The music-makers, Op. 69 (Edward Elgar)

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  • (Posted 2006-10-30)  CPDL #12955:          (MIDI)
Editor: Michael Gibson (submitted 2006-10-30).   Score information: A4, 74 pages, 2.93 MB   Copyright: CPDL
Edition notes: This work is in a single continuous movement. For convenience of file handling, it has been split into 4 sections. The 6 midi files have been zipped together. Includes a keyboard version of the original accompaniment.

General Information

Title: The Music Makers, Op. 69
Composer: Edward Elgar

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Soloist: Contralto (although it seems to be in more of a Mezzo-Soprano range)
Genre: SecularCantata

Language: English
Instruments: Orchestra

First published: 1912
Description: This 'ode' sets a poem by Alfred O'Shaughnessy for Contralto solo, chorus and orchestra. The work contains many quotations from Elgar's earlier works, particularly Enigma, Gerontious, Sea Pictures, both Symphonies and the Violin Concerto. It was first performed at the Birmingham Festival on 1 Oct 1912.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

We are the music-makers,
A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming…
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.

They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.

And therefore today is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.

With our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing;
O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.

For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry…
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams.