As Edward Elgar's compositions for imperial ceremonies and the First World War have specific functions (royal celebrations, marching music, rallying cries, and charitable offerings), they can be considered together within an analysis. The compositions share a number of characteristics: none is abstract in nature, Elgar composed many of them to sound specifically ‘popular’, and none can claim ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’ meanings, like the ‘Enigma’ Variations or the Violin Concerto. In the period before the war, these compositions solidified Elgar's reputation as an important national figure. During the war, they aptly represented the complex difficulties individual Britons faced from the violence and carnage of battle. After the war, they placed Elgar in the forefront of society as an official ceremonial figure. They allowed him to represent a musical tradition rapidly declining throughout elite Great Britain, but prominent in middle-class quarters. These works were inspirational in their own time, and many are still rousing today. As important examples of period pieces, they show Elgar transcending the limits of concert music to successfully negotiate popular forms.

Throughout this chapter, ‘popular’ describes music that might be easily disseminated, might be performed in non-elite contexts and venues (bandstands, rallies, music-halls, the London Coliseum, etc.), or might have been written by Elgar to garner a broad audience. A close analogy to this type of composition would be Beethoven's Wellingtons Sieg (or ‘Battle Symphony’), a potboiler meant to capture timely sentiment. Elgar often designed his ‘functional’ music to be popular through concentrating on broad styles of composition, including singable melody as opposed to motivic transformation.