Elgar himself described the song as "a tune that comes once in a lifetime.The frenzied campaign music brief, led by VMLY&R’s executive music producer Theresa Notartomaso, has become the new norm in the post-pandemic advertising hustle. Its use at graduations is an all-American tradition, Woolf writes.īut maybe the Americans are on to something. Some sports teams play it at events where the island nation–rather than the United Kingdom–is competing, while some citizens have lobbied to have it replace “God Save the Queen” as the national anthem of England. In England, the song is still a favorite, Woolf writes. English poet Arthur Benson provided lyrics, producing the song " Land of Hope and Glory" that shares the melody that Americans hear today at graduation ceremonies: The immortal Jove’s dead clamors counterfeit,Īfter hearing Elgar's march performed in 1901, writes Christopher Woolf for Public Radio International, the king-to-be liked it so much that Elgar included it in a Coronation Ode performed at the royal crowning. Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!Īnd O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
He has just admitted that he's lost the mental peace of being a simple soldier forever, and that Desdemona's perceived unfaithfulness has ruined his life:įarewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, In a scene that takes place in the castle garden, Othello tells Iago that he has lost faith in his wife, Desdemona. The riff played by school bands across the country is just a section from the first of Elgar's six "Pomp and Circumstance Marches," a reference to a passage from William Shakespeare's Othello. There’s more to the tradition's British roots besides its debut at Edward VII's coronation. Writing for Psychology Today, Kimberly Sena Moore notes that there are reasons for the cultural foothold of “Pomp and Circumstance.” Its “regal melody, warm tone colors, and stately… tempo” set an “emotional tone,” she writes, while it has also been used for graduations for so long that everybody knows what to expect when they hear it–just like robes and tasselled mortar boards create that expectation. It just became the thing that you had to graduate to.” “Then eventually… everybody started using it. “After Yale used the tune, Princeton used it, the University of Chicago Columbia,” music expert Miles Hoffman told NPR.
Then, though, it was played as he walked offstage, not as he walked up to receive his diploma, according to NPR’s Morning Edition. It was composed in 1901 by Edward Elgar, born on this day in 1857, and was used for the 1902 coronation of Britain’s Edward VII (the son of Queen Victoria who lent his name to the Edwardian age). The tune began its association with American graduations four years later at Yale University, when Elgar was given an honorary doctorate. But “Pomp and Circumstance” is American by adoption, not by origin. The marching song prompts instant recognition for many Americans, who have been hearing it played at graduations of all kinds as far back as the early 1900s. As thousands of American teens make the walk across a graduation stage this month, one thing is certain: “Pomp and Circumstance” will be played.
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