The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles (Elgar) The Apostles, Op. 49, is an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra composed by Edward Elgar. It was first performed on 14 October 1903. After his international success with the "Enigma Variations" (1899) and "The Dream of Gerontius "(1900), Elgar was commissioned by the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which had also produced "Gerontius", to write a new choral work. This encouraged Elgar to start composing a large-scale work on a subject he had been contemplating, according to the composer, since boyhood when he had even started selecting the words. "The Apostles", like its successor "The Kingdom", depicts
Canons of the Apostles John of Antioch (Joannes Scholasticus), Patriarch of Constantinople from 565 to 577, published a collection of synodal decrees in which he included these eighty-five canons, and this number was finally consecrated for the Greek Church by the Trullan or Quinisext Council of 692, which stopped short of affirming their apostolic authorship, instead referring to them as having been handed down in the name of the Apostles. On the other hand, the Latin Church, throughout the Middle Ages, recognized only fifty canons of the Apostles. This was the number finally adopted by Dionysius Exiguus, who first translated these canons into Latin