Music: Musical Kipling

The English-speaking peoples have yet to produce an enduring giant among composers. Edward William Elgar came close, though not very. Perhaps the best that can be said for him is that he admirably expressed his era. A discerning friend once wrote him: "You have translated Master Rudyard Kipling into music." For long, palmy decades, the world heard Elgar's brassy paddles chunking from Rangoon to Mandalay to Aldershot. When the trooper was on the tide, my boys, or when Tommy Atkins returned from defending dominion over palm and pine, or simply when the...

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