We're now at our final stop on this journey, and we've come from the tranquillity of rural Oxfordshire to a building on one of
the main roads into Birmingham City Centre with the traffic noise going past.
We're about to head inside the oratory to discover more about Cardinal Newman, his love of music and his connection to Elgar's work.
Thank you for speaking to us today, Father Guy, and ine can't help but be struck,
entering the building, of this total contrast to the busy hustle and bustle of one of the major roads in the Birmingham city centre outside.
Could you tell us more about the history of the Oratory, its association with Newman, and so more about where we are now?
Yes, certainly. Well, to try and keep it as brief as I can,
since St Philip Neri was a 16th century priest in Rome and he developed a very particularly personal style of apostolate,
which was based very much on his own, very outgoing character,
and was particularly devoted to the encouragement of the practise of the faith by lay people through prayer and the celebration of the sacraments.
And Philip was responsible, really, through his very, very kind of persistent personal apostolate,
working your way through, as I say, through pastoral measures of word and sacrament with the extra assistance of music,
which was an enormous feature of his own personal apostolate,
which was to say a bit more about that in a moment, if you like, get onto Cardinal Newman.
And what it did was it succeeded in regenerating the whole life of the city in practise of the faith.
And he gathered around himself a congregation of priests who assisted him in this work, and that became known as the congregation of the Oratory,
Oratory being just an ordinary standard word - oratorio - for a place in which people gathered for prayer.
So it wasn't specifically meant to be a church.
In fact, we quite definitely not a church.
The oratorio was the place where you gathered for prayer and also from that word also developed certain other practises,
hence, of course, oratorio, the musical form, which is not,
as is often said specifically to do with St Philip in person, since Philip was one of the many practitioners of,
if you like, the use of oratories to and to enhance the life of people in in their practise
of the faith through through celebrating the faith in music and prayer.
So he developed a particular kind of combination of prayer and music in his oratory prayers,
which was the kind of standard format in which he drew people in - laypeople - and his own priests and worked within this
format in order to to bring people deeper into the life of prayer and into the sacramental celebration of the faith.
And in that way, of course, to raise the whole standard of personal holiness amongst the people.
Where it comes into the life of of Cardinal Newman is very interesting, because when he became a Catholic in 1845, as an Anglican clergyman
of course, he wasn't automatically going to be accepted as a Catholic priest.
He had to go through a whole process of discernment and training for that.
So he was sent to Rome by the then local bishop to where he was, of course, based in Oxford.
And that was Bishop Wiseman. He recommended to Newman, who said, "What should I do as a priest?
If I'm going to live as a priest, how should I live?"
So Wiseman said to Newman, you ought to look at the Oratory, so Newman looked at the first.
He wasn't terribly impressed, interestingly enough, but he did gradually.
This, the seed that it planted took took root in his mind because he saw this is something I can adapt for England.
When he was eventually ordained a priest and became an oratorian in Rome,
he came back to England and in 1848 he founded the altar here in Birmingham, not in this house,
but in Maryvale, which he named Old Oscott after the name of St Mary in the Valley,
the name of the church in Rome where St Philip lived and is buried.
And and so he began to work there.
But he realised pretty quickly that Maryvale, which is out in the countryside, was not the best situation.
In order she needs to work in a city, needs to be in the midst of people in the mass, in the bustle of ordinary, everyday life,
and to bring the gospel message to people precisely in their everyday working lives and the situations in which they are placed.
So it wasn't an apostolate for people who are already living some kind of high life.
It was for people living a very ordinary life. So. He eventually, after another time in a very poor part of central Birmingham,
he eventually came here to this house which he built himself, the house that sits on the Hagley Road.
The church, which was on this site, was much plainer because there wasn't much money.
So he built a fairly simple church. So this church was eventually replaced in the early years of the last century with this one,
which was designed to be a memorial to Newman in person.
Now, the thing that's interesting, of course,
anybody who sees a church like this is it's very different from many other churches that you'd ever go into,
even a lot of Catholic churches, for that matter. Yes. And I believe also it was colloquially known as Little Italy when you walk in here.
So because of that distinctive difference? That's right.
Of course, one of the things that Cardinal Newman, Father Newman, of course,
first was was very keen to do was to promote the sense of the church as a living historical link with with the with the ancient past.
And so he he found that contemporary Catholicism abroad had a lot to offer culturally,
although in a sense he never felt fully at home in that he was always he was always very much an Englishman.
And his whole kind of religious sensibility was formed by his time in the Church of England.
I think this is fascinating to think about Elgar's Dream
of Gerontius - well Elgar and Newman's Dream of Gerontius, because in terms of the musical genre of the oratorio,
we think of the Handelian tradition, of Mendelssohn, and these are very much works
for performance and they are works which are telling a biblical story often.
And that's very much - although Elgar doesn't actually give the title oratorio, he says it's the setting of Newman's poem -
but also it's a very different kind of musical object in terms of that there's no biblical story and that the figure at the centre is Gerontius,
is this ordinary old man. Yes.
Who Elgar said he wanted to say was a sinner and a worldly man rather than somebody who has achieved sainthood and that this would be about,
as you said, that very personal journey of the soul, that it would be about the relationship of the Guardian Angel who knew every moment of his life.
So, I mean, I wonder how much do you think Elgar was aware of the ethos of oratory and that sense of personal discernment
through prayer and music that had come from St Philip and then that had been embraced by Newman?
That's a very interesting point.
I think that obviously being brought up as a Catholic in Worcester, Elgar was very familiar with the figure of of Newman, who, of course,
when Elgar was in his early maturity there, would know that that Newman, of course, by 1878 was a cardinal here in Birmingham.
So, of course, bringing tremendous kind of prestige and lustre to the Catholic Church in the Midlands.
So that would be something that that he would be very much aware of. I don't think, unfortunately, there's any evidence that he ever met the cardinal.
Sadly, it would be rather nice if there were. But I think that probably like many people here, if they weren't actually living here in Birmingham,
he might have been a bit in awe of this this great man. That's that's a suspicion that I have rather than anything else.
He did know of some of the fathers, because obviously it's only after Newman's death in 1890 that Elgar, who was, of course,
only really coming into prominence as a composer in his own right, was beginning to consider important kind of projects.
And and, of course, The Dream really fits into that later development in his own life.
So it wasn't in love to Newman's death that that Elga really thought about this.
And so I think it was only then that he got to know this Oratory.
And he was he was certainly corresponding with with one of the fathers here,
Father Henry Bellasis, about the possibility of setting The Dream during the course of the 1890s.
He got to know the poem I think was given to him as a as a wedding present.
And of course, he got married in the London Oratory.
So obviously, the connection between the London and Birmingham Oratories is rather complex,
one which isn't necessarily something we need to go into here, but nonetheless, there is a family connection, so to speak.
And so because of the whole Philipine inheritance,
then anybody who got to know London Oratory would at least have something of
an inkling of what what that whole Newman tradition and project was about,
this this idea was of penetrating into the culture of the of the world around you.
I mean, this this this this way that was spiritually challenging and uplifting at the same time.
And of course, that's what I think he was certainly aware of the of the musical interests that the cardinal had,
because we do know that Elgar was was playing in the Birmingham Triennial Festival Orchestra during the 80s.
Yes. And therefore, of course, he would certainly have been -
I think it's almost inevitable that he would have been - in the orchestra on occasions when Cardinal
Newman would have been attending concerts in Birmingham Town Hall as part of the Triennial Festival.
Because one of the things that's very interesting to to read through in the Cardinal's
diaries and also in the diaries of one of his young proteges called Edward
Bellasis one of quite a large family that was devoted to the cardinal,
is that the cardinal was a great devotee of the Triennial Festival and used to to attend is every time,
many times during the course of the festival programme and encourage others to attend as well,
To encourage the younger fathers here to go, for instance.
And then eventually he was approached to become a patron of the festival because he realised that he was available to it.
And he was very, very glad to accept it was something which he was more than happy to do because he had such a strong sense of the importance of music,
and that also fed into what happened here.
For instance, one of the works he went to here at the Triennial - I can't remember which year it was, it would have been quite early in the 80s -
it was Cherubini's Requiem in C Minor.
and he was so moved by that, deeply moved by it as a musical experience, that he wanted it played here liturgically.
So he had it performed here liturgically on more than one occasion after that,
and there was that kind of crossover between the festival and the church music,
which was, I think, more easily achieved in those days perhaps than in later times.
And and yeah and I think that's the sort of fascinating insight into this relationship.
And this seems to be a wonderful moment for us to move to the museum where we can see more evidence of Newman's love of music.
And also we can get to look at Elgar's manuscript.
So we're now in the museum at the oratory dedicated to Cardinal Newman, and that was created upon his canonisation very recently.
And we've got a couple of wonderful things to artefacts to look at here.
So first of all, if we might turn to what we have here, which is his own viola,
first thing you notice about it, of course, is that it's actually quite small for a viola.
Yeah, yeah, very much so. It's so well preserved as well.
It's a beautiful instrument. So could you maybe tell us more about his when he started to be involved with
music and when he started to be involved with performing music on his own?
Well, he played both the violin and the viola. That's right.
Newman, of course, is really a string player.
He actually writes quite a lot about music in his adult life.
And he always writes from the point of view of being a string player because that was the instrument.
The violin, which he took up at the age of 10, was actually on his 10th birthday that he first recorded in his diary, that he had violin lessons.
And he obviously made progress very quickly because he's obviously reached a fairly high standard of proficiency in playing fairly early on.
There are some examples of that amongst his papers as well.
Country Dances. Here we are. And this is a this is a failure with his signature on it.
So this is something that he wrote about himself when he was obviously still in his ah, I would say probably very, very young player.
So it shows the kind of standard that he. He's already reaching.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, this this is a sort of good technical standard that he's starting, that he's clearly reaching very rapidly.
And then is that also the case he went on to perform later in life,
so as a student and into his adulthood? Yes.
Yes, he did. He when he went to Oxford, which again, he did quite young.
He was only 16 when he went up to Oxford. He he started playing almost straightaway.
There was there some funny stories relating to his playing the violin music making in Oxford
in those days wasn't considered to be a particularly worthwhile or gentlemanly pastime,
both by the Dons and by some of the undergraduates.
So there was contempt from some of the doctors and there was amusement on the part of some of the undergraduates.
And so he was made the butt of a few jokes, but he weathered them extremely well.
And so I think that was one of the ways in which he established his kind of
his great gravitas as a person was the way that he coped with people's mockery.
So he became known as a musician without the contempt that that often brought on musicians.
And he used to go to performances in the Holywell music rooms.
He spent quite a lot of money, which interestingly enough on that and on buying music, too.
So he was quite seriously devoted to music and he was invited.
There were a couple of musicians called Reinagle who were professionals,
and he was invited by them to make up a string quartette on several occasions for private music making groups.
And so he would play either the violin or the viola.
He complains on one occasion, but having to be made to play the viola far too long into the night, a very heavy one, a tenor, as he called it.
And I think that's the reason why he's got a very small, relatively small viola, because it was easier for him to cope with, especially because.
Yeah, because it's interesting that you you mention this not being a very gentlemanly pursuit,
because that's part of the culture of 19th century England.
That's a musical performance is seen as something that is kind of brought in from abroad to get the best.
Like your champagne, presumably, and that not many gentlemen would necessarily practise as an enthusiasm.
And we also have, if I may turn the page, we have four sessions.
We've got him signing his compositions as Giovanni Enrico Neandrini.
So he's Italianising his name, John Henry Newman, in order to cast himself as Paganini or
somebody like that. Elgar had a note in the poem for a long time.
He'd certainly been given a copy of the poem for a wedding present and done by the priest who sing the priesthood,
instructed his his wife for reception into the church.
So he he and of course, he already knew the figure of Cardinal Newman.
So he also was very struck by the the musical qualities of the poem and that it was able to inspire a lot of ideas in him.
So I think that he conceived the idea himself.
It wasn't something that was suggested to him. He conceived the idea himself.
When he was asked to produce a big work for the festival. He'd written smaller cantatas already that had been performed here.
And then he was he was approached with something bigger as his own fame was growing.
And he thought of of doing The Dream. He was he he he did correspond with Father Henry
Bellasis, who was one of the the community here who was quite prominent after the cardinal's death,
who had been one of Newman's many companions who'd gone with him to the festival.
So he obviously had musical interests as well. And and I think Father Henry was was was not entirely encouraging at first, interestingly enough.
But Newman. So Elgar did persist.
I think that once once the idea had struck a certain kind of inspirations in him, he couldn't resist it any any longer.
And so he just got on with doing it. And of course, by the time he got to the end, it was a huge rollercoaster.
And of course, he just couldn't put it down until he finished it in August.
1900, wasn't it?
So we're now looking at Elgar's autograph score that he worked on at Birchwood Lodge and that he signed with that final bit and
then became the conducting score, that was used at the first performance.
That's right. So we can see that where he signs off.
Sorry. He signs off at the end, of course. That's probably the first thing that we want to look at.
Then right at the very final pages.
Here we are where he - Fine, of course, and then "This is the best of me,"
the quotation from Ruskin, and then the date: Birchwood Lodge, August 1900.
Could you tell us about this dedication that we're looking at now,
Fr Guy, how it came to be here and how it seems to still reside here?
Well, this actually is Elgar's autograph conducting score.
It was Elgar's own idea and his own inspiration to offer this to the Oratory.
And that's what the meaning of this whole dedication is.
You see that he says, "I offer this manuscript to the library of the Oratory with the deepest reverence to the memory of Cardinal Newman,
whose poem I have had the honour to attempt to set to music."
Beautiful, isn't it? The humility of that which I think is quite, quite genuine as well.
He wasn't being falsely modest at all. But obviously, as we know, what he did was was an extraordinary achievement, of course.
So he gave that to the Oratory in 1982, just after the the the the the new published edition was available.
So by that stage, performances were beginning to increase.
And of course, the quality of performances improved then onwards.
One of the things that's fascinating about this subject are these references that come through to natural landscapes.
Oh, yes. So we can see the section where Elgar has set Newman's words, "The sound is like the rushing of the wind through the pines."
That's right. We have these also these wonderful little additions where there'll be a sudden sforzando,
so a loud emphasis followed by quiet, and Elgar has written whimsically.
"Birchwood Lodge in a thunderstorm." That's right.
So he's he's really, as you kind of get this evocation of the surroundings and I mean, the pine trees as well is something particularly interesting.
And could you perhaps comment on the connection to some of the places that Elgar and Newman both knew and why this
passage would be particularly significant to Newman? In the 1850s when he was already established here,
bought a plot of land at Rednal, which is about six miles away from here, then in the countryside, to be a cemetery and a country house,
so a place for rest and refreshment. And he used to go there often.
He loved it.
One of the things is that it's on the back of the Lickey Hills or rather the hills are at the back of the house, and the Lickeys are covered with pines.
And in the summer months, one of the things that you hear is the sound of the wind blowing through the pines.
So I think that that's what Newman was thinking about when he wrote this particular phrase,
"It sounds like the rushing of the wind, the summer wind amongst the lofty pines."
It was I think it was read what he was thinking of, and particularly when Elgar came to set it,
we know that that he, in fact, was thinking of a place called Spetchley just outside Worcester,
where he was, for a short time as a small boy, at school.
And he wrote this in a vocal score that belongs to the family that owns Spetchley Park,
That was at Spetchley, over those words there that it was the it's the memory of his being a boy.
And I know I've also seen the clump of pines is still there in the grounds,
which is the one that inspired that same kind of response in and Elgar as it had done in Newman.
And it's beautifully set. And you can see the trouble that that Elgar has gone to suggest this,
the sound of the the wonderful harp writing, particularly - there's a significant amount in the other strings as well -
Of the very kind of atmospheric suggestive way in which Elgar often writes in these sort of passages, there's a lot of movement going on under the surface.
You can you can hear it. And it just points to also for both Newman and Elgar
this love of landscape, and desire to incorporate their lived experience of the landscape into this highly personal,
And highly actually highly sensual work.
And then, of course - not the same form of conifer
exactly - but we also know there's the fir trees associated with other places, such as his birthplace cottage,
so really, what this and this whole experience of living with trees, living in rural locations was so important to both of them. So Fr
Guy Nicholls, thank you so much for showing us these wonderful objects,
this wonderful place today that has so much to do with the history of Elgar and Newman's work.
Well, not at all. It's been a really great pleasure for me as well to be able to show you these things and share
some of some of these treasures with you and with everyone else who will be seeing this.