.......This time on the "Today" programme (2.6.07), where the obnoxious John Humphrys introduced it by asserting that Elgar was derivative of other composers (though he employed the cowardly "some say that" mode of speech). It's unlikely that Humphrys was thinking of the remark of Ravel, who on hearing some of Elgar's music for the first time, exclaimed, "It's Mendelssohn!" , though of course, Ravel was not saying that Elgar's music was derivative, he was expressing his astonishment that a composer should still be writing in that style in the early twentieth century. The interview subject, Julian Lloyd-Webber, neglected to put Humphrys on the spot by enquiring, "Which other composers?", and preferred to try to argue that Elgar was innovative, so far as British music was concerned, anyway. The truth is, surely, that most of Elgar's music sounds much like that of other late-Victorian and Edwardian composers, except that he was more inspired and inventive, and technically better-equipped than most of them. This fact has become obscured because most of his contemporaries are now almost forgotten. Listening to some of their music when the opportunity arises (not very often) is an effective antidote to the view that Elgar did not tower above them. There's nothing dishonourable or derivative about being a composer of one's time --- it just doesn't chime with the vulgar party-game greatness agenda of the BBC ("Greatest British painting", "Greatest Briton of the Twentieth Century", "Greatest Philosopher", and innumerable others).

Some of you will have seen it before no doubt but I thought this was interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2007/interact/puzzles/dorabellacode.shtml#comments