The Spirit of England

80, is a work for chorus, orchestra, and soprano/tenor soloist in three movements composed by Edward Elgar between 1915 and 1917, setting text from Laurence Binyon's 1914 anthology of poems The Winnowing Fan.

The work acts as a requiem for the dead of World War I and is dedicated "to the memory of our glorious men, with a special thought for the Worcesters".

[1] The complete work was first performed in Birmingham on 4 October 1917, by the soprano Rosina Buckman, with Appleby Matthews conducting his choir and the New Beecham Orchestra.

Cowgill comments that musically Elgar seems to respond in such a vein, "with expansive, aspirational melodies built around upward leaps and rising sequences in full choir and orchestra, marked grandioso, nobilmente, and sonoramente."

But in her view an earlier writer, Basil Maine, correctly distinguishes between the tone of The Spirit of England and that of other imperialist Elgar works: "The conception is grandiose, but not as the Pomp and Circumstance Marches are.