Edward Elgar wearing the Order of Merit insignia
"For my part, I expected nothing from any English composer... But when I heard the Variations (which had not attracted me to the concert) I sat up and said `Whew!' I knew we had got it at last."
Thus wrote George Bernard Shaw, referring to Edward Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme ("Enigma"), Opus 36. The Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Philharmonic will perform the Variations, as well as Dvorak's Symphony No 9 ("From the New World"), under the direction of its principal conductor, Yuri Temirkanov (June 25).
Others besides Shaw considered Elgar's Variations the most distinguished British orchestral music to that date. And yet the piece began very modestly, as a private joke.
Elgar had tinkered the theme into the shape he wished, and was playing it at the piano, at which point (as he wrote): "The voice [of Alice, Elgar's wife] asked with a sound of approval, `What's that?' I answered, `Nothing -- but something might be made of it; Powell [a pianist of Elgar's recent acquaintance] would have done this (variation 2) or Nevinson [a cellist] would have looked at it like this (variation 12).'"
Thus Elgar did not merely compose 14 abstract variations on his theme, but in each case reinterpreted the theme so as to mirror a personality known to him.
"I have in the Variations sketched `portraits' of my friends -- a new idea, I think ... I don't know if 'tis too `intimate' an idea for print. It's distinctly amusing."
The "enigma" of the piece is threefold. First, "enigma" refers to the theme itself; Elgar added the word in pencil to the manuscript. Second, there is the riddle of which friend (or Elgar and his wife Alice, who are accorded a variation each) is depicted where, but this riddle was solved soon after the first performances. The third is a musical conundrum which has baffled musicians to this day, a tantalizing clue which Elgar threw out in the program note for the premiere on June 19, 1899.
"The Enigma I will not explain -- its `dark saying' [the literal translation of the Greek "ainigma"] must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme `goes,' but is not played... So the principle Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas -- eg Maeterlinck's `L'intruse' and `Les sept princesses' -- the chief character is never on the stage."
At first, it seemed that Elgar wanted someone to guess the secret, but as the years passed, he came to avoid the subject. At the end of the score, an inscription from Tasso reads: "Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio": I long for much, hope for little, ask nothing.