Edward Elgar and His World (43 page)

Autres temps, autres moeurs

Elgar's biographers have generally considered the reaction against the composer in the 1920s as evidence of a post-World War I generational and ideological shift. To some extent they are correct, but it is clear that even between 1899 and 1919 (and especially between 1902 and 1908), when Elgar was at his creative and popular peak, there was already a significant body of opinion that was consistently hostile to the composer, and for reasons that reflected a very particular aesthetic standpoint. Dent's notorious condemnation of Elgar's vulgarity is thus as much a continuation of this critical tradition as it is a curt dismissal by the president of the International Society for Contemporary Music of a composer who, by 1930, could be portrayed as a creatively inactive, late-Romantic musical dinosaur; the concerns of his article (vulgarity, emotionalism, brilliant orchestral timbre) are identical to those of Maclean and Fuller-Maitland.

But not to those of the Hadow who in 1931 published
English Music
. The structure of this volume is clearly modeled on Walker's
A History of Music in England:
the Middle Ages provide a preparation to the musical heights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before descending into the “Dark Age” of the eighteenth century, from which emerges the “Dawn and Progress of the English Renascence” and the music of the present day (whose leading exponent, Vaughan Williams, provides the book's introduction). The “Renascence” chapter closes with an assessment of Elgar's career that is far more appreciative than Hadow's
Edinburgh Review
article a quarter of a century earlier.
Gerontius
, a work about which Hadow had previously commented that the orchestration sometimes concealed “an occasional weakness of idea,” receives particular praise; moreover, in writing that “there should have been no question, as there is none now, about the hymn ‘Praise to the Holiest,' or the pathos of the death-scene, or the mystic beauty of the ascent toward the Throne,” Hadow distances himself from Fuller-Maitland, who had raised those very questions. Whereas in 1906 Hadow had written that Elgar and Berlioz possessed “something of … the same wayward brilliance,” in 1931 there was no parity between the two composers. Elgar, though having something of the Frenchman's revolutionary spirit, was “a greater man than Berlioz, greater in sustained power of thought, in elevation of sentiment, in dignity and control of expression.” The
“gaucherie”
of his earlier works had given way to a “serenity of manner” and a “variety of utterance which will be a heritage for all our generations to come.” In short, Hadow concluded, Elgar had “remodelled the musical language of England: he [had] enlarged its style and enriched its vocabulary, and the monument of his work is not only a landmark in our present advance but a beacon of guidance for its future.”
⁹⁶

Thus did one septuagenarian member of the British establishment pay homage to another, in a period when British society was in crisis, threatened both economically (the aftermath of the Wall Street crash) and politically (the rise of socialism at home). How better to ameliorate such a situation than address an imagined national community—“a heritage for all
our
generations to come,” “a landmark in
our
present advance”—in praise of a figure now identified in the public mind with Englishness itself?
⁹⁷
If any proof were needed of the fundamentally historical and contextual nature of reception history, this would be it. But I suspect that Elgar, ever the idealist, might have regarded Hadow's tribute to him as evidence of a “real, lasting educational good”—truth—“gained from the mature slowly-wrought opinion.” Indeed, he might even have considered it a belated “conversion.”

NOTES

1. Edward Elgar,
A Future for English Music and Other Lectures
, ed. Percy M. Young (London: Dobson, 1968), 163, 177, 167.

2. Ibid., 163.

3. Ibid., 183.

4. Lydia Goehr,
The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

5. Carl Dahlhaus,
Foundations in Music History
, trans. J. B. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 151.

6. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 167.

7. Brian Trowell, “Elgar's Use of Literature,” in
Edward Elgar: Music and Literature
, ed. Raymond Monk (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993), 230, 280. Compare Rev. H. R. Haweis's similarly Platonist
Music and Morals
(London: W. H. Allen, 1871), which was sufficiently celebrated to go through twenty editions; see Meirion Hughes,
The English Musical Renaissance and the Press 1850–1914: Watchmen of Music
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 6–8.

8. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 167–73, 207.

9. Ibid., 105; Trowell, “Elgar's Use of Literature,” 254–56. The extent of the “absolute” character of the First Symphony is also debateable; see Aidan J. Thomson, “Elgar and Chivalry,”
19th-Century Music
28, no. 3 (2005): 259–67.

10. Letter to Ernest Newman, 4 November 1908, quoted in Jerrold Northrop Moore,
Edward Elgar: A Creative Life
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 537.

11.
The Strand Magazine
(May 1904): 543–44, quoted in Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life,
339.

12. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 51, 53.

13. Ibid., 187. Fuller-Maitland intended his obituary to act as a rejoinder to the overthe-top (and sometimes inaccurate) articles that followed Sullivan's death in 1900, but his description of these accounts as an example of “Jumboism” was somewhat crass. See J. A. Fuller Maitland [
sic
], “Sir Arthur Sullivan,”
Cornhill Magazine
495 (1901): 300–309.

14.
Musical News
(9 December 1905), quoted in Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 480. In his inaugural lecture, for instance, Elgar criticized British composers who had written rhapsodies (“Could anything be more inconceivably inept. To rhapsodise is one thing Englishmen
cannot
do”). Stanford, the composer of several Irish rhapsodies, was almost certainly his target. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 51, 53.

15. J. A. Fuller-Maitland,
English Music in the Nineteenth Century
(London: Grant Richards, 1902).

16. Meirion Hughes and Robert Stradling,
The English Musical Renaissance 1840–1940: Constructing a National Music
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 41; Hughes,
Watchmen of Music
, 29–38.

17. Hughes,
Watchmen of Music
, 164, 167–68, 172; Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 359.

18. Hughes,
Watchmen of Music
, 181–82; Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 549.

19. Moore, for instance, dismisses Fuller-Maitland as “a notorious reactionary,” ironically only a few lines after he refers, in far less loaded terms, to the even more conservative, but pro-Elgar, Joseph Bennett as an “old stager.” See Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 333.

20. Hughes,
Watchmen of Music
, 55–56.

21. Kalisch was a progressive critic who not only translated the libretti of both
Elektra
and
Der Rosenkavalier
, but “as secretary of the old Concert-goers' Club and chairman of the later Music Club … was able by lectures and demonstrations to introduce a wide public to the new works as they were produced.” See Kalisch's obituary in the
Times
(London), 18 May 1933, 16. Thompson was an enthusiastic Wagnerian, whose one music monograph was titled
Wagner and Wagenseil: A Source of Wagner's Opera “Die Meistersinger”
(London: Oxford University Press, 1927). Both critics befriended Elgar.

22. Vaughan Williams recalled that Parry described the Prelude to
Parsifal
as “mere scene painting,” and that he was “always very insistent on the importance of form as opposed to colour,” and further, that he possessed an “almost moral abhorrence of mere luscious sound.” See Hughes and Stradling,
The English Musical Renaissance
, 31, 26; Jeremy Dibble,
C. Hubert H. Parry: His Life and Music
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 243; and Ralph Vaughan Williams,
National Music and Other Essays
, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 182. For a fuller examination of British attitudes to Wagner in this period, see Anne Dzamba Sessa,
Richard Wagner and the English
(London: Associated University Presses, 1979); and Emma Sutton,
Aubrey Beardsley and British Wagnerism in the 1890s
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

23. H. C. Colles, “Maclean, Charles (Donald),” in
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, 5th ed., ed. Eric Blom (London: Macmillan, 1954), 5:480;
Who's Who on CD-ROM, 1897–1998
. Oxford University Press.

24.
Zeitschrift
1, no. 5 (February 1900): 120. According to Fleischer, the society aimed to be “a federation of the musicians and musical connoisseurs of all countries, for purposes of mutual information on matters of research or on more current matters.” Charles Maclean, “International Musical Society,”
Grove
5th ed., 4:518.

25. My use of Oscar Schmitz's famous denunciation of English music is intentional: as one might expect, given its Leipzig origins, the IMG had more members from Germany than from any other country between 1899 and 1914. German scholarly attitudes to English music at the time are perhaps best summed up by Wilibald Nagel's
Geschichte der Musik in England
(Strasbourg: Trübner, 1894), which ended with the death of Purcell; see also “Two Histories of English Music,”
Zeitschrift
12, no. 3 (December 1910): 72–75.

26. Charles Maclean, “Worcester,” “Notizien,”
Zeitschrift
4, no. 1 (October 1902): 31.

27. My thanks to Julian Rushton for suggesting this argument.

28. W. H. Hadow,
Studies in Modern Music: Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner
(London: Seeley, 1893; hereafter
Studies
1);
Studies in Modern Music: Frederick Chopin, Antonin Dvořák, Johannes Brahms
(London: Seeley, 1895; hereafter
Studies
2);
The Oxford History of Music
, Vol. 5,
The Viennese Period
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904).

29. W. H. Hadow, “British Music: A Report upon the History and Present Prospects of Music in the United Kingdom” (Dunfermline: Carnegie Trustees, 1921);
English Music
(London: Longmans, Green, 1931). The English Heritage series also included “Cricket” by Neville Cardus and “English Humour” by J. B. Priestley.

30. Hughes,
Watchmen of Music
, 37.

31. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 49.

32. Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 85, 259, 438; Jerrold Northrop Moore, ed.,
Elgar and His Publishers: Letters of a Creative Life
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 2:613, 677; Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 51, 53; Jeremy Dibble, “Elgar and his British Contemporaries” in
The Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, ed. Daniel M. Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 20 (Elgar's italics). Jaeger himself was not always uncritical of Parry's work, describing the latter's
Magnificat
privately to Elgar as “poor stuff” (28 February 1898; Moore,
Elgar and His Publishers
, 1:66), and commenting disparagingly of the
Thanksgiving Te Deum
, “[O]h. Parry!! very
MUCH
Parry!!! Toujours Parry!!!! Fiddles sawing all the time!!!!!
DEAR
old Parry!!!!!!” 12 July 1900; Moore,
Elgar and His Publishers
, 1:213.

33. Letter to Jaeger, 9 March 1898, quoted in Moore,
Elgar and His Publishers
, 1:69 (Elgar's italics). Elgar's views on Parry's orchestration would change over time: many years later Elgar took Vaughan Williams to task for his criticism of Parry's scoring in the Symphonic Variations; see Dibble, “Elgar and his British Contemporaries,” in
Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, 23.

34. J. A. Fuller-Maitland,
English Music in the Nineteenth Century
(London: Grant Richards, 1902), 252.

35. Ibid., 201. In addition to the ten pages on Parry, Fuller-Maitland devoted eight to Stanford and five to Mackenzie.

36. J.E.B., “Reviews: English Nineteenth Century Music,”
Musical News
22 (19 April 1902): 378; Common Time, “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
25 (April 1902): 510.

37. “Elgar, Sir Edward,” in J. A. Fuller-Maitland, ed.,
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1904), 1:773–74.

38. Ibid., 774.

39. “Parry, Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Bart,”
Grove
2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907), 3:625.

40. Charles Maclean, “Hubert Parry's Latest Work,”
Zeitschrift
4, no. 12 (September 1903): 676, 678.

41. Ibid.: 678–79.

42. “Parry and Elgar,” “Comments on Events,”
Musical News
25 (26 September 1903): 255.

43. Herbert Thompson, “Gloucester,” “Notizien,”
Zeitschrift
6, no. 1 (October 1904): 41–42. For a similar perspective see also E. A. Baughan, “The Gloucester Festival: The New Works,”
Monthly Musical Record
34 (1904): 185–86.

44. C[harles] M[aclean], “Gloucester,” “Notizien,”
Zeitschrift
6, no. 1 (October 1904): 43.

45. Quoted in Basil Maine,
Elgar: His Life and Works
(London: G. Bell, 1933), 2:278. While Dent's comments seemingly passed unnoticed in the first edition of the
Handbuch
, they caused an outcry when the revised edition was published, even though, as Brian Trowell has pointed out, the two versions of the article were identical; see Trowell, “Elgar's Use of Literature,” 183. An earlier accusation of vulgarity with a particularly Elgarian twist came from Francis Toye in an article entitled “Velgarity” [
sic
] that appeared in
Vanity Fair
shortly after the premiere of the Violin Concerto. Toye drew attention to the “torrents of snobbery, advertisement and flattery that now accompany the production of [Elgar's] every new work,” and warned that “this untroubled enthusiasm is bound to produce a reaction sooner or later, and that the cause of Elgar is best served by a total abstention from ‘velgarity.'” Quoted in Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 594.