Elgar – “Enigma” Variations

During the 1890’s, Elgar began establishing his reputation as a composer in London, primarily with music for chorus and orchestra. Elgar found that adhering to a text offered a certain freedom from a purely musical standpoint, since the text would facilitate the coherence and logic of the piece as a whole. At the same time, a text could also be limiting, since purely instrumental music should have the capability of transcending the boundaries resulting inevitably from a spoken, culture-specific language. Thus Elgar, after having previously composed a variety of instrumental pieces which were rather unsuccessful due to their lack of compelling organization, hit upon the idea of a set of orchestral variations. Each variation would be only a few minutes long, thus alleviating the pressure on the composer to maintain large-scale structural coherence without using a text as a guide. Yet, by exploring a diversity of musical styles throughout the variations, Elgar could pursue a freedom not available with the choral works.

Although the variation set is now known by the title “Enigma,” the greatest unanswered question is exactly what the “puzzle” is supposed to be. In pencil, Elgar wrote the word “enigma” by the theme after having completed composition of the entire work, and he said later that the riddle’s “‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed.”  Each variation is accompanied by initials or a nickname, referring to the acquaintance of Elgar’s whose personality is ostensibly represented. But this provides no mystery: the people in question can be easily identified, and even the anonymous subject of the “Romanza” (Variation XIII) has been established with near certainty.

Causing some consternation among music scholars is Elgar’s comment that “through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played.” This has led some to speculate that the “enigma” theme is itself derived from another melody, perhaps one from a different composition (or even by a different composer). Yet no convincing candidate theme has been offered in support of this theory.  It is also possible that Elgar intended the work to encrypt an autobiographical secret, perhaps by the sequence of the variations, the dramatic and emotional weight assigned to some of them (especially Variation IX, “Nimrod”), or the psychological journey of the piece as a whole.  Whatever the case, Elgar either lost interest in the “enigma” gimmick or decided that the answer was best left unknown, since in his later life he referred to the work only as “my Variations.”  Regardless, the great success of the piece catapulted the composer to widespread renown: he received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge the year after the work was first performed, and he was regarded almost overnight as the finest composer England had yet produced.

The work owes its lasting popularity to its colorful orchestration and its brilliantly defined characters. The variations offer glimpses into Elgar’s relationships with the following people:

  • Theme (Enigma). With both brooding and optimistic elements, the theme sets the stage while leaving plenty of room for development – which is, of course, exactly the idea.
  • I. Carolyn Alice Elgar was the composer’s wife. Shimmering tremolo in the strings and delicate woodwinds indicate Elgar’s admiration for her; toward the end, when the theme is played loudly by the horns and trumpets, it is hard not to sense a certain desperate passion.
  • II. Hew David Stewart-Powell played the piano in chamber music with the composer (who was a violinist). The pecking of notes in the violins not only creates a mysterious musical effect, but also imitates the pianist’s warm-up exercises.
  • III. Richard Baxter Townshend was an author and an amateur actor, and the music captures the spirit of not-always dignified theatricality with “dialogue” between the high and low voices of the orchestra.
  • IV. Elgar considered the country squire, William M. Baker, to be a “gentleman and scholar,” but also a bit excessively energetic, with a propensity to slam doors on his way out of rooms.
  • V. Richard P. Arnold was the son of Elgar’s friend William, a painter and another amateur pianist. Elgar was amused by the way that Richard could seem to be serious but then easily make light remarks, in the same way that the dark sonority of the strings is contradicted by the dancing woodwinds.
  • VI. Isabel Fitton took viola students with Elgar. Although she was never more than an amateur, Elgar evidently viewed her with some respect: the violas are the stars throughout most of this variation, with a melody that, while not especially difficult, is nonetheless quite graceful and charming.
  • VII. Arthur Troyte Griffith was the architect of Elgar’s house. He also attempted to study the piano, but not with great success. The tempestuous rhythm that begins in the timpani and lower strings gives way to bombastic melodies in the winds and furious scales and arpeggios in the violins. The movement ends abruptly, perhaps with a promise to tackle the instrument again at a later date.
  • VIII. Winifred Norbury was another amateur musician, one whom Elgar regarded as especially easy-going. The gently rocking melodic lines throughout help the piece calm down from the chaos of the previous variation. After relaxing all the way down to a single note, held in the violins, the music moves directly into the following variation, the most celebrated of the set.
  • IX. August Jaeger was an office manager at Novello, the company that published much of Elgar’s music (and which still holds the rights to many of his works). The two were also close friends; “Nimrod” was Elgar’s nickname for Jaeger, as “Jäger” is German for “hunter” and Nimrod is a hunter from the Bible. Elgar recalled fondly a conversation the two had had about the profound slow music of Beethoven, and tried to capture both the essence of their friendship and the inspiration of Beethoven in this great and noble variation.
  • X. Dorabella is a character from Mozart’s opera Così Fan Tutte, but it was also Elgar’s nickname for his young acquaintance Dora Penny. Dora had her grace, represented by the ballet-like grace of the variation, but she also had a stutter, to which Elgar alludes with lilting interruptions in the woodwinds.
  • XI. George Robertson Sinclair was the organist at the Hereford Cathedral. The variation captures an incident where Sinclair was out with his bulldog, who slipped on the bank and fell into a river. The careless canine was able to extricate itself, but it made a lot of noise in the process, and the variation features an angry bark at its conclusion.
  • XII. Basil Nevinson was a cellist who played chamber music with Elgar. The cellos are featured prominently in this variation, with a rich, dignified melody that shows off the beauty of the instrument and (presumably) something of Nevinson’s personality.
  • XIII. Historians believe that Elgar’s relationship with Lady Mary Lygon, who had recently left on a cruise to Australia, was only a friendship. Nonetheless, he was sorry to see her leave, and was perhaps inspired by the general idea of a lover departing on a cruise, even if he lacked any such personal experience. In honor of the cruise, a solo clarinet quotes wistfully from Mendelssohn's “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” overture.
  • XIV. “Edu” was Mrs. Elgar’s nickname for her husband, so this variation is the composer’s characterization of himself. Although the triumphant spirit that dominates the finale may be interpreted as an immodest celebration of the composer’s ego, the effect is really one of summation. In particular, a section of Variation I, for Elgar’s wife, returns almost unaltered, and the grand tune from Variation IX (Nimrod) is encored as well. The end of the piece seems to assert that whatever greatness the composer may possess he owes to his relationships with his friends.

 

1996-97 PCO Repertoire