Sir Edward William Elgar (1857 – 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.

Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.

Elgar composed his Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf to fulfill a commission that he had received from Dr. Charles Swinnerton Heap, the founder and conductor of the North Staffordshire Music Festival. It was at this festival, on 30 October 1896, in Victoria Hall at Hanley, that the work received its premier. Set in the years between 995 and 1000, the saga relates the story the life and battles of King Olaf, a Norse crusader. Prior to beginning work on King Olaf, Elgar had spent a great deal of time immersing himself in the Wagnerian idiom. This, combined with Elgar's belief that his name was of Scandinavian origin, must have favored in the decision to set a Norse saga. Elgar derived his libretto from the fifth story in Part I of Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, a poetic monument modeled loosely after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Longfellow had been a favorite poet of the composer's mother, and as such, the works of the poet had figured strongly on Elgar's youth. The Saga of King Olaf is the first story in Longfellow's work to be related by the musician. In arranging Longfellow's text to suit his needs, Elgar enlisted the assistance of H. A. Acworth, a retired neighbor who had published several translations of Indian Ballads in verse. Acworth was charged with reducing Longfellow's twenty-two sections to eight with prologue and epilogue. He also composed several sections of the narrative, including the conversion and Sigrid scenes, "The Death of Olaf" and "The gray land breaks to lively green". In addition, he wrote the text for what was to become the six recitatives for bass soloist that Elgar used to link his scenes.

Elgar arranged the text into a cantata for soprano, tenor ant bass soloists, choir and orchestra. Elgar specifies the roles of the performers in a paragraph that he set in the beginning of the full score: "In the following Scenes it is intended that the performers should be looked upon as a gathering of skalds (bards); all, in turn, take part in the narration of the Saga and occasionally, at the more dramatic points, personify for the moment some important character." The work has been criticized by some as having banal lyrics and a story line that lacks apparent cohesion, but it has also been regarded as the best of his pre-Enigma compositions. Each scene provides a brief glimpse at an event in Olaf's life, while the prologue and epilogue serve to set the scene and recount the message of the work, respectively.

The first scene presents the Norse god, Thor, as he vows to defy Christianity. Elgar's music possesses all of the power and majesty inherent in the visual imagery of the text. In "King Olaf's Return", Olaf accepts Thor's challenge before confronting and killing his champion, Ironbeard in "The Conversion". This is followed by the "Gudrun" scene, in which Olaf's bride is killed on their wedding night. "The Wraith of Odin" presents some of Elgar's more dashing melodies, as the ghost of Odin visits Olaf at a feast. In the "Sigrid" scene, Olaf attempts to convert Sigrid, while in "Thyri" he and Thyri are wed. Here, Elgar explores the gentler side of his compositional nature, with joyous choruses and lilting duets. In "The Death of Olaf", Olaf meets his end while facing Danish invaders in a battle at sea. Structurally, the epilogue serves to tie together a number of the themes from previous movements, as the chorus proclaims the eternity of Christ in a moving finale that hardly has an equal amount the composer's works.

Source: AllMusic (https://www.allmusic.com/composition/mc0002372044#desc ription).

Although originally composed for Chorus (SATB) and Orchestra, I created this Arrangement of "As Torrents in Summer" from "Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf" (Op. 30 Epilogue) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).