Following their marriage in 1889, Edward and Alice Elgar settled in London. Elgar hoped that the move would help him establish a national rather than purely local reputation but it was not to be. In truth, at that time Elgar had not written enough music of a quality to justify the status he aspired to. After eighteen months of relative hardship and considerable disappointment, he and Alice returned to live in their native Worcestershire.

It is therefore rather ironic that, while in London, he received a commission from the Worcester Festival Committee for a short orchestral work to be premièred at the 1890 Three Choirs Festival. Elgar composed most of the work during the spring of 1890, completing it in July in good time for the festival. It was his first major orchestral score, his first to be published, and his first to be reviewed seriously by the musical establishment.

Froissart received guarded approval by the critics, who tempered their praise for its originality and energy with criticisms of a degree of repetitiveness and the lack of a coherent development. This is a little harsh, for the score contains a youthful abundance of good tunes, even if Elgar is not very subtle in his development of them. The more perceptive critics commented on the promise they saw in the work, a faith which Elgar fully repaid in the decade to come.

The score is prefixed by a phrase from Keats "When Chivalry lifted up her lance on high!": for this concert overture describes the medieval age of knights and ladies, of chivalry and romance, of Arthur and Guinevere. The unusual title comes from the name of Jean Froissart, who was a French historian of the late 14th century, though he was rather more imaginative than historically accurate in his chronicles of the age.