Three Bavarian Dances

In August 1893 Edward and Alice Elgar enjoyed a two-week holiday at Garmisch in Bavaria, where they were much impressed by the local folk music, not least Schuplatt’l dancing and part-singing. Some months later Alice wrote a series of six poems inspired by the experience and specifically intended for her husband to set as part-songs - which, she knew, would appeal to his publisher. He duly completed From the Bavarian Highlands in 1895 and conducted the first performance with the Worcester Festival Choral Society the following year. Elgar’s publisher also liked the idea of arranging a selection of part-songs for orchestra and the Three Bavarian Dances were first performed at the Crystal Palace in 1897.

Sounding a little like a meeting between Elgar and Brahms, the Allegretto giocoso is based on the first of the part-songs, Dance, its main theme shaped to go with the words “Come and hasten to the dancing/Merry eyes will soon be glancing.” The melody that goes with the words “Sleep, my son, oh slumber softly” in the third of the part-songs, Lullaby, is not the delightfully decorative string tune that opens the Moderato but the expressive horn solo that eventually combines with it. Beginning with a vigorous little tune not unlike one of Bizet’s in Carmen, the Allegro vivace - based on the last of the part-songs, The Marksmen - features not only a Brahmsian waltz for clarinets but also an unmistakably Elgarian melody (“In triumph now we take our way/And with our prizes homeward wend”) which is introduced by woodwind half-way through and developed to grandioso proportions before the end.

Gerald Larner ©2006