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Edward Elgar 1857–1934

by H. G., W. McN.

Among the reflections evoked by the death of a great creative artist is one that has become stereotyped. It is to the effect that those who lament his passing are not qualified to arrive at a reasoned judgment of his work: being contemporaries, they cannot achieve the detachment that is one of the first requirements of criticism. This does not apply to Elgar, for his last important composition – the ‘Cello Concerto – was produced as long ago as 1919; and with this exception all the works by which, in the main, he is to be judged are over twenty years old. There are apparently no posthumous works to be awaited and taken into consideration. For once in a way we see the whole of a great composer’s output not only published, but widely performed and appreciated, for a considerable period before his death. As a result there is the singular fact that the Elgar article in the latest edition of ‘Grove’ (inevitably out of date already in regard to most modern composers) needs hardly any addition beyond the date ‘February 23, 1934.’ The majority of the musicians in this country have made up their minds about Elgar; their opinion has never been more single-minded or more decisively expressed than in the year 1933; and we see no reason why that opinion should be held up with any diffidence. According to that opinion Elgar is one of the small band of composers for whom the word ‘great’ should be reserved. To relate him more definitely to modern times, he is to be ranked in importance with Debussy, Sibelius, and Strauss. With this deliberation we proceed to an article on Elgar which we have, by choice, not cast in a regular and methodical form. We prefer to take up a few rambling thoughts about Elgar and treat them as they come.

Until the autumn of last year Elgar’s health gave no cause for anxiety. He was hale and active during the celebrations of his seventy-fifth birthday. As late as August it seemed to be no ordeal to him to sit in front of the orchestra at a Promenade concert and conduct his second symphony without a score. Last year, too, there was talk of a third symphony in the making – a proof that he still felt within him the energy for a weighty task of creation and manual labour. These signs of an unconsumed vital force were read with confidence, even with eagerness, by the musical world in Britain, and there were few who doubted that Elgar, with one broad gesture, was about to re-assert his old leadership and take the centre of the stage that he had abandoned for fourteen years. This confidence wavered at the news, in October, that he was seriously ill, still more when it was learnt that an operation was necessary; but it revived at the knowledge that Elgar had come through the ordeal and was back in his home. We can see now how far this optimism grew out of need and desire. It was not only that one grasped at the promise of a new work and of old scenes revived – the days of expectancy, the keyed-up audience, the thrill of the first unfolding of music probably destined to live. Our dependence upon Elgar as a living force was rooted in something deeper than this episode of a symphony promised and withheld. It was a habit that had been impressed upon our musical existence by the vividness of the part Elgar had played in it, a habit that we did not easily prepare to give up. It was still so strong upon us, even after the fourteen years of his silence, that Elgar’s death has brought as much a sense of loss to-day as it would have done twenty years ago. The sense of loss is deeply felt by those whose experience of Elgar’s music grew, work by work, as the music grew, and can remember it and re-live it as a long series of encounters and sudden revelations, each associated with the composer’s living presence and personality.

To the younger musical people of to-day Elgar presented a different figure. They saw in him a being from another world, an anomaly that stirred them to wonder. Such works as ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ had come into their ken as monuments of a past era, an era indivisible in their eyes when the permanent things of music were set up and history was made. Yet in front of them, conducting an orchestra or pictured in the press, was the composer himself, a citizen of 1933. A prodigy of this order inspired respect of a similar order, a respect extending to the border of what is accorded to mortal beings. One of the younger generation has said: ‘This music of Elgar’s was written before I was born. It is classic. When I see him come on to conduct a work I feel that I might just as well see Beethoven come on next.’ Has any other artist put such a notion into people’s heads? Only Thomas Hardy comes to mind as a parallel; but Hardy lived out his last years as a hermit, whereas Elgar was in the eye of the public to the end. Now that the prodigy is gone the world must seem an emptier place to those who so beheld it.

Elgar’s death brings to an end not only the career of a composer, but an age of music. This is no idle anticipation of a future verdict, for it is unquestionable that the age to which Elgar’s music belongs is that of the 19th century, and that with the exception of Delius every living composer of the first rank belongs to a later age. It is not upon Elgar’s position but upon his importance that the future will decide. Meanwhile the present has no hesitation in forming its own opinion, at least in the composer’s own country. The need for this reservation is a factor that cannot be ignored. There are people who look upon it as an awkward factor, their standpoint being that the contrast between the foreign and the British view of Elgar accuses us of chauvinism. But foreign indifference may just as easily be attributed to another prejudice, and one that is known to exist, namely, the old belief that Britain is not musical. This belief has been an obstacle to the entry of E;gar’s works into other countries, and the English character of his music (which we shall consider presently) has been an obstacle to its appreciation where it has been entered. Elgar is, in fact, still a closed book to the generality of foreign musicians, and little authority upon the contents of that book can be conceded to those who have not opened it. While foreign musicians are insensible to Elgar’s magnitude, still more are they unconcerned as to his historical position. For one thing the modern age began on the continent considerably earlier than it did in England, and during the early years of the present century the preceding age had been too definitely closed down and superseded for any composer to claim that he was prolonging its existence. In this country, where the rate of progress had been steadier, Elgar’s music gave a natural extension to the gradually expanding outlook of the previous generation. In the ‘eighties and ‘nineties the chief preoccupation of British musicians had been the music of Wagner, Brahms, Dvorák, Tchaikovsky and all their romantic retinue. The classical ideal was still paramount, and the romantic ideal rising to a climax beside it. Meanwhile Parry had been habituating people’s minds to the novelty of giving serious consideration to music made in England. Debussy was unknown, Strauss no more than a hand on the horizon. The rapid shifting of ground by the measure of which Elgar was soon to be counted as behind the times had as yet made so little impression in Britain that the Elgar of the oratorios appeared to us as one of the most strikingly progressive composers of the day. With ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ he was considered to have brought the atmosphere and harmonic colouring of ‘Parsifal’ into the concert-room – this apart from the new revelation of his own individuality. In ‘The Apostles’ and ‘The Kingdom’ he gave romantic expression and the elasticity of the Wagnerian leit-motif to the oratorio form that Parry had kept alive. In the symphonic works he broadened the structure that Brahms had re-created and Dvorák had enlivened. In his choral writing certain tendencies long visible – tendencies away from the system of Handel and Mendelssohn – found their complete realisation. His orchestration, however personal, was founded on the 19th-century technique. In every broad and essential feature Elgar’s music was a direct extension and individualising of the music that had held sway in this country down to the time of his ripest works. For us, therefore, he prolonged the standing tradition, maintaining it against the hammerings of Strauss, the insidiousness of Debussy, and the provocations of Stravinsky; and he did so not by an appeal to our conservative instincts but by showing what new adventure and discovery lay in the old ways. As late as 1914 it was still possible for the mass of liberal and well-informed opinion in this country to take ‘Falstaff’ rather than ‘The Rite of Spring’ as a model for contemporary art. It cannot be doubted that Elgar’s music, by its strength, weight, and popularity, acted as a bulwark against the too ready influx of modernism, and that the present British school owes much of its steadiness – as compared with what we see going on elsewhere – to Elgar’s example. Elgar was, then, not a composer who kept the classic and romantic age alive into his own time. That he was a master-composer who brought greatness to its ending is an opinion that we in Britain maintain in spite of the indifference of others. We claim to be in a better position to judge. We know the music through and through, and we understand the language in which it is written. No Frenchman, German, or Italian can understand the Englishness of Elgar. Foreigners can only see his music objectively. They may be impressed by its technical merits, its structure and proportion, its urgent moods, and they may concede that as far as these matters go Elgar was a very fine musician. But still the heart of the music has eluded them. We on our part appreciate the measurable properties of Elgar’s music as much as they do, perhaps a little more; what in the end brings us back to Elgar again and again is a property that exists for us alone, a speaking quality to which our ears are attuned and the ears of foreigners are not. It is an intuitive property, and since it is by such properties that music lives or dies, only those who share Elgar’s intuitions are able to form a true judgment of his music. A generation of British musicians has examined this music, dwelt with it, listened to its inner voice, and pronounced upon it; and as far as a contemporary verdict is possible, has delivered one. Elgar’s is great music, and worthily brings a great age to its end.

Beside the English quality in Elgar’s music there is another which we call Elgarian. It cannot, of course, be described, but it is unmistakable, and it is present in varying degrees in nearly the whole of Elgar’s music. Elgar is not peculiar in this respect, even among modern composers. There are, for instance, at least three living British composers whose music as continually proclaims its authorship. We are all familiar with the signs that distinguish Vaughan Williams from Holst and Holst from Bax, and each of them from all other composers. But these signs are more external, and more akin to artifice, than the personal intimations that we get from Elgar. Each of the three composers named declared his character by something that he himself has added to the technique, the vocabulary, and the procedures of music; but when Elgar is most characteristic he seems to cast aside all innovations and neologisms and to go back to ancient simplicities. Over and over again when we hear a fragment that we know at once to be the purest Elgar we find that as far as material goes it might have been thought of half a century earlier. The art of music did not need to wait for the 20th century before conceiving such ideas as these.

(figs 1, 2, 3 not reproduced here)

It is at such moments that the character known as Elgarian makes its deepest appeal. There is an endless charm and endearment in the perpetual discovery that the composer’s inmost secrets require no special language to elucidate them, but come to us framed in a simple everyday wording. Elgar can even engage us with the commonplace. Such a phrase as:

(fig. 4 not reproduced here)

which is banal as it stands, is unimpeachable in its context.

The Elgarian quality can reveal itself in all grades of texture from the simple to the complex. Sometimes it will employ chromatic harmony:

(fig. 5 not reproduced here)

(The descending phrase in the second bar is very Elgarian; and the melodic C natural – not the half-expected C flat – is a momentary gleam of beauty that no other composer could have thought of.) Another characteristic form is the short rhythmic pattern that seems to have been born somewhere in Cockaigne (though not in the Overture):

(fig. 6 not reproduced here)

A famous trick of Elgar’s is the octave leap within in a melody. To anyone who knows the symphonies well, familiar instances will at once come to mind. Sometimes the Elgarian is embodied in a mannerism, such as the syncopations in the seventh and eight bars of the Violin Concerto. Another familiar caprice is the sudden dart into a far-off key and back again; others do this, of course, but not quite in Elgar’s way:

(figs 7, 8 not reproduced here)

Can anyone explain why the single extraneous chord in this passage is pure Elgar?

Then there are the unclassifiable Elgarisms. Below is a familiar one. The agenda, so to speak, is a cadence in F sharp minor, with two half-bars to do it in; see what happens – the very spirit of Elgar suddenly leaping out in a few notes:

(fig. 9 not reproduced here)

One could quote many other guises of the Elgar mode without coming any nearer to a knowledge of its workings. It is one of the most pervasive and characteristic personal modes in the whole of music.

The Elgarian mode may be put down as his unconscious part – for Elgar did not know how or why his best thoughts kept on turning up with this label on them. Allied to it is a set of habits that belong to the more conscious working of his mind. Great and small, they range throughout his composing process from the habit of composing vast sonata forms down to the quiet cymbal stroke, piano, on an off beat. To discuss them in detail would take too many pages of this journal. One, however, we must mention, as it is of particular technical interest to musicians. It is the freedom and activity with which his basses move about, and the way in which their movement is involved in the main idea of the music. There are basses which are mobile because they happen to be carrying the principal tune, others which are plastered on, like third species counterpoint, to music that could get on without them, others which are active because the music is contrapuntal. But the characteristic Elgar bass is of a special nature. One may learn a good deal about it by studying the exposition in the first movement of the Violin Concerto. The bass is on the move practically the whole time, and every leap and stride it makes is vital to the musical idea of the moment. One feels that the whole of the sound is occupied with the sense. It is this that gives so striking an effect of buoyancy to the opening of the concerto, as to many other familiar passages in Elgar’s works. Nothing, except pure Elgarianism, is more characteristic of the composer than this shifting support, and the spontaneity with which the ideas project themselves into this position – a position akin, sometimes, to dancing on a tight-rope. Music of this type demands a higher degree of technical exactness than music of the Wagnerian type, which so frequently sits down on a bass note and flings its arms about in an upper region. Compare, say, the first five minutes of ‘Götterdämmerung’ with the first five minutes of Elgar’s first Symphony, or the ‘Siegfried Idyll’ with the ‘W. N.’ Variation in the ‘Enigma.’ To show that we are comparing textual habits and not degrees of merit, we add: compare the first exposition of Elgar’s Violin Concerto with that magnificent passage, the first exposition of Beethoven’s, and see how greatly the former exceeds the latter in textual interest and in the degree of technical finish necessary to its working.

The temptation to go on quoting favourite bits of Elgar must be resisted, or this article would never end: we must, however, indulge it once more. If asked for the most Elgarian of all Elgarian minutes we should answer, and probably many others who know their Elgar would do the same, with one of those incidental, secondary passages that he inserts, almost surreptitiously, between the essential declaratory parts of the symphonic structure. It is when he stops to whisper something confidentially that he is most himself – his intimates say that this was characteristic of the man among his friends. Our choice is the passage in the Scherzo of the second Symphony that begins with the delicious little tune:

(fig. 10 not reproduced here)

and discusses this and other small matters for 124 bars from fig. 106 to fig. 116. This is the very distillation of E. E. And as for technical finish, it is worth any student’s while to copy it out in full score.

It has become the custom to regard Elgar as the last of the romantics – a view that overlooks some distinguished successors, even in this country. (Was it Bax who recently described himself as ‘an incurable romantic’? Anyway, he is one, fortunately.) With the passing of the anti-romantic phase that followed the war, the label will become even less applicable to Elgar: it will not be needed, in fact, until the art of music as it has existed from Bach till the present day has ceased to be. Nevertheless, there are differences between Elgar and the younger English romantics – differences so obvious that they would not be referred to here but for the fact that they cannot well be left out of any consideration of the present and future appeal of Elgar’s music. Like the rest of the great 19th-century composers, Elgar was a romantic all the time, whereas with the younger of his successors romance appears to be no more than one of several elements whose function is to provide contrast. Some of these element are new. Take, for instance, the deliberate avoidance of emotion on the part of the extremists of what may be called the cerebral school. None of the great composers ever set himself to write purely cerebral music: he may have achieved the result unintentionally (the contrapuntists of every period have of course been specially liable to this sort of lapse), and the result is dryness. Bach went near to anticipating the cerebrationists when he wrote ‘The Art of Fugue,’ but the claims of music were too strong for him, and what might have developed into a colossal exercise became a monumental work in which heart as well as intellect has a place. But the modern cerebral school will pass – is passing, in fact – for the good reason that musicians in general so discovered, without surprise, that dry music is not made less dry by being labelled cerebral. (Humour, both cynical and leg-pulling, has attracted young English composers rather more, but there is less of it than there was ten years ago.) There is no need to cite names; nobody in touch with modern English music can have failed to notice signs of a return to the Elgar and Delius conception of music as the language of romance, emotion, fantasy – all the things, in fact, that only music can express, or can express better than any other medium.

The one difference between Elgar and his successor that will be permanent is in the matter of dissonance. Elgar rarely, if ever, used dissonance for its own sake. There is no lack of asperity in his harmony, but it is never of the ‘wrong note’ type that began to be fashionable before the war and became an obsession afterwards. His use of dissonance seems to have been based on the old-fashioned but still sound principle better expressed by a line in ‘Abt Vogler’ than by any primer. It is too readily assumed that objection to the so-called ‘advanced’ type of contemporary music is on the ground of its dissonance, whereas the complaint is more often concerned with its monotony. Since 1914 the normal ear has been able to stand up to any sort of noise – even the worst that can be produced from musical instruments; but it demands variety even more than it did twenty years ago, and it soon discovered (ahead of composers) that a continuous dissonance may easily become as tiresome a convention as any other overworked fashion. Elgar could be as chromatic as the ‘progressives,’ but he leaves them out of the hunt in his invention of diatonic passages that are still fresh and original after years of familiarity. We have referred to the frequency with which the Elgarian inspiration works in simple language. We are now thinking of longer stretches in which Elgar keeps the interest and the emotion alive without departing from the plain terms of music. The ‘Nimrod’ Variation, for example, achieves its dignity and emotion by simple diatonic harmony. In the exquisite close of the Introduction to ‘The Kingdom’ there are a mere half-dozen accidentals in about fifty bars. The instrumental introduction to the second part of ‘Gerontius’ is another familiar example of the inspired simplicity that belongs rather to the early days of the art than to the present time. It was characteristic of Elgar to remain unaffected by the craze for experiment that began while he was still in his prime. How easy it would have been for one with his consummate technique to take a hand in the not very difficult game, and make a show of being up to date! Instead, when the game was at its height, he produced the ‘Cello Concerto – one of his simplest and most lyrical of all his major works, and now accepted, even by the younger school of critics, as one of the finest. With Elgar, as with Delius, music is primarily the art of beautiful sound. From first to last he wrought with the normal material. He never went ‘folky’ or primitive; even the modes make but little appearance in his music, despite his early ecclesiastical experiences. (But the revival of plainsong was still a long way off, or the tale might have been different.) He once spoke impatiently concerning the use of folk-song as a basis: as composer’s job was to invent, not to borrow and decorate. As for atonality and polytonality, music ought to be in a key, if only in order to be able to leave it for another; why forgo such a means of contrast and balance as tonality? And one key at a time is enough; two are negation, or a mere paper effect. In the matter of counterpoint, his preference was clearly for the type that fitted. He would have agreed with Tovey’s dictum that where there are no rules there are no difficulties. Similarly on orchestration: he demanded no freak instruments, and produced no stunt effects. Material and methods are normal, but used to such splendid issues that even to-day, when some young composers can make Berlioz sound tame, Elgar’s scoring is still in a class by itself, both for its mastery and its individuality. (When will somebody make an exhaustive study of his methods, and so produce an orchestration primer second to none?)

A good deal has been said – not all of it wisely – as to Elgar’s struggle for recognition. But is the lot of a new and genuinely individual composer much easier to-day, even when the gramophone and the wireless set have bridged the gulf between composer and public? It has to be remembered, too, that although the Elgar touch is revealed in almost all the early works, his genius, like that of some other great composers, matured slowly, and his full stature was not shown until he was past his fortieth year, when the ‘Enigma’ Variations (1899) and ‘Gerontius’ (1900) were produced. To-day, when these works and their successors are among the most treasured things in music, it is more easy than honest to blame the public of a half-century ago for failing to recognise a genius that was incipient rather than manifest.

That Elgar was ‘self-taught’ is another fact of the picturesque type that naturally lends itself to over-emphasis. We have used inverted commas for ‘self-taught’, because we question the validity of the term. The point is worth discussion, for there is a tendency in some quarters to cite Elgar as a proof of the futility of academic training, and in others to regard the peculiar circumstances of his musical development as a matter for commiseration.

The technique of composition (without which no music worthy of the name has ever been written) is learned from the study of the best models; and the difference between the so-called self-taught composer and the one who goes to a teacher is that the latter is put in the track of the best models more quickly (and therefore more cheaply, time being money) than the former, who has to hunt for himself. Moreover, the taught student is helped and kept to his path by having his exercises set for him and his course planned by one who is pretty sure to be a more exacting task-master than he himself is likely to be. The plain commonsense of the matter is that the quickest way of acquiring the technique of any job, whether it be cabinet-making or composition, is to work with one who specialises in the teaching of that technique. But it is not the only way, and Elgar has shown that it may not be the best and most thorough. Elgar achieved his masterly technique because of his powers of application, and thanks to a number of factors that have been too little regarded.

In his early days he was in the fortunate position of being able to put his creative essays, both for voices and instruments, to the test of performance. The young Elgar, like the mature Bach and Franck, composed music for the choir of the church with which he was associated; and when scarcely out of his ‘teens he began a five years’ period as bandmaster at the County Asylum, with the double duty of coaching the members of the band individually and composing dance music for their performance. Haydn’s inventiveness and sureness of touch are ascribed largely to the fact that year after year he was writing symphonies that were played at once by the orchestra he himself conducted. The experience of Elgar was analogous, though on a far humbler scale, the compositions being sets of quadrilles and the ‘orchestra’ an unpromising collection of pianoforte, bombardon, euphonium, flute, clarinet, two cornets, two violins, and a double-bass. A good deal was to be learned in making such a force sound well, and results have proved that young Elgar learned it all. Genius thrives on limitations, and much of his unsurpassed skill in orchestration may be ascribed to this early experience, with its practical knowledge of the available instruments and the constant problem of making such slender tonal ends meet. In many ways more was to be learned in this hard school than by the normal course which gives the student a full orchestra to experiment with – on paper. And, as Mr. Basil Maine says in his book,[1] speaking of Elgar’s early choral writing, ‘the inestimable advantage of hearing his essays in terms of actual tone’ was ‘infinitely preferable to having his music blue-pencilled by a theorising professor and condemned to silence.’

Add to such practical experience the post of conductor and accompanist to the Worcester Glee Club, some violin lessons from Pollitzer, a close study of text-books (among them were Mozart’s ‘Succinct Thorough Bass,’ Cherubini’s ‘Counterpoint,’ and Stainer’s ‘Harmony’), familiarity with Beethoven’s Symphonies in pianoforte versions, a more generous amount of operatic listening (thanks to touring companies) than falls to many students to-day, and, not least, the influence of the Three Choirs Festivals, and of the music constantly heard in Worcester Cathedral, and the sum is a curriculum so comprehensive that for a receptive and gifted youth it could hardly be bettered. Only to fanciful and non-musical journalists would such a double training as student and working musician be regarded as a handicap, and its fortunate recipient be compassionately labelled ‘self-taught.’ Let it be granted that only a genius can tread so arduous a path with profit; but the consummate musicianship of Elgar indicates that, given the genius, there is no better schooling. The point is worth emphasising to-day, when the tendency is to underrate the value of hard work in developing both musicianship and the strength of character needed for its full expression.[2]

Something has to be said concerning the charge of vulgarity (a misleading word, but the one commonly used) that is so often brought against Elgar. It is a true bill, and it lies against every great composer, because genius is always full-blooded and profuse. Critics who dislike Elgar’s music have a right to say so, but when they base their dislike on his vulgarity, and cite as instances certain of the early lesser works such as ‘Salut d’Amour’ (a good example of salon music, after all), and the Military Marches, they may fairly be asked why they do not object to the vulgarity of Wagner as exemplified over and over again from ‘Rienzi’ to the Huldigungs March; by Handel in a host of trivial movements; by Mozart in many a superficial page in the pianoforte sonatas – but there is no need to insist on the obvious. Genius is inevitably lavish and therefore unequal; full-blooded, and therefore apt on occasion to offend the truly refined ear. It is only your petit maître who never transgresses in this way: he lacks the great qualities of which it is one of the defects. Moreover, what is often described as vulgarity is no more than the common touch through which genius makes its universal appeal. (It is perhaps a deficiency of this common touch in contemporary music that make one section of the public stick to the more popular of the classics and sends another section to the dance band.) Going back to the specific instances, we wonder whether the intelligentsia who shudder at Elgar’s Military Marches need to be reminded that Schubert also wrote a set just as military and marchy, but somewhat less spirited. (But then Schubert was a German classic and Elgar a Victorian-Edwardian Englishman.) In regard to jingoism, we are not fond of ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ but we find it easy to be tolerant when we remember that Purcell wrote ‘Britons, strike home,’ ‘Come if you dare,’ ‘Fairest Isle,’ and other things which ought to cause the judicious to grieve. (But they don’t somehow.)

As to the charge that Elgar is at times too emotional: did the great classics never slop over? Not one among them invariably observed the narrow boundary that separates sentiment from sentimentality, or that prevents emotion from becoming maudlin and sorrow lachrymose. (Didn’t Beethoven express satisfaction – with a touch of cynicism – when he drew tears? And wasn’t Berlioz, the admired of the intellectuals, overjoyed when a listener fainted during some horrific outburst?) Judge Elgar (like other great composers) by his best, and he comes through the ordeal with flying colours. The figure is apt, because it is just this gallant standard-bearing quality, not without an occasional touch of swagger, that (being a new quality in English music) repelled a minority. Mr. Constant Lambert makes a true observation on this point in the Radio Times of March 9 when he says: ‘Elgar’s music has at times an almost Meyerbeer-like flamboyance. This is, in my opinion, no fault, and even those who dislike it must admit that Elgar has brought back into English music the fire, colour, and passion that have always been attributes of the classic English school.’

It is, in fact, an odd thing that English music had to wait until Elgar for the characteristics that have always distinguished its literature, drama, and pictorial art. And the inequality that is perhaps best exemplified in the Elizabethan drama and in such widely separated story-tellers as Chaucer and Dickens, is one of the evidences of its immense vitality. When someone remarked to Ben Jonson that Shakespeare never blotted a line, Jonson’s reply was a wish that he had blotted a thousand. The wish was ascribed to envy, but it merely showed Jonson’s failure to see in those thousand lines the superfluity that is always present in the output of a genius. It is a commonplace that composers are not good judges of music, least of all their own. Naturally: composers have a full-time and exacting job that leaves little time and energy for anything else in the musical line. They leave criticism to those who can’t compose.

Although the period of Elgar’s acknowledge mastership is brief – a mere thirty-odd years – the popularity of his best works has not been continuous. The neglect of the symphonies, ‘Falstaff,’ and the Violin Concerto, from 1914 until a few years ago, called forth warm protests from his admirers (the Musical Times in 1925 contained a good deal of correspondence on the subject), but Elgar was only one of the modern composers whose larger works were under a temporary cloud at that time. The economic stress in the years immediately following the war was even worse than that of the war period, and the orchestral repertory became somewhat attenuated, with a preference for standard works that made moderate demands in rehearsal and material.

Elgar, however, was alone in suffering from the rebound of his pre-war popularity. Inevitably the music that was so triumphant and expression of the spirit of the Edwardian era lost much of its appeal in the years of disillusionment. Elgar had been hailed – and rightly – as the Composer Laureate. No music could have reflected more nearly the Imperialistic side of Kipling than ‘The Banner of St. George,’ the ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ Coronation and Imperial Marches, the ‘Crown of India’ Masque and the Coronation Ode; and to the harassed public of the early nineteen-twenties, still tightening belts and taxed to the hilt, the symphonies, the Violin Concerto, and ‘Falstaff’ were uncomfortable reminders of the days of ease and plenty. Moreover, the intelligentsia having largely ‘gone communist,’ there was a definite political bias against Elgar’s music – a bias which still lingers, to nobody’s loss but the biased.

Happily, music sheds its political implications almost as readily as its topical allusions. Had Beethoven allowed the original dedication of the ‘Eroica’ to stand, what disturbances there would have been at the time! But who thinks of Napoleon to-day when hearing the symphony? And a few years hence the association of certain works of Elgar’s with the Imperialism of thirty years ago will be no more than a vague memory.

Is the dictum – repeated parrot-like – that ‘Elgar is the greatest composer since Purcell’ due to caution, or to enthusiasm for Purcell? It has cropped up in many of the obituary notices, together with a variant acknowledging Elgar’s superiority to any other British composers ‘since the 18th century’ – which suggests that the England of that period was a nest of singing birds most of whom were rather better than Elgar.

As a genius, Purcell was among the world’s greatest; but he was a thwarted genius. The period of transition in which his lot was cast, and the undeveloped state of instrumental idiom and technique, and his untimely death, were factors that made complete fruition impossible. Composers (strange as it may seem) must be judged by their compositions, not by their genius; else Schubert would replace Bach, and even John Sebastian might be supplanted by Wilhelm Friedemann. Born a couple of centuries later, Purcell would assuredly have been among the world’s first half-dozen; instead, he died with his song half sung, and that mostly in tiny fragments – exquisitely fresh, even today, but only a promise that could never be fulfilled. Elgar may have been less richly endowed, but when one surveys an output that comprises two symphonies and two concertos that are generally admitted to be among the best of modern examples, one of the most abidingly attractive of concert overtures, by far the finest modern essay in the concerto grosso form, a set of orchestral variations without a superior (or perhaps equal), a symphonic poem so richly inventive that it is only now being recognised as the masterpiece it surely is, three oratorios, one of them a good second to ‘The Messiah’ and ‘Elijah’ in its wide appeal, and a host of lesser things, many of rare charm (e.g., the numerous part-songs), one can only ask, ‘Why drag in Purcell?’

We had intended to make no reference to the unhappy episode of 1931, when a protest against Prof. Dent’s judgment of Elgar in Adler’s ‘Handbuch der Musikgeschichte’ was signed by a number of representative English musicians. But we alter our mind because some recent discussions of the matter have obviously been based on imperfect recollection. For example, one writer implies that Prof. Dent gave offence by adversely criticising the ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ side of Elgar; to another writer, the composer’s occasional theatricality was the point at issue. But the protest was on broader grounds, being evoked by the ‘unjust and inadequate treatment of Elgar’ (we quote the document); the summary dismissal of all Elgar’s orchestral works as ‘lively in colour, but pompous in style and of too deliberate a nobility of expression’; the description of the chamber music as ‘dry and academic’; and, above all, by the remark that ‘for English ears Elgar’s music is much too emotional and not free from vulgarity.’ In a word, the protesters objected to a purely personal valuation (to which every critic has a right) being put forward in a continental work of reference as the views of the English musical public. There was no animosity to Prof. Dent in this rejoinder: it was merely a case of the general respect for the Professor having to give way to the warm admiration for the Composer.

It is worth noting, as bearing upon what was said above concerning Elgar and the younger generation, that the eighteen signatories included William Walton, Peter Warlock, E. J. Moeran, Leslie Heward, and John Goss. It is a happy circumstance that the return to popularity of the symphonies and other major works occurred some years before Elgar’s death. The triumph was the greater in that the composer saw his works acclaimed by a new generation. It has been said that Elgar’s music makes no appeal to the youth of to-day. We could adduce plenty of evidence to the contrary, but it will suffice to quote a signed letter that appeared in The Times a few days after Elgar’s death. (The writer is a doctor in a London Hospital):

‘As one of the younger generation, backed by the opinions of many young musical friends, I consider that much of the post-war enthusiasm for Sir Edward Elgar’s music comes from our generation. The audience at the Promenade Concert last autumn which gave Sir Edward Elgar such a tumultuous reception at his last public appearance as conductor was composed very largely of young people. At this time, when so much of the acidity and ugliness of the post-war reaction is still present in modern art and life generally, we who knew not England in its happier days turn to Elgar for his nobility, his sympathy and sincerity, and above all for his essential goodness. For me, his music directly expresses the best of my ideas and ideals.’

This pronouncement agrees with the experience of many older musicians who are in a position to judge of the attitude of youth in this matter; even more significant evidence has been the admiration expressed for Elgar’s works by the younger school of music critics. If the response of youth is somewhat belated, the fact is accounted for by the period of neglect referred to above: the young generation of to-day had to wait for the revival. They are taking to Elgar’s music, amid the dark ways of modernism, as they do to a burst of sunshine in cloudy weather.

Elgar was a man of complete integrity; kindly, generous, and upright. In his own circle he was loved. Outside it he often presented an aspect that deceived people as to his real nature. Though he was gratified by his success he had no taste for the parade that came of it. Since his momentary acquaintances were largely formed during the press of public work and therefore at a time when his nerves were on edge he was widely reputed, among those who knew him but little, to be lacking in geniality, even in courtesy. He was intolerant of toadyism, and especially apt to be testy with people who insisted on talking shop. (Even at the best of times it was difficult to draw him into a discussion about music.) All this awkwardness of manner was a protective armour. Beneath it was a nature ready to glow and expand in its own cherished surroundings and chosen intimacies.

Elgar never took to city life. He was fond of his West Country, of his garden, his dogs (he had four at his last residence), and his library. He was extremely well read, and had knowledge of a number of out-of-the-way subjects. He was an ardent Shakespearian. No single hobby occupied him for life: rather was he a hobbyist, taking up one after another out of curiosity: kite-flying, chemistry, puzzles of all kinds (he could tackle Torquemada), poker-work, and in his last years, carpentry. He was a cyclist, fisherman, and country walker. He could talk freely on country topics. He dressed well, as if out of respect for his military and strangely un-composer-like appearance.

He was not a happy man. His work taxed him body and soul – let the enjoyment that he has given to the world be the measure of what it cost him – and its burden was not lightened by his constant and perverse belief that the hand of the world was against him. Perhaps it was in self-confession that he wrote at the head of one of his works: ‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight.’

Musical Times, April 1934

Notes

1. Elgar: his life and works. By Basil Maine. G. Bell & Sons. [back]

2. A striking piece of evidence on this side of Elgar appeared in an article by Sir Richard Terry in The Radio Times of March 9:

On the question of polyphony he used to embarrass me by his persistent attitude of a listener and a learner. I found out the depth of his knowledge (which I had long suspected) by the merest accident. Hearing that I had lost my volume of Rochlitz, he asked me to accept a copy which he had bought in early youth "to try and get the hang of those old fellows" (as he put it). His notes in the book and across the music showed me that his had been no superficial study. He had noted all that was worth noting about the characteristics (contrapuntal and harmonic) of the old Polyphonists from Dufay and Josquin to Goudimel, Lasso, Palestrina and his school.’ [back]