We acquired a set of manuscript sketches by Sir Edward Elgar for his 'Introduction and Allegro'. The composer had torn them out from a sketchbook to give them as a gift to a former pupil in 1930.
23 Feb 2025Blog series Music
Author Sandra Tuppen, Head of Music Collections
The British Library has acquired a set of original sketches and drafts by Sir Edward Elgar for one of his best-known compositions, the Introduction and Allegro for strings. Elgar completed the work in February 1905 and conducted the first performance a few weeks later. In 1930 he tore these particular sketches out of one of his sketchbooks and gave them to a friend.
Years later, the sketchbook from which he tore them, which contains sketches for some of his other works, was donated to the British Library. We are delighted that we can now reunite the torn-out pages with the sketchbook, almost 100 years after Elgar removed them.
A page from the newly acquired sketches for Elgar's Introduction and Allegro.
Elgar often jotted down tunes and other musical ideas into a bound sketchbook. He would then expand and rewrite his ideas, sometimes copying them from one sketchbook to another, and gradually turn them into fully-formed musical works.
When we were alerted to the existence of the Introduction and Allegro sketches last year, we suspected that they came from one of Elgar’s many sketchbooks. It wasn’t clear which one, though. An initial clue came from the distinctive rubber-stamped page numbers on the sketches. The same type of numbering is found in Elgar’s ‘Sketchbook V’, now in the British Library.
Crucially the page numbers on the torn-out pages fill gaps in the pagination in this sketchbook. What clinches the connection, though, is the way that two pages from the Introduction and Allegro sketches fit exactly with stubs of the pages that were left behind in the sketchbook when they were torn out.
Torn-out pages of fit exactly with the stubs of the pages remaining in the sketchbook.
Once Elgar had finished composing a work, he no longer needed the sketches and drafts created during the process of composition. He would sometimes give these to friends as mementoes. On 6 November 1930 he gave the Introduction and Allegro sketches to his former pupil Frank Webb. Webb recorded this gift in a faint pencil note on the first of the pages:
Given me by EWE [i.e. Edward William Elgar] Nov 6/30 (Torn out of his Sketch book) Sketches for the Introduction & Allegro
Frank Webb’s son Alan later published his own memories of Elgar, recalling that:
On occasion he [Elgar] would visit my father in his office. Once he pulled some manuscript sheets out of his pocket and said: ‘Here, would you like these?’ ‘These’ were sketches for the Introduction and Allegro for Strings.
The pages must have been folded up to fit into Elgar’s pocket, and they appear to have remained tightly folded ever since. They have now been acquired by the British Library, via Christie’s Private Sales, from the descendants of Frank Webb.
We already held some very fragmentary sketches for the Introduction and Allegro, as well as the manuscript of Elgar’s final version. The newly acquired sketches and draft material fill a gap between these, chronologically, and shed light on how Elgar composed the work.
Many of the musical themes found in the final version are in place in the sketches, though they are mostly written in short score (i.e. on two staves) and not yet in the order in which they appear in the final version.
One particular melody in the Introduction and Allegro is known as the ‘Welsh tune’. Elgar was inspired to compose it after hearing distant singing while on holiday in Wales. This theme appears several times in the manuscript: as a single-line tune, a melody with lightly sketched harmony and fully harmonised in a setting for strings. Elgar used this string setting in the final version of the piece.
Orchestrated version of the ‘Welsh tune’ from the Introduction and Allegro sketches.
For preservation reasons the newly acquired pages will not be physically reattached to the sketchbook. However, researchers will be able to view all of the material together in the Library’s Rare Books and Music Reading Room. We will also be digitising it and ‘virtually’ reuniting it online.
The sketchbook has other missing pages, which were also torn out before the Library acquired it. Perhaps these will also come to light one day.
Alan Webb’s reminiscences of Elgar, ‘Some personal memories of Elgar’, are published in An Elgar Companion, ed. Christopher Redwood (Ashbourne: Sequoia Publishing, 1982), pp. 168-174.
The sketchbook from which Elgar tore the Introduction and Allegro material has the British Library manuscript number Add MS 63157. The new acquisition has been assigned the number MS Mus. 1964. Preliminary sketches for the Introduction and Allegro are found in Add MSS 63153, 63154, 63156, 47903. The final full score is numbered Add MS 58015.
This blogs is part of our series exploring the music collections of the British Library, encompassing materials in all formats – manuscript, printed and digital editions, recordings, literature – from all periods.
This blog focuses on updates and events relating to our music manuscripts and archives and our printed music collections, while updates relating to music recordings can be found on in the Sound and Vision series.
