When Elgar s popular part-song My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land was published in 1890, a ready market for such pieces had been established by the competition festival movement, itself fuelled by the enormous growth in the number of choirs. This wide-ranging selection features several of Elgar s finest songs, including his best-known work in the genre As Torrents in Summer, which boasts a memorable tune, the highly original and chromatic Owls, probably the strangest that Elgar ever set, and the ambitious and bitonal There is Sweet Music which the composer himself described as a clinker, and the best I have done .
