Pageant of Empire is also the title given to the set of songs, to words by Alfred Noyes, written by Sir Edward Elgar and included in the Pageant. Elgar conducted the massed choirs at the opening ceremony of the Exhibition, including Land of Hope and Glory, but the songs were not performed there until 21 July, when they were conducted by the composer.
Elgar composed his Empire March for the same occasion, and this march was at the time considered part of the Pageant of Empire. However the Empire March was not performed then and Elgar's Imperial March took its place.
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Famous quotes containing the words pageant of, pageant and/or empire:
“What helps it now, that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mock’d the smart,
Through Europe to the Aetolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself—
Yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)