by Adams, Byron
EDWARD ELGAR AND HIS WORLD
OTHER PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS VOLUMES PUBLISHED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE BARD MUSIC FESTIVAL
Brahms and His World
edited by Walter Frisch (1990)
Mendelssohn and His World
edited by R. Larry Todd (1991)
Richard Strauss and His World
edited by Bryan Gilliam (1992)
Dvoák and His World
edited by Michael Beckerman (1993)
Schumann and His World
edited by R. Larry Todd (1994)
Bartók and His World
edited by Peter Laki (1995)
Charles Ives and His World
edited by J. Peter Burkholder (1996)
Haydn and His World
edited by Elaine R. Sisman (1997)
Tchaikovsky and His World
edited by Leslie Kearney (1998)
Schoenberg and His World
edited by Walter Frisch (1999)
Beethoven and His World
edited by Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg (2000)
Debussy and His World
edited by Jane F. Fulcher (2001)
Mahler and His World
edited by Karen Painter (2002)
Janáek and His World
edited by Michael Beckerman (2003)
Shostakovich and His World
edited by Laurel E. Fay (2004)
Aaron Copland and His World
edited by Carol J.Oja and Judith Tick (2005)
Franz Liszt and His World
edited by Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley (2006)
Edward Elgar
and His World
EDITED BY BYRON ADAMS
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
For permissions information, see page xi.
Library of Congress Control Number 2007924749
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13445-1 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13446-8 (paperback)
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This publication has been produced by the Bard College Publications Office:
Ginger Shore, Director
Mary Smith, Cover design
Natalie Kelly, Design
Text edited by Paul De Angelis and Erin Clermont
Music typeset by Don Giller
This publication has been underwritten in part by a grant from
Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To the memory of William W. Austin
Scholar, Musician, and Teacher
This, then, is the message, which, knowing no more as I unfolded the scroll of it, what next would be written there, than a blade of grass knows what the form of its fruit shall be, I have been led on year by year to speak, even to this its end.
—John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, June 1877
Contents
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Of Worcester and London: An Introduction
BYRON ADAMS
PART I
WORCESTER
Measure of a Man: Catechizing Elgar’s Catholic Avatars
CHARLES EDWARD MCGUIRE
Elgar the Escapist?
MATTHEW RILEY
Elgar and the Persistence of Memory
BYRON ADAMS
“The Spirit-Stirring Drum”: Elgar and Populism
DANIEL M. GRIMLEY
PART II
DOCUMENTS
Early Reviews of The Apostles in British Periodicals
SELECTED, INTRODUCED, AND ANNOTATED BY AIDAN J. THOMSON
Charles Sanford Terry and Elgar’s Violin Concerto
TRANSCRIBED AND INTRODUCED BY ALISON I. SHIEL
PART III
LONDON
Elgar’s Critical Critics
AIDAN J. THOMSON
Elgar and the Salons: The Significance of a Private Musical World
SOPHIE FULLER
Elgar and the British Raj: Can the Mughals March?
NALINI GHUMAN
Working the Crowd: Elgar, Class, and Reformulations of Popular Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
DEBORAH HECKERT
Elgar’s War Requiem
RACHEL COWGILL
PART IV
SUMMATION
Transcending the Enigmas of Biography: The Cultural Context of Sir Edward Elgar’s Career
LEON BOTSTEIN
Index
Notes on the Contributors
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I must thank Leon Botstein, whose leadership of the Bard Music Festival is masterful; indeed, this series is the direct result of his vision. I am grateful for the support of Irene Zedlacher and indebted to the encouragement proffered by Christopher H. Gibbs. As with all the volumes in this series, the production schedule for Edward Elgar and His World came with inviolable deadlines, and so I must express my gratitude to the fine scholars who have contributed to this volume. All the contributors have been cooperative, alert, erudite, and much to my relief, good-humored. I commend my editorial assistant, Eric N. Peterson, for his alacrity, meticulousness, and willingness to work through the night if necessary. I offer thanks to my student Brennon Bortz, who patiently initiated me into the mysteries of editing at the computer. I am grateful to Lauren Cowdery for her tactful but expert advice. I owe a debt of gratitude to Gary Mick, Brett Banducci, and, especially, Marcus Desmond Harmon, all of whom helped me to correct the proofs. It has been a privilege to work with Paul De Angelis and Natalie Kelly, and with Ginger Shore of the Bard Publications Office, as well as with that paragon of copy editors, Erin Clermont.
Among the many archives consulted by the contributors to this volume, I want especially to acknowledge the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, The Worcester County Records Office, the Faculty of Music Library at Oxford, and the Elgar Birthplace Museum; thanks to other such institutions are scattered throughout. I thank the Academic Senate of the University of California, Riverside, for their practical support of this project, as well as my colleagues and students in the Department of Music who have assisted me in innumerable ways.
Permissions and Credits
Novello & Co. has graciously given permission to reprint musical excerpts from the following works by Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto in E Minor, op. 85; “Chanson de nuit”; The Crown of India, op. 66; The Dream of Gerontius; Falstaff, op. 68; The Music Makers; Nursery Suite; The Sanguine Fan, op. 8; The Spirit of England; Symphony no. 1 in A-flat Major, op. 55; Symphony no. 2 in E-flat Major, op. 63; Variations on an Original Theme, op. 36 (the Enigma Variations).
The following copyright holders have graciously granted permission to reprint or reproduce the following copyrighted material. Acknowledgments for other works may also appear under some of the figures or in the notes.
Ascension. Stained glass window (1887), St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Photo: Jonathan Berg / www.bplphoto.co.uk
The Golden Stairs. 1880, Edward Burne-Jones, © Tate Gallery, London 2007.
Christ in the Wilderness. 1873 (oil on canvas), Ivan Nikoleevich Kramskoy (1837–87). Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, RIA Novostl / The Bri
dgeman Art Library.
Christ in the House of His Parents. 1849–50, Sir John Everett Millais. Photo credit: Tate Gallery, London / AA Resource, NY.
The Elgar Window and the Elgar memorial plaque, Worcester Cathedral, by permission from Worcester Cathedral.
Isabella, Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96) / © Guildhall Art Gallery, city of London / The Bridgeman Art Library.
“The Murder of Nurse Cavell,” from The War Illustrated: A Picture Record of Events by Land, Sea and Air. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.
The P. S. Wings in the O.P. Mirror, Walter Sickert, by permission of the Musée des Beaux Arts, Rouen.
Portrait of Cardinal Newman (1801–90), oil on canvas, Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96) / Private collection / The Bridgeman Art Library.
Vesta Victoria at the Bedford, Walter Sickert, Richard Burrows Collection.
Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, for a grant underwriting the publication of this volume
Of Worcester and London:
An Introduction
BYRON ADAMS
We begin now to see clearly the Elgar dichotomy: the Worcestershire Elgar and the London Elgar, the private Elgar and the public Elgar. The division is apparent in the music. The great works of 1899 and 1900 belong to Worcestershire and to the private Elgar, accordingly they have an authentic ring of truth.
—Percy M. Young, Elgar O.M.: A Study of a Musician, 1955
By all rights, 1912 should have been the crowning year of Edward Elgar’s career, his long progress from provincial obscurity to fame and riches consummated at last. In this year Elgar and his wife, Alice, whose faith in her husband’s genius had been vindicated so spectacularly, moved into Severn House, an elegantly appointed home in London designed by the fashionable architect Norman Shaw. As they took possession on New Year’s Day, Sir Edward and Lady Alice Elgar may have reflected on how far they had come since 1890, when an earlier attempt to gain a foothold in the metropolis met with discouragement. During this uncertain and disappointing period in Kensington, Alice Elgar, who was forty-one and pregnant with her first and only child, had been forced to sell her pearls to make ends meet.1 In the autumn of that unhappy year, Elgar and his family abandoned London, retiring once again into the dull routines of provincial Worcestershire. Some twenty-two years later, their situation took the sting from memories of earlier struggles: the Elgars had arrived, and in a style befitting Britain’s leading composer. As their daughter, Carice, later reminisced, Severn House, grand as it might be, was “by no means everybody’s house as it would only accommodate a small family such as ours, as everything was sacrificed to the long stately corridor and the large music room and annexe, a large dining room and large basement, two large bedrooms and three quite small ones, and two even smaller for the staff.”2
Here a proud Lady Elgar held “at homes” on Saturday afternoons, attracting eminent guests such as Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, and Arthur Nikisch.3 Sir Edward was less sanguine than his wife about the move to London, however. When flighty Dora Penny, portrayed as “Dorabella” in the tenth of the Enigma Variations, first entered Severn House, she enthused to the composer, “You are in clover here.” Elgar replied darkly, “I don’t know about clover—I’ve left that behind at Hereford—but Hereford is too far from London; that’s the trouble.”4
Elgar’s forebodings proved, alas, all too prescient. Severn House, furnished in part through the generosity of wealthy friends such as Edward Speyer and Frank Schuster, was expensive—ruinously so. Projects such as The Crown of India, op. 66 (1912), a sumptuous masque composed by Elgar for Oswald Stoll’s lavish music hall, the Coliseum Theatre, were undertaken in part to provide much needed cash.5 Elgar, who had become accustomed to ecstatic receptions for his compositions, such as occurred with both the First Symphony in 1908 and the Violin Concerto in 1910, was dismayed that his Second Symphony had garnered a much more restrained response from audiences and critics. At the 1911 premiere, he exclaimed in dismay to his friend W. H. Reed, “What is the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs.”6
Under the strain, Elgar’s health, never very robust, began to fray. On May 28, Alice Elgar wrote in her diary, “E. very uneasy about noise in the ear.”7 Elgar was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a mysterious illness of the inner ear that often particularly affects middle-aged men. The composer’s case of this chronic illness seems to have been confined to episodes of vertigo and tinnitus without significant loss of hearing, although hearing loss can, and often does, manifest itself in some sufferers. As Ménière’s disease is made worse by adrenalin release, it is not surprising that Elgar suffered with particular intensity during this worrisome time, and the trauma of the diagnosis itself may have exacerbated matters.8
But all of these problems—finances, illness, changes of musical fashion—paled into insignificance in August of 1914, when the familiar world came crashing down around his and everyone else’s ears. From the windows of the frigid Severn House (virtually impossible to heat due to wartime fuel shortages), the Elgars watched the war intrude into the night skies over London: in her diary entry for September 8, 1915, Alice Elgar noted that she “ran to the window and then fled out to look through other windows … The sky was lit by flying searchlights—part of Zeppelin visible like a gilt box, and star-like shells bursting more or less near it, and the boom of guns sounding!”9 Worn out from composing music to support the war effort, and battered by fluctuating war news as well as by the disruptions to concert life that inevitably brought financial disruptions in their wake, the composer continued to suffer from ill health. Elgar may have experienced a severe episode of vertigo related to Ménière’s disease during a train journey in April 1916, and in March 1918 he had a tonsillectomy, at that time an acutely painful operation for a man of sixty-one.10 In uncertain health and upset by the war, Elgar sought refuge in the countryside, in 1918 renting a very modest cottage in Sussex, “Brinkwells,” literally in the middle of nowhere. Here his creative faculties were renewed, and he completed the Cello Concerto as well as what William W. Austin called “the astonishing trilogy of chamber music.”11
Elgar’s retreat from London to rural Sussex in the face of wartime anguish might at first seem evidence for Percy Young’s construction, expressed in the headnote, which divides the composer into the public poet who lived in metropolitan splendor at Severn House and the private artist alone with his deepest, most authentic thoughts amidst the Malvern Hills. Young’s vision of a bifurcated Elgar remains popular, and similar rhetoric shows up in analyses by commentators such as Frank Howes, who divides the composer into “the Elgar who writes for strings and the Elgar who writes for brass.”12 The work of this protean composer cannot be parsed neatly, however. Elgar was deeply torn about his roots in Worcestershire: between his first unsuccessful 1890 sojourn in London and the success in 1899 of the Variations on an Original Theme, op. 36—the Enigma Variations—he spent a great deal of time in the West Midlands bemoaning his fate as an obscure provincial musician hampered by his status as a tradesman’s son and a Roman Catholic.13 Elgar’s friend and employer Rosa Burley recalled that “he had at this time, and indeed never lost, a marked Worcestershire accent and was not then a young man of any particular distinction, yet he had the habit of speaking of Malvern in the condescending manner of a country gentleman condemned to live in a suburb.”14 In fact, the young Elgar ached to get to London. As an aspiring youth he scrimped and saved enough money to take violin lessons in London from Adolphe Pollitzer, and once in the capital would attend concerts avidly. Until the mid–1920s, he continued to do so whenever he was in London. Without the varied musical venues of the metropolis, from concert halls to the soirees held in the London salons of influential patrons such as Frank Schuster, Elgar could hardly have attained either fame or honors so rapidly after 1899.
More to the point, Elgar’s music simply cannot be divided up neatly into
the extroverted urban and the introspective—and thereby somehow more authentically “English”—rural. Simple geography belies a convenient division into the pastoral or vulgarly imperial, for Elgar wrote his lively, brassy musical love letter to the capital, the Cockaigne Overture, op. 40 (1901, and suggestively subtitled “In London Town”) while residing in Malvern. Indeed, nearly all of Elgar’s public and populist compositions, including all five of the Pomp and Circumstance marches, were composed in the West Midlands, and his anguished and, in spite of the large orchestral and choral forces employed, intimate reaction to the war, The Spirit of England, op. 80 (1915–17), was mainly composed in London. Interestingly, the most nakedly autobiographical and most private of his scores, The Music Makers, op. 69 (1912), was finished in the city. The day that Elgar completed this score, the self-dramatizing composer wrote to his friend Alice Stuart-Wortley: “I sent the last page to the printer … I wandered alone onto the [Hampstead] heath—it was bitterly cold—I wrapped myself in a thick overcoat & sat for two minutes, tears streaming out of my cold eyes and loathed the world.”15
After Elgar’s death in 1934, Vaughan Williams, Howes, and others sought to remold his history closer to their own ideological desires, co-opting Elgar’s posthumous reputation for their own brand of English musical nationalism. In an obituary tribute penned in 1935 for a special memorial issue of Music and Letters, Vaughan Williams eulogized Elgar to suit his own agenda: “He has that peculiar kind of beauty which gives us, his fellow countrymen, a sense of something familiar—the intimate and personal beauty of our own fields and lanes.” Later in the same tribute, Vaughan Williams asserted that Elgar achieved a “bond of unity” with English listeners “not when he is being deliberately ‘popular,’ as in Land of Hope and Glory or Cockaigne, but at those moments when he seems to have retired into the solitude of his own sanctuary.”16 In the same issue of Music and Letters, Howes divided the composer’s oeuvre into private “strings” and public “brass.” Such critics as Howes, faintly embarrassed by Elgarian exuberance, tended to prefer the introspective, pastoral music for “strings,” especially the Introduction and Allegro, op. 47 (1904–5), a work in which the composer comes tantalizingly close to quoting a Welsh folk tune.17 Such efforts to recruit Elgar posthumously into their ranks of the “English Musical Renaissance” were doomed to fail, especially in the face of Elgar’s quite public lack of interest in all of the signifiers that marked (to a greater or lesser degree) renaissance composers such as Vaughan Williams. As Elgar’s friend W. H. Reed has testified, the composer “had no great affection for the Elizabethan composers … He liked Purcell, but would not join in the furore about Tudor music that arose amongst a certain set of young composers … He would not rave about folk-tunes … he held that the business of a composer is to compose, not to copy.”18 Indeed, Elgar once exclaimed forthrightly, “I write the folk songs of this country.”19