Author: simon
Land of Hope and Glory – Are You Talking About The Isle Of Wight?
Tuesday, 27th November, 2007 at 9:12 am, Isle of Wight
The amazing thing about talking to people is that often, you find out a whole lot more than you knew about before you met them. It’s easy to forget, but often proves itself to be right.
Land of Hope and Glory, as we all now know was written by Elgar.
Amazing to hear from Andrew Neill (Elgar Society) that Elgar only really came to wide public attention relatively recently. In the 60s, it was pretty hard to find his recordings on vinyl … I now know.
Well through the miracle of enlightenment that digital access gives to media … we can now present to you the rabble rousing, Land of Hope and Glory. … oh and it’s conducted by His Edward-ness …
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Whilst Elgar wrote the music to Land of Hope and Glory, the words were actually written by Arthur Christopher Benson. Look him up in Wikipedia for further info. As Ventnor has the best music library open to the public in the South of England we owe it to ourselves to be well-informed on matters musical.
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Thanks Oldie – that’s one of the joys of being an open format where people can add information – you & the readers get to learn more that the original writer knows!
When I was research the piece, I saw that Land of Hope and Glory was a rework of a section of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, but it didn’t mention the words.
BTW – if you have time, it would be great if you could update the Wikipedia entry (linked above) with the extra info, so all can benefit.
You mentioned the best music library being in Ventnor. That’s a new one to us … can you point us in its direction?
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The story is this: When the late Mr Snow was librarian at Ventnor in the 60s and 70s, Victor Fleming the famous musician who retired to Honeythorne on the seafront(other oldies will remember this was the house that used to have metal railings in the shape of music staves with quotes from Wagner and Schubert on)donated his vast private collection of sheet music and books to the library. Then shortly afterwards the widow of the Head of Music at Upper Chine donated all her husband’s vast private collection. Then the Island library Service decided to locate all the music books in the Island libraries to Ventnor as well. This was all because of Mr Snow’s passion for music. Mr Snow, musical Ventnorians will remember, was an organist and organiser of the recorded music society that met at the library. He was also one of the first people on the Island to get an open university degree. Mr Snow then dedicated his spare time to cataloguing all the music and it is upstairs in the library and in the room called “the stack”. When he retired, the work of cataloguing continued with a young graduate musician librarian who had studied music at Colchester in the early 90s. There were sets of choral music, orchestral music, lots of piano music and all the standard music books including a complete set of Groves. Musical holidaymakers spread the word after mention of it appeared in the Incorporated Society of Musicians’ Music Journal. Sadly Ventnor library was not allocated even a penny to spend on that part of the library – to such an extent that when the light fitting needed replacing in the mid-90s it took the then librarian about six weeks to get it replaced and I remember straining to read a book one winter afternoon. Over the years I’ve noticed they’ve sold off a lot in their occasional sales(because they looked a bit grubby I suppose) without even realising how important and rare some of the books were that places like university music libraries could have made good use of. This is an unpublicised treasure. If yoo are a musician, ask the librarian if you can have a browse up there.
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