British Banknotes 20 Pound Sterling note 1999 Sir Edward Elgar
Bank of England
Obverse: Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at right. On the left side is a hologram window with sitting Britannia (as logo of Bank of England). Denominations in numerals are in top corners. In center in words. Signatures: Merlyn Lowther, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.
Reverse: Portrait of English composer Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934); View of the west face of Worcester Cathedral; Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians and church music, resting; Angel girl playing trumpet.
Watermark: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in young age.
Printer: Bank of England Printing Works, Debden.
Design: Roger Withington & Andrew Ward.
Date of Issue: 22 June 1999. Date withdrawn: 30 June 2010.
Original Size: 150 x 80 mm.
Texts: Bank of England; I Promise to Pay the Bearer on Demand the Sum of Twenty Pounds; London, for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.
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The Historical series are so called because they feature a famous historical character and appropriate scenes on the reverse. The £5 was first issued on 7th June 1990, and the £20 on 5th June 1991. They remain the current notes in circulation today (1999). The £10 was first issued on 29th April 1992, and the £50 on 20th April 1994. The £50 note incorporates an additional security device in the form of a foil Tudor rose and medallion.
In preparation for the "E Series" of notes, issued by the Bank of England, photographs of The Queen were especially commissioned by the Bank. The photographs were taken by Don Ford in 1985-1986, one of the Bank’s technical photographers, under the direction of Roger Withington. Mr. Withington designed the notes of the "E Series" and prepared the engraving of the Queen, which appeared on this series of notes, from one of the photographs taken by Mr. Ford. The portrait shows Queen Elizabeth wearing Queen Mary’s "Girls of Great Britain and Ireland" Tiara, Queen Alexandra’s cluster earrings and, although difficult to identify, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee necklace.
5 Pounds George Stephenson 10 Pounds Charles Dickens
20 Pounds Michael Faraday 50 Pounds Sir John Houblon
20 Pounds Michael Faraday 50 Pounds Sir John Houblon
The new series of notes. The £20 was first issued on 1st January 1999, and the £10 on 7th November 2000. The £10 note is the first to have the metallic security thread 'windowed' on the reverse rather than the front of the note.
Sir Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.
In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music remains more played in Britain than elsewhere.
Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the microphone in 1925 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.
Worcester Cathedral
Worcester Cathedral, before the English Reformation known as Worcester Priory, is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester. Built between 1084 and 1504, Worcester Cathedral represents every style of English architecture from Norman to Perpendicular Gothic. It is famous for its Norman crypt and unique chapter house, its unusual Transitional Gothic bays, its fine woodwork and its "exquisite" central tower, which is of particularly fine proportions.
Worcester Cathedral has three choirs: the Worcester Cathedral Choir (the main choir which has both a boys' and a girls' treble line, which normally work independently), Worcester Cathedral Chamber Choir, and the Worcester Cathedral Voluntary Choir. All three choirs were involved in the BBC broadcast of the midnight and Christmas morning services in 2007, with the boys and the girls of the Cathedral Choir, respectively, taking the lead in the two services. Since the 18th century, Worcester Cathedral Choir has taken part in the Three Choirs Festival, the oldest music festival in the world.
The composer Edward Elgar spent most of his life in Worcestershire. The first performance of the revised version of his Enigma Variations - the version usually performed - took place at the cathedral during the 1899 Three Choirs Festival. He is commemorated in a stained glass window which contains his portrait.
Saint Cecilia
Saint Cecilia, Cecilia also spelled Cecily (Latin: Sancta Caecilia; flourished 3rd century, Rome [Italy]; feast day November 22), patroness of music, one of the most famous Roman martyrs of the early church. It is written that as the musicians played at her wedding she "sang in her heart to the Lord". Her feast day is celebrated in the Latin Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches on November 22. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass.
According to a late 5th-century legend, she was a noble Roman who as a child had vowed her virginity to God. When she was married against her will to the future saint Valerian, then a pagan, she told him that an angel of God wished her to remain a virgin. He promised to respect this wish if he were allowed to see the angel. She replied that he would if he were baptized. On his return from baptism he found Cecilia talking to the angel. She then converted his brother Tiburtius, who also saw the angel. Both men were martyred before she was. She distributed her possessions to the poor, which enraged the prefect Almachius, who ordered her to be burned. When the flames did not harm her, she was beheaded. Cecilia was buried in the catacomb of St. Callistus, near Rome. At the beginning of the 9th century, Pope St. Paschal I discovered her relics in the catacomb of St. Praetextatus and had them moved to Rome, to a basilica in Trastevere that now bears her name. She became the patron saint of musicians and music; in art she is often represented playing the organ.
Merlyn Lowther, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England
Merlyn Vivienne Lowther (born March 1954) was Chief Cashier of the Bank of England for 1999 to 2003. She was the first woman to hold the post. The signature of the Chief Cashier appears on Bank of England banknotes. Lowther was succeeded by Andrew Bailey.
Since February 2013, Lowther has been a Deputy Chairman of Co-Operative Banking Group Limited and The Co-operative Bank plc.