Mughals, Music, and "The Crown of India" Masque: Reassessing Elgar and the Raj

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Abstract

Edward Elgar’s 1912 masque, “The Crown of India,” was written specifically for the music hall in celebration of the crowning of King George V and Queen Mary at the Delhi Durbar in 1911. This work has been addressed by musical and postcolonial scholars, and has been appropriated by two factions: those who wish to claim Elgar as an unrepentant imperialist, and see that manifested in this work, and those who wish to see him as a beacon for anti-imperialism, who see evidence of this in the cuts that he made to the libretto, written by Henry Hamilton. What has been lacking in this discourse is a vehicle to address those cuts from a literary perspective, citing actual support from the two versions of the libretto (with and without cuts). This study reassesses the masque in light of these libretti, and offers a new assessment of Elgar’s imperial tendencies at that point in time, and the imperialism of the Raj.
Original languageAmerican English
JournalSouth Asian Review
Volume31
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2010

Disciplines

  • Musicology
  • Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
  • South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies

Keywords

  • Durbar
  • Elgar
  • India
  • The Crown of India
  • libretto
  • postcolonial

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