2nd June: Edward Elgar

On June 2 1857 Edward Elgar, composer whose works include Pomp and Circumstance and Enigma Variations was born. He said, "There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require." 10 things you may not know about Edward Elgar:

1. Elgar began composing music when he was about ten years of age. He wrote music for a play that he performed with his brothers and sisters when he was ten, which he rearranged and published as The Wand of Youth forty years later. He only made minor changes.
2. As a young man his ambition was to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, and he even began learning German in preparation for this. He was very disappointed when his father could not afford to send him there.
3. He married one of his pupils, Caroline Alice Roberts, who was eight years older than him. Her family were of a higher social standing than Elgar's, and disinherited her for marrying a musician who was not only unknown, but a Roman Catholic. She acted as his social secretary and business manager, trying to get him noticed in influential society with limited success. "The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman," she wrote in her diary.
4. Elgar wrote the Enigma Variations when he was 42. Each of the 14 variations was named after the nicknames of some of his close friends and were intended as a musical representation of those people. Elgar said that there was a fifteenth theme, overarching all the others, but he never revealed what that was.
5. The Dream of Gerontius was banned by the Dean of Gloucester in 1901, because of its Catholic influences.
6. "I've got a tune that will knock 'em – will knock 'em flat", Elgar said to his friend Dora Penny. He was right. When it was first played at a Promenade Concert in 1901, the tune got a standing ovation and the only double encore for an orchestral item ever at the Proms. No prizes for guessing that the piece was the Pomp and Circumstance March (Land of Hope and Glory).
7. Dora Penny is also remembered as the recipient of the Dorabella Cipher - two letters written by Elgar in a code which was never deciphered, even by Dora herself.
8. He was a keen amateur chemist and had a laboratory in his back garden.
9. He wrote an anthem for Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., called He Banged the Leather for Goal.
10. He and his wife were keen cyclists in their younger days. Elgar nicknamed his bicycle "Mr Phoebus".