Elgar’s mode of musical speech is remarkable, even among present-day colorists, for its wealth of color and its richness of tonal effects. Yet he is no impressionist of the Debussy type; every detail of poetic and imaginative suggestion is worked out with careful reference to its own effectiveness as well as that of the larger units to which it may belong. In his treatment of voice-parts there is a remarkable fluency and independence that suggests the old ecclesiastical methods. There is perfect correspondence, in all matters of verbal accentuation, between melodic setting and rhetorical delivery. In his marked preference for long lines of indefinite melodic structure (absence of definite phrases), he closely allies himself not only with the ‘Palestrina style’ but with the Wagnerian method of continuous ‘melos.’ His kinship with Wagner is further emphasized by the elaborate employment of ‘leading motives’ in his largest works. In these motives, however, he is not as fortunate as was Wagner in casting them in distinct, individual, and easily-distinguishable forms. This defect may be inevitable, perhaps, in treating sacred themes subject to so many purely spiritual ramifications as Elgar indulges in. As in the Wagnerian scheme, so in the Elgarian, the orchestra assumes a rôle of utmost importance, frequently overtopping the choral forces and appropriating for its own purposes the composer’s choicest melodies. But Elgar’s mode of treating the orchestra on the whole differs radically from Wagner’s because of the different points from which they approached their tasks in their respective vocal works--Wagner from the standpoint of dramatic effect, Elgar from the standpoint of pure church-music. Hence in the three works above mentioned one finds, for long stretches at a time, a spirit of lofty impersonality, an absence of sensuous melodies, which tends to lull the mind of the listener into a passive condition for receiving the impressions of the text, which is by no means unlike the mental condition produced by listening to actual liturgic music. ‘The Light of Life’ is Elgar’s first work in oratorio style and is short--not as long as many sacred cantatas; yet its exceedingly serious style precludes its being called a cantata. It received its initial hearing at the Worcester Festival in September, 1896. The text by Rev. E. Capel-Cure relates the gospel story of the man, blind from his birth, whom Jesus healed. The persons represented are the mother of the blind man (soprano), the narrator (contralto), the blind man (tenor) and the Master (baritone).