Elgar--Pomp and Circumstance March, No. 4 (Used in the film Clockwork Orange)

Elgar Pomp and Circumstance, Op. 39 March, No. 4 in G (1907)

Music of Sir Edward Elgar.

“I have some of the soldier instinct in me,” Elgar (1857-1937) wrote. Elgar's work Pomp and Circumstance Marches take the military quick march and set the genre as a subject of serious musical compositions for orchestra.

In 1901, Elgar placed a stanza based on Lord de Tabley's (1835-1895) poem “The March of Glory” which Elgar substantially modified as an epigraph for his set of marches which he continued to work on until 1930. March No. 4 in G was written in 1907:

Like a proud music that draws men on to die
Madly upon the spears in martial ecstasy,
A measure that sets heaven in all their veins
And iron in their hands.
I hear the Nation march
Beneath her ensign as an eagle's wing;
O'er shield and sheeted targe
The banners of my faith most gaily swing;
Moving to victory with solemn noise,
With worship and with conquest, and the voice of myriads.