Bernard Chasan wrote:

>Roger Hecht writing on Elgar's Third Symphony:
>
>>But the greatest irony of all is their looking back and
>>reaching into the grave of a composer long considered superannuated for
>>what may be the best "new" piece in decades.
>
>I agree that the music is wonderful, But the composer of two (now 3)
>great symphonies, Falstaff, Enigma Variations, the Cello and Violin
>Concertos, and the Sea Pictures orchestral song cycle never should have
>been considered to be "superannuated" whatever that word means in this
>context.

During much of the period after his wife died, Elgar considered his time
past--he saw himself as superannuated.  I like to think he obviously isn't
now and hasn't been for quite some time, though I'm never quite sure when
I listen to the comments of some who continue to see him as some kind of
stuffed shirt from a bygone era.  (The last time I heard that it was from
a Briton.) If I have overstated the matter, consider me a passionate
Elgarian who has read much about the composer over the years and has
inadvertantly adopted Elgar's mindset regarding others' opinions of his
own music.  I, of course, never once considered his music superannuated.
It's one of the joys of my life.

>And why all this "reaching into the grave" rhetoric? Why does this
>unlovely and uncalled for expression apply to Elgar more than any other
>deceased composer or artist or writer we appreciate?

Unlovely? Perhaps, though I'm not so sure.  Uncalled for? Not at all.
I was referring specifically to this work conceived in the early Thirties
and assembled during the 1990s.  For the people in today's audiences, as
opposed to Elgar scholars, the Third Symphony *is* a new work.  Though
Anthony Payne put the music together, the very substance of that music was
(nearly all) created by a composer who died in 1934.  Absent the offending
phrase, it could be said that Payne reached back through time for his
material.  This is the irony I was trying to capture: the idea that there
is little music written today that appeals to me (and apparently to many
others), yet I (and again, others) respond so readily to a new work
masterfully assembled by a contemporary, but which is music (mostly)
written by a composer long dead.  That's the best way I can explain it.

Roger Hecht