Edward Elgar and His World (36 page)

49. (Sir) A(lfred) H(erbert) Brewer (1865–1928), composer and organist. Born in Gloucester, he was a chorister at the cathedral before studying organ in Gloucester (under C. H. Lloyd), Oxford, and the Royal College of Music (under Walter Parratt). After spells at Bristol Cathedral, St. Michael's, Coventry, and Tonbridge School, he returned to Gloucester as cathedral organist in 1896. His best-known works are his cantatas
Emmaus
(1901), with which Elgar assisted in the orchestration, and
The Holy Innocents
(1904). He was knighted in 1926. “Obituary: Alfred Herbert Brewer,”
The Musical Times
69 (April 1928): 367–68; “Some of Elgar's Friends,”
The Musical Times
75 (April 1934): 320.

50. See also rehearsal nos. 19 to 20.

51. Parry's oratorio received its premiere at the festival.

52. Parry's oratorio
Job
was premiered in 1892, also at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester.

53. Arthur Fagge (1864–1943), organist and conductor. Born in Kent, but based for most of his life in London, he founded the London Choral Society in 1903 as a vessel through which to perform British works, notably Elgar's three mature oratorios, and also Walford Davies's
Everyman
and Bantock's
Omar Khayyám
, both of whose London premieres the Society gave. “Obituary: Arthur Fagge,”
The Musical Times
84 (June 1943): 192.

54. Clementina De Vere-Sapio, American soprano, was a regular performer in the provincial festival circuit. She appears not to have performed in Britain any earlier than 1894 or any later than 1911.

55. Marie Brema (1856–1925), English mezzo-soprano, of German-American parentage. Born in Liverpool, she studied under Henschel and Alfred Blume, making her debut at St. James's Hall in 1891. Although remembered primarily as an operatic performer (particular in Wagner; she was the first English singer to sing at Bayreuth), she was also an accomplished oratorio singer; the Guardian Angel in
Gerontius
(which she sang at the work's premiere) was considered one of her finest roles. “Obituary: Marie Brema,”
The Musical Times
66 (May 1925): 461; A. Eaglefield-Hull, “Brema, Marie,”
A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians
, 59.

56. (Harry) Gregory Hast (1862–1944), English tenor. A founder of the Meister Glee-Singers in 1890 and a member of the choirs of both Westminster Abbey and the Temple Church (under Walford Davies), he became a noted recitalist following his St. James's Hall debut in 1898, touring in both America and Europe. He published
The Singer's Art: Letters from a Singing Master
(London: Methuen) in 1925. “Obituary: Gregory Hast,”
The Musical Times
85 (October 1944): 319.

57. Arthur Francis Braun (1876–1940), English baritone (and Marie Brema's son), was a regular performer in provincial festivals in the first decade of the twentieth century. The high point of his career appears to have been singing the solo baritone part in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra in Paris under Stanford in January 1906. “The English Concerts in Paris,”
The Musical Times
47 (February 1906): 105.

58. Robert J. Buckley,
Sir Edward Elgar
(London: Jone Lane, 1905), 8.

59. Ibid., 74.

60. Moore's suggestion appears in
Elgar and His Publishers
, 1:111. The obituary for Percy Betts can be found in
The Musical Times
45 (October 1904): 652; that for J. H. G. Baughan can be found in
The Musical Times
69 (February 1928): 173.

Charles Sanford Terry and Elgar's Violin Concerto

TRANSCRIBED AND INTRODUCED BY ALISON I. SHIEL

Since its first performance on November 10, 1910, much scholarly energy has been expended on certain mysterious aspects of Elgar's Violin Concerto in B Minor, op. 61. The significance of the dedication and the five dots that follow—
Aquí está encerrada el alma de
…. (Herein is enshrined the soul of….)—and of Elgar's particular attention to the grammatical correctness of this Spanish quotation, drawn from Lesage's picaresque novel
L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
, has called forth pages of speculation by Elgar biographers. Scholars have subjected the concerto itself to detailed analysis, much of it in terms of the gender of its various themes, the implication being that the melodies are meant to represent some romantic entanglement of Elgar's, past or present. Names of several women have been invoked in these studies, including those of young Elgar's Worcester girlfriend, Helen Weaver, the mature composer's American friend Julia “Pippa” Worthington, and, most persistently, Alice Stuart-Wortley, whom the composer once described as the “stepmother” of the score.
¹

A volume now lodged in the British Library (Add. MS 62000) illuminates the history of the Violin Concerto. The first-proof copy of the full score, given by Elgar to his friend Professor Charles Sanford Terry, is bound with letters from Sir Edward and Lady Elgar to Terry, as well as Terry's own various notes and observations. Together, these documents provide a fresh approach to our understanding of the work.

Charles Sanford Terry (1864–1936), first lecturer and later professor of history at the University of Aberdeen (1898–1930) was the leading Bach scholar of his day in Britain. A pioneering historian, especially in the field of Scottish history, he had the reputation of being a brilliant lecturer, capable of “marshalling intricate masses of detail into lucid and balanced narrative.”
²
Terry applied these formidable skills to his research into the life and music of J. S. Bach. His large number of publications on Bach and the Bach family attest to his industry and scholarly rigor, and several of these studies remain unsurpassed to this day. An able amateur musician—singer, violinist, and conductor, with musical abilities cultivated at both St. Paul's Cathedral and Cambridge—Terry conducted the Aberdeen University Choral and Orchestral Society (1898–1913), and in 1909 founded the first competitive music festival in Scotland.
³
Terry's activities consistently met with marked success.

Terry's regular attendance at festivals and other musical events in England encouraged his varied musical undertakings, and the resulting acquaintances with the musicians he met at such venues were of signal importance, including a close friendship with Elgar. In 1906, at Terry's instigation, Elgar traveled to Aberdeen to receive an honorary doctorate from the university, the first musician to be so honored; Terry's gesture appears to have further deepened the relationship between the two men.
⁴
In 1908 Terry was invited for the first time to be a member of the Elgars' Three Choirs Festival house party. Terry's charm and congeniality (and perhaps his academic status) quickly endeared him to Lady Elgar, and he soon became an “approved” friend. When Terry attended the premiere of
The Music Makers
in Birmingham, Alice Elgar was glad that the professor from Aberdeen was there to take care of her husband; she wrote in her diary on September 16, 1912, “Prof. Terry with him which made A. happy about him.” The diaries also record the many occasions when Terry acted as a companion for both Lady Elgar and her daughter Carice, tactfully taking them off Elgar's hands when the composer was involved with rehearsals and other musical matters. Terry enjoyed an especially warm and friendly relationship with the young, often lonely Carice Elgar, and indeed, was affectionately referred to by Carice as “uncle.” The Elgar diaries reveal the extent to which Terry was to become supporter, defender, mentor, and ally to all three members of the Elgar family.
⁵

By 1910, Terry had become a regular visitor to the Elgar household. He arrived for a visit on Friday, October 7, 1910, the same day that Lady Elgar recorded the arrival of an important parcel in her diary: “Large parcel of proofs. E. very busy.” Over the weekend, Terry helped considerably with the intensive and detailed labor of checking the proofs. Saturday, October 8, was a “Stuffy day. Prof. helping E. with proofs etc … Heavy air and damp,” and the following day, “E. & Prof. comparing parts in score. Much good work.”
⁶
As a token of thanks, Elgar presented Terry with the proof score, sending it to Aberdeen later that month. Writing to Alice Stuart-Wortley on October 11, Terry was enthusiastic:

The
Concerto grows more and more
Dunter
esque!
⁷
It is bound to create an enormous sensation on Nov. 10, and thereafter be acclaimed the compeer of those of Beethoven and Bach. It is a
glorious
work, and
what
a glorious man he is! When I leave Plas Gwyn I always feel like a schoolboy facing the awful blackness of a return to school.
⁸

This letter indicates the extent of Terry's devotion to Elgar and explains the great care he subsequently took in preserving the full score that Elgar had given him out of “his goodness and to my vast pride and pleasure.”
⁹
(Terry was not the only person to receive a gift in connection with the proofs of the concerto: Charles Stuart-Wortley, Alice's husband, and Ivor Atkins also received similar gifts.) With typical foresight, and in a fashion reminiscent of the large scrapbooks he assembled for each of Aberdeen's competitive music festivals, Terry assembled all the materials he had collected in connection with the Violin Concerto: the first-proof full score, his own typewritten comments, concert tickets (including his own and Carice's tickets for the premiere, suggesting that he escorted Carice to the event), photographs, newspaper cuttings, and letters from Sir Edward and Lady Elgar.
¹⁰
These assembled documents were among his treasures.
¹¹

Terry felt moved to record his unique association with the Violin Concerto in a series of informative typewritten sheets that are bound in the British Library volume with the rest of the material. As a friend—but clearly also as a music historian—Terry obviously felt a responsibility “for the benefit of posterity” to “place on record the facts and details” known to him in relation to the concerto. Having been an eyewitness to Elgar's uncertainty when inscribing the dedication on the score, Terry recorded his version of this event in the clearest of terms; but being a discreet person of unswerving loyalty to Elgar, he makes no reference whatever to any private history the dedication may have had, writing only that “there are matters too sacred and too intimate for even the biggest friendship to pry into.” Terry's firm opinion is that it is Elgar's own soul that is enshrined in the work, and he perceives “a particular intimate relation between the Concerto and its creator.”
¹²
In wholly characteristic fashion, Elgar seems to have relished the mystery surrounding the dedication. Writing to his friend Nicholas Kilburn on 5 November 1910, Elgar adds a tantalizing footnote that is unrelated to the rest of the letter:

Aqui está encerrada el alma de… . .
Here, or more emphatically
in here
is enshrined or simply enclosed—
buried is perhaps too definite—
the soul of… ?
The final “de” leaves it indefinite as to sex or rather gender.
Now guess.

In a set of notes dated 11 November 1910, Terry, ever the historian, records in detail his role in the publication of the concerto and reveals the pride he took in his involvement:

The subject of the Concerto had long been in the composer's mind, and I remember his playing the opening theme to me at Mr Schuster's house in Old Queen Street on January 7th, 1909, after conducting a performance of his first Symphony at Queen's Hall, London, that evening. He brought the whole work completed for Violin and Pianoforte to the York Festival in July 1910, and it was played to him, I think for the first time, by Mr W. H. Reed of the London Symphony Orchestra at Plas Gwyn, Hereford, on Tuesday July 26th, 1910. As appears from a letter dated August 5th, 1910, bound herewith, the scoring of the Concerto was completed at Plas Gwyn on that date. Herr Fritz Kreisler accepted in [blank] the composer's invitation to produce the work, and on Friday, September 2nd, 1910, he played the Concerto for the first time to the composer in the Board Room of Messrs Novello at 160 Wardour Street, London. The only other person present was myself, whom the composer had asked to turn over for him the pages of the piano score. During the Gloucester Festival, Kreisler again went through the work at a house in the Close taken for the Festival by Sir Edward and Lady Elgar. After a long rehearsal which lasted through the afternoon and part of the evening of Thursday September 8th, 1910, Elgar inscribed Kreisler's name on the work.

The letters to Terry from Elgar and Lady Elgar in the volume provide fascinating insights into the progress of the Violin Concerto and the circumstances surrounding its creation. Shining through all the letters is the pleasure that Alice and Edward Elgar took in Terry's company; as well as their disappointment when he was unable to be with them on occasions of celebration.

In view of his proud association with the concerto, it is rather surprising that in June 1919 Terry gave away the proof score bound with this precious memorabilia. The recipient of Terry's handsome gift was Sir John Marnoch, a keen amateur musician, professor of surgery at Aberdeen University, and, as such, one of Terry's colleagues. One can only speculate that Terry felt indebted to Marnoch in some way, possibly in relation to his own health. The volume is bound in cream-colored leather with JM from CST June 4 1919” embossed in gold on the cover. In his prefatory letter to Marnoch, Terry expresses the accurate opinion that the volume is “a real historical document” and that “some day it will have to be recorded.”

After Marnoch died in 1932, Terry regained possession of the volume. In 1934 when Fritz Kreisler visited Aberdeen as part of a concert tour of Scotland, he visited the now elderly Terry, and was invited to inscribe the volume—“In kind remembrance of Fritz Kreisler, March 22, 1934”—under a photo of the violinist that Terry had pasted into the book after the first performance of the Violin Concerto in 1910. One can only imagine the shared memories that this reunion brought back for both virtuoso and musicologist, especially since Elgar had died less than a month before Kreisler inscribed Terry's precious volume.