The Starlight Express is a children's play by Violet Pearn,^[1] based on the imaginative novel A Prisoner in Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood, with songs and incidental music written by the English composer Sir Edward Elgar in 1915.

On 9 November 1915, Sir Edward Elgar was invited by Robin Legge, music critic of The Daily Telegraph, to write the music for a children's fantasy play to be produced at the Kingsway Theatre that Christmas. The play was The Starlight Express, an adaptation of a novel by Algernon Blackwood called A Prisoner in Fairyland, by Blackwood and Violet Pearn. The baritone and composer Clive Carey had already started his own setting, but abandoned it when Elgar was commissioned.^[2]

The producer was to be Basil Dean: but since he had been called up for army service in France, he was replaced by the actress Lena Ashwell.^[3] Elgar was soon shown the script by Ashwell and had successful meetings with her and with Blackwood. The story appealed to Elgar because of its similarities to the private fantasy world of his own childhood which he had depicted in the music he wrote for "The Wand of Youth"; his first thought was to re-use that music, and he wove many reminiscences of it into the score. He worked on it enthusiastically, and in just over a month had produced over 300 pages of score – songs and incidental music – in time for the rehearsals. On 6 December the two chosen singers, the Australian-born soprano Clytie Hine and baritone Charles Mott,^[4] rehearsed with Elgar.

The Starlight Express was produced by Lena Ashwell at the Kingsway Theatre in London, as one of her high-quality wartime entertainments. The production was announced in The Times, mentioning that the small orchestra pit of the theatre would be enlarged to accommodate a full orchestra.^[5] It opened on 29 December 1915. The premiere was to have been the conducted by the composer, but because Lady Elgar had suffered concussion a few days before as the result of a traffic accident, he stayed at home with her, and the conductor was the young Julius Harrison.^[6] It ran for only one month, closing on 29 January 1916.

The reasons for the failure were inappropriate design of the characters and scenery by Henry Wilson (who had been chosen and his work approved by Lena Ashwell), and the difficulty Pearn had in making something theatrical with her adaptation of the book. Both Blackwood and Elgar had expressed misgivings about the design, and Blackwood had considered using his right to object and get a new artist. Blackwood objected to "this murder of my simple little Play ... Arts & Crafts pretentious rubbish stitched onto your music by a silly crank who has never read the play". Elgar agreed. This would have meant postponement of the opening. The critics who reported their view of the opening night, while praising the music and particular performers, remarked on the lack of substance to the story. The music did not deserve to be forgotten. Elgar negotiated with The Gramophone Company, and on 18 February 1916, the music was recorded on eight sides, with the songs performed by Agnes Nicholls and Charles Mott. Later that year the three Organ Grinder's Songs were published by Elkin, with a piano accompaniment arranged by Julius Harrison.

A simplistic version of Blackwood's novel. According to the elgar.org website, "A family of children, trapped in the oppressive world of adults, forms a secret society whose members collect stardust and live in star caves. They seek to rescue their parents from an earthly existence and eventually succeed, taking them also to a star cave."^[7]

Cast list:^[8]

• Daddy ("John Henry Campden", an author)
• Mother (his wife "Henrietta")
• Jane Anne ("Jinny", their eldest daughter, aged 17)
• Monkey (their youngest daughter, aged 12)
• Jimbo (their son, aged 10)
• Grannie (Irish mother of Henrietta)
• Cousin Henry ("Henry Rogers", cousin of Daddy)
• Madame Jequier (a Widow, owner of the Pension Wistaria)
• Organ-Grinder (may also be the Tramp)
• Children ('Street Arabs') who accompany the Organ-Grinder before the curtain
• Miss Waghorn and three other retired Governesses
• The Pleiades (dancers)
• Sprites: Tramp, Lamplighter, Gardener, Dustman, Sweep, Woman-of-the-Haystack, Little Winds and Laugher

Act I

1. Organ Grinder (Baritone): "To the Children" – "O children, open your arms to me,"

Act II

2. Organ Grinder: "The Blue-Eyes Fairy" – "There's a fairy that hides"

Act II Scene 1

3. Organ Grinder: "Curfew Song" (Orion) – "The sun has gone"

4. Laugher (Soprano): "The Laugher's Song" – "I'm ev'rywhere"

5. Organ Grinder: "Come Little Winds" – "Wake up you little night winds"

Act II Scene 3

6. Laugher: "Tears and Laughter" – "Oh! stars shine brightly!"

7. Jane Anne (Soprano): "Sunrise Song" (or "Dawn Song") – "We shall meet the morning spiders"

Act III

8. Organ Grinder: "My Old Tunes" – "My old tunes are rather broken"

Act III Scene 1

9. Jane Anne: – "Dandelions, daffodils"

Act III Scene 2

10. Laugher: – "Laugh a little ev'ry day"

11. Organ Grinder: "The Dawn" – "They're all soft-shiny now"

12. Jane Anne: – "Oh, think Beauty"

Act III Finale

13. Jane Anne & Cousin Henry, duet: "Hearts must be soft-shiny dressed" – "Dustman, Laugher, Tramp and busy Sweep"

From Elgar's The Wand of Youth Suites

• The Little Bells (Scherzino) – in all Acts
• Fairy Pipers – in all Acts
• Sun Dance – interlude at the end of Act II
• Moths and Butterflies – introduction to Act II Scene 3
• March – in Act III

From Elgar's The Music Makers

• a sequence in Jane Anne's song at the end of Act II Scene 2

From the Christmas Carol The First Nowell

• at the end of Act III

• Piano Suite, arranged by Albert Ketèlbey, pub. Elkin & Co. Ltd. London & New York, 1916
  • To the Children (Organ-Grinder's Song)
  • Dance of the Pleiades
  • Sunrise Song
  • In the Forest
  • "The Blue-Eyes Fairy" (Organ-Grinder's Song)
  • Finale
• Organ Grinder's Songs, piano accompaniment arranged by Julius Harrison, pub. Elkin & Co. Ltd. London & New York, 1916
  • 1. "To the Children"
  • 2. "The Blue-Eyes Fairy"
  • 3. "My Old Tunes"

Review from the weekly magazine "Punch", 5 January 1916. The reviewer, the drama critic Joseph Thorp, used to sign himself "T".

Curiously, Clytie Hine, 'The Laugher', gets no mention. The Musical Times thought well of her.

The Starlight Express

Daddy .............. O. B. Clarence^[9]

Mother ............. Ruth Maitland^[10]

Grannie ............ Una O'Connor

Jimbo ............... Ronald Hammond^[11]

Monkey ............ Elsie Hall

Jane Anne ........ Mercia Cameron

Cousin Henry .... Owen Roughwood^[12]

Mme Jequier ..... Juliette Mylo^[13]

Miss Waghorn ... Mary Barton

Tramp ............... Charles Mott

It would be uncandid to pretend that Mr. ALGERNON BLACKWOOD gets everything he has to say in The Starlight Express safely across the footlights – those fateful barriers that trap so many excellent intentions. But he so evidently has something to say, and the saying is so gallantly attempted, that he must emphatically be credited with something done – something well done really. The little play has beautiful moments – and that is to say a great deal.

The novelist turned playwright wishes to make you see that "the Earth's forgotten it's a Star". In plainer words he wants to present you with a cure for "wumbledness": people who look at the black side of things, who think chiefly of themselves – those are the wumbled. The cure is stardust – which is sympathy. The treatment was discovered by the children of a poor author in a cheap Swiss pension and by "Cousin Henry" a successful business man of quite an unusual sort. You have to get out into the cave where the starlight is stored, gather it – with the help of the Organ Grinder, who loves all children and sings his cheery way to the stars; and the Gardener who makes good things grow and picks up all the weeds; and the Lamplighter who lights up heads and hearts and stars impartially; and the Sweep, who sweeps away all blacks and blues over the edge of the world; and the Dustman, with his sack of Dream Dust that is Star Dust (or isn't it?) and so forth.

Then you sprinkle the precious stuff on people and they become miracles of content and unselfishness (The fact that life isn't in the very least like that is a thing you have just got to make yourself forget for three hours or so).

The author was well served by his associates. SIR EDWARD ELGAR wove a delightfully patterned music of mysterious import through the queer tangle of the scenes and gave us an atmosphere loaded with the finest stardust. Lighting and setting were admirably contrived; and the grouping of the little prologue scenes, where that kindly handsome giant of an organ-grinder (MR. CHARLES MOTT), with the superbly cut corduroys, sang so tunefully to as sweet a flock of little maids as one would wish to see, was particularly effective.

Of the players I would especially commend the delicately sensitive performance of MISS MERCIA CAMERON (a name and talent quite new to me) as Jane Anne, the chief opponent of wumbledom. She was, I think, responsible more than any other for getting some of the mystery of the authentic Blackwood craft across to the audience. The jolly spontaneity of RONALD HAMMOND as young Bimbo was a pleasant thing, and ELSIE HALL, concealing less successfully her careful training in the part, prettily co-operated as his sister Monkey. The part of Daddy, the congested author who was either "going to light the world or burst" was in O. B. CLARENCE'S clever sympathetic hands. MR OWEN ROUGHWOOD gave you a sense of his belief in the efficacy of stardust. On what a difficult rail our author was occasionally driving his express you may judge, when he makes this excellent but not particularly fragile British type exclaim "I am melting down in dew". The flippant hearer has always to be inhibiting irreverent speculations occasioned by such speeches.

I couldn't guess if the children in the audience liked it. I hope they didn't feel they had been spoofed, as MAETERLINCK so basely spoofed them in The Blue Bird, by offering them a grown-up's play "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought". But the bigger children gave the piece a good welcome and called and acclaimed the shrinking author.

• The Starlight Express was not the only collaboration of Blackwood and Pearn. Note

Karma: A Re-Incarnation Play in Prologue, Epilogue & Three Acts. London: Macmillan, 1918 and New York: E.P. Dutton, 1918. "A love story re-enacted through four existences."

Through The Crack (an adaptation of The Education of Uncle Paul by Blackwood). London and New York: Samuel French. Produced at Christmas 1920, then in 1925.

• On 22 May 1918, Lance Corporal Charles James Mott, the successful singer in that first production of The Starlight Express was in the London Regiment (Artists' Rifles) when he was mortally wounded by a German shell-burst.^[14] He was 37. Elgar, writing to a friend, said "It is difficult to believe that Charles Mott is dead; dead of wounds in France. I am overwhelmed: a simple, honest GOOD soul."
• In 1933 the conductor Joseph Lewis constructed from the score a 40-minute selection from The Starlight Express which he conducted in several BBC radio broadcasts. But his score and other valuable BBC material was destroyed in an air-raid in 1940.
• In September 1940 the Kingsway Theatre was damaged by fire in an air raid. All The Starlight Express stage props and music (conductor's score and orchestra parts) was destroyed. However, Elgar had left his manuscript full score of the music with the publishers, Messrs Elkin & Co., and apart from memories and reviews, this became the only surviving remnant. Fortunately this score also contained many of his own written notes on the performance. The score is signed "Edward Elgar, Finis, A.E. December 1915" – A. E. was his wife's initials, and Elgar, typically doubled the pun with the inscription "AE 15" (abbreviated Latin "AETATIS 15", English "Age 15"): he was a child again!
• In 1984 Richard Adams provided a 'performing narrative' to accompany a performance of Elgar's score in the Netherlands. The narrator for the occasion was composer Michael Berkeley.

• On 18–19 February 1916, a selection of the songs and music were given an acoustic recording at the HMV Studios, Hayes, by The Gramophone Company. The singers were Charles Mott and Agnes Nicholls, and Elgar conducted the "Symphony Orchestra". There were four 12-inch records (D455-8): (1) To the Children and The Blue-Eyes Fairy (Mott); (2) My Old Tunes and Curfew Song (Mott); (3) Come Little Winds (Mott), Wind Dance (orchestra), Tears and Laughter and Sunrise Song (Nicholls); (4) The Laugher's Song (Nicholls) and Finale – Hearts must be soft-shiny dressed (Nicholls and Mott).^[15]
• In December 1935, four of the songs were recorded at the HMV Studios, Hayes, by The Gramophone Company. The singers were Stuart Robertson and his wife Alice Moxon. It is not known who conducted the orchestra. The songs were To the Children, The Laugher's Song, The Blue-Eyes Fairy and My Old Tunes.
• On 26 September 1946, two of the Organ Grinder's songs (My old tunes and To the Children) were recorded at Decca Studios in London. The singer was Henry Cummings, with an orchestra conducted by Charles Groves (in his first recording session).
• In 1964 EMI/HMV released The Miniature Elgar inspired by the BBC-TV Monitor film. It included the songs My old Tunes and To the Children, performed by Frederick Harvey with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lawrance Collingwood.
• In 1973, Chandos Records recorded some of the songs, performed by John Lawrenson and Cynthia Glover, with Michael Austin (organ) and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta conducted by George Hurst. The songs were To the Children, The Blue-Eyes Fairy, The Laugher's Song, Tears and Laughter, The Dawn Song, My Old Tunes, Jane Anne's song and Finale.
• In 1974–1975, a complete recording was made by EMI/HMV on 28/29 November 1974, 20/22 December 1974 and 22 October 1975. This was at Abbey Road Studios, London. The singers were Derek Hammond-Stroud and Valerie Masterson, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley.
• In December 1990 some of the songs were recorded by Decca Records at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea. The singers were Bryn Terfel and Alison Hagley, with the Welsh National Opera Chorus and Welsh National Opera Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. The songs were To the Children, The Blue-Eyes Fairy, The Laugher's Song, Come Little Winds, Tears and Laughter, The Dawn Song, My Old Tunes, Jane Anne's song and Finale.
• A 1992 Koss Classics release of lesser-known works by Elgar, performed by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Raymond Leppard, included the orchestral Overture and Finale.
• In 1997, the 1990 Decca recording of 'The Starlight Express' was remastered.^[16]
• The Starlight Express London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vernon Handley, with Valerie Masterson (soprano) and Derek Hammond-Stroud (baritone)
• The Starlight Express Suite Cynthia Glover (Soprano), John Lawrenson (Baritone), Bournemouth Sinfonietta conducted by George Hurst. Tracks: To the Children, The Blue-Eyes Fairy, The Laugher's Song, O stars shine brightly, The Dawn Song, My Old Tunes, Jane Anne's song and Finale. Chandos CHAN6582

• Foreman, Lewis (ed.), "Oh My Horses! Elgar and the Great War" – Chapter 9 by Andrew Neill (Elgar Editions, Rickmansworth, 2001) ISBN 0-9537082-3-3
• Keeton, A. E., Elgar's Music for 'The Starlight Express, Oxford Journals (Oxford University Press, 1945); XXVI: 43–46 Music and Letters 1945 XXVI(1):43–46; doi:10.1093/ml/XXVI.1.43 1945 by Oxford University Press
• Kennedy, Michael Portrait of Elgar (Oxford University Press, 1968) ISBN 0-19-315414-5
• Moore, Jerrold N. Edward Elgar: a creative life (Oxford University Press, 1984) ISBN 0-19-315447-1 Pages 687–695
• Porte, J. F. (1921). Sir Edward Elgar. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co. Ltd. Pages 169–174