Why Kipling Scuppered Elgar's Sea-Songs

Elgar’s flag-waving nautical song-cycle The Fringes of the Fleet was performed to packed houses up and down the country in 1917, then sank virtually without trace for the next 90 years. As the work receives its first professional orchestral recording since Elgar's own, Tom Higgins, the conductor of the recording, explains how the work came into being, and why Rudyard Kipling had it banned.

IF events in the First World War had meshed a little differently, Elgar’s The Fringes of the Fleet would have become one of his best-known works. When first heard at the London Coliseum on 11 June 1917 as part of a bill of variety performances – in a staging with the four male singers appearing in fishermen’s costumes outside a pub – its success was immediate and sincere.

The war was reaching its climax, with patriotism at fever pitch. Elgar’s group of four songs for orchestra and four baritones, set to poems by Rudyard Kipling, caught the public mood exactly. "The Lowestoft Boat", "Fate’s Discourtesy", "Submarines" and "The Sweepers" all realistically portrayed the lives of fighting men at sea and this at a time when Britain commanded one of the mightiest navies in the world. Added to this was the composer’s comment that he had set the words in “a broad saltwater style”.

The work proved so popular that the Coliseum management extended its run week after week until the end of July, with Elgar continuing to conduct two performances a day “in person”. He even went so far as to compose one more song for inclusion in the programme: "Inside the Bar". He dedicated it to the singers: Charles Mott, solo baritone, Frederick Henry, Harry Barratt and Frederic Stewart. Later, on 4 July, he, the baritones and the orchestra went to Hayes, Middlesex, and recorded the work for The Gramophone Company.

Appreciation of Elgar’s new work was immediate, so that the provincial music-hall tour that followed – to Manchester, Leicester, Chiswick and Chatham – was no surprise. Elgar, heroically, continued to conduct every performance, even though he was seriously unwell. The Fringes then returned to the Coliseum later in the year - by which time the euphoria was under threat. Kipling was determined to stop further performances and finally succeeded at the end of 1917. His reasons have remained a matter of speculation ever since.

Elgar, no doubt thinking about the loss of income to him personally, was bitterly disappointed at this turn of events and, prior to the final run of performances at the Coliseum, referred to them as a “funeral”.

What is known is that Kipling was against Elgar setting the poems in the first place and the reasons for that are rooted in late 1915, when the writer first published a pamphlet of verse and prose also called The Fringes of the Fleet. “Fringes” here referred to naval auxiliaries: vessels such as escort boats, submarines and mine-sweepers were to be Kipling’s target.

As it turned out, Kipling published his Fringes shortly after his world began to fall apart. In October he learnt that his only son was missing in action. Although Kipling had initially given his consent to Elgar, he later thought better of it and apparently took the view that he did not want his war-poetry portrayed in the music hall. The ban seemed to stifle further interest in the work. Although it received sporadic performances in the intervening 90 years since then, its true value continued to be overlooked.

I had long known about the work’s existence, as had Siva Oke of SOMM Recordings. We determined together that it deserved a new professional orchestral recording, if only because it demonstrates Elgar at his best in secular songs with orchestra. I therefore prepared a new performing edition, basing it on various manuscript copies and on Elgar’s own recordings of 1917, as well as taking into account a number of contemporary performance practices that were not always written down at the time. My purpose throughout was to stay faithful to Elgar’s original intentions while recognising that certain dynamics and phrasings needed adjusting for modern instruments in a 21st-century recording studio.

I then chose as couplings for the CD several other works that mostly, like The Fringes of the Fleet itself, reflect Britain’s centuries-old love affair with the sea. John Ansell’s two overtures, Plymouth Hoe and The Windjammer, represent the best of British light music, as does Haydn Wood’s A Manx Overture. Added to these are two settings of Kipling’s Big Steamers, one by Elgar, the other by Sir Edward German, while I further orchestrated two John Ireland songs, The Soldier and Blow Out, You Bugles, that are contemporary with The Fringes.

Among the considerable amount of music that Elgar specifically wrote for the “war effort”, The Fringes of the Fleet is generally considered to be his best work. Our revival of this music should help shed fresh light not only on a period in Elgar’s creative life which generally suffers from neglect, but also on a genre seldom employed by the composer: secular songs with orchestra. This music has been overlooked for too long.

Tom Higgins © 2009

The CD "The Fringes of the Fleet" (with Roderick Williams, solo baritone; Nicholas Lester, Duncan Rock, Laurence Meikle, baritones; Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra/Tom Higgins) is released today by Somm Recordings.

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