I looked Salut D'Amour up on Wikipedia and found this to be very interesting:
"Elgar finished the piece in July 1888, when he was engaged to be married to Caroline Alice Roberts,
and he called it "Liebesgruss" ('Love’s Greeting') because of Miss Roberts’ fluency in German.
When he returned home to London on 22 September from a holiday at the house of his friend
Dr. Charles Buck, in Settle, he presented it to her as an engagement present. Alice, for her part,
offered him a poem called "The Wind at Dawn" which she had written years before and which
he soon set to music.
The dedication was in French: "à Carice". "Carice" was a combination of his wife's names
Caroline Alice, and was the name to be given to their daughter born two years later.
It was not published (by Schott & Co.) until a year later, and the first editions were for violin
and piano, piano solo, cello and piano, and for small orchestra. Few copies were sold until
Schott changed the title to "Salut d’Amour" with Liebesgruss as a sub-title, and the composer's
name as 'Ed. Elgar'. The French title, Elgar realised, would help the work to be sold not only
in France but in other European countries: Schott was a German publisher, with offices
in Mainz, London, Paris and Brussels.
The first public performance was of the orchestral version, at a Crystal Palace concert on
11 November 1889, conducted by August Manns."
Once again, the photos are not the best today with the bad lighting , but I wanted to share
it anyways. Hope you all are having a wonderful day! |