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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,

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to St. George's Catholic Church in Worcester. And this is the place where Elgar worshipped as a boy,

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where his father was the organist and where subsequently Elgar himself was Organist and composed some of his early sacred music.

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So this is another very important sites to associate with Elgar,

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and the backdrop to his Catholic work, The Dream of Gerontius.

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Now, in terms of Worcester's Catholic history, despite the fact that the Reformation forced Catholic worship underground,

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there's been an almost continuous history of Catholic worship in Worcester due to the Jesuit mission here.

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And one thing we know also is that there is this was associated, first of all,

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with secular houses and other sorts of moving places of worship that were quite discreet throughout the 17th and 18th century.

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Then in 1765, a church was built near to this location in what was then known as affectionately as the "town ditch."

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The current church dates from 1829 and the foundation and opening of that church

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was a momentous occasion for the growing Catholic population of Worcester,

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not only religiously but musically, being accompanied with music by Haydn and Mozart.

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So what we're going to do now is go inside this church and discover more about Elgar's

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association with it and about his involvement in the Catholic history of Worcester.

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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,

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and we're speaking to Deacon Paul O'Connor.

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Thank you very much for speaking to us on the podcast, Deacon Paul.

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My pleasure.

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So please, could you start by saying something about where exactly we're sitting and the significance of this setting and Elgar's connection?

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Yeah. OK, so we're sitting in the choir loft of St. George's Catholic Church here, just off the city centre of Worcester.

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It was built in 1829 after emancipation for the growing population of the city.

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One of the characteristics of it is its classical design. But as well as that, we have the Transfiguration by Raphael.

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It's a copy. It's the only full size copy of it outside the Vatican,

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and it was commissioned by the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury in the 1840s,

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and it sits above our reredos the high altar and dominates the nave of the church.

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Either side of it, we have the Worcester Saints of Oswald and St Wulstan,

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who were were the two saints who built the original and then the current cathedral here in Worcester.

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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.

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And I think that's really important in terms of the history of Catholicism in Worcester and its surroundings,

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because we have to recognise that the Jesuits formed their mission of St George to England.

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And there was a lot of Jesuit activity in this area with both Hindlip Hall and Harlington Hall being in close proximity.

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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.

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And this organ here, The Anneessen from 1885, is the one that he would have played.

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He first started to assist his father, William, who was organist here before him when he was about 12 or 13,

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and he became the assistant organist when he was 14. That would have been 1873, a post he held until

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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.

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Thank you. And what you've described there as well is how longstanding and how significant the Catholic history of Worcester is.

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And yet we've just been exploring in the cathedral that we with that centre of town and the statue,

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that's not always immediately apparent when you enter Worcester.

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And so given the the tensions around Roman Catholicism in England in the 19th century,

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what would Elgar's experience of growing up as a Catholic have been in Worcester?

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So I've got actually an anecdote here when on the occasion of the first public procession in 1922,

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the son of Hubert Leicester, who was Elgar's childhood friend

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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. 

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So that would have been in 1902. So when Elgar was 40 years old?

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Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that about being Catholic in Worcester at the time is what we

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would now call the institutional discrimination that people would have experienced.

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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.

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I think what is quite interesting about Worcester is that, you know, that discrimination was quite nuanced because it was most definitely there,

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and that type of prejudice and jibes and personal attacks were most definitely part and parcel of Catholic life in the city.

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But at the same time, because of the Catholic history and the fact that we have to recognise that there

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were probably a fair number of Catholics within the city and the surrounding area,

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there was a degree of personal ambivalence to Catholics.

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You know, it's that whole thing of you - you feel what you don't know -

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and I think another case in point close to Elgar would be Hubert Leicester rising to become mayor of Worcester?

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Oh, absolutely. And I think I mean, that's one of the things which I think Hubert Leicester was incredibly grateful for,

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was the the close friendship that he had with Elgar and the role that music

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that Elgar composed that was sung and played here and spread out to the city.

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He benefited from that relationship because we know that the choir here was extremely

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well-regarded and people would come to to hear them play and sing from near and far,

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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.

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So the city effectively took on board that as well.

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So in a way, Leicester could be trusted because he could become part of the establishment through Elgar,

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which is actually quite ironic given the concerns that Elgar always had in his life

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about his Catholicism being a barrier to him becoming part of the establishment.

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Yes. And and what you say about music is so interesting and it's having a sort of integrative

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function in terms of the connections in Worcester between Catholics and Protestants,

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because we also, as we were just thinking about in the context of the cathedral,

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we were talking about the challenges over the first performances of the work,

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the resistance of the clergy in charge to references to Our Lady or to Masses being said, to the doctrine of Purgatory

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and so on, but then it seems like actually the the regard of the choir is also about the quality of musical performance.

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Absolutely. And the the inherent content. Yes.

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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

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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.

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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,

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the Mass in the setting of the cathedral, which was most definitely not going to be acceptable at that time.

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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

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in other Catholic churches is to have touring opera companies that the singers, who may be actually Italian,

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for example, in Catholic would come and dep in the choirs.

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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.

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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.

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You're looking at musicians and singers here who would regard themselves as whilst being amateur, still very much of high quality.

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And of course, you've got someone like Elgar composing music for here.

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And you mentioned William, Edward's father, because he was organist here for a while,

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And so William would like a break.

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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.

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But his intention would always be to be back for the Offertory, except he didn't always manage it.

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And that's where Edward had to step in in his early days to be able to play the Offertory hymn.

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And we know that Edward, too, wasn't too enamoured with the long sermons,

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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.

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And it's, you know, looking at it now, you know, 140 years later,

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it's it is a humbling moment for us to realise that things like his Ave Verum Corpus, his Ave Maris

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Stella, his Ave Maria, his O Salutaris, his Regina Caeli,

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and many others, his Pie Jesu and also Drakes Broughton and Ecce Sacerdos Magnus were all composed here for Mass here.

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And the last one, Ecce Sacerdos

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Magnus, was it was composed specifically for Bishop Ilsley coming to consecrate the Sacred Heart, which is in the name of the church,

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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.

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We still play the Ecce Sacerdos Magnus and it's it and all of the other pieces are as timeless and as fresh now.

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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,

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and here's how he's still part of the worshipping practice and the and Catholic identity.

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It's something which has helped us within Worcester to raise the profile of Catholics.

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We know that we are very good at hiding away.

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There is something instinctive about keeping ourselves to ourselves and all that,

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that whole element of people thinking, am I allowed to cross the threshold of a Catholic church if I'm not Catholic?

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Well, the fact that the music that he's known internationally is associated with the city

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was composed here, the fact that we do have concerts here now, which are based on Elgar, which have touring musicians and singers,

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where there is an invitation for all to come and attend, just breaks down those barriers a little bit more.

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And so it's something we still continue to to hope will will grow that understanding of the role

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of Catholic Elgar within the city and as part of his whole talent and composition and so on.

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But it's something that through the church here, can ripple out into the city and wider afield.

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Yeah, that's wonderful. And also, we just saying some more about Elgar when he was here as organist as well.

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So he didn't like the long sermons, but he made good use of them composing.

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But he he also what was his relationship like with the choir and how did how did he like to run things?

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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,

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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.

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And he wanted everything to be perfect. And we know that if he didn't think that what he was doing was perfect,

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then they would be that that disregard and even melancholia that he would that would be part of his character.

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And that was here then. But just like he was a hard taskmaster for himself.

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So he expected the highest quality for his for his choir as well.

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And so he standardised a code of conduct for his choir.

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And whilst we don't have that within the parish now,

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we do know that there was one specific rule which I think demonstrated his expectation of the choir,

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where he says the members of the choir must conform in all musical matters to the

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instructions of the organist, whose authority on all questions of music shall be supreme.

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No arguing what I what I say must go now.

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We have a very high quality choir now and we do have a very good organist.

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But I think it's fair to say he wouldn't dare insist upon that for the current choir.

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But it just shows that he was serious about his music.

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He was serious about the music that the choir performed and he expected nothing but the best,

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nothing but the best for him, but also for the glory of God here in St. George's.

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Yes. And speaking of the glory of God, the heading, the dedication to the glory of God of Gerontius.

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Yes, of course. And his frustration with the first performance that we mentioned earlier in the podcast,

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that it must have been so, so much of him and his consummate professionalism was invested in that work.

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And then to see the in performance, if not reach those standards, was such an immense frustration for him.

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Oh, absolutely. And I think here we have to say a slight insight into that because we could see the evolution of that music.

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And this was almost the pinnacle of all of that Catholic music that was that had come before,

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which had been performed so well and have been received with such praise for that first performance of such a wonderful work.

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To go so badly in his eyes must he must have been crestfallen, especially given given his character.

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Fortunately, things turned around, but nevertheless at that moment,

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he must have wondered quite what he must do next. Deacon Paul,

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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.

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So having begun our story in this podcast at Worcester Cathedral and the place

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Elgar holds there, being here at St George's

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Worcester has given us a fascinating alternative perspective. We can see both the extent to which this church lies on the physical periphery of

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the town and that also its place in Elgar story has been somewhat marginalised.

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And yet this is a very powerful story going from Elgar's time, even stretching before it,

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and then lasting into the present day, of how music in particular has been a

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source of integration and connection and belonging for Catholics in Worcester.

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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.

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However, this isn't the only thing that we want to look at.

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So the next place we'll be exploring will be concerned with the natural landscape

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of Worcestershire and the significance that had for Elgar in composing the work.

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So we will turn now to his birthplace cottage of The Firs, Broadheathtorch-dream.