Honours, Awards and Commemorations
Elgar was knighted in 1904, and in 1911 he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit. In 1920 he received the Cross of Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown; in 1924 he was made Master of the King's Musick; the following year he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society; and in 1928 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). Between 1900 and 1931, Elgar received honorary degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, Durham, Leeds, Oxford, Yale (USA), Aberdeen, Western Pennsylvania (USA), Birmingham and London. Foreign academies of which he was made a member were Regia Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome; Accademia del Reale Istituto Musicale, Florence; Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris; Institut de France; and American Academy of Arts. In 1931 he was created a Baronet, of Broadheath in the County of Worcester. In 1933 he was promoted within the Royal Victorian Order to Knight Grand Cross (GCVO). In Kennedy's words, he "shamelessly touted" for a peerage, but in vain.
The house in Lower Broadheath where Elgar was born is now the Elgar Birthplace Museum, devoted to his life and work. Elgar's daughter, Carice, helped to found the museum in 1936 and bequeathed to it much of her collection of Elgar's letters and documents on her death in 1970. Carice left Elgar manuscripts to musical colleges: The Black Knight to Trinity College of Music; King Olaf to the Royal Academy of Music; The Music Makers to Birmingham University; the Cello Concerto to the Royal College of Music; The Kingdom to the Bodleian Library; and other manuscripts to the British Museum. The Elgar Society dedicated to the composer and his works was formed in 1951. The University of Birmingham's Special Collections contain an archive of letters written by Elgar.
Elgar's statue at the end of Worcester High Street stands facing the cathedral, only yards from where his father's shop once stood. Another statue of the composer by Rose Garrard is at the top of Church Street in Malvern, overlooking the town and giving visitors an opportunity to stand next to the composer in the shadow of the Hills that he so often regarded. In September 2005, a third statue sculpted by Jemma Pearson was unveiled near Hereford Cathedral in honour of his many musical and other associations with that city. It depicts Elgar with his bicycle. From 1999 until early 2007, new Bank of England twenty pound notes featured a portrait of Elgar. The change to remove his image generated controversy, particularly because 2007 was the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth. From 2007 the Elgar notes were phased out, ceasing to be legal tender on 30 June 2010.
There are around 65 roads in the UK named after Elgar, including six in the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Among these are eleven Elgar Avenues, including one in Malvern, Worcestershire, and another close to the house where Elgar lived, Plâs Gwyn in Hereford. A street in North Springfield, Virginia and a major road in Box Hill, Melbourne, are also named after him. Elgar had three locomotives named in his honour. The first "Sir Edward Elgar" was a Bulldog class locomotive, number 3414; it was built in 1906 and withdrawn from service in 1938. The second was a Great Western Railway Castle Class locomotive in the post WWII 7000 series. Built in 1946 and withdrawn from service in 1964, its original name was replaced by "Sir Edward Elgar" in 1957. The third was a Brush type 47 diesel locomotive, for which nameplates were specially cast in the former Great Western Railway style. On 25 February 1984, this locomotive was officially named "Sir Edward Elgar" at Paddington station in London by Simon Rattle, then conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Elgar's life and music have inspired works of literature including the novel Gerontius and several plays. Elgar's Rondo, a 1993 stage play by David Pownall depicts the dead Jaeger offering ghostly advice on Elgar's musical development. Pownall also wrote a radio play, Elgar's Third (1994); another Elgar-themed radio play is Alick Rowe's The Dorabella Variation (2003). David Rudkin's BBC television "Play for Today" Penda's Fen (1974) deals with themes including sex and adolescence, spying, and snobbery, with Elgar's music, chiefly The Dream of Gerontius, as its background. In one scene, a ghostly Elgar whispers the secret of the "Enigma" tune to the youthful central character, with an injunction not to reveal it. Elgar on the Journey to Hanley, a novel by Keith Alldritt (1979), tells of the composer's attachment to Dora Penny, later Mrs Powell, (depicted as "Dorabella" in the Enigma Variations), and covers the fifteen years from their first meeting in the mid-1890s to the genesis of the Violin Concerto when, in the novel, Dora has been supplanted in Elgar's affections by Alice Stuart-Wortley.
Perhaps the best-known work depicting Elgar is Ken Russell's 1962 BBC television film Elgar, made when the composer was still largely out of fashion. This hour-long film contradicted the view of Elgar as a jingoistic and bombastic composer, and evoked the more pastoral and melancholy side of his character and music.
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