Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36, Enigma  

Composition and Premiere: Elgar conceived the Enigma Variations in October 1898 and finished the score on the following February 10. The premiere took place on June 19, 1899, in St. James’s Hall, London. The first BSO performance was led by Wilhelm Gericke in December 1903. Jean Morel conducted the first Tanglewood performance on July 24, 1954. 

Edward Elgar spent his youth in Worcester, a sleepy cathedral town in western England, living over the family music shop and pursuing his own original studies via the music on its shelves. Except for violin lessons he had no formal training, but already as a child he showed promise. At 16 he began supporting himself as a freelance musician, filling various positions as violinist, conductor, and even bassoonist in a wind quintet, as well as teaching violin. Five years spent as conductor of an “orchestra” made up of staff members of the mental asylum in nearby Powick were invaluable; he composed original music and rescored the classics for whatever instruments were available each week. In 1889 he married Caroline Alice Roberts, a woman convinced of his genius. She encouraged Elgar to compose the great works that she knew he had in him. During the thirty years of their marriage, Elgar became England’s first composer of international stature in two centuries—and after her death, which occurred fourteen years before his own, he was never able to complete another large work. 

Until he was 40 Elgar remained a purely local celebrity. Shortly after the premiere of his cantata Caractacus at the Leeds Festival in October 1898, he sat musing at the piano one day, idly playing a pensive melody that had occurred to him. When his wife asked what it was, he said, “Nothing, but something might be made of it.” He named several of their friends and demonstrated how each might have treated the theme if, as he wrote his publisher later, “they were asses enough to compose.” Encouraged by Alice, Elgar sketched out an entire set of variations on his original theme. After completing the orchestration in February 1899, Elgar sent the score to the well-known conductor Hans Richter. He waited a nervous month before learning that Richter would program the work, and the premiere in London on June 19 was a sensational success. 

The manuscript of the score simply bears the title “Variations for orchestra composed by Edward Elgar, Op. 36.” Over the theme, though, someone has written in pencil the word “Enigma.” The handwriting appears not to be Elgar’s. But he did not object to the word, and in fact his program note implied the presence of a mystery, a “dark saying” that “must be left unguessed.” He added, “through and over the whole set another larger theme ‘goes’ but is not played.” Elgar himself revealed the identity of the “Variations” in a set of notes written in 1913, later published with photographs of each of the individuals. The Theme (Andante) itself goes by stops and starts; it has been pointed out that the first four notes provide a perfect setting, in rhythm and pitch, of the name “Edward Elgar,” who thus writes his signature, so to speak, on the whole work. 

I. (C.A.E.) L’istesso tempo. Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife. II. (H.D.S.-P.) Allegro. Hew David Steuart-Powell, who played piano in a trio with Elgar and Basil Nevinson (the subject of Variation XII). III. (R.B.T.) Allegretto. Richard Baxter Townshend, author of a series of Tenderfoot books (A Tenderfoot in Colorado and A Tenderfoot in New Mexico), as well as a classical scholar and a lovable eccentric. IV. (W.M.B.) Allegro di molto. William Meath Baker, a country squire with a blustery way about him. Elgar depicts his forcible delivery. V. (R.P.A.) Moderato. Richard Penrose Arnold, a son of Matthew Arnold, a self-taught pianist. VI. (Ysobel) Andantino. Isabel Fitton, an amateur viola player, whom Elgar draws into the music by writing a leading part for her instrument. VII. (Troyte) Presto. One of Elgar’s closest friends, Arthur Troyte Griffith, an architect. VIII. (W.N.) Allegretto. Winifred Norbury, a competent pianist, though Elgar commented that the variation was “really suggested by an eighteenth-century house and the gracious personalities of the ladies.” 

IX. (Nimrod) Adagio. August Jaeger (“Jaeger” is German for “hunter,” and Nimrod is the “mighty hunter” of the Old Testament), who worked for Elgar’s publisher, Novello, and often provided enthusiasm and moral support for the composer. This Adagio is the best-known single excerpt from the Variations, noble, poignant, and deeply felt. In England it has become a traditional piece to commemorate the dead. X. Intermezzo (Dorabella) Allegretto. Dora Penny, later Mrs. Richard Powell, who first heard the variations even before Elgar had orchestrated them. XI. (G.R.S.) Allegro di molto. Dr. George R. Sinclair, organist of Hereford Cathedral, though the variation has more to do with his bulldog Dan. Elgar explained that the opening had to do with Dan “falling down the steep bank into the river…paddling upstream to find a landing place…and his rejoicing bark on landing.” XII. (B.G.N.) Andante. Basil G. Nevinson, a fine amateur cellist who performed with Elgar and Steuart-Powell (Var. II) in a trio. XIII. (***) Romanza. Moderato. This variation’s subject has never been identified. XIV. Finale. (E.D.U.) Allegro. Elgar himself. 

The Enigma Variations remains, justifiably, Elgar’s best-known work. In its invention, its range of expression, its play of light and dark between movements and keys, the craftsmanship of its links between movements, its exploiting of the various possibilities of the orchestra, its melodic fertility—in all of these things, the work is quite simply a masterpiece. 

STEVEN LEDBETTER 

Steven Ledbetter, a freelance writer and lecturer on music, was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.