Webb’s son, Alan, later recalled: “On occasion, he [Elgar] would visit my father … Once, he pulled some manuscript sheets out of his pocket and said: ‘Here, would you like these?’ ‘These’ were sketches for the Introduction and Allegro.”.
The British Library has acquired previously unknown sketches and drafts by Sir Edward Elgar for one of his best-known masterpieces, Introduction and Allegro for Strings.
Sandra Tuppen, the library’s head of music collections, said this collection was “significant for the light that it shines” on Elgar’s creativity.
“We’ve already got in the library very preliminary sketches for the piece and the autograph manuscript of the final version,” she said.
In 1930, four years before his death, he tore out sketches from one of his sketchbooks and gave them to Frank Webb, his former violin student, with whose descendants the pages had remained until now.
