So we've now come all the way from Elgar's statue and the cathedral past William Elgar's music shop on the high street to the edge of town,
to St. George's Catholic Church in Worcester. And this is the place where Elgar worshipped as a boy,
where his father was the organist and where subsequently Elgar himself was Organist and composed some of his early sacred music.
So this is another very important sites to associate with Elgar,
and the backdrop to his Catholic work, The Dream of Gerontius.
Now, in terms of Worcester's Catholic history, despite the fact that the Reformation forced Catholic worship underground,
there's been an almost continuous history of Catholic worship in Worcester due to the Jesuit mission here.
And one thing we know also is that there is this was associated, first of all,
with secular houses and other sorts of moving places of worship that were quite discreet throughout the 17th and 18th century.
Then in 1765, a church was built near to this location in what was then known as affectionately as the "town ditch."
The current church dates from 1829 and the foundation and opening of that church
was a momentous occasion for the growing Catholic population of Worcester,
not only religiously but musically, being accompanied with music by Haydn and Mozart.
So what we're going to do now is go inside this church and discover more about Elgar's
association with it and about his involvement in the Catholic history of Worcester.
So we're now inside St. George's Catholic Church in Worcester, Elgar's place of worship as a child and where he was organist,
and we're speaking to Deacon Paul O'Connor.
Thank you very much for speaking to us on the podcast, Deacon Paul.
My pleasure.
So please, could you start by saying something about where exactly we're sitting and the significance of this setting and Elgar's connection?
Yeah. OK, so we're sitting in the choir loft of St. George's Catholic Church here, just off the city centre of Worcester.
It was built in 1829 after emancipation for the growing population of the city.
One of the characteristics of it is its classical design. But as well as that, we have the Transfiguration by Raphael.
It's a copy. It's the only full size copy of it outside the Vatican,
and it was commissioned by the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury in the 1840s,
and it sits above our reredos the high altar and dominates the nave of the church.
Either side of it, we have the Worcester Saints of Oswald and St Wulstan,
who were were the two saints who built the original and then the current cathedral here in Worcester.
And then on the other side, we have the Jesuit saints of St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, because this was originally a Jesuit parish.
And I think that's really important in terms of the history of Catholicism in Worcester and its surroundings,
because we have to recognise that the Jesuits formed their mission of St George to England.
And there was a lot of Jesuit activity in this area with both Hindlip Hall and Harlington Hall being in close proximity.
This particular part of the church, the choir loft, is where Elgar would have been as a boy in his youth and early in his adult life.
And this organ here, The Anneessen from 1885, is the one that he would have played.
He first started to assist his father, William, who was organist here before him when he was about 12 or 13,
and he became the assistant organist when he was 14. That would have been 1873, a post he held until
1885, when he was appointed as the organist, this organ went went in place in the same year and he was organist here for four years.
Thank you. And what you've described there as well is how longstanding and how significant the Catholic history of Worcester is.
And yet we've just been exploring in the cathedral that we with that centre of town and the statue,
that's not always immediately apparent when you enter Worcester.
And so given the the tensions around Roman Catholicism in England in the 19th century,
what would Elgar's experience of growing up as a Catholic have been in Worcester?
So I've got actually an anecdote here when on the occasion of the first public procession in 1922,
the son of Hubert Leicester, who was Elgar's childhood friend
of course, remarked that 20 years ago boys would have been mocked and sang at by others, by other people when they were going to Mass.
So that would have been in 1902. So when Elgar was 40 years old?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that about being Catholic in Worcester at the time is what we
would now call the institutional discrimination that people would have experienced.
So the lack of opportunities of high office and profession because of because of being Catholic, and that was part and parcel of society as a whole.
I think what is quite interesting about Worcester is that, you know, that discrimination was quite nuanced because it was most definitely there,
and that type of prejudice and jibes and personal attacks were most definitely part and parcel of Catholic life in the city.
But at the same time, because of the Catholic history and the fact that we have to recognise that there
were probably a fair number of Catholics within the city and the surrounding area,
there was a degree of personal ambivalence to Catholics.
You know, it's that whole thing of you - you feel what you don't know -
and I think another case in point close to Elgar would be Hubert Leicester rising to become mayor of Worcester?
Oh, absolutely. And I think I mean, that's one of the things which I think Hubert Leicester was incredibly grateful for,
was the the close friendship that he had with Elgar and the role that music
that Elgar composed that was sung and played here and spread out to the city.
He benefited from that relationship because we know that the choir here was extremely
well-regarded and people would come to to hear them play and sing from near and far,
both Catholic and non-Catholic. And of course, with Elgar composing a lot of what became very famous music here for Mass in this in this location.
So the city effectively took on board that as well.
So in a way, Leicester could be trusted because he could become part of the establishment through Elgar,
which is actually quite ironic given the concerns that Elgar always had in his life
about his Catholicism being a barrier to him becoming part of the establishment.
Yes. And and what you say about music is so interesting and it's having a sort of integrative
function in terms of the connections in Worcester between Catholics and Protestants,
because we also, as we were just thinking about in the context of the cathedral,
we were talking about the challenges over the first performances of the work,
the resistance of the clergy in charge to references to Our Lady or to Masses being said, to the doctrine of Purgatory
and so on, but then it seems like actually the the regard of the choir is also about the quality of musical performance.
Absolutely. And the the inherent content. Yes.
Yeah. It's as if it go it goes one level above the content of the music just to appreciate the quality of the composition itself and also the
quality of the performance and shows that people could accept it in a in a manner that was that that was a little bit more tolerable.
And I suppose it also helps that it was being sung here where people were visitors, as opposed to almost the imposition of Our lady, Purgatory,
the Mass in the setting of the cathedral, which was most definitely not going to be acceptable at that time.
Yeah. And I mean, another thing I know in William Elgar's time is that one thing that would be quite a common practice here and
in other Catholic churches is to have touring opera companies that the singers, who may be actually Italian,
for example, in Catholic would come and dep in the choirs.
And so it's very sort of far from this kind of numinous aura of Gregorian chant that is sometimes associated with Catholic sacred music.
Most definitely. I think it was it sounds like a really exciting time where, as you say, you've got the high-quality visiting musicians.
You're looking at musicians and singers here who would regard themselves as whilst being amateur, still very much of high quality.
And of course, you've got someone like Elgar composing music for here.
And you mentioned William, Edward's father, because he was organist here for a while,
and one of the things which we know about Edward's early days was assisting him was his father wasn't Catholic, but he was a proficient organist.
And what he didn't like was the lengthy sermons that took place at the time, which could be anything up to possibly over half an hour.
It is said that with the lengthy sermons and the sheer extent of the of the music at high mass, it could sometimes take over two and a half hours.
And so William would like a break.
And it was an ideal opportunity during the sermon just to nip across the road to the to the hotel to just enjoy some light refreshments.
But his intention would always be to be back for the Offertory, except he didn't always manage it.
And that's where Edward had to step in in his early days to be able to play the Offertory hymn.
And we know that Edward, too, wasn't too enamoured with the long sermons,
but he used his time a little bit more productively because it was during those sermons that he said that he sat here composing some of his music.
And it's, you know, looking at it now, you know, 140 years later,
it's it is a humbling moment for us to realise that things like his Ave Verum Corpus, his Ave Maris
Stella, his Ave Maria, his O Salutaris, his Regina Caeli,
and many others, his Pie Jesu and also Drakes Broughton and Ecce Sacerdos Magnus were all composed here for Mass here.
And the last one, Ecce Sacerdos
Magnus, was it was composed specifically for Bishop Ilsley coming to consecrate the Sacred Heart, which is in the name of the church,
and it is said that over a thousand people came to Mass, at that time, to see the bishop, but also to experience and savour the music of Elgar.
We still play the Ecce Sacerdos Magnus and it's it and all of the other pieces are as timeless and as fresh now.
When they were first first performed here, and I think that's a wonderful anecdote about the importance of Elgar's association with this place,
and here's how he's still part of the worshipping practice and the and Catholic identity.
It's something which has helped us within Worcester to raise the profile of Catholics.
We know that we are very good at hiding away.
There is something instinctive about keeping ourselves to ourselves and all that,
that whole element of people thinking, am I allowed to cross the threshold of a Catholic church if I'm not Catholic?
Well, the fact that the music that he's known internationally is associated with the city
was composed here, the fact that we do have concerts here now, which are based on Elgar, which have touring musicians and singers,
where there is an invitation for all to come and attend, just breaks down those barriers a little bit more.
And so it's something we still continue to to hope will will grow that understanding of the role
of Catholic Elgar within the city and as part of his whole talent and composition and so on.
But it's something that through the church here, can ripple out into the city and wider afield.
Yeah, that's wonderful. And also, we just saying some more about Elgar when he was here as organist as well.
So he didn't like the long sermons, but he made good use of them composing.
But he he also what was his relationship like with the choir and how did how did he like to run things?
Well, I think I think it's fair to say that he led by example in that we know that even here in his early days,
he had that self discipline and self critique that was a characteristic of his lifetime, that he would be very aware of what he was doing.
And he wanted everything to be perfect. And we know that if he didn't think that what he was doing was perfect,
then they would be that that disregard and even melancholia that he would that would be part of his character.
And that was here then. But just like he was a hard taskmaster for himself.
So he expected the highest quality for his for his choir as well.
And so he standardised a code of conduct for his choir.
And whilst we don't have that within the parish now,
we do know that there was one specific rule which I think demonstrated his expectation of the choir,
where he says the members of the choir must conform in all musical matters to the
instructions of the organist, whose authority on all questions of music shall be supreme.
No arguing what I what I say must go now.
We have a very high quality choir now and we do have a very good organist.
But I think it's fair to say he wouldn't dare insist upon that for the current choir.
But it just shows that he was serious about his music.
He was serious about the music that the choir performed and he expected nothing but the best,
nothing but the best for him, but also for the glory of God here in St. George's.
Yes. And speaking of the glory of God, the heading, the dedication to the glory of God of Gerontius.
Yes, of course. And his frustration with the first performance that we mentioned earlier in the podcast,
that it must have been so, so much of him and his consummate professionalism was invested in that work.
And then to see the in performance, if not reach those standards, was such an immense frustration for him.
Oh, absolutely. And I think here we have to say a slight insight into that because we could see the evolution of that music.
And this was almost the pinnacle of all of that Catholic music that was that had come before,
which had been performed so well and have been received with such praise for that first performance of such a wonderful work.
To go so badly in his eyes must he must have been crestfallen, especially given given his character.
Fortunately, things turned around, but nevertheless at that moment,
he must have wondered quite what he must do next. Deacon Paul,
thank you so much for talking to us on the podcast for everything you've told us about this wonderful historic building and Elgar's connections.
So having begun our story in this podcast at Worcester Cathedral and the place
Elgar holds there, being here at St George's
Worcester has given us a fascinating alternative perspective. We can see both the extent to which this church lies on the physical periphery of
the town and that also its place in Elgar story has been somewhat marginalised.
And yet this is a very powerful story going from Elgar's time, even stretching before it,
and then lasting into the present day, of how music in particular has been a
source of integration and connection and belonging for Catholics in Worcester.
And this is something that we are going to take forward in the story of The Dream of Gerontius, especially at the Oratory in Birmingham.
However, this isn't the only thing that we want to look at.
So the next place we'll be exploring will be concerned with the natural landscape
of Worcestershire and the significance that had for Elgar in composing the work.
So we will turn now to his birthplace cottage of The Firs, Broadheathtorch-dream.