By the time Stanford had received a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to write a choral work for them in 1884, he had, at the age of 32, already begun to assert himself as one of Britain's leading composers. The Elegiac Ode was, however, his first mature foray into the world of major British choral festivals. Some of the Elegiac Ode had in fact been sketched three years earlier in 1881, but after the Norwich commission was received, Stanford evidently grasped the opportunity to complete the work in it's entirety in July 1884. The words were taken from the last part of Whitman's elegy, 'When lilacs in the dooryard bloom'd', written in the aftermath of President Lincoln's assassination in 1865 (it was a text which Stanford's pupil, Holst, later used for his Ode to Death, composed in the wake of the war in 1919). Taking the seven verses of the burial hymn, Stanford divided his chosen text into four parts, thereby creating a four-movement musical structure more akin to a choral symphony with it's substantial (and thematically related) choral outer movements flanking two shorter inner essays. By the time Stanford had received a commission from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to write a choral work for them in 1884, he had, at the age of 32, already begun to assert himself as one of Britain's leading composers. The Elegiac Ode was, however, his first mature foray into the world of major British choral festivals. Some of the Elegiac Ode had in fact been sketched thre ATTENTION: please remember that all Blu-Rays are Region A USA and all DVDs Region 1 USA and you will need a multi region Blu-Ray/DVD player to play them.