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Gervase Cary Elwes

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GERVASE CARY ELWES (1866-1921), English vocalist, son of Valentine Cary Elwes, of Billing Hall, Northants., and Brigg, Lincs., was born at Billing Nov. 15 1866. Educated at the Oratory school, Edgbaston, and at Christ Church, Oxford, Gervase Elwes married Lady Winefride Feilding, daughter of the 8th Earl of Denbigh, in 1889, and two years later, on appointment to the diplomatic service, he became honorary attache at Munich, then at Vienna and finally at Brussels. Possessed of a charming tenor voice, he became known as an amateur singer of exceptional ability, and in the three cities named he studied music assiduously, in Vienna under Mandyczewski and in Brussels under Demest, while he also paid frequent visits to Paris from Brussels in order further to study under Bouhy. He entered the musical profession while still in the diplomatic service, which he finally abandoned in 1895. As a professional singer he made his first public appearance at the Westmorland Festival in 1903, and in London at a concert of the Handel Societ y. In London he continued his studies under Victor Beigel, sang with conspicuous success at the Monday " Pops," at the Kruse festival and at provincial festivals. His first representative festival engagement was at Leeds in 1904. In 1907 he toured Germany with Fanny Davies; two years later he sang with the Oratorio Society of New York in Bach's St. Matthew Passion and The Dream of Gerontius, the latter a work with which his name became indissolubly associated. He took part in upwards of 150 performances of it. His intensely deep religious convictions undoubtedly aided him in this work, for he was a very devout Catholic, and in Bach's Passion his performance was exalted. As singer of songs Elwes held an unique position. He excelled in the lieder of Brahms; and to him such English composers as Roger Quilter and Vaughan Williams owed a fair proportion of their success, at least in the beginning. Elwes left England late in 1920 for a long-promised tour of the United States, and he was accidentally killed at the railway station at Boston on Jan. 12 1921.