Category: Daily Dispatch

Is there a more out-of-fashion composer than Sir Edward Elgar?

For many, Elgar is inseparable from “Pomp and Circumstance.” His ceremonial music conjures visions of Imperial England (and, of course, stateside graduation ceremonies), though anyone with a sensitive ear will detect the melancholy underpinnings of the artist.

Elgar was a soulful composer, whose faith, love of country, love of wife, and love of animals enriched his existence and informed his music. That said, not all was peaches and cream. Of humble origins in a class-conscious society (his fiancée was disinherited for accepting his proposal), a Catholic in an overwhelmingly Protestant nation, and an autodidact who rose to England’s highest musical office (he served as Master of the King’s music for ten years), he was seldom wholly comfortable in his own skin. Haunted by feelings of inadequacy, this perpetual outsider yet managed to become his country’s most celebrated composer.

He was also a grand procrastinator, often getting lost in his experiments as an amateur chemist and shirking his responsibilities in favor of slipping off to the races.

Though he loved his wife devotedly (he wrote little of note after her death in 1920), he was deprived while she lived of the pleasure of the company of dogs, which he adored. A close friend’s bulldog, Dan, became an honorary pet, and as we know from Elgar’s letters and marginalia in his manuscripts, the spirit of Dan infuses a surprising number of his works. (Most famously, an episode in which Dan tumbled into the Thames is immortalized as one of the “Enigma Variations.”)

After the death of his wife, Elgar was able to openly indulge his passion for dogs, even setting places for them at his table. One of these was a cairn terrier named Mina, who was the inspiration for a charming miniature, his very last work:

Hilarious video of the “Enigma” variation inspired by Dan falling into the Thames – here associated with ants, bees, and birds!

Elgar home movies, including footage of Mina and his spaniel Marco

One of my favorite pieces of all time, the “Enigma Variations.” The “Nimrod” variation (beginning around the 11:19 mark) turned up in the movie “Dunkirk” a few years ago, so maybe Elgar isn’t as out-of-fashion as I think.

Jacqueline Du Pré performing Elgar’s masterful Cello Concerto, written in the wake of World War I

Elgar, colorized, conducting his greatest hit. “Land of Hope and Glory,” of course, is the trio section of his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1. A happy coincidence that he was born during graduation season!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3KLDKg9IVA

Happy Birthday, Sir Edward Elgar!