The War Years 1915 to 1918

Inflation not only caused problems for Novello, but sales and profits also declined in real terms. These trends were also reflected in Elgar's earnings and Source Material 1(3) clearly shows this. The total of royalties and copyrights over the four years was only £1,054 13s: not much more than the copyright of £1,000 he received from The Apostles. Of course this was not the whole story. Elgar was receiving royalties and copyrights from other music publishers, as well as performing fees from Novello and others. The advent of ‘mechanical music’ (records) was also a new interest and source of income. Nevertheless, his relationship with Novello was such that only one major new work – The Spirit of England – was published, and if the total royalties from this work of £370 16s 11½d were excluded, the total fell to £657 11s 0½d over the four years.

The royalties from King Olaf were sustained at a high-level up to 1914, but then collapsed. Having been £58 11s for 1913 and 1914, they were only £7 18s 6d for 1917 and 1918, and the situation in Britain was worse than these sums indicated. There were sales of 750 vocal scores to the USA in 1917 and fifty in 1918. Royalties on these were £5, leaving a British total of £2 18s 6d: only 247 vocal scores were sold and thirteen tonic sol-fa editions. Meanwhile, for the Coronation March there was no income at all.