Enigma?

[Lat-Literal]

Clearly the turning point. How about this remarkable coincidence - my daughter's name is Carice! Remarkable!

BBC Radio 4 - What Are The Odds? - Coincidence:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v2x58

I can understand - perhaps - a Texan proposing Ein Feste Burg - but a Catholic from provincial Worcestershire, who's about to start on The Dream of Gerontius? Hmmm...

And that's ignoring the more serious point I've already raised.

Without wishing to push what I have suggested too far, I think the theories based on his Catholicism can dovetail in, so to speak. In a letter to publisher August Jaeger, and with specific reference to his Catholicism, Elgar said of Gerontius, “I’ve written it out of my insidest inside.” Consequently the "in" word is deeply associated with Catholicism in his mind. That is quite serious stuff. The poet John Henry Newman's conversion was, I think, in line with Elgar's mother's conversion to Catholicism or more accurately vice versa. The overtness of Gerontius led to disapproval among some Anglicans as it was bound to do. It needed a lighter counterpoint perhaps. A game. A riddle. Something in another piece which kept a less challenging aspect inside while simultaneously part inviting a wider audience in to facilitate empathy. I would suggest that this counterpoint is Elgar's in-crowd - fun, diverse, harmless but made opaque. It's an "in game" that enables the maintaining of a safer personal separation alongside or following the Gerontius work while being semi-inclusive on a trivial, more artistic level.

[Petrushka]

Elgar made a comment to Dora Penny ('Dorabella') to register surprise that she hadn't worked out the Enigma. Dora was the daughter of the Rev Alfred Penny who became Rector and Rural Dean of Wolverhampton and I have long thought that the Enigma theme may have been a hymn tune which she would have known. Interesting, too, that Variation 11 ('GRS') is G.R. Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral and it has been speculated that, given the organ connection, Bach is possibly quoted. I wonder if Bach's Ein Feste Burg BWV720 is in there somewhere?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The speaker in question has made a great deal of noise about this, and it was interesting at first, but the more he goes into complexities, the less convincing it seems. I've discussed it with him on the Elgar Society Facebook page, but he seems to have such a fixation with having found the answer, that no rational discussion is possible.

He dismisses Auld Lang Syne, by saying the tune doesn't fit, but in truth, it fits almost perfectly. Elgar losing his temper, when Dora Penny suggested it, hardly convinces one otherwise.

[Lat-Literal]

Elgar made a comment to Dora Penny ('Dorabella') to register surprise that she hadn't worked out the Enigma. Dora was the daughter of the Rev Alfred Penny who became Rector and Rural Dean of Wolverhampton and I have long thought that the Enigma theme may have been a hymn tune which she would have known. Interesting, too, that Variation 11 ('GRS') is G.R. Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral and it has been speculated that, given the organ connection, Bach is possibly quoted. I wonder if Bach's Ein Feste Burg BWV720 is in there somewhere?

Sinclair had originally been destined for the Anglican priesthood but in 1900 successfully programmed Verdi's Requiem at the Three Choirs Festival "in a country still suspicious of Roman Catholicism". So there is the same sort of dynamic at play there. He was probably already in that sort of mind in the late 1890s. That doesn't preclude the Lutheran as the dominant juxtaposition in a piece where, frankly, Catholicism isn't at the forefront unlike in The Dream of Gerontius. I'm quite interested here in Troyte Griffith's Toposcope on Worcestershire Beacon. There is some sense in these people of seeking orientation, perhaps with a specific religious aspect, or in an all round connectedness of religion, the land and its peoples.

Elgar said: "The sketches are not ‘portraits’ but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people". William Meath Baker was the only son of Rev. Ralph Bourne Baker. Richard Baxter Townshend was the son of Rev Chambré Corker Townsend. Revs John Keble and John Buckland were in the Arnolds' background. Dora Penney was the daughter of the Rector of Wolverhampton. Lady Mary Lygon's husband, William, had an open association with the high church and Anglo-Catholicism which caused increased perturbation in the Evangelical Council. On Auld Lang Syne, I toyed with this idea in another post earlier this year. I can't remember the context. A part of me wanted to say "yes" and to see it as Elgar redefining as something other than an English composer but nothing in British history obviously seems to support it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The speaker in question has made a great deal of noise about this, and it was interesting at first, but the more he goes into complexities, the less convincing it seems. I've discussed it with him on the Elgar Society Facebook page, but he seems to have such a fixation with having found the answer, that no rational discussion is possible.

Yes - sadly this came across very clearly in the programme; a need to be right, to identify with the composer, to "correct" the injustices of his losing his job and his marital problems. ("This epiphany occurred to me on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn: I don't think that that is a coincidence". "I'm not always very good at listening. I can be stubborn ... and assume that I already know the answers when I really don't". ) His resentment of "career academics" is clear, too - again using this as a way of illustrating his identification with the composer, and therefore overlooking Elgar's brief period as Professor of Music at Birmingham University, and the published lectures he gave during that period - but someone referring to a tune called "Hail! Britannia" and claiming that the "accidentals of that key signature" [g minor] are Bb, Eb, and F#" can be understood as having problems with such "picky-picky" varmints.

(And he can't pronounce "February"!)

Every ten years or so, there's a R4 programme in which someone is given time to demonstrate that they have "solved" the enigma of Enigma - there was a Thread on the BBC messageboards in which (I think) the much-missed Fred Campbell linked to a programme which "settled" a theme in Mozart's Prague Symphony as being Elgar's source (Fred confused matters in that he mentioned the Minuet from that Symphony!). A bit more convincing than this "take the last six notes of a melody (which happens merely to be a scalic passage), turn it upside-down, put it in the minor, and miss out a couple of notes" attempt - even Berg might have suggested that he was going a bit too far with such contrived thinking.

I'm very happy with my own "solution", but won't burden Forumistas with it (it went down like a lead balloon when I mentioned it during that BBC Messageboard discussion). And once such trivialities are out of the way, attention can be turned to the far more fascinating subject of the work itself.

[Bryn]

. . . I'm very happy with my own "solution", but won't burden Forumistas with it (it went down like a lead balloon when I mentioned it during that BBC Messageboard discussion). And once such trivialities are out of the way, attention can be turned to the far more fascinating subject of the work itself.

[Pabmusic]

I wrote 10,000 words on this (the preface to a score published in Germany). Most of it is not about the puzzle, but here are some bits that are (it continues in a second post):

Enigma-Variations)

The Background

On the evening of Friday, 21st October, 1898, Edward Elgar came home from a day's teaching the violin at The Mount, a girls' school in Malvern. He was in one of his characteristic ‘lows’ following the first performance of his cantata Caractacus at Leeds earlier in the month. That work had actually been well received, though not without some criticism, including this double-edged comment from E. A. Baugn of The Westminster Gazette: “…the music as a whole gives one the impression that a second-rate mind has, by some freak of nature, been endowed with a capacity for expressing itself which we do not find in anyone who is not a genius.” But it seemed to reflect a general uncertainty about the position of this ambitious 41-year-old self-taught provincial, who was still flexing his musical muscles. He had already written choral works for the festivals at Worcester and Hanley, as well as Leeds, and had been been commissioned to write something for the 1900 Birmingham Festival, but Novello & Co. told him they would be disposed to consider publishing it if he were to produce a short work suitable for amateur singers. He really wanted to write a symphony, but no one was interested. It was exceedingly frustrating.

On October 20th he wrote to August Jaeger of Novellos: “I'm not happy at all in fact never was more miserable in my life: I don't see that Ive done any good at all: if I write a tune you all say it's commonplace – if I don't you all say it's rot. – well I've written Caractacus, earning thro' it 15s/-d a week while doing it & that's all – now if I will write any easy, small-society choral work for Birmingham, using the fest. as an advt. – your firm will be ‘disposed to consider it’ – but my own natural bent I must choke off. No thank you – no more music for me – at present … I tell you I am sick of it all: why can't I be encouraged to do decent stuff & not hounded into triviality…” The next morning he wrote to the editor of The Musical Times, who had requested details of his future musical plans, that “E.E. having achieved the summit…of his ambition, retires into private life & bids adieu…to a munificent public”. Then he left to teach at the Mount.

[Pabmusic]

And the rest:

Something never done before

Elgar was tired when he returned that evening (he never enjoyed teaching). After dinner, his wife Alice lit him a cigar and he sat at the piano to relax. Alice sat nearby. More than thirty years later he recalled the occasion: “I musingly played on the piano the theme as it now stands. The voice of [my wife] asked with a sound of approval ‘What is that?’ I answered ‘Nothing – but something might be made of it; Powell would have done this…or Nevinson would have looked at it like this…’ [Later] ‘Who is that like?’ The answer was ‘I cannot quite say, but it is exactly like the way [Billy Baker] goes out of the room. You are doing something which I think has never been done before.’ ” Of course, Elgar's memory would have embellished the tale in the intervening years – and he told slightly differing accounts during his lifetime – but all share the same basic features, and all these features are present in the accounts he told the press before even the first performance:

1. After a tiring day …


2. Elgar improvised at the piano;


3. he chanced upon a tune, and …


4. he was interrupted by questions about what it was;


5. he then began a sort of game, challenging the listener to identify mutual friends by the different styles in which he played the tune.

What makes this story so important is what happened later in the tale of the Variations, the statement that the theme is a counterpoint to a well known tune. Important as this statement is, it is not easy to reconcile with a theme improvised in an almost absent-minded way, and which required Alice Elgar's intervention to bring it to the forefront of the composer's mind.

In any event, the idea stuck, for on 24th October the composer wrote again to Jaeger: “Since I've been back [from Leeds and London] I've sketched a set of Variations (orchestry) on an original theme: the Variations have amused me because I've labelled ‘em with the nicknames of my particular friends – you are Nimrod: That is to say I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the ‘party’ – I've liked to imagine the ‘party’ writing the var: him (or her) self & have written what I think they wd. have written – if they were asses enough to compose – it's a quaint idee & the result is amusing to those behind the scenes & won't affect the listener who ‘nose nuffin’. What think you?” The letter ends with one of Elgar's more memorable phrases – “Much love & sunshine to you”. His mood was clearly buoyant and the despair of four days before forgotten. Music was ‘on’ once more.

...

Elgar's letter of October 24th to Jaeger clearly implies that he initially expected the identities of his friends to be kept from the audience (who ‘nose nuffin’). He intended his friends to appreciate what was happening, nonetheless, for although he hid their identities behind initials and pseudonyms, he enjoyed revealing the secrets.

…

Japes and Puzzles

It seems such an easy question to ask: What is the solution to the ‘Enigma’? And yet, before we can even begin to answer, we must establish first what is the question, the ‘Enigma’.

It seems that Elgar never talked of any puzzle beyond the identity of the subjects at the time he was writing the work. The first use of ‘Enigma’ seems to have been when the word was added to the first page of the full score, immediately after the tempo indication and metronome mark. ‘Enigma’ is written there in August Jaeger's hand, clearly not intended as a title (which would surely have been placed higher and more centrally). Interestingly, it is in quotation marks.

Several commentators have questioned why it is there at all, but Jaeger is known to have made a number of corrections following a list supplied by the composer, in early April 1899. This was the first time Jaeger had actually seen the score as it had only just arrived back from Vienna, where Hans Richter had been studying it. Elgar himself came to London on 10th April 1899, intending to check Jaeger's work (“I should like to see an example of your scoring” he said). It is likely that ‘Enigma’ was added at this time, for a draft copy of the programme note for the first performance, mentioning ‘Enigma’, was sent to Elgar on 10th or 11th. That same programme note quotes Elgar and contains the puzzle that has exercised musical minds ever since the first performance: “The ‘Enigma’ I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed …; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’ but is not played. So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas … the chief character is never on the stage.”

From this, it seems there are actually two puzzles: the nature of the ‘Enigma’ itself, and a larger theme which goes ‘though and over’ the whole set, but is not played.

It is not too much to suggest that the ‘Enigma’ relates to the theme itself. The name ‘Enigma’ used on the first page – not as a title – suggests that it probably refers to only the first six bars of the tune, the passage up to the double bar. This would make sense of that double bar – something that is itself puzzling without such an explanation. The ‘dark saying’ is clearly a reference to standard dictionary definitions of ‘Enigma’: “A dark, obscure, or inexplicable saying; a riddle; a statement, the hidden meaning of which is to be discovered or guessed.”

The first six bars thus become a ‘presence’ that recurs throughout the piece, giving unity to the disparate movements. There is no doubt that Elgar equated these bars with himself (the first four notes are even in the rhythm of ‘Edward Elgar’, though this may be coincidence). Not only that, but the Elgar they represent is Elgar when lonely, depressed – or at least feeling sorry for himself. …

…

If the ‘Enigma’ represents the composer himself, what could be the larger theme that ‘goes’ throughout? This, of course, has been the puzzle that has provided extra-musical interest for 110 years. The clear front-runner is that it is a tune, unplayed, for which the ‘Enigma’ provides a counterpoint. Those close to Elgar thought it was a well known tune, and Elgar himself encouraged this. Writing in The Musical Times in October 1900, F G Edwards states “ … the heading ‘Enigma’ is justified by the fact that it is possible to add another phrase, which is quite familiar, above the original theme that he has written. Thereby hangs the Enigma.” The text of that article had been submitted to the composer for approval, so presumably had his imprimatur.

Several commentators have suggested that the larger theme is abstract (‘friendship’ is the most common guess) but there is simply no supporting evidence for this. Others have suggested that the whole thing was an Elgarian hoax, but again there is no supporting evidence, and too much that there was a puzzle to solve.

However, no one has ever identified the larger theme conclusively. Many tunes have been suggested, with Auld Lang Syne and the Dies Irae (surprisingly) being the most popular. (Dies Irae could hardly have been ‘quite familiar’ in Protestant England, even if Elgar was Catholic.)

Auld Lang Syne would be emotionally right – Elgar was at a significant crossroads, and would soon be saying goodbye to the provincial life he was used to. The problem is that no ‘solution’ yet proposed makes a truly convincing counterpoint with the theme, even if one limits the theme to its first six bars. Another candidate is Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (Ah Vous Dirai-je Maman to Mozart and Dohnanyí), but it needs to be played in the minor and can hardly be said to go very well in any event.

It has to be remembered that the work was not planned – at least, if we accept the composer’s story of its genesis. Patrick Turner has suggested a solution that has the ring of truth about it. Elgar was tired; he had been teaching all day and his spirit was ‘down’. He improvised at the piano, but a persistent tune ran through his head – perhaps it was something pupils had been playing that day. Almost absent-mindedly, Elgar improvised an accompaniment that had the feel of a counter-melody to the unplayed tune; this then became the ‘Enigma’ from which the Theme and ultimately the variations evolved. At this early stage, and for a long time afterwards Elgar talked of ‘Variations on an Original Theme’, but ‘Original’ was eventually dropped (possibly after Jaeger's intervention) and Elgar settled for Variations, op.36, as appears on the title page of the full score. When Jaeger first saw the score, he added ‘Enigma’ over the first six bars, with the composer's approval.

Thus the work became a set of variations on a variation of an unplayed theme.

[BBMmk2]

Thank you pabs!

I think it's always good to have a mystery. If you solve it, there would be nothing left?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thank you pabs!

I think it's always good to have a mystery. If you solve it, there would be nothing left?

Which reminds me - I must start an Agatha Christie Thread sometime!

[visualnickmos]

Pabs

What an absolutely fascinating and absorbing read. Thank you for regaling us with your thoughts. I wonder if it will ever be 'solved' for want of a better word.... I kind of hope not.

[ahinton]

If I may be so bold, I have another theory about this which is some ways might seem reflective of the reverse of the Anthony Payne Elgar 3 situation; in that example, Elgar's music was written "after the event", so to speak but in the case that I'm about to describe it was in one sense done "before the event". In another set of variations - this time for piano and orchestra and completed in 1995 by a composer whom I've known all my life - the theme comprises all 12 notes of the chromatic scale (albeit never threated serially) followed by a modal passage that represents Elliott Carter by using the musical letters of his name, 11 of them in all. In the coda to the work, the Elgarian connection finally reveals itself clearly when the first five of those six letters of Carter's surname are shown to be the first five notes of Elgar's Enigma theme transposed up a tone. Incidentally, by what I presume to be coincidence, I attended the Proms première of Adagio Tenebroso, the middle movement of Carter's Symphonia: Sum Fluxæ Pretium Spei as the opening work in a concert the remainder of whose first half was taken up by Elgar's Falstaff.

Now where's me coat? A long walk on the Worcester Beacon seems in order...

[Pabmusic]

Pabs

What an absolutely fascinating and absorbing read. Thank you for regaling us with your thoughts. I wonder if it will ever be 'solved' for want of a better word.... I kind of hope not.

I don't think it ever will, simply because the 'origin' tale (assuming it's true) doesn't allow for a well-thought-out 'counterpoint' solution.

[Pabmusic]

If anyone would like a copy of the full 9,500 words, pleas PM me and we'll sort something.

[EdgeleyRob]

Pabs

What an absolutely fascinating and absorbing read. Thank you for regaling us with your thoughts. I wonder if it will ever be 'solved' for want of a better word.... I kind of hope not.

Thanks from me too Pabs