Edward Elgar by Diana M. McVeagh
This book has been incredibly illuminating. I wanted to devote a post to noting my observations and thoughts surrounding McVeagh’s analyses.
Elgar’s early cantatas are characterized by a composer who is still developing his technique. Despite this, I have always been drawn to them, especially The Black Night (1889-93). They are charged with this forward momentum, this energy that seemed, to my ear, unique. It was encouraging to read how remarkable it was that Elgar’s style developed quite early, was so distinctive, and remained consistent (192).
On Wagner, McVeagh states that “It cannot be disputed that without Wagner, Elgar would not have written in quite the way that he did, but in Elgar’s mature works, though much of their harmonic language he surely learnt from Wagner, there is no question of imitation” (197).
I want to outline some of the music theory I would like to hold on to. I am very interested in tonality but simultaneously loosening, pulling, or stretching functionality. Key area ambiguity and sudden or quick modulation (especially via sequence) are elements that really excite me. Briefly moving back to the Elgarian sequence, he often does not use chromatically descending or ascending sequences (by semitone), opting for larger intervals. Also, by treating a melody note in a sequence enharmonically, he modulates to any remote key he so chooses quickly and smoothly. I guess by taking advantage of the melodic cohesiveness a sequence provides. When writing out my own modulation exercises, I noticed that treating a tone as enharmonic, from the initial triad, is powerful in modulating to distant keys. To see it here in Elgar, as outlined by McVeagh, is very cool! Of course, this isn’t the only way Elgar modulates—even in a sequence. The common thread of all his modulations is that they are swift and fluid (196).
Harmonically, Elgar inherited from Wagner the full evocative vocabulary of chromaticism, decorated by suspensions, appoggiaturas, altered notes, and passing notes, often concurrently in several parts; of delayed resolutions, of free handling of high-powered chords, by which to express in dissonance from the most delicate to the most intense in every degree of romantic emotion (197). I love this quote from McVeagh. Further, Elgar also likes to slip one simple chord into an ornate chromatic progression (134). Also, if I remember correctly, elsewhere in the book, McVeagh states that Elgar also creates sublime music from the simplest of diatonic progressions. I believe the best example of this is his Variations on an Original Theme or Enigma Variations (1898-99).
McVeagh also discusses Elgar’s extreme sensitivity to verbal rhythm in The Dream of Gerontius (1900). When a vocal melody is composed in relation to the rhythm and structure of a text, it achieves a sublime naturalness that imparts a relationship between melody and word that, once heard, makes it impossible to dissociate the words from the music. Instead of fitting words after the fact or to an instrumental melody. This is an entirely new subject to me and led me to discover Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music (1909) by George Lansing Raymond. I am really looking forward to reading this book.
“Psalms, Songs and Sonnets, Some Solemn, Others Joyful, Framed to the Life of the Words”
I am quickly noting Elgar's extensive use of the flattened seventh. I don’t understand this section and will ask Olsen for help on it.
Next counterpoint. Boy, this is important. Elgar’s chromatic and sometimes sliding harmony is prone to sag. However, this is saved by Elgar’s gift for counterpoint, in which “he constantly refreshes the repetitions of his themes by slipping them into them a new strand…It is through the themes sheer joy of life put forth spontaneously a new shoot” (201).
Elgar’s thematic development. I will quote here because all of this is so cool and exciting to me, and I want to take note of it here because I don’t own this book. “What he does in his developments is not to expound the properties of the material from his expositions or to set the main themes in contrast and conflict…or simply to reiterate them…but, like Sibelius, to take snatches and fragments and make of them something new” (204). “Elgar..flits from one to another, never stating but always hinting, shedding a momentary gleam of light here and there: he reveals relationships between apparently unconnected themes. Often chronological sequence is waived, as it is his habit not to display the resemblance at first, so that the recognition comes in the astonishment and then illumination. In fact, the moment of illumination is often not in the development…but in the recapitulation” (204). “This method of development is not confined to specific working-out sections or to movements in sonata form” (204). “Contrapuntal relationships are common. Sometimes a movement gives the impression that its themes must all move over the same harmonic ground at the same speed, so easily do they fit over each other, with never a tuck or bulge. In the second movement of the First Symphony, a tune from the trio lingers carelessly above the return of the scherzo theme, and the scherzo, on its second time round, puts its own two themes in double counterpoint. Always the choice of the exact moment to reveal such a relationship is masterly” (205). The end of The Apostles and Gerontius is strengthened by two leitmotifs, once heard separately, locked together with certainty (205). Elgar is also capable of more subtlety: “[In the last movement of the Second Symphony], forty-five bars before the end of the development, he presents a theme derived from the second subject. Eight bars later, he connects it with the first subject by [working out a new figure contrapuntally]. And then, at the recapitulation, as if to stress the relationship, he unexpectedly brings in a hint of it over the last bars of the first subject” (205).
“Elgar’s developments, indeed whole movements, have a continual reaching forward and back…Elgar’s development, then, is personal and characteristic of his mind. This partly explains why, though he used principles of systematic leitmotives in his oratorios, the results do not sound much like Wagner’s. For Wagner treated his leitmotives not only as symbols, modifying them as the dramatic action demanded, but also as musical subjects, developed in Beethoven’s manner and spun into a symphonic web. Such motival development is not Elgar’s most natural way. He frequently interlaces his leitmotives contrapuntally…his treatment of them is more like a mosaic: permutations of their order rather than modifications of individual ones.” (205-206).
So much to think about!!
Lastly, Elgar shows us the taking of mental images (In my case, I am most interested in images/emotions inspired by literature) and expressing them in music. This is a very open-ended concept and also provides so much to think about.
Thank you, Elgar. Your music has deeply touched me.
“I feel and don’t invent.”
