Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Early Years
- 2 The Royal College of Music
- 3 The Promising Young Composer
- 4 The Wedding Feast
- 5 ‘A Sentiment Prevalent Here’
- 6 Intensifying the Effect
- 7 The International Star
- 8 A Stalwart Member of the Profession
- 9 A ‘Definite Place for the Negro in the World's History’
- 10 A Tale of Old Japan
- 11 Requiem
- 12 The Legacy
- Postscript
- Appendix 1 The Song of Hiawatha
- Appendix 2 Further Reading
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - Intensifying the Effect
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Early Years
- 2 The Royal College of Music
- 3 The Promising Young Composer
- 4 The Wedding Feast
- 5 ‘A Sentiment Prevalent Here’
- 6 Intensifying the Effect
- 7 The International Star
- 8 A Stalwart Member of the Profession
- 9 A ‘Definite Place for the Negro in the World's History’
- 10 A Tale of Old Japan
- 11 Requiem
- 12 The Legacy
- Postscript
- Appendix 1 The Song of Hiawatha
- Appendix 2 Further Reading
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
Days after the Pan-African Conference ended Jaeger wrote to Elgar on 12 August 1900:
Taylor writes to me this morning that he has a commission to write the music for Stephen Phillips’ Herod which Beerbohm Tree will produce at Her Majesty's. Lucky beggar! But I do wonder what he will do with the music to a play. I dont [doubt?] he has ever been to a theatre in his life, at least I've never heard him say so. Really nothing succeeds like success. Produce one work that will become really POPULAR, & you get commissions chucked at you! Its extraordinary.
Her Majesty's Theatre in the heart of London was close to the Haymarket Theatre which Herbert Beerbohm Tree managed in the 1890s. Born in London of Germanic descent in 1852 Tree nursed ambitions to be an actor as he worked in his father's office. At the Haymarket he starred as Svengali in Trilby in 1895 – ‘the biggest financial success of his career’. Tree thought the play was ‘hogwash’ but it enabled him to build Her Majesty's Theatre which opened in April 1897. Tree's new theatre cost £55,000.
The orchestra … was of a far higher quality than any that had been heard in a London theatre before, and the music played during the intervals was good enough to subdue the chatter of the audience, and even to prevent people from crowding the bars, as they did elsewhere.
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- Samuel Coleridge-TaylorA Musical Life, pp. 105 - 126Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014