Gervase Elwes
Elwes was born in Billing Hall, Northampton, the son of Valentine Dudley Henry Cary-Elwes (1832-1909) and his second wife, Alice Geraldine, daughter of Rev.
In June 1903 he was auditioned at the Royal College of Music in London by Charles Villiers Stanford, who left the room and brought Hubert Parry in to hear him as well.
[8] Elwes had a voice entirely in the English colouring[clarification needed], but with an unusual quality of sincerity and passion, and of considerable power.
[9] His singing possessed a spiritual fervour deriving from the religious disposition of his parents, who had taken the unusual step of converting to Roman Catholicism when he was five years old.
[10] Victor Biegel, a "little round, bald Viennese", was for some time accompanist to the celebrated German lieder singer Raimund von zur-Mühlen[11] and had a special understanding of the songs of Johannes Brahms, which he imparted to Elwes.
[12] There was a great rapport, and his teaching, especially during his six-month residence at Billing Hall (an Elwes estate)[13] in 1903, completely freed and relaxed Elwes' voice, opening the way for the sustained power and brilliance of his upper register, and the vocal stamina which enabled him to maintain great oratorio roles (for which he was much in demand) with absolute conviction through a singing career of nearly two decades.
[17] Elwes became the greatest living exponent (alongside John Coates) of Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which he first performed on 9 April 1904, with Muriel Foster and David Ffrangcon-Davies at the Queen's Hall under the baton of Felix Weingartner.
[23] (It was also in 1911, at the Queen's Hall, that he gave the premiere of Franco Leoni's oratorio on the Passion, Golgotha, with Clara Butt, Kennerley Rumford and Maggie Teyte in the other solo roles.
In January 1907, he made a singing tour of Germany which included Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Frankfort, and Cologne, giving recitals with Fanny Davies (a celebrated pupil of Clara Schumann's).
He was then singing such songs as Komm bald, Am Sonntag Morgen, Salamander, Ein Wanderer, Wir wandelten, Auf dem Kirchhof, Magyarisch, Die Kränze, Ständchen, and Botschaft.
[29] Brahms remained central to Elwes's repertoire to the end, and he also performed lieder of Grieg, Dvořák, and George Henschel.
They lived at The Manor House, Brigg, Lincolnshire, and at Billing Hall, Northamptonshire,[35] and had six sons and two daughters together:[36] On 12 January 1921, Elwes was killed in a horrific accident at Back Bay railway station in Boston, Massachusetts, in the midst of a high-profile recital tour of the United States at the height of his powers.
His particular association with the lyrics of A. E. Housman and the music of Elgar, and his death soon after the First World War, reinforce his embodiment of the lost Edwardian generation, perhaps the last in which his religious conviction could so thoroughly have endeared him to so many.
[45] A portrait bust of him by Malvina Hoffman was sent by Mrs Vincent Astor and was set in a specially prepared niche on the grand tier of the old Queen's Hall (the original venue of the Promenade Concerts) as a memorial by his American friends, being unveiled in 1922.
[47] In addition to being a great singer, Elwes was a capital game shot and devoted much of his spare time to shooting on his estates.
