There Is Sweet Music is the idyllic title of the first AVIE release by the eight-voice Proteus Ensemble and their conductor Stephen Shellard, which surveys a selection of relatively rare part-songs by Sir Edward Elgar.

Elgar maintained his dedication to composing part-songs throughout his life and imbued each of them with an inimitable character. Like the composer’s celebrated “Enigma Variations”, his part-songs bear an array of inspirations and dedicatees, including his wife Caroline Alice who penned the poem of the album’s closer, “O Happy Eyes”, shortly after she and Elgar were married. This early work became a companion to the song “Love,” written eight years later and also dedicated to Caroline Alice.

Elgar turned to famous poets and peers – Lord Byron for “Deep in my soul”, Percy Bysshe Shelley for “O wild West Wind!”, and Alfred Lord Tennyson whose poem “The Lotos-Eaters” provides the album’s title track. English translations of Russian poems lend themselves to “Death on the Hills”, “Love’s Tempest” and “Serenade”.

Elgar frequently found inspiration in Italy, where he composed “Angelus’, a song dedicated to his close friend Alice Stuart Wortley whom he called “Windflower” and whose spirit is enshrined in his Violin Concerto.

Stephen Shellard’s Elgarian epiphany began in 1990 when he joined Dr. Donald Hunt’s choir at Worcester Cathedral as an Alto Lay Clerk. Dr. Hunt’s inspired and devoted expertise in performances of works by Worcester’s most famous musical son cast a life-long spell on Stephen that manifests itself in these beautiful performances with his Proteus Ensemble.

EDWARD ELGAR (1857–1934)
1. The Fountain, Op. 71, No. 2
2. Serenade, Op. 73, No. 2
3. Death on the Hills, Op. 72
4. To her beneath whose stedfast star (from No. 10 “Choral Songs in honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria”)
5. Angelus (Tuscany), Op. 56
6. Deep in my soul, Op. 53, No. 2
7. Good Morrow (a simple carol for His Majesty’s happy recovery)
8. O wild West Wind!, Op. 53, No. 3
9. My love dwelt in a Northern land (Romance), Op. 18, No. 3
10. As torrents in summer (from “Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf”, Op. 30)
11. They are at rest (Elegy)
12. Love, Op. 18, No. 2
13. The Shower, Op. 71, No. 1
14. There is sweet music, Op. 53, No. 1
15. I sing the birth
16. Love’s Tempest, Op. 73, No. 1
17. O happy eyes, Op. 18, No. 1

This masterly impassioned new recording opens on euphorically strident The Fountain, Op. 71, No. 2, the emboldened Serenade, Op. 73, No. 2 and the dutifully harmonized Death on the Hills, Op. 72, and then we get the beautiful To her beneath whose stedfast star (from No. 10 “Choral Songs in honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria”), the ornately stunning Angelus (Tuscany), Op. 56, and the stoically charmed Deep in my soul, Op. 53, No. 2, and then we get the vibrant Good Morrow (a simple carol for His Majesty’s happy recovery) and the celebratory O wild West Wind!, Op. 53, No. 3.

Continuing onward, and next we get brought forth the cultured My love dwelt in a Northern land (Romance), Op. 18, No. 3, the lavishly-layered As torrents in summer (from “Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf”, Op. 30), the aureate They are at rest (Elegy) and a veritably gilded Love, Op. 18, No. 2, and they are in turn backed by the delicately-hued The Shower, Op. 71, No. 1, the sublime There is sweet music, Op. 53, No. 1, the lustrous I sing the birth, rounding out on a simply radiantly opulent Love’s Tempest, Op. 73, No. 1, closing on a dutifully harmonized O happy eyes, Op. 18, No. 1.

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