In an exception, for the 2001 Last Night concert following the September 11 attacks, the conductor Leonard Slatkin substituted a more serious programme, featuring Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings", but despite the success of this occasion, the now traditional pieces returned the following year.
In some years, "Land of Hope and Glory" and the other favourites were left out of the programme but reinstated after press and public outrage. The Last Night of the Proms was broadcast annually on television from 1953 onwards, and Promenaders began dressing up outrageously and waving flags and banners during the climax of the evening. By then, audience participation in the second half of the programme had become a ritual, and from 1947 a boisterous 'tradition' was created by the conductor Malcolm Sargent, making "Land of Hope and Glory" part of a standard programme for the event.
"Land of Hope and Glory" featured in the final concerts for 1928, 1929, 19. From 1927, the BBC began supporting the Proms, with radio broadcasts bringing the music to an increasingly wide audience. The two pieces were played one after another at the closing concerts in 1916, 19. It was played as "Land of Hope and Glory" in the last concert of the 1905 proms, and at the first and last concerts of the 1909 Proms, which also featured Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs. 1 was introduced as an orchestral piece (a year before the words were written), conducted by Henry Wood who later recollected "little did I think then that the lovely broad melody of the trio would one day develop into our second national anthem". The Proms began in 1895 in 1901 Elgar's newly composed 'Pomp and Circumstance' March No. God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.Ī pride that dares, and heeds not praise, God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet, Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee? Wedding march from Wagner's opera Lohengrin, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conductor (EMI Classics)ħ.Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, Verdi's Aida: Grand March, Boston Pops Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler conductor, (RCA Victor)Ħ. Hector Berlioz's The March to the Scaffold, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conductor (Sony Classical)ĥ. Henry Purcell's march from The Married Beau, from Baroque Music for Brass and Organ, Empire Brass Quintet, (Telarc)Ĥ. Felix Mendelssohn's Ruy Blas overture, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Claus Peter Flor conductor (RCA Victor)ģ. 1, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Yehudi Menuhin conductor (1991, Virgin Classics)Ģ. Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. Music Heard in the Morning Edition Reportġ. Perfect if the graduates know that they will be unemployed, Hoffman says. Or a selection from Hector Berlioz with the unfortunate title of The March to the Scaffold. For example, Henry Purcell's march from The Married Beau, "a sort of specialty processional, but it's a great piece." "I'm not sure I can actually hear or feel the tassels waving there in the breeze," Hoffman says.īut if you're tired of Pomp and Circumstance, there are several terrific alternative marching tunes, he says. What was played as a processional at the Elgar ceremony was the Ruy Blas overture by Felix Mendelssohn, but Hoffman suggests it may not strike some as a graduation theme.
It just became the thing that you had to graduate to." "After Yale used the tune, Princeton used it, the University of Chicago Columbia," Hoffman tells NPR's Bob Edwards. It first became associated with graduations in 1905, when it was played when Elgar received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1905, but it was played as a recessional, not as a processional, at the ceremony. Elgar's march was used for the coronation of King Edward VII. But it wasn't originally intended for graduations. Sir Edward Elgar composed Pomp and Circumstance - the title comes from a line in Shakespeare's Othello ("Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!") - in 1901. Music commentator Miles Hoffman stops by Morning Edition to discuss the famous processional and other marches in this season of commencement exercises and weddings. It's hard to imagine a graduation without it.