Edward Elgar and His World (19 page)

Example 2. Opening Measures, “Nimrod” variation, Variation IX of the
Enigma
Variations, op. 36, starting at rehearsal number 33.

Example 3. Recall of the “Nimrod” variation from the fifth stanza of
The Music Makers
, op. 69, starting at rehearsal number 51.

Elgar explicitly connected both his concert overture
In the South
and the Second Symphony to his friend and faithful patron Frank Schuster, the homosexual son of a wealthy banker. Siegfried Sassoon, in an otherwise venomously penned portrait of Schuster, noted that his erstwhile friend's “hero-worship of Elgar was (justifiably) the most important achievement of his career, because he really did help Elgar toward success and recognition.”
¹⁰⁹
Schuster tirelessly promoted Elgar's music in aristocratic and artistic circles, and, as Sophie Fuller discusses elsewhere in this volume, Schuster's elegant home in London and his country house, The Hut, in Bray-on-Thames, were important sites for Elgar, who occasionally used the estate as a refuge when composing. Elgar trusted Schuster so explicitly that he designated his patron as one of his daughter's guardians when the composer and his wife left for America in 1905.
¹¹⁰
Even death did not fully curtail Schuster's generosity, for he left Elgar the considerable sum of £7,000, writing in the bequest that the composer had “saved my country from the reproach of having produced no composer worthy to rank with the German masters.”
¹¹¹
Elgar was deeply saddened by his patron's death, writing to Schuster's sister, Adela, “By my own sorrow—which is more than I can bear to think of at this moment (a telegram [announcing Schuster's death] has just come) I may realize some measure of what this overwhelming loss must be to you.”
¹¹²

Elgar dedicated
In the South
to Schuster. The composer wrote that his friend would find the overture filled with “light-hearted gaiety mixed up in an orchestral dish [in] which [,] with my ordinary orchestral flavouring, cunningly blent, I have put in a warm cordial spice of love for you.”
In the South
, inspired, as the title attests, by a journey to Italy, was completed barely in time for the premiere, which took place on the third evening of a festival devoted to Elgar's music.
¹¹³
In a remarkable show of devotion, Schuster offered practical proof of his admiration by underwriting this ambitious undertaking, in effect assuming responsibility for any financial loss that might have occurred.

Elgar wrote to Percy Pitt that the opening of
In the South
portrayed “the joy of living” and had an “exhilarating
out-of-doors
feeling.” The overture's initial theme was originally jotted down as a musical depiction of the “moods of Dan” in 1899—Dan was a boisterous dog belonging to Elgar's friend George Robertson Sinclair—and was cast originally in E major.
¹¹⁴
Robert Anderson aptly observes that the example of Strauss's
Ein Heldenleben
may have induced Elgar to transpose this theme to E-flat major, but, as we shall see, there may well have been another reason for this change. The broader questions of why Elgar projected human emotions onto a dog and how this anthropomorphic projection called forth such varied and expressive ideas are unanswerable, though the surprisingly varied “moods of Dan” themes are suited perfectly to the scores in which they appear.
¹¹⁵

Shortly after Schuster's death in 1928, Elgar wrote to Adela Schuster, who had requested of the composer an epitaph for her brother: “I want something radiant, bright & uplifting for dear Frankie's memorial stone & I cannot find it: forgive me I have failed. I have said in music, as well as I was permitted, what I felt long ago,—in F[rank]'s own Overture ‘In the South' & again in the final section of the Second Symphony—both in the key that he loved most I believe (E flat)—warm & joyous, with a grave and radiating serenity: this was my feeling when the Overture was dedicated to him 24 years ago & is only intensified now.”
¹¹⁶
Did Elgar transpose the opening theme of
In the South
from its original E major to E-flat major in part because he knew that Schuster “loved” the lower key? As Elgar designed the overture as a special gift to Schuster, a friend who relished all manner of male company, one can only speculate whether or not, lurking in back of his mind, there might have been a persistent wraith of memory of Pauer's description of E-flat major as “masculine.” By far the most interesting aspect of Elgar's letter to Adela Schuster, however, is that as late as 1928 his characterization of E-flat major is reminiscent in style of Pauer's affective vocabulary—“the exponent of courage and determination, and gives to a piece a brilliant, firm and dignified character.”

Elgar's Second Symphony has been associated with any number of the composer's friends and acquaintances. Often mentioned is Edward VII, to whose memory the work is dedicated.
¹¹⁷
Lady Elgar invoked Alfred Rodewald, whose death in 1903 deeply agitated her husband, as an inspiration for the harrowing slow movement.
¹¹⁸
Elgar himself declared that a theme in the last movement was a portrait of Hans Richter: “Hans himself!”
¹¹⁹
Alice Stuart-Wortley has been construed as a muse for the symphony through readings—of variable insight depending on the interpreter—of the composer's letters to her.
¹²⁰
Frank Schuster is rarely mentioned, however, despite Elgar's clear statement that the symphony's poetic coda, cast in E-flat major, was inspired by him. One wonders if Elgar ever mentioned his intention to Schuster, who was very much alive in 1911 when this symphony in his favorite key was premiered. Once again, Elgar provided a motto for the symphony that has given rise to much speculation, the first line from one of Shelley's poems: “Rarely, rarely comest thou, / Spirit of Delight!”
¹²¹
Describing this score, throughout which E-flat major glimmers and shines, Elgar wrote to his publisher in terms that conjoin his 1928 letter to Adela Schuster with Pauer's characterization of E-flat major, for, he confided, “The spirit of the whole work is intended to be high & pure joy: there are retrospective passages of sadness but the whole of the sorrow is smoothed out & ennobled in the last movement, which ends in a calm &
I hope & intend
, elevated mood.”
¹²²

Example 4. Excerpt from the coda of the Finale, Symphony no. 2 in E-flat major, op. 63, five measures after rehearsal number 170.

The Music Makers
, a setting of an ode by the poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844–81) for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra, was finished a year after the first performance of the Second Symphony. The poem expresses an earnest, striving ideology reminiscent of Longfellow's more exhortatory poetry, as well as a high vision of the artist's calling that recalls the American author's
Hyperion
. Here, however, as Aidan J. Thomson has observed, Elgar deconstructed O'Shaughnessy's poem by using quotations from his own scores, creating an agonistic relationship between the text's optimism and the music's repeated tendency toward pessimistic dissolution. Semantic memory thus assumed a crucial role in the creation of
The Music Makers:
Elgar treated themes from previously composed works as abstract entities thrust into a wholly new context, yet still retaining something of their original import.
The Music Makers
is surely the most self-referential of Elgar's autobiographical scores; of this work, he wrote to Ernest Newman, “I am glad that you like the idea of the quotations: after all art must be the man, & all true art is, to a great extent egotism & I have written several things which are still alive.”
¹²³

Example 5. Quotation from the coda of the Finale, Symphony no. 2, in
The Music Makers
, starting at rehearsal number 53.

The Music Makers
may furnish further evidence of Schuster's connection to the Second Symphony. In the most protracted allusion in the score, Elgar uses the “Nimrod” variation to illustrate lines in O'Shaughnessy's fifth stanza, which reads in part: “But on one man's heart it hath broken, / A light that doth not depart; / And his look, or a word he hath spoken, / Wrought flame in another man's heart.”
¹²⁴
Of this passage Elgar testified, “Here I quoted the ‘Nimrod' Variation as a tribute to the memory of my friend, A. J. Jaeger: by this I did not mean to convey that his was the only soul on which light had broken or that his was the only word, or look, that wrought flame in another man's heart.”
¹²⁵
For this tribute to Jaeger, Elgar not only quotes the “Nimrod” variation, but begins this stanza in the variation's key of E-flat major as well, making this the only quotation in
The Music Makers
that appears in its original key.
¹²⁶
(After the initial statement of the “Nimrod” theme, this section vacillates between E-flat major and A-flat major—Pauer describes this key as “full of feeling and replete with a dreamy expression”—before finally settling into the latter.)
¹²⁷
Since the key scheme in
The Music Makers
is as intricate as any other of Elgar's major works, the composer may well have designed the tonal plan to accommodate this excursion in E-flat major. As Moore notes, the recall of the “Nimrod” variation “dwarfed all the short surrounding
Music Makers
figures—especially when ‘Nimrod' found a wonderful coupling with the final descending figure from the Second Symphony in the same key.”
¹²⁸

As mentioned earlier, Elgar told Adela Schuster that he had portrayed her brother in the coda of the Second Symphony, the pervading theme of which is Moore's “descending figure.” Was Schuster one of the men, along with Jaeger, whose word or look “wrought flame in another's man's heart”? And did Schuster, whose favorite key of E-flat is common to all this music, have an inkling of Elgar's tribute in the symphony's coda and, thus, in
The Music Makers?
As Diana McVeagh once exclaimed, “If [Elgar] genuinely disliked people wondering about his private life, why had he not learned his lesson from ‘enigma'? To cap it all, he composed
The Music Makers
, with its allusions and references, many of which could not be fully understood by anyone who know nothing of his past life.”
¹²⁹

But not all of Elgar's self-revelations were made consciously. In his “symphonic study”
Falstaff
, the theme that, according to the composer's own description, portrays Prince Hal in “his most courtly and genial mood” is cast in E-flat major. Unlike the “Nimrod” variation, the Second Symphony, or
The Music Makers
, a fictional character is portrayed in Pauer's “eminently” masculine key in
Falstaff
. Although a full analysis of
Falstaff
is beyond the scope of this essay, it can be pointed out that this first Prince Hal theme undergoes a development both psychological and musical, since its apotheosis (rehearsal number 127) represents the royal progress of Prince Hal, just crowned as Henry V, and occurs just before his ruthless repudiation of Falstaff: “How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!”
(2 Henry IV
, 5.5.41, 46).
¹³⁰