In the South (Alassio), Op. 50
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

THE STORY

     Exhausted after completing The Apostles, Edward Elgar decided to spend the winter months of 1903 in sunny Alassio, Italy, with his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, sunny it was not—the weather on the Italian Riviera that winter was not much improved from that in England. The Elgars reported being depressed at the relentless rain and wind; to make matters worse, Elgar had hoped the scenic Mediterranean would be an ideal place to begin work on his first symphony but found himself unable to write. 
     When the weather finally cleared, musical inspiration did come—but it was for a tone poem rather than a symphony. In the South, Elgar wrote, evokes “the thoughts and sensations of one beautiful afternoon” in the valley of Andora, with “streams, flowers, hills, and distant snowy mountains in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other.” On that beautiful afternoon, he also considered all of the history held in that very spot—imagining battles that took place, a chapel that had stood there, and a shepherd among its ruins. Envisioning these scenes, the music came to Elgar almost immediately and, as he described it, “the rest was merely writing it down.” 
     This Italian-flavored tone poem is characterized by rapid fluctuations in mood, which Elgar illustrated with charming notations in his score. The exuberant theme, for example, is labeled “Joy of living (wine and macaroni).” As the tempo slows, he pictures “El. & family musing (this is not bad).”

LISTEN FOR

• The vigorous opening theme—music critic Michael Kennedy remarked, “nothing in the whole of Elgar is more thrilling than the leaping opening”

• A calmer, pastoral section that Elgar described as “romance creeping into the picture”

• The work’s most famous theme, a striding melody in the viola that sounded so authentically Italian that it was assumed to have been adapted from a local folksong but was in fact an original Elgar creation; it was later published as a song for soprano, “In Moonlight”

INSTRUMENTATION

Three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings