Edward Elgar had dreamed of composing a great biblical oratorio trilogy since his schooldays, when he found in an old Bible a marginal note from one of his teachers: 'This is the best life of Christ.' The Apostles (1903) was the first part of this planned trilogy, though the third part was never completed. Elgar described his ambition as creating 'the greatest oratorio that was ever written,' and while that claim remains debatable, The Apostles is athe most sustained meditation on the calling and formation of the disciples in oratorio form.
Elgar's compositional method was unprecedented in oratorio history. Rather than commissioning a librettist, he constructed his own text by intricately cross-referencing multiple passages of Scripture, drawing on Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and the Psalms simultaneously. The result is a libretto that reads like a harmony of the Gospels - multiple voices of Scripture converging on the same events, each contributing a different perspective on the same divine action.
The oratorio opens with a setting of Psalm 92, the Psalm appointed for the Sabbath morning: 'It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, proclaiming your love in the morning.' This introduction, which became one of Elgar's most admired orchestral passages, establishes the work's atmosphere of dawn prayerfulness, drawing on Luke 6:12's account of Jesus spending 'the night praying to God' before choosing the twelve. The calling of the Apostles emerges from this night of prayer, establishing the pattern that they are not self-chosen but God-chosen.
The work's most controversial feature was its treatment of Judas Iscariot. Elgar's Judas is not a stock villain but a tragic figure who genuinely believed in Jesus as a political Messiah and whose betrayal was intended to force Jesus to declare his kingdom. When that plan fails, Judas is consumed by remorse, his cry of 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood' (Matthew 27:4) set to music of devastating anguish. The portrayal drew accusations of unorthodoxy, but Elgar defended it as a faithful reading of the Gospel texts, which show Judas's regret without explaining his motivation.
The Mary Magdalene scene - drawing on Luke 7:37-50 and John 20:1-18 - presents another figure from the Gospel margins given full sympathetic depth. The transition from Mary's anointing of Jesus to the empty tomb scene, with Mary hearing her name spoken by the risen Christ, creates one of the most moving emotional arcs in the work. The recognition scene ('Rabboni!' - John 20:16) is set with an intimacy that contrasts strikingly with the oratorio's more massive choral passages.
The work concludes with the Ascension and the Apostles' commissioning to go into all the world (Matthew 28:19-20, Acts 1:8), setting the scene for The Kingdom's Pentecost narrative. The final chorus draws from Psalm 150 and from Revelation 5:12-13, merging the earthly church in its mission with the heavenly worship of the four living creatures and twenty-four elders.
Elgar's orchestration is of extraordinary richness, using the leitmotif system he had developed from Wagner to give each character and theological theme its own musical identity. The Apostles' theme, the Christ theme, the Judas theme, and the Holy City theme weave through the work with the same structural precision that Bach brought to the Passions, creating a musical theology as much as a musical narrative.
The Apostles represents the high-water mark of English oratorio - a tradition running from Handel through Mendelssohn to Elgar - and its ambition to bring the biblical narrative to life through symphonic means remains unmatched in the repertoire.