Wand of Youth Suite, Op.1

Elgar’s first Wand of Youth Suite – drawn largely from incidental music for a play he wrote as a family entertainment when he was in his early teens – was such a success on its first performance in 1907 that he returned to his youthful sketches for a second suite a few months later. According to a note the composer drafted for a commercial recording of the suites, the six pieces of the Wand of Youth Suite are from the same source. His memory seems to have failed him in this case, however, since much of the music derives from a sketch book dated 1879 and, presumably, containing ideas from his early 20s. Not that this is of any great importance since, like the first suite, it is welcome for the boyish charm of its melodic material and the maturity of its orchestral treatment.

The opening March is the earliest example of its kind by one of the greatest of all British composers of marches. Its G minor main theme, introduced by violins over a treading bass, could have been written by just about any competent composer at the time but not the thoroughly characteristic bassoon counterpoint which enters at an early stage. The same goes for the lightly articulated contrasting material in G major and its sonorous wind counterpoints. The thematic development towards the end is also the work of a mature composer. The Little Bells offers a similar contrast between its E flat major opening section, brilliantly scored for woodwind and two sorts of bells, and its nostalgic second section in C minor with another thoroughly characteristic wind counterpoint, in this case marked molto cantabile.    Subtitled “Dance”, Mothers and Butterflies is a sensitively articulated gavotte with a pleasingly gracious middle section. The Fountain Dance gently rises and falls in alternating violin and woodwind arpeggios which twise give way to material concerned less with description than with sentiment.

The two “bear” movements are very different studies in character. The Tame Bear is poignantly well behaved, in a rather old fashioned way in A minor, until it suddenly lashes out at the very end. As for Wild Bears, we know that most of it was used as a quadrille for the patients of Powick Asylum when Elgar was appointed conductor of the little band there in 1879. Whatever its ultimate origin, whether it had anything to do with the childhood play or not, it is an exhilarating inspiration scored in such a way as to suggest that these particular bears originate in Russia.

Gerald Larner © 2011

Elgar couldn’t remember exactly how old he was when he devised the family entertainment with the little pieces of incidental music that, decades later, he was to “use up” in his two Wand of Youth Suites. But whether he was twelve or fourteen, it is an unbelievably early age for the composer to have conceived some of the more mature-sounding items of Wand of Youth material. From what we know of the play itself – set in a fairyland unappreciated by grown-ups – it is entirely acceptable as a literary effort of a boy in his early teens. The childhood credentials of some of the music are rather more dubious.

Taking the Overture as an example, the bustling opening theme, though clearly not its orchestral colouring, is boyish enough. The lyrical second theme, with its characteristically yearning falling seventh, is not – still less on its largamente treatment a few bars later. If it is difficult to reconcile that mature inspiration with Elgar’s statement that “on the whole the little pieces remain as originally planned,” the explanation could be that when he compiled the Wand of Youth Suites in 1907 and 1908 he was working from a sketch-book dated 1879. It is just possible that the largamente tune could have been added at that time, when he was in his early twenties. If not, it would suggest that Elgar was even more precocious than Mozart or Mendelssohn.

The Serenade is credible at least as far as its charming main theme is concerned. It’s when we come to the middle section that doubts arise, not because of its fairly obvious change of key to the tonic minor as because of the sophistication of the thematic development. If we can believe in the Sentimental Sarabande in Britten’s Simple Symphony, which is another recycling of boyhood ideas, we can believe too in Elgar’s old-style Minuet: a similarly competent pastiche, it is designed, appropriately, for the entry of “two old people” in the play.

Sun Dance was originally devised by the young composer to go with an episode where the old people (the grown-ups), having wandered into the children’s fairy land and having been charmed to sleep by the Fairy Pipers, are awakened by “glittering lights flashed in their eyes by means of hand mirrors.” Or, rather, some of it was devised for that purpose. While the playful woodwind material could have been written round 1870, the waltz tune that so attractively alternates with it surely dates from 1879 at the earliest. As for the music that sent the Old People to sleep in the first place, it must have been the lullaby for two clarinets at the beginning of Fairy Pipers (bearing the stage direction “Two fairy pipers pass in a boat and charm them to sleep”) rather than the melody that follows on violins. But that too, with its apparently folk-song origins, could have been an early invention. Slumber Scene is clearly associated with the same part of the play, although the original would surely not have taken the harmonic liberties so poignantly applied in the present version. Fairies and Giants – the former nimble if a bit heavy on their feet and coloured by touches of Tchaikovsky woodwind magic, the latter as scary as the clumsy variant of the fairy theme uttered by ponderous brass – could well be a childhood invention, although the orchestration clearly derives from the mature Elgar.

Gerald Larner © 2011         

Elgar couldn’t remember exactly how old he was when he devised the family entertainment with the little pieces of incidental music that, decades later, he was to “use up” in his two Wand of Youth Suites. But whether he was twelve or fourteen, it is an unbelievably early age for the composer to have conceived some of the more mature-sounding items of Wand of Youth material. From what we know of the play itself - set in a fairyland unappreciated by grown-ups - it is entirely acceptable as a literary effort of a boy in his early teens. The childhood credentials of some of the music are rather more dubious.

Taking the Overture as an example, the bustling opening theme, though clearly not its orchestral colouring, is boyish enough. The lyrical second theme, with its characteristically yearning falling seventh, is not - still less on its largamente treatment a few bars later. If it is difficult to reconcile that mature inspiration with Elgar’s statement that “on the whole the little pieces remain as originally planned,” the explanation could be that when he compiled the Wand of Youth Suites in 1907 and 1908 he was working from a sketch-book dated 1879. It is just possible that the largamente tune could have been added at that time, when he was in his early twenties. If not, it would suggest that Elgar was even more precocious than Mozart or Mendelssohn.

The second item in today’s selection from the two Wand of Youth Suites, Sun Dance, was originally devised by the young composer to go with an episode in the play where the Old People (the grown-ups), having wandered into the children’s fairy land and having been charmed to sleep by the Fairy Pipers, are awakened by “glittering lights flashed in their eyes by means of hand mirrors.” Or, rather, some of it was devised for that purpose. While the playful woodwind material could have been written round 1870, the waltz tune that so attractively alternates with it surely dates from later. As for the music that sent the Old People to sleep in the first place, it must have been the lullaby for two clarinets at the beginning of Fairy Pipers (bearing the stage direction “Two fairy pipers pass in a boat and charm them to sleep”) rather than the melody that follows on violins - although, with its apparently folk-song origins, that too could have been an early invention.

March, the first movement of the second Wand of Youth Suite, is supposed to have been intended for the end of the play. The lugubrious G minor material that opens the piece seems an unlikely choice for a finale, even allowing for the fifty-year-old composer’s sombre orchestration and textural elaboration, while the delightful contrasting episode on staccato strings G major seems just too sophisticated for a boy of fourteen. The dramatic function of both the next two movements, The Little Bells (subtitled Scherzino) and Moths and Butterflies (subtitled Dance), was to lure the Old People over the bridge into fairyland. Given their melodic appeal, they would have proved very effective in that respect. Even so, it is difficult to imagine how the young performers - with their ensemble of “a pianoforte, two or three strings, a flute and some improvised percussion,” as Elgar later described it - managed the virtuoso woodwind figuration in The Little Bells and how a schoolboy could have become as adept in the language of contemporary ballet as the composer of Moths and Butterflies.

As for Wild Bears, the last movement of the second Suite, we know that most of it was used as a quadrille for the patients of Powick asylum when Elgar was appointed conductor of the little band there in 1879. Whatever its ultimate origin, whether it had anything to do with the childhood play or not, it is a brilliantly scored and exhilarating inspiration.