Edward Elgar and His World (44 page)

46. Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 47.

47. C. Fred Kenyon, “The Destroyer of Genius,”
Musical Opinion
24 (July 1901): 696. Kenyon wrote under the psuedonym “Gerald Cumberland.”

48. Maclean, “Hubert Parry's Latest Work,” 680.

49. Common Time, “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
26 (April 1903): 522–23. The author noted that the presence on the committee of Henry Hadow, and his closeness to the Royal College clique, raised questions about the committee's professed impartiality.

50. “The Musical Season” in “Comments and Opinions,”
The Musical Standard
65 (18 July 1903): 36.

51. Moore,
Elgar: A Creative Life
, 401; “‘Somewhere Farther North': Echoes of the Morecambe Festival,”
The Musical Times
44 (July 1903): 460.

52. “‘The Sleepy London Press'” in “Comments and Opinions,”
The Musical Standard
65 (4 July 1903): 3.

53. See Hughes and Stradling,
English Musical Renaissance
, 66–74, and Elgar,
A Future for English Music
, 53, 284.

54. Fuller-Maitland,
English Music in the Nineteenth Century
, 185.

55. Maclean, “Gloucester,” 43; and “Hubert Parry's Latest Work,” 679.

56. “There is an oddity at the core of Elgar's music which does not lie in the line of beauty, but consummate skill in figuration and orchestration conceals this.” Charles Maclean, “Music in London,”
Zeitschrift
2, no. 11 (August 1901): 401.

57. Alfred Kalisch, “Musikberichte: Birmingham,”
Zeitschrift
5, no. 3 (December 1903): 132; Herbert Thompson, “The English Autumn Provincial Festivals,”
Zeitschrift
5, no. 4 (January 1904): 176; R. J. Buckley,
Sir Edward Elgar
(London: John Lane, 1904), 80.

58. W. H. Hadow, “Some Tendencies in Modern Music,”
The Edinburgh Review
204, no. 418 (1906): 397. Hadow is not identified as the author of the article in the
Review
itself but is in a review of the article by Charles Maclean in the
Zeitschrift;
see C[harles] M[aclean], “London,” “Notizien,”
Zeitschrift
8, no. 3 (December 1906): 99.

59. Hadow, “Some Tendencies,” 398–99.

60. This allusion has some basis in fact. It was no accident that five “leaders” of the English musical renaissance were highlighted in
English Music:
Fuller-Maitland explicitly compared Parry and his colleagues favorably with the Moguchaya Kuchka (the Mighty Fire), claiming that there was “more stability in their aims” (186); similarly, Hadow saw the development of nationalism in Russian music as “the best of auguries for the further progress and development of our own”; see “Some Tendencies,” 396. The columnist Common Time of
Musical Opinion
argued that Elgar and Bantock were influenced by both Tchaikovsky and Wagner; see “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
25 (December 1901): 190. Similarly, Charles L. Graves identified Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, and Wagner as influences on Elgar's First Symphony; see
Post-Victorian Music with Other Studies and Sketches
(London: Macmillan, 1911), 39.

61. Hadow,
Studies 1
, 325.

62. This idealism prevailed outside the renaissance set, too. Ernest Newman, in his monograph of Elgar's early works,
Elgar
(London: John Lane, 1906), ostentatiously avoids any discussion of nonmusical issues until the final chapter. Elgar's admiration for Hanslick has been noted earlier.

63. Michael Kennedy,
Portrait of Elgar
, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 76.

64. J. H. G. B[aughan], “The Oratorio Musically Considered,” From the Concert Room,
The Musical Standard
68 (18 February 1905): 100–101. The identity of this critic has caused some confusion. Jerrold Northrop Moore claims that J. H. G. B. was Percy Betts of the
Daily News
(a critic whom, like Baughan, Elgar described as a “pig”; see Moore,
Elgar and His Publishers
, 1:111), but this is incorrect: Percy Betts's full name was Thomas Percival Milbourne, and he had died on August 27, 1904. See “Obituary: Mr. Percy Betts,”
The Musical Times
45 (October 1904): 652. Rather, J. H. G. B. was J. H. G. Baughan (d. 1927), who succeeded his brother, the better-known E. A. Baughan, as editor of the
Musical Standard
in 1902, a post he held until June 1913. Baughan wrote regularly for other periodicals, and for the
Daily Mail
. See “Obituary: J. H. G. Baughan,”
The Musical Times
69 (February 1928): 173.

65. J. H. G. B[aughan], “The Elgar Festival,” Some Events of the Week,
The Musical Standard
66 (19 March 1904): 185; “Dr. Elgar's ‘King Olaf,'” Some Events of the Week,
The Musical Standard
66 (30 April 1904): 277.

66. “Ernest Newman on Elgar's ‘The Apostles,'” Comments and Opinions,
The Musical Standard
69 (23 September 1905): 192.

67. Common Time, “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
27 (November 1903): 112.

68. Charles Maclean, London Notes,
Zeitschrift
14, no. 3 (December 1912): 79.

69. Charles Maclean, “International Musical Supplement: Local,”
Zeitschrift
10, no. 3 (December 1908): 64b. This was an editorial that though lacking any authorial attribution would have been written by Maclean. Charles Maclean, “Music in England,”
Zeitschrift
1, no. 1–2 (October–November 1899): 16.

70. Charles Maclean, “Three Recent English Productions,”
Zeitschrift
5, no. 9 (June 1904): 362; London Notes,
Zeitschrift
14, no. 3 (December 1912): 79. The
Crown of India
Suite was “Elgar up to date, discarding early puerilities and uglinesses, and leaning on his own matured individuality.” “London Notes,”
Zeitschrift
13, no. 7 (April 1912): 238. The praise for the First Symphony perhaps reflects that work's apparently more conservative idiom (in comparison with, say,
The Apostles):
“At last. As on a surf-board coast a boat drifts backwards and forwards, then recoils, then suddenly on the crest of a high wave touches land, so with England in this case. In respect of the latest developments of highly charged emotional music her attitude has been indeterminate, baffling. Now at the hands of one of her own veritable sons, not those of an alien or a naturalized person, a work has been produced so absolutely up to date in every sense, of such commanding merit, and of such extraordinary and immediate success, that no one can doubt land has been touched, nay a definite territorial point in music-evolution has been annexed. All honour to Elgar, who has secured this for England.” “International Musical Supplement,” Local section,
Zeitschrift
10, no. 3 (December 1908): 64a–64b. See also Thomson, “Elgar and Chivalry,” 266–67.

71. Maclean considered
Parsifal
to be blasphemous (“It is revolting to Christians, who know of but one Redeemer, to have a second mediaeval one staged”) and claimed that
Tristan
was “a glorification of that which all the rest of the world condemns; an offence against everyone who takes satisfaction in the fact that Aphrodite has no power over Athene goddess of the mind or Hestia goddess and guardian of the hearth.” But on another occasion he praised the music of
Parsifal
for “go[ing] on its majestic course in its own way, following the mood merely of the text, the words being fitted subsequently with consummate art into the stream of sound”. See C[harles] M[aclean], review of Ernest Newman,
Wagner
, “Music of the Masters” Series (London: Wellby, 1904); “Kritische Bücherschau,”
Zeitschrift
6, no. 10 (July 1905): 443; Charles Maclean, “Music and Morals,”
Zeitschrift
8, no. 12 (September 1907): 462; “London Notes,”
Zeitschrift
13, no. 7: 238.

72. Charles Maclean, “‘La Princesse Osra' and ‘Der Wald,'”
Zeitschrift
3, no. 12 (September 1902): 487.

73. Charles Maclean, “London Notes,”
Zeitschrift
15, no. 10–11 (July-August 1914): 295. Maclean advocated using ballad opera—a genre that was lyrical by its very nature—as the basis for developing a contemporary, consciously English operatic tradition. A composer whose work might be a model for this tradition, he suggested, was Mackenzie, as his style was “one of the most national … we have ever possessed” on account of its “fresh melody, complete individuality, and freedom from foreign models.” By “foreign” Maclean almost certainly meant German, since Mackenzie's
Colomba
(1883), about which these remarks were made, owes much to
Carmen
in both its plot (which is based on a scenario by Merimee) and musical language. See Charles Maclean, “Mackenzie's ‘Colomba,'”
Zeitschrift
11, no. 5 (February 1910): 142–45.

74. For a further example of a critic who regarded Elgar's approach to melody as unpatriotic, see George Lowe and Diogenes, “English Music: Two Views,”
Musical Opinion
31 (December 1907): 179–81. According to the pseudonymous Diogenes, “In the place of clear straightforward understandable writing, we find vague heavy most un-English and uninspired phrases loosely and often incoherently strung together. ‘Musical mosaics' never have been and never will be great music; and great music is what we want and what we must have if we are to be a musical nation” (180).

75. Ernest Walker,
A History of Music in England
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 306.

76. Common Time, “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
24 (July 1901): 683.

77. W[alter] B[ernhard], “My Note Book,”
Musical Opinion
32 (February 1909): 245.

78. Charles Maclean, “On Some Tendencies of Form as Shown in the Most Modern Compositions,”
Proceedings of the Musical Association
22 (1895–96): 153–81, 179.

79. C[harles] M[aclean], “London,” “Notizien,”
Zeitschrift
7, no. 5 (February 1906): 204.

80. Maclean described him as the “greatest of living musicians” in “Music and Morals,”
Zeitschrift
8, no. 12: 462. The more liberal Alfred Kalisch described him as “the greatest, if not the only great force in the music of to-day, and destined to have a permanent and prominent place in the history of music.” “Musikberichte,” London section,
Zeitschrift
4, no. 10 (July 1903): 627.

81. “Teutonised France,” in “Comments on Events,”
Musical News
24 (10 January 1903): 30.

82. “Musikberichte,” London section,
Zeitschrift
4, no. 10 (July 1903): 631. Indeed, Maclean follows this quotation with a negative review of the London premiere of
Gerontius
at Westminster Cathedral on June 6, 1903.

83. Quoted in C[harles] M[aclean], “Musikberichte,” London section,
Zeitschrift
6, no. 7 (April 1905): 294. See also “Richard Strauss's Music,” in “Comments on Events,”
Musical News
24 (18 April 1903): 363, for a report of a debate between the decadent poet Arthur Symons (in the
Monthly Review)
and Ernest Newman (in the
Speaker)
regarding the merits of Strauss's orchestral music. Symons had argued that “Strauss has no fundamental musical ideas (ideas, that is, which are great as music apart from their significance to the understanding, their non-musical significance).” Newman defended the German composer.

84. E. A. Baughan, “The Gloucester Festival: The New Works,” 185. A similar point was made by E[dwin] E[vans, Sr.], “Comments and Opinions,” “The Elgar Festival: Second Evening,”
The Musical Standard
66 (19 March 1904): 180.

85. Hadow, “Some Tendencies,” 393–94.

86. Thompson, “The English Autumn Provincial Festivals,” 176.

87. Quoted in “Notes on News,”
Musical Opinion
28 (October 1904): 18; Charles L. Graves, “Elgar's First Symphony” (2 January 1909), chap. 5 in
Post-Victorian Music with Other Studies and Sketches
, 38.

88. Walker,
A History of Music in England
, 306–7.

89. Byron Adams, “Elgar's Later Oratorios,” in
Cambridge Companion to Elgar
, 81–105.

90. Ellis Hanson,
Decadence and Catholicism
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 2–5, quoted in Adams, “Elgar's Later Oratorios,” 85.

91. Common Time, “Musical Gossip of the Month,”
Musical Opinion
27 (November 1903): 112.

92. Charles Maclean, review of Hugo Riemann,
Introduction to Playing from Score
(London: Augener, 1905), “Kritische Bücherschau,”
Zeitschrift
7, no. 7 (April 1906): 296.

93. F. J. Sawyer, “Modern Harmony: Exemplified in the Works of Elgar, Strauss and Debussy,”
Musical Opinion
29 (August 1906): 816–17;
Musical Opinion
30 (October 1906): 26.

94. Newman,
Elgar
, 80–81.

95. Hadow, “Some Tendencies,” 391–92.

96. Hadow,
English Music
, 158–59.

97. Italics added. The importance of “imagined communities” in modern nationalism has been identified by Benedict Anderson; see his
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
, 2nd ed. (London: Verso 1991).

Elgar and the Salons:
The Significance of a Private Musical World

SOPHIE FULLER

The Bank of England has a tradition of embellishing its banknotes with famous British public figures. Those celebrated have included an engineer (George Stephenson), an architect (Christopher Wren), a statesman (the first Duke of Wellington), scientists (Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Michael Faraday), writers (Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare), and social reformers (Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale). In June 1999, the Bank issued a new 20–pound note, replacing Michael Faraday (who had himself replaced William Shakespeare) with its first musician, Edward Elgar.
¹
Elgar is represented from the shoulders up, staring into the distance, in a drawing probably made from a photograph taken sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century. His hair is starting to thin and turn gray but the famous, resplendent moustache is still dark.
²
The rest of the banknote shows a reclining female figure, labeled “St. Cecilia,” resting a portative organ on her lap; a trumpet-playing angel (presumably a reference to
The Dream of Gerontius);
and the west face of Worcester Cathedral, the Three Choirs Festival venue associated with many of Elgar's public triumphs, and also, of course, the cathedral of the town in which he grew up, and close to which he lived for much of his life.