Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2004
Mary Katherine Tillman
Pages 42-48
An Introduction to “The Dream Of Gerontius” by Cardinal John Henry Newman and Sir Edward Elgar
Newman’s dramatic poem, “The Dream of Gerontius” (1865), was set to music by Edward Elgar (1857-1934) in 1900. This essay brings out the sympathy of mind and heart between poet and composer, and perhaps between them both and the listener of today, as well as the universality and depth of the human stake in some kind of personal and peopled life after death.