Cockaigne (In London Town)

Cockaigne ( In London Town) (op. 40) is an overture by Edward Elgar. It was composed from 1900 to 1901 and premiered on June 20, 1901 in London. The playing time is approximately 14-15 minutes.

Formation

One of his friends against remarked Elgar, the idea for the piece came to him in a dark day in the Town Hall, as he looked at "all the memorials of the great past of the city " and its history, with him came a melody from the dark blanket ago be.

Elgar began composing after the premiere of his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius in the autumn of 1900, and finished its work on the score on 24 March 1901.

Music and themes

As already indicated above, Cockaigne is an homage or a portrait of London, while also addressing the Beititel the overture to explain. Almost programmatically the life of the city is set in the center of the work: The city life with whistling street boys at the beginning of the piece, followed by a lyrical interlude, then a second theme that symbolizes a love couple in the park, and finally next to a passage in a military band forms, almost memories of the festive atmosphere in a church. At the end of the theme is repeated once and executed magnificently.

Elgar himself described Cockaigne ( In London Town) as " cheerful and londonerisch; sincere, healthy, humorous, strong, but not vulgar ".