Download or read book The Life of Elgar written by Michael Kennedy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important new biography of Elgar draws on letters and documents which have become available in the last twenty-five years. Michael Kennedy, a leading scholar of British music and a distinguished musical biographer, uses this new material, which includes Elgar's own vast correspondence, in an attempt to get to the centre of the composer's complex personality. Elgar's letters reveal his unpredictable swings of mood, from gaiety and a fondness for puns to morose self-pity and a feeling that he was 'not wanted'.