In its 15 minutes or so the overture gives a lively and colourful musical portrait of
Edwardian London. "
Cockaigne" was a term used by moralists at that time as a metaphor for gluttony and drunkenness, while Britain adopted the name humorously for London. The work presents various aspects of turn-of-the-century London and Londoners. It begins with a quiet but bustling theme which leads into an unbroken sequence of snapshots: the cockneys, the church bells, the romantic couples, a slightly ragged brass band (perhaps the
Salvation Army) and a contrastingly grand and imperious military band. The work culminates in a characteristically Elgarian blaze of orchestral sound – including a full organ – in E, leading to closing bars in C. Mindful of the way Elgar brings his themes together at the climax of the piece, both
Bernard Shaw and
W. H. "Billy" Reed compared the work to
Richard Wagner's
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Prelude, which culminates in the combination of several themes. Shaw, in a long article on Elgar in 1920, wrote: Reed wrote: The Elgar scholar
Julian Rushton writes that although there are echoes of
Die Meistersinger, and both overtures "use busy counterpoint within a loose
sonata pattern", Elgar’s aural pictures are quite different from Wagner's medieval
Nuremberg: "his London is not only the hub of an Empire but the city of
music-hall and
Covent Garden (market, not opera)". ==Recordings==