Elgar's Dream of Gerontius
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How the choral work The Dream of Gerontius, by Edward Elgar, has touched and changed people's lives.
For Terry Waite, it was the first piece of music he heard as a hostage in the Lebanon, after four years in solitary confinement.
Writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson describes how Elgar's own fragile emotional state is written into the music, which describes the journey taken by a dying man.
Singer Catherine Wyn-Rogers explains how Elgar's music helped her come to terms with the loss of her parents.
Martin Firth recalls a life-enhancing performance of the piece in Bristol cathedral.
Jude Kelly, artistic director of the South Bank Centre, explains how she experienced the choir in this piece as a 'spiritual army' when she performed it at university.
Martyn Marsh describes how the music brought him to a realisation about how he would like to end his days.
And Robin Self recalls a life-changing performance of this piece, which enabled him to grieve for his son.
Series about pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2013.
Transcript
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| 0:13.6 | And remember, I'll be listening. |
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| 0:23.7 | traitors' legends, and murdered and banished players. |
| 0:27.0 | The Traitors Uncloked. |
| 0:28.3 | Watch on EyePlayer, listen for more on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.3 | When I was working at Lambeth, I was an advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, |
| 0:36.9 | and we had a spate of hostage cases |
| 0:39.8 | in the 1980s, in Iran, in Libya, and in Beirut. I became involved and was successful in negotiating the |
| 0:51.2 | release of people from a number of places. But then I was captured and I spent five years in solitary confinement. |
| 1:01.0 | I was kept in a room with no natural light for almost the whole of the period, |
| 1:08.0 | blindfolded when anyone came into the room, chained by the hands and feet to the wall, |
| 1:13.5 | slept on the floor, no books and papers for over three years, no contact with the outside world. |
| 1:21.6 | Extreme isolation, no one to speak with, no one to share with, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, bleak, blank, empty space. |
| 1:32.3 | Somehow I had to keep myself alive within. Eventually, four and a half years into captivity was given a small radio, a little battery-operated thing. |
| 1:43.9 | And I remember very distinctly, nervously, taking this radio |
| 1:49.5 | and placing it on the bar that held my chain, |
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