Variation I (C.A.E.)-This is Alice Elgar, whose death in 1920 brought the composer’s creative life to a halt for twelve years until he began work on his Third Symphony toward the end of 1932. Theme-This is a simple three-part design, something you could represent as A-B-A, and, in the words of Elgar’s biographer Diana McVeagh, “as productive as a goldmine.” Elgar wrote descriptive notes for the variations unattributed quotations in what follows come from those notes. Probably only Alice Elgar and the composer’s friend August Jaeger knew the secret of the unplayed larger theme-if, indeed, there was a secret. As for the other, Elgar wrote, “The enigma I will not explain-its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played-so the principal Theme never appears.” The first of these was easy, each friend save one being identified by initials or a nickname. THE MUSIC Elgar presented two mysteries, the identity of the “friends pictured within” and something darker at which he hinted in his program note. The Variations proved a landmark, not just for Elgar, but for English music. A famed interpreter of both Wagner and Brahms, he had been active and adored in England since the late 1870s.
When he finished the Variations, he sent the score to the great German conductor Hans Richter, who agreed to introduce the work in London. He was in his forties and still had to scrape together a living with long hours of teaching and hackwork for his publisher. “Commenced in a spirit of humor & continued in deep seriousness,” is how Elgar later described the genesis of the work that would make all the difference in his life. Surely,” she added, “you are doing something that has never been done before.” Powell would have done this, or Nevinson would have looked at it like this.” He played some more and asked, “Who is that like?” “I cannot say,” Alice Elgar replied, “but it is exactly the way Billy Baker goes out of the room. “Nothing,” he replied, “but something might be made of it. One theme in particular struck his wife’s fancy, and she asked what it was. THE BACKSTORY On an October evening in 1898, Edward Elgar, tired from a day’s teaching, lit a cigar and began to improvise at the piano. INSTRUMENTATION: 2 flutes (second doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, organ ad libitum, and strings Hans Richter conducted at Saint James's Hall, London, England Enigma, Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36īORN: June 2, 1857.
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