[2] Compare De Quincey's famous essay on Judas Iscariot.--ED.
Elgar's austerity is more strongly pronounced in "The Apostles" than in "Gerontius," and so, too, is his audacity in using the special resources of the modern dramatic orchestra to expound a religious theme. The old pompous oratorio manner he has left an immeasurable distance behind him. He sticks at nothing in his determination to cut down to the quick of human nature, to reject all abstractions and conventions and illustrate an idea or fact of religious experience in its relation to actual flesh and blood. The sinister parts of the oratorio recall by their general tone, atmosphere, and colouring the scene in Klopstock's "Messiah" in which an avenging angel carries the soul of Judas up to Golgotha and there shows him the results of his work. Mighty as the music is, it is all strictly illustrative, and so the centre of gravity remains in the text.
Some time must elapse yet before anyone can offer a confident estimate of "The Apostles" as a work of art. It will possibly be found to stand to "Gerontius" in something like the relation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to his Seventh, the later work being of greater depth and significance but less perfectly finished.
Elgar's most recent oratorio, "The Apostles," which will be heard by the Manchester public for the first time this evening, stands in much the same relation to recent works in oratorio form by other composers as one of the later musical dramas by Wagner holds to the kind of opera that was in vogue when he began to write. According to current ideas, justified by the practice of many well-known composers, an oratorio comes into existence by some such process as the following. A composer casts about for a subject, either being guided in his choice by consideration of what is in some manner appropriate to the particular occasion, or simply taking a story from the Bible that has not been used before, or not too frequently before, for musical purposes. He then either obtains the services of a librettist or himself arranges a libretto setting forth the chosen story. In the drawing up of the libretto the most important matter is the engineering of "opportunities" for the composer--here an effective air for the principal personage, there a chorus with scope for effective contrapuntal writing, everywhere due regard for the well-varied interest which the public loves, and, at the end of a part, provision for an effective Finale. But some recognised kind of musical opportunity is always the chief matter. No one cares much about the subject except in so far as it provides the musical opportunity of an accepted kind. It is a case of chorus, air, concerted piece, march, air for another sort of voice, and Finale, with connecting recitatives as a necessary evil, and the whole thing standing or falling according as the composer seizes the said opportunities and turns them to account in the accepted manner, or neglects or fails to do that. For so long a time has that kind of oratorio been regarded by the general public as the only possible kind, that even now immense numbers of persons discuss works like "Gerontius" and "The Apostles" on the old lines. That a musician should have a mind, and a message to which notes and chords are subservient, is an idea so new as to be disquieting, if not at once dismissed as absurd. People are so much accustomed to say that they never did care about the subject of a musical work; that no sensible person does; that if the music is pretty the work is good; and there is an end of the matter. Yet now comes a composer and makes the subject the chief thing, writing music that gives no one the slightest encouragement to take interest in it apart from the subject--in short, displaying the most complete indifference to everything that used to be expected of a composer, and giving us all to understand that, in a religious work, if the music does not in some clear manner contribute to the exposition of the subject, it is not justified at all. In this respect "Gerontius" and "The Apostles" are alike. People can take them or leave them, but they cannot make them out to be pretty music, such as one can enjoy without "bothering about" the subject. For Elgar so orders that we have to enjoy with the head and the heart or not at all. He will not allow us to enjoy simply with the nerves or by recognising approved kinds of musical rhetoric.