Elgar

From the Romantic era onwards music has been seen as the most quintessentially temporal art, possessing a unique capacity to invoke the human experience of time.  Through its play of themes and recurrence of events music has the ability to stylise in multiple ways our temporal relation to the world, with far-reaching implications for modern conceptions of memory, subjectivity, personal and collective identity, and history.  Time, as philosophers, scientists and writers have found throughout history, is notoriously hard to define.  Yet music, seemingly bound up so intimately with the nature of time, might well be understood as disclosing aspects of human temporality unavailable to other modes of inquiry, and accordingly was frequently granted a privileged position in nineteenth-century thought.  For if this age understood time, it was through a melody.
  This book examines the multiple ways in which music may provide insight into the problematics of human time.  Whether in the purported timelessness of Beethoven’s late works or the nostalgic impulses of Schubert’s music, in the use of music by philosophers as a means to explicate the aporias of temporal existence or as medium suggestive of the varying possible structures of time, as a reflection of a particular culture’s sense of historical progress or the expression of the intangible spirit behind the course of human history, each of the book’s chapters explores a specific theme in the philosophy of time as expressed through music.  They chart the development across the course of the nineteenth century of music’s capacity to convey the manifold nuances of time, revealing how music would finally become seen as the ideal instantiation of time and human existence itself.  At once historical, analytical, critical, and ultimately hermeneutic, it provides both fresh insight into many familiar nineteenth-century pieces and a rich theoretical basis for future research.

Edward Elgar’s The Apostles (1903) stands apart from the oratorio genre in its presentation of the mission of Christ viewed primarily through the eyes of Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot, two relatively minor characters who are given few words of their own in the bible. The title of the oratorio itself is belied by featuring a woman who was not one of “The Twelve” and a man who was the one apostle to defect from the rest. There may be biographical resonances in Elgar’s highly unusual choice to make these two ‘outsiders’ the main subject of an oratorio ostensibly concerned with the life of Christ and his inner circle of disciples.  Many biographers have suggested that Elgar perceived his own origins as a working-class Catholic outside the more aristocratic Anglican cultural environment he needed to impress as a composer. Some of his letters and quoted remarks also suggest that he struggled with his own faith more than it may have seemed from his public persona.
 
Elgar’s distinctive use of Wagnerian leitmotif technique permeates the expansive form of the work, resulting in an exceptional example of the late Romantic juxtaposition of the cosmic and the personal in a multi-layered texture. Though The Apostles has been widely recognized as one of Elgar’s most important works, it has rarely been performed in the United States.  While its inspired prologue is still sung as an anthem in some churches (a choral setting of Luke 4:18, where Jesus quotes Isaiah to proclaim his mission to the poor) the remainder of the work is seldom heard in American concert halls or churches.

During his lifetime, and in the course of the twentieth century, Edward Elgar and his music became sites for a remarkable variety of nostalgic impulses. These are manifested in his personal life, in the content of his works, in his critical and biographical reception, and in numerous artistic ventures based on his character and music. Today Elgar enjoys renewed popularity in Britain, and nostalgia of various forms continues to shape our responses to his music. From one viewpoint, Elgarian nostalgia might be dismissed as escapist, regressive and reactionary, and the revival in Elgar's fortunes regarded as the symptom of a pernicious 'heritage industry' in post-colonial, post-industrial Britain. While there is undeniably a grain of truth to that view, Matthew Riley's careful treatment of the topic reveals a more complex picture of nostalgia, and sheds light on Elgar and his cultural significance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Elgar’s tenure as a University Professor between 1905 and 1908 is mainly remembered for its brevity and public controversy, especially as regards his uncompromising verdicts on various aspects of musical culture in Britain. By contrast, the analyses he offered of specific pieces of music have not been well digested. This is partly because records of the two lectures in which he took the latter approach are sparse: Elgar did not use a full script for either (and as a lecturer was much the better for it, according to some observers). For the lecture on Brahms’s Third Symphony the absence of sources is a severe impediment to reconstructing exactly what Elgar said, but the one on Mozart’s Fortieth can be pieced together. A miniature score of the symphony survives on which Elgar made many pencilled comments and markings as aides-mémoire for the lecture. Furthermore, the conceptual background to the analysis can be uncovered. It was in part an illustration of points made in the previous week’s lecture (‘Orchestration’), and in part a demonstration of the aesthetic doctrine of the Victorian artist and critic Charles Eastlake (‘consistency of convention’). This paper picks a way through the apparently disorganised and miscellaneous notes for the lecture by means of a mixture of analysis, inference and speculation. It argues that some kind of order lies behind them, and that the lecture provides a number of insights into Elgar’s musical attitudes and aesthetics.

Im Spätherbst 1898 sitzt der englische Kom- ponist Edward Elgar im Wohnzimmer am Klavier und improvisiert. Seine Frau Alice hört zu und bemerkt: „Edward, diese Melodie, die du gerade spielst, gefällt mir! Was ist das?“ Elgar schaut sei- ne Frau an und überlegt einen Moment. „Es ist über dich ... Es kann noch etwas ganz anderes daraus werden. Ein großes musikalisches Rätsel über mich und meine Freunde ....“
Ob die Enigma-Variationen wirklich so entstan- den sind, ist unbekannt. Sicher ist allerdings, dass Elgar ein paar Monate später in seiner handschriftlichen Partitur vermerkt: „Enigma“ – das griechische Wort für „Rätsel“. In Elgars Varia- tionen über ein eigenes Thema finden sich zwei Rätsel! Zum einen sind die Titel der einzelnen Stücke sonderbar: Was bedeuten die Abkürzungen „CAE“ oder „HDS-P“? Zum anderen behauptete Elgar, dass es ein weiteres Thema gibt, das aber niemals gespielt wird. Edward Elgars musikalische Geheimnisse. Die Enigma-Variationen als Szenisches Spiel im Musikunterricht, in: Musik und Bildung 4/2010, S. 24-29

One of the more serious charges that can be brought against Elgar is that his art was escapist. Today, in our post-Freudian age, it is common to associate the notion of escape with regression. In this view, to be an escapist means not just to evade adult responsibilities, but to suffer from a psychological disorder in which libido is arrested at an infantile stage of development (the “oral” phase). Furthermore, on a cultural level it could be alleged that escapist impulses are easily manipulated (and perhaps originally induced) by commercial or political forces that seek to cement their power and to dilute popular resistance. But there is another possible perspective. A long tradition of English radicalism links dream, escape and protest. In this light, a re-examination of Elgar’s escapist impulses seems feasible.

Liner notes for the Avie Records recording of Donald Fraser's orchestration of the Elgar Piano Quintet in A minor for symphony orchestra and his arrangement of Elgar's song cycle "Sea Pictures" for SATB chorus and Strings. Released as AV2362 in 2016
Performers
English Symphony Orchestra
English Chamber Orchestra
Rodolfus Chamber Choir
Kenneth Woods - conductor

In the last quarter of the 19th century, the London music establishment made frantic attempts to put British music back on the world map. However, this project, which coined itself 'English Musical Renaissance' (EMR), did not sufficiently succeed in freeing Britain from its self-image of being a 'nation without music'. Things took a turn for the worse when this self-criticism found an echo in a German socio-cultural travelogue. Consequently, to this day, Britain still has to deal with the sobriquet 'Land ohne Musik'. Historiography of British music in general and of the EMR in particular is what one might call 'autohistoriographical' in nature: exclusively British matters are described by British (music) historians for a distinctly British readership. Its historical objectivity is therefore problematically thwarted by the subjectivity of self-designation. Hence the motto I borrowed from Allan Megill: "when identity is problematized, memory is valorized". This study, primarily conceived for the non-British, Dutch-speaking reader, provides a commented overview of most of these sources and a critical review of the five major EMR-narratives. It ends with a caveat on the most recent one, which. It is just about the only one consulted on the continent, while it is controversial and provocative to the extent that it cannot be fully understood and appreciated without a sufficient knowledge of the underlying facts and the other historical works on the subject.

An article (in Turkish) about Sir Edward Elgar's trip to Turkey in 1905 and the diary he kept during his travels.

İstanbul’da bir Oxford olduğunu Sir Edward Elgar’dan öğrendim desem, inanır mıydınız? Elgar’ın doğduğu, Worcester şehrine yakın, Lower Broadheath Köyü’ndeki müze evini bundan bir buçuk sene önce ziyaret etmiş ve intibalarımı “Maskenin Arkasındaki Adam: Edward Elgar” başlıklı yazımda, Andante’nin Aralık 2010 sayısında kaleme almıştım. Ancak, o zaman Elgar’la başlayan bu dostluğun, kendi ülkeme dair bana ufak tefek daha çok nükteler öğreteceğinden habersizdim; maskenin arkasındaki o adam meğer daha ne çok gizemi maneviyatında saklıyormuş… Elgar’ın İstanbul günlüğünden bahsediyorum. Evet, Sir Edward Elgar’ın 1905’te İstanbul’a geldiğinde gözlemlerini not aldığı ve Türk müzik tarihinde hiç bilinmeyen, el yazması orijinali Birmingham Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi’nde bulunan o çok tarihi, kısa anı defterinden. Ve haliyle, Andante’nin satırlarında sizlerle ilk defa bu defterin içeriğini detaylıca paylaşmanın heyecanını duyuyorum.

British music and musical life before the Great War have been relatively neglected in discussions of the idea of the 'modern' in the early twentieth century. This collection of almost 300 letters, written by Granville Bantock (1868-1946) to the Scottish composer William Wallace (1860-1940) and the music critic Ernest Newman (1868-1959) places Bantock and his circle at the heart of this debate. The letters highlight Bantock's and Wallace's development of the modern British symphonic poem, their contribution (with Newman) to music criticism and journalism, and their attempts to promote a young generation of British composers - revealing an early frustration with the musical establishment. Confirming the impact of visits to Britain by Richard Strauss and Sibelius, Bantock offers opinions on a range of composers active around the turn of the twentieth century, identifying Elgar and Delius as the future for English music. Along with references to conductors, entertainers and contemporary writers (Maeterlinck, Conrad), there are fascinating details of the musical culture of London, Liverpool and Birmingham - including programming strategies at the Tower, New Brighton, and abortive plans to relaunch the New Quarterly Musical Review. Fully annotated, the letters provide a fascinating window into British music and musical life in the early twentieth century and the 'dawn' of musical modernism.

An article (in Turkish) about a visit to Elgar's birthplace house in Lower Broadheath.

Emre Aracı, çocukken BBC’ye mektup yazıp bir eserinin radyoda çalınmasını isteyecek kadar çok sevdiği İngiliz besteci Edward Elgar’ın doğduğu evi geçtiğimiz günlerde - içinden bir sese uyarak - ziyaret etti. Yazarımızın, Londra’ya 185 kilometre mesafede Worcester şehri yakınlarındaki Lower Broadheath köyünde bulunan Elgar Müze Evi’ne yaptığı günübirlik ziyaretinin perde arkası, her zamanki gibi zengin ayrınılarla yüklü…

The most interesting recent developments in formal function theory have tested its application on nineteenth-century repertory. Hitherto, however, functional analysis has touched only lightly on the post-Wagnerian symphonic repertory of the decades around 1900. When music analysis addresses this repertory today, it is usually by means of the approaches that have become ‘Sonata Theory’. Functional analysis brings different insights, switching the focus to syntax and local formal process. The third-movement ‘Rondo’ from Elgar’s Second Symphony (1911) exemplifies the progressive Romantic repertory in its challenges to analysis. While functional analysis can illuminate the syntax and formal processes of this music, it must be applied with an ear to shifting and overlapping functional meanings. The Rondo manifests parallel ambiguities at the levels of paratext and genre. The syntactic continuity and instability foregrounded by functional analysis resonate directly with the movement’s thematisation of the demonic and the uncanny through paratext, topic, cyclic reminiscence and generic ambiguity. This article uses the concepts of functional theory to open and discuss questions of genre and compositional process and to reframe the Rondo’s programmatic themes from an analytically informed perspective.

The theme of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s The Dream of Gerontius is the Roman Catholic theology of death and the redemption of a sinner. It is a respectable piece of writing in poetical language, numerously reprinted and translated in French and German. It formed the basis of Edward Elgar’s libretto and music bearing the same title as Newman’s work. The scope of this article is to explore the relationship of Elgar’s to Newman’s vision as interpreted in his libretto and choral composition. The article concludes by placing Newman’s work in the context of the history of musicology.