Elgar's Dream of Gerontius is perhaps the greatest of all his choral masterpieces. Experience it live at St Abans Cathedral with Hertfordshire Chorus.

Tickets: https://www.stalbanscathedral.org/Event/hertfordshire-chorus-the-dream-of-gerontius

Life, death and what happens when it's all over.

Elgar's work of 1900 is based on a poem on these major themes by Cardinal John Henry Newman. The story follows an ordinary and humble old man (the name Gerontius is from a Greek word meaning old man) as he faces his death, meets his guardian Angel and comes face to face with God, before being sent to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.

Elgar was keen to not make the piece too sacred, explaining: "I imagined Gerontius to be a man like us, not a Priest or a Saint, but a sinner... I've not filled his part with Church tunes and rubbish but a good, healthy full-blooded romantic, remembered worldliness, so to speak."

The work is scored for a full-size orchestra, three choirs, three soloists, with an organ for good measure. Despite the many musicians needed to perform the piece, it starts with only a few, with the numbers swelling as Gerontius gets closer and closer to God.

Of all Elgar's choral masterpieces, Gerontius is perhaps his greatest. This is music that makes the spirit soar, while reminding us at the same time, of our own humility. Elgar felt this too, inscribing the final page of the score with a quotation from John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies:

"This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory."