A version with floating wordless soprano solo (and very slowed-down) was used in the soundtrack to the 1998 British biographical drama film Elizabeth (which angered the Elgar estate at the time) and you can hear an adaptation of it at the end of the 2017 film Dunkirk. ‘Nimrod’ has regularly been performed at Whitehall in London at the National Service of Remembrance. Like any music of a personal nature, it means different things to different people, but its nobleness has made it perfect for use on solemn occasions. It is perhaps the variation closest to the theme itself. Not surprisingly, Elgar himself used ‘Nimrod’ in other works, notably and memorably in his vastly underrated and underperformed oratorio The Music Makers (another autobiographical work where the composer brings back themes from many of his previous compositions). Here, Elgar quotes beautifully from Mendelssohn’s Overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage – and perhaps a phrase from the Mendelssohn, heard in the clarinet, has never been more poignantly played or recorded than in Sir Charles Mackerras’s (another Australian) recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Later, we get an enigma within the Enigma: ‘***Romanza’ is the title of Variation 13, and Elgar explained that the asterisks represented the name of a lady (Lady Mary Lygon) who, at the time, was on a sea voyage with her brother to Australia, who was to become Governor of New South Wales. Variation 11, is headed ‘G.R.S’ (organist George Robertson Sinclair) but the rambunctious music for this variation is a portrait of Dan, Sinclair’s bulldog, complete with furious paddling upstream and a satisfied bark upon landing.
Variation 10 is Dorabella, who is step-niece of Variation 4, as it were (Billy Baker) she spoke with a slight stammer and you can hear it in the music. So Hew David Steuart-Powell would ride through town on his bicycle, constantly ringing the bell – the pizzicato violins doubled by woodwinds neatly represent the bell.
And it is to Alice herself that the first variation ‘C.A.E.’ is dedicated.Įlgar’s Enigma Variations also spell out, in musical ways, characteristics of the friends. 14, called ‘E.D.U.’ – Edu being his wife Alice’s nickname for her husband. When Elgar wrote his Enigma Variations each section was headed with the initials of friends, with the final variation, No. When Debussy wrote his Préludes, he gave them titles after he had written them. So perhaps the theme is simply (or profoundly) one about friendship. In fact, the work was dedicated “…to my friends pictured within”. The Enigma Variations are sketches of friends. Dedicated “…to my friends pictured within” In 2010 Charles and Matthew Santa proposed the theory that the enigma was based on pi. It’s also been suggested that the theme is Shakespeare’s 66th sonnet. In his book on Elgar, Ian Parrott suggests the theme has a biblical source. After all, wasn’t it Sherlock Holmes who said that the best place to put something where you don’t want someone to see it is right in front of their eyes? Or perhaps, the clue, the theme, isn’t musical at all. It may be that the answer to the riddle is staring at us in the face. Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and alumnus of the Choir of King’s College Cambridge, is confident that it is Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater.Īnd so the theme has been inverted, reversed, and carved up in all manner of form, pulled apart, dissected, put back together again. So the guessing continued: the minor version of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star God Save The Queen Martin Luther’s hymn tune Ein Feste Burg Home, Sweet Home Rule Britannia the theme of the slow movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata Pop Goes The Weasel and as recently as May 2019 it was announced that the mystery had been solved. What happens? It has another go at that forbidden thing. Like telling a naughty child not to do something. Well, there’s nothing like telling your audience that there’s a secret, it’s dark, it’s not entirely clear and it “must be left unguessed”, to get them to do precisely the opposite – try and solve the mystery. And more, “The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed”. Listening to it you hear syncopations which almost seem to suggest that, to quote the composer, “over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played …so, the principal Theme never appears”. And the theme was not a straightforward theme in itself. Why ‘Enigma’? Because Elgar was secretive about the work’s theme. Elgar composed his Enigma Variations between October 1898 and February 1899 and the work premiered in London on 19 June 1899. And it came relatively late in life, when the composer was in his early forties. It was Elgar’s Enigma Variations (or Variations On An Original Theme to use its original title) that catapulted Elgar to international renown.
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