Elgar Studies. Ed. by J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Julian Rushton.

Abstract

‘Enigma’ is surely the most seductive word in the lexicon of those who write about the life and work of Edward Elgar. The composer himself virtually invited family and friends—as well as critics during his lifetime and biographers after his death—to refer to him as an ‘enigma’. Curiously, the origin of this connection is less clear-cut than it may seem. It was August Jaeger, not the composer, who pencilled the word ‘enigma’ over just the theme in the manuscript of the score of the Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 (1899). Further muddying the waters was Elgar’s declaration to C. A. Barry, who wrote the programme note for the premiere: ‘The Enigma I will not explain—its “dark saying” must be left unguessed’ (quoted by Charles Barry in the programme note for the premiere on 19 June 1899; see Jerrold Northrop Moore, Elgar: A Creative Life (Oxford, 1984), 259). Elgar may not have ‘explained’ the ‘dark saying’, but he returned obsessively to discussions of the ‘Enigma’ for the rest of his life. He encouraged speculation concerning a supposed unheard theme that runs in counterpoint throughout the score. He so identified with the theme of the variations that he occasionally used the opening bars in lieu of his signature, and later elaborated extensively on the ‘friends pictured within’. Far more telling than all of this persiflage is Elgar’s initial offhand report to Jaeger that ‘I have sketched a set of Variations (orkestry) on an original theme … I’ve liked to imagine the “party” writing the var[iation] him (or her) self & have written what I think they w[ou]ld have written’ (Moore, Elgar, 253). If the theme alone is the ‘Enigma’, then all of those diverting descriptions of the idiosyncrasies of the ‘friends pictured within’ are relevant only to the extent that they illumine the ways in which the composer viewed himself, expropriating for his own purposes certain traits of his friends. Put this way, the charm of the conceit becomes a ‘dark saying’, and the Enigma Variations are revealed as an act of inspired narcissism, as what really matters to Elgar is the way his friends see him, not the way he portrays them. All of the hints, false scents, and misleading clues are calculated simultaneously to conceal and reveal, but are also designed to keep attention focused squarely and exclusively on the composer. Needless to say, Elgar’s brilliant stratagem has been a massive success, engaging amateur sleuths, serious scholars, and enchanted listeners for over a century. Furthermore, the enigmas surrounding Enigma enabled Elgar to bask in the reassuring light of constant attention during his lifetime and ensured that he would remain a cynosure after his death—generating an extraordinary degree of posthumous narcissistic gratification, as it were.