. He was ecumenical long before the word was fashionable, at home in the Anglican and Roman Catholic worlds.

It was during the Edwardian and early Georgians eras that Elgar reached his creative apogee. Between 1901 and 1914 he completed his greatest choral and orchestral works and, much admired by Hans Richter and Richard Strauss among others, enjoyed an international reputation. Composed in 1914 and conforming to a more traditional choral style (rather than the more “orchestral” one favored by Elgar in his larger works), the vigorous harvest anthem “Fear not, O Land” — this morning’s communion motet — derives much of its appeal from unexpected changes of key (such as those in the opening fourteen bars), and Elgar’s dramatic return to the tonic (“do yield their strength”) is a particularly fine moment.

Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things.
Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength.
Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God.
The floors shall be full of wheat.
And ye shall eat in plenty, and praise the Name of the Lord your God. that hath dealt wondrously with you.
Amen.

Gerald Harder