Edward Elgar, Modernist (review)

Abstract

TWENTIETH-CENTURY STUDIES Edward Elgar, Modernist. J. P. E. Harper-Scott. (Music in 20th Century.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xiii, 255 p. ISBN-10: 0-5218-6200-0; ISBN-13: 978-0-5218-6200-4. $90.00] Illustrations, bibliographical reference, index. In Edward Elgar, Modernist, J. P. E. Harper-Scott advances provocative if questionable thesis that Elgar's music can be best understood through a combination of Schenkerian analysis and philosophy. Harper-Scott thus joins trend of modifying more technical methods of Schenkerian analysis with a more subjective approach to musical meaning. Here, however, seeming incongruity of Heinrich Schenker and Martin Heidegger as well as specificity of Elgar's First Symphony and Falstaff raise questions whether invoking philosophy is a justifiable expansion of Schenkerian theory or just an expedient, and whether claims to broader applications are valid. Schenkerian theory loses not only aesthetics but also syntax of Ursatz, its harmonic-contrapuntal framework, and therefore value of Schenkerian analysis for Elgar's music is debatable. But is precisely these points that make Harper-Scott's book worthwhile reading for Elgarians, Schenkerians, and musicologists in general. Harper-Scott begins by outlining aims of his study and modernist characteristics of Elgar's music. In chapter 2, he discusses problem that Schenkerian analysis poses for Elgar's music, namely that Schenker's Ursatz is based on Beethoven's heroic goal-oriented style. He then reformulates Schenker's Ursatz in relation to Heidegger's Augenblick, which Harper-Scott defines as the moment that changes our perception of ourselves, and that determines future in light of past and present, hence a turning point. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of Elgar's First Symphony that draws on work of James Hepokoski as well as Schenker and Heidegger, and that features immuring and immured tonics of A-flat and D respectively, a static Kopfton, and a single four-movement Ursatz. In chapter 4, Harper-Scott Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff and builds on Hepokoski's premise that symphonic poems must be interpreted through interconnection of text (music) and paratext (non-musical image). The drama of Falstaff, Hal, and Kingship of England plays out through their associated keys of C, E-flat, and E, respectively, which Harper-Scott analyzes through a combination of Schenker's and Hepokoski's methods, especially nonresolving recapitulation deformation and rotational structure. Focusing on Heidegger in chapter 5, Harper-Scott formulates his theory of musical hermeneutics, comparing and contrasting with that of Lawrence Kramer. Harper-Scott's concept of music's mimetic nature derives from quest narrative in literature. Chapter 6 examines a possible existential meaning of temporal unfolding of First Symphony and Falstaff, characterizing as a kind of failed quest narrative which rejects Beethovenian paradigm while-and this is a typically modernist move-ostensibly but disingenuously repeating it (p. 6). Finally, chapter 7 interprets Elgar's modernism as a commentary on man's nature and future. To elaborate on overview above, in Harper-Scott's Heideggerian refinement of Schenker's theory, which is also title of chapter 2, Schenker is essentially no longer Schenker. Harper-Scott asserts, Without acknowledging [the Augenblick], analyst cannot properly account for 'purely musical' parts of work (its grammar and structural logic) (p. 64). For example, in his analysis of First Symphony, By incorporating Augenblick into Schenker's phenomenology, analytical method can be made to accommodate duotonal (and other unorthodox) structures (p. 66). In a sense, Augenblick becomes a substitute for Ursatz, and Harper-Scott discards foundations of Schenker's theory for a more poetic idea and a more subjective analysis. …