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The Blenheim-born soprano Rosina Buckman (1881-1948) had a distinguished career as an opera singer, and as a concert artist and teacher. One of the greatest Isoldes of her age, an outstanding Aida and Butterfly and a touching Mimi, she sang with Melba and Martinelli at Covent Garden and during the years of the First World War became principal dramatic soprano of the Beecham Opera Company. Most of Buckman's collections of press-cuttings are already known and their contents have been disseminated by biographers and historians (Simpson 105-119). However, another volume of these has recently come to light in a Wellington basement. Among the clippings it contains, those of particular interest here are the reviews of the first complete performance of Edward Elgar's The Spirit of England on 4 October 1917 in Birmingham with Rosina Buckman as soloist. The Spirit of England is a three part song cycle, comprising settings of three war poems by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) taken from his The Winnowing-Fan, which had been published in 1914 with considerable success. Elgar began work on the cycle in 1915 at the suggestion of a mutual friend, Sydney Colvin. Knowing of Elgar's extreme distress at the slaughter of the war, Colvin had written to him on 10 January 1915: 'Why don't you do a wonderful Requiem for the slain -something in the spirit of Binyon's For the Fallen . . .' (Moore 288). Elgar chose three of Binyon's poems, adding 'The Fourth of August' and 'To the Women' to Colvin's suggestion of 'For the Fallen', but as he began work on them he learned that a Cambridge composer, Cyril Rootham, had already set 'For the Fallen' and his manuscript was with the publisher Novello. Elgar felt he must withdraw. Binyon wrote, urging him to proceed. 'Think of the thousands who will be craving to have their grief glorified & lifted up & transformed by an art like yours . . . Surely it would be wrong to let them lose this help & consolation' (Moore 288-89). He pointed out that Rootham had purposely planned his work 'on simple lines so as to be within the compass of small local choral societies: so I cannot see why his should clash, or why both settings should not be published'.

Rosina Buckman’s press-cuttings and the first complete performance of Elgar’s The Spirit of England