Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar was born in 1857, a Roman Catholic shopkeeper's son in Protestant Britain, teaching himself composition while the academy looked elsewhere. He married above his station — the daughter of a senior Army officer — and she pushed him forward, but success didn't arrive until he was past forty. The Enigma Variations in 1899 broke through at home and abroad, followed a year later by The Dream of Gerontius, a Catholic text that unsettled Anglican England but lodged itself in the repertory for good. In his fifties he delivered a symphony and violin concerto to immense acclaim; the second s…