The Elgar "Debate"

Last month we mentioned Hugh Wood’s lively review of a clutch of Elgar titles in the Times Literary Supplement. Wood noted that “the skies have darkened with flocks of celebratory books coming home to roost” but was kind to Diana McVeagh’s Elgar the Music Maker, our own contribution to the flock. His extended piece on the five titles ranged broadly, taking in a spirited defence of Anthony Payne’s reconstruction of Elgar’s Third Symphony and some possibly barbed remarks about New Musicologists along the way.

Since then there has been a frank exchange of views, as they say, on the letters pages of the TLS. Under the heading Elgar and Schenker in the April 4th issue, three correspondents took issue with Mr Wood, one even referring to him as Basil Fawlty. Richard F Taruskin accused him of “insularity, anti-intellectualism, know-it-all complacency, proud ignorance, [and] blimpish spite”. This could not be ignored, of course, and Hugh Wood was allowed to respond to what he saw as Taruskin’s “random, all-purpose, indiscriminate abuse” with an amusing letter in the 18th April issue.

Somewhere amongst the smoke and cordite stands Elgar, as two online correspondents have already pointed out (“Critics can be safely ignored,” offered a gentleman from New Zealand). However, Wood was always going to write an interesting and provocative article, as anyone who has read the recently-published collection of his writings (including some earlier TLS reviews), Staking Out the Territory, will know. This one could run and run…

Drowned in ink

“I wish people would drown themselves in ink and let me alone,” wrote Edward Elgar to his daughter. This is quoted in a lively review by Hugh Wood of several books on Elgar in today’s Times Literary Supplement.

The anniversary year came and went with a couple of special issues in the consumer glossies, some new recordings and a flurry of concerts (although a glance at the events pages of the Elgar Society’s web site reveals a healthy selection at any time). There was no major new biography, but the books mentioned in Wood’s article look at Elgar’s world and his music from a number of different viewpoints. It was satisfying for us to read his conclusion that Diana McVeagh’s Elgar the Music Maker was “one thoroughly good result of this Elgar year.”

“Diana McVeagh has been a devoted Elgarian all her life and her previous book on the composer was written, as already mentioned, more than fifty years ago,” Wood continues. “This is neither a biography nor a technical analysis, but McVeagh has hit on the perfect way of combining the best features of both. No biographical fact appears unless it is directly related to Elgar’s music; no piece is discussed without consideration of its context…There is no superimposition of alien theories or of special interests, and there are no perverse reinterpretations. The last few pages deal with Elgar’s posterity and end with a beautifully balanced study of Elgar’s personality. This is a worthwhile, useful book; and in five years’ time when the other four are forgotten, it will still be bought and read.”

Diana McVeagh at Bard

Diana McVeagh, author of Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music and Elgar the Music Maker, recently attended a rather special Elgar symposium in the United States. Here is her report:

I’m recently back from the USA, where I was attending the Bard Summerscape Festival, Elgar and his World. Bard College lies in 540 acres up the Hudson valley. The first surprise for me was how rural and beautiful it is, only two hours drive north of Manhattan. Bard has run Summerscapes since 1990. Last year the composer was Liszt, next year it will be Prokofiev. Elgar was the first UK composer to be so honoured.

“…and his World" is the important phrase. Here we had two weekends (one more to come, October 26-27) of recitals, concerts, symposiums, introductory talks. The scholar-in-residence, Byron Adams, had devised programmes that were delightful in themselves but also history lessons in sound. Everyone knows that Elgar’s Enigma Variations put English music on the European map ‘at a stroke’. Hearing them after Parry’s Symphonic Variations and Stanford’s Concert Variations, worthy though both are, one understood exactly why Elgar’s genius simply shone out! There was less well-known Elgar, his early Harmony Music, his occasional Crown of India, his late Civic Fanfare. There were cross-references, to Debussy’s Noël des enfants and Faurés La bonne chanson. There were real discoveries (Ethel Smyth’s variations for flute, oboe and piano) and reinforcements of previous high opinions (Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet). There was popular music hall song, and the kind of intimate recital held in the homes of wealthy patrons.

The talks put Elgar in the context of literature, history, the visual arts, gender, imperialism. The performers were less familiar with the music than Londoners would be. Falstaff was note-perfect, but lacked communication. Enigma was played without the associations, traditions, and emotional baggage that we are used to – ‘ Dorabella’ with less tenuto than usual on the first wind semiquaver, ‘Nimrod’ without the Cenotaph, as it were - cleaned-up, uncluttered. I felt I was hearing the work freshly, almost for the first time, more what they would have heard in 1899. Leon Botstein, principal of Bard College and principal conductor, secured one of the most powerful performances of Gerontius I have ever heard.

For me, the Festival was stimulating, exhausting, provocative, enlarging. I have never found greater enthusiasm in any audience. The core comes every year, whoever the composer. I lost count of the people who said to me “When we heard it was to be Elgar, we wondered why. Now we know.” This year, Elgarians came from far and wide. I met people whose names and work I had long been familiar with, made new friends, partied, sat up half the night talking. We UK visitors were royally treated and entertained. Thank you Bard!