Ex. 8-12: After

No. 1 of Elgar's Two Songs (Op. 31), composed in 1895; the manuscript is dated 21 June 1895. The words are by the English poet Philip Bourke Marston. It opens, "A little time for laughter, a little time to sing" — brief joys set against the long sorrow that comes after.

Marston's own life was full of loss. He went blind as a small child. As a young man, he lost his fiancée, both his sisters, and several close friends — among them the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In 1895 Elgar was still a little-known musician in the west of England, teaching violin and conducting local choirs around Worcester and Malvern. Songs that amateurs could sing at home sold better than large works, and helped him earn a living. Elgar became famous only a few years later.

Elgar paired "After" with "A Song of Flight" (Op. 31 No. 2), a brighter setting of a poem by Christina Rossetti. The two songs were first performed together by the Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene, in London on 2 March 1900. Plunket Greene was a friend of Elgar; later that same year he created the baritone role in the premiere of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. He had married a daughter of Hubert Parry, an established English composer about nine years older than Elgar.

From the album Where Corals Lie: A Journey through Songs by Sir Edward Elgar by Julia Sitkovetsky and Christopher Glynn (2021)
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