Edward Elgar was an English composer of the late-Romantic period, born near Worcester and active for much of his career in the West Midlands and later in London and Sussex. Largely self-taught, he composed orchestral works, choral oratorios, chamber music, and songs, achieving his breakthrough with the Enigma Variations in 1899 and going on to write the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. Knighted in 1904 and later appointed Master of the King’s Musick, he died in Worcester in 1934 following surgery that revealed inoperable colorectal cancer, at the age of 76.

Elgar is regarded as the pre-eminent English composer of his generation, the first since Purcell to achieve sustained international recognition. His music fell somewhat out of fashion after the First World War but underwent a significant revival from the 1960s onward, and works such as the Enigma Variations, the Cello Concerto, and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches remain cornerstones of the British concert repertoire. He was also an early and influential advocate for recording classical music on the gramophone.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Elgar