Elgar's Hillside

[Elgarian]

I say this as an American acutely aware of the foreign policies of my own country--some would question the veracity of any claim by an Imperial power that its overseas policies are pursued in the interest of "trusteeship" and seeing "countries in its charge brought safely and in due course to independence."  Is that, I wonder, how Elgar himself understood what the British Empire was doing? 

I suppose I should make it clear, first, that my intention isn't to whitewash Elgar's view of British Imperialism, but to establish more accurately what it is, and what it isn't: it isn't jingoistic. It carries with it a large dollop of duty and sacrifice. I'm not at all suggesting that we have to agree with him; but if we're going to criticise his views on Empire we need to criticise what they are, not what many people mistakenly think they are. My second point would be to raise a cautionary note about judging the beliefs and ideals of any Late Victorian according to our 21st century world view. We simply don't know how differently we might have see things ourselves had we been living in such a place, at such a time. However, laying those details aside, it seems we've got close to something we can both have some empathy with when we think in terms of the mystical Arthurian ideal.

That makes a great deal of sense to me and helps me better hold in tension what you call the private and public Elgar.  You mention the Violin Concerto, and I understand exactly what you're describing.  I hear it, too, in both symphonies and, perhaps most poignantly, in The Spirit of England.  Would you go so far as to say that there is evidence of Elgar's struggle to reconcile (or at least deal with) his public and private sides in most all of his music to one degree or another?

I haven't actually thought of applying the 'Public and Private' idea to all his work, but you're surely right when you mention hearing it in the symphonies etc. One place where it's very striking is in the third symphony. Although most of what he left of it was at best fragmentarily sketched, the first few minutes of the first movement are pretty much worked out , and it's a classic example of what we're talking about. The symphony opens with that great  opening theme that sounds like a starkly ominous warning (Public) but very shortly the most exquisite, intimate, feminine passage enters as a (Private) counter suggestion. Absolutely the epitome of the two sides of Elgar. (And we know that the gentle passage was yet again inspired by a particular woman he'd met and fallen in love with, even at this late date.)

[revdrdave]

I suppose I should make it clear, first, that my intention isn't to whitewash Elgar's view of British Imperialism, but to establish more accurately what it is, and what it isn't: it isn't jingoistic. It carries with it a large dollop of duty and sacrifice. I'm not at all suggesting that we have to agree with him; but if we're going to criticise his views on Empire we need to criticise what they are, not what many people mistakenly think they are. My second point would be to raise a cautionary note about judging the beliefs and ideals of any Late Victorian according to our 21st century world view. We simply don't know how differently we might have see things ourselves had we been living in such a place, at such a time. However, laying those details aside, it seems we've got close to something we can both have some empathy with when we think in terms of the mystical Arthurian ideal.

Yes, I quite agree and, as I've thought about it, I'm inclined to think that as important as it is to grasp whatever ideology informed Elgar's understanding of himself and his world, it's equally important to make sure that speculation about the ideology always remains in service to, rather than becoming more important than, the music itself.  Especially so given, as you point out, that looking at a Late Victorian worldview with 21st century eyes can be a dicey undertaking.  I think, for example, of Shostakovich and the way people who've no experience of what it means to live (let alone create) under a totalitarian regime nonetheless dismiss his music as a whole or in part because they can't get past ideological arguments vis-a-vis his relationship with Stalinism and the Soviet state.   

[Elgarian]

Yes, I quite agree and, as I've thought about it, I'm inclined to think that as important as it is to grasp whatever ideology informed Elgar's understanding of himself and his world, it's equally important to make sure that speculation about the ideology always remains in service to, rather than becoming more important than, the music itself.  Especially so given, as you point out, that looking at a Late Victorian worldview with 21st century eyes can be a dicey undertaking.  I think, for example, of Shostakovich and the way people who've no experience of what it means to live (let alone create) under a totalitarian regime nonetheless dismiss his music as a whole or in part because they can't get past ideological arguments vis-a-vis his relationship with Stalinism and the Soviet state.

Oh yes, that's a super analogy. And I agree completely with those who would insist that it should be possible to listen to the music and engage with it at a significant level, without knowing anything about any ideology that might originally have inspired it. Music is after all an abstract art. It's perfectly possible to listen to something like the violin concerto 'cold', and be enthralled by its musical beauty and coherence, without knowing anything at all about windflowers or Elgarian Imperialism.

My own approach is complicated by the fact that I'm fascinated by Elgar the man as well as by his music, so I continually blur the boundaries between music and biography, and revel in doing so. It's an approach that wouldn't suit everyone. Some might say that it muddies the purely musical appreciation, and I accept that, but I've never been happy about separating out the abstraction of music from life as we live it. I like the richly flavoured fare I get when I absorb them mixed up together.

[71 dB]

I haven't had much time lately, but I have been reading this latest discussion. Alan's posts about Elgar are often so sophisticated that I feel like an moron in comparison. I feel I understand Elgar and his music well, but there is so much in this current discussion I never think about when listening to Elgar. I don't care about jingoism. To me Elgar was born in a Kingdom that ruled "half the world" and that's it. All I know Elgar was a pacifist and that's enough for me. Maybe I have found a shortcut understanding Elgar on a simple but adequate level and I am constantly amazed how difficult of a composer Elgar is for many to get into...

[revdrdave]

I haven't had much time lately, but I have been reading this latest discussion. Alan's posts about Elgar are often so sophisticated that I feel like an moron in comparison. I feel I understand Elgar and his music well, but there is so much in this current discussion I never think about when listening to Elgar. I don't care about jingoism. To me Elgar was born in a Kingdom that ruled "half the world" and that's it. All I know Elgar was a pacifist and that's enough for me. Maybe I have found a shortcut understanding Elgar on a simple but adequate level and I am constantly amazed how difficult of a composer Elgar is for many to get into...

I understand exactly what you mean about Alan's posts and how, by comparison, whatever I have to offer seems so rudimentary. I keep reminding myself, however, that Alan's insights are based on nearly a lifetime's experience with Elgar's music and I've only found my way to Elgar in the last month. Intimidating as his posts may be, Alan himself is never intimidating. I've always found him to be the perfect gentleman, even when he doesn't agree with you. Alan, unbeknownst to him at the time, was my guide to discovering Handel via a series of posts several years ago on a Handel's operas and oratorios thread. He's serving in that same capacity now with Elgar. I find him to be a wonderful teacher.

I wouldn't say that I find Elgar difficult in the sense that now that I'm really listening to his music I just don't get it. I would say that there is a complexity and profundity to his music that, frankly, I didn't realize before now and that, accordingly, it doesn't always give up its secrets easily. And I'm discovering the same to be true of the man himself--there is an emotional, dare I say spiritual, complexity to his character thanks to the dynamic between what Alan (and others) have called the "public" and "private" Elgar that, for me, makes his music all the more fascinating. I can't separate the two, I'm finding. The more I learn about both Elgar and his music, the less I'm able to just listen to his work without thought of what, in his life, gave rise to it.

[Elgarian]

I haven't had much time lately, but I have been reading this latest discussion. Alan's posts about Elgar are often so sophisticated that I feel like an moron in comparison.

Please, please don't. You aren't a moron - that much I know! What I write here are just the assorted thoughts that result from something like 50 years of listening, reading, and wandering around the Malvern Hills, and that is all they are. I don't claim to have perceived some special truth about Elgar. I've just built up a way of thinking and listening that suits me, and sometimes I find I can clarify what I think by writing about it. You're much better off listening to the music than reading what I write!

I feel I understand Elgar and his music well, but there is so much in this current discussion I never think about when listening to Elgar. I don't care about jingoism.

I know, but many people do, and they often use it as a mallet to beat Elgar with. I don't suppose I'd think about it much myself if they didn't.

[Elgarian]

I would say that there is a complexity and profundity to his music that, frankly, I didn't realize before now and that, accordingly, it doesn't always give up its secrets easily. And I'm discovering the same to be true of the man himself--there is an emotional, dare I say spiritual, complexity to his character thanks to the dynamic between what Alan (and others) have called the "public" and "private" Elgar that, for me, makes his music all the more fascinating. I can't separate the two, I'm finding. The more I learn about both Elgar and his music, the less I'm able to just listen to his work without thought of what, in his life, gave rise to it.

That's exactly as I've found it. I can't separate them. I'll happily concede that it might be a good thing if I did, but even if it were, I simply couldn't do it. To listen to the Introduction & Allegro for strings is, for me, like going for a walk with Elgar up the Worcester Beacon listening for the sound of the airs and harmonies hinted at by the wind in the grass, and sharing that longing of his for something undefinable but which seems to be connected with deeply-rooted Englishness and spirituality and vast skies and distant horizons. I can't think of the Enigma Variations without seeing Dora Penny dancing around Elgar's study while he played the tenth variation to her; or without hearing Winifred Norbury's gentle laughter in the eighth. I can't listen to the first symphony without remembering his comment about playing the slow movement 'like something heard down by the river'. In short, I haven't got a hope of approaching the music as pure music, at all. I suspect that for many more musical folk than I, that might discredit vast swathes of what I say about it!

[Moonfish]

Elgar:
Cello Concerto         Harrison/New SO/Elgar
Symphony No 1         London SO/Elgar
Falstaff                   London SO/Elgar

Once again I listened to the electrical recordings of these works and was very pleased with the experience. These are true gems traveling through time. The cello concerto in particular (as has been expressed so many times on this thread) as well as the first symphony were both delightful and rewarding. The first symphony is becoming more and more precious to me with repeated listening. Such a complex soundscape with the ability to resonate with one's inner world.

[asin] B004MSRDK6[/asin]

[Moonfish]

Elgarians,
What are your thoughts on this release of the earliest acoustic recordings of Elgar's works?
I'm sure it is mentioned in one of the previous 113 pages, but I cannot find it...

[asin] B005SQ3AU8[/asin]

[André]

My fascination/love with  Elgar's music started one very early morning at the beginning of a 12 hour car drive from the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula to Montreal almost 40 years ago. As I opened the radio, a dim AM audio signal transmitted the Elgar cello concerto's beginning. I was hooked and have never looked back. Forget about high fidelity. Elgar's music travels time and space in a way no other does. It tugs the heart strings in the simplest way imaginable. You don't even notice it.

[Elgarian]

Elgarians,
What are your thoughts on this release of the earliest acoustic recordings of Elgar's works?
I'm sure it is mentioned in one of the previous 113 pages, but I cannot find it...

[asin] B005SQ3AU8[/asin]

You can find my first responses to the box - and some discussion in the following posts, starting at post #1348, here:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,3503.msg584688/topicseen.html#msg584688

[71 dB]

Forget about high fidelity.

Sorry, I can't, I am an acoustic engineer. Even Elgar himself welcomed advances in audio technology when electric recording emerged around 1930. Historical recordings are interesting, but there is no need to forget good sound quality.

[Elgarian]

My fascination/love with  Elgar's music started one very early morning at the beginning of a 12 hour car drive from the tip of the Gaspé Peninsula to Montreal almost 40 years ago. As I opened the radio, a dim AM audio signal transmitted the Elgar cello concerto's beginning. I was hooked and have never looked back. Forget about high fidelity. Elgar's music travels time and space in a way no other does. It tugs the heart strings in the simplest way imaginable. You don't even notice it.

I think one of the most striking things about being able to listen to Elgar's own recordings - both electrical and acoustic - is that what we hear is considerably superior to what he himself would have heard, and he LOVED the medium. He got all the surface noise from the 78s; we can hear the same recordings with that largely eliminated, or at least greatly reduced. It's true that with the early purely acoustic recordings one has to make more allowances, but the electrical ones are very, very listenable. And of course when we listen to a distorted AM broadcast such as the one you refer to, we're temporarily back in a similar position. Yet still, as you say, enough of the music comes through to transform the moment.

[71 dB]

Elgarians,
What are your thoughts on this release of the earliest acoustic recordings of Elgar's works?
I'm sure it is mentioned in one of the previous 113 pages, but I cannot find it...

[asin] B005SQ3AU8[/asin]

It's possible I have never heard Elgar's acoustic recordings. This is an unknown territory for me.   

[Moonfish]

This arrived this morning:



Available from Amazon, released yesterday:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elgar-Conducts-Complete-recordings-1914-25/dp/B005SQ3AU8/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1323794487&sr=1-2

I listened to part of the second disc while eating my lunch: Cockaigne, In The South, and Marie Hall playing the violin concerto (cut to fit onto 4 sides). I expected crackle and pop; I expected to have to make a lot of allowances. I did not expect to have Marie Hall standing in the room, playing the VC, but that's what it seemed like.

The vividness of the recordings (bearing in mind that these are acoustic recordings, made around 1914/16) is gob-smacking. The guy responsible for the processing deserves a medal. I would never have believed this degree of restoration possible. The source was, unbelievably, Elgar's personal collection of 78s, and while he would have been playing them on HMV's state of the art players (they supplied him with gramophones, as one of their star recording artists), they must surely have taken a fair bit of wear, so it's hard to understand how they could yield something this good. It's very strange hearing Marie Hall's playing - so very different in style to Menuhin some years later, and what's more, in a stripped down version of the VC to squeeze it onto four 78 sides - but I found it deeply moving. There are personal reasons why I might shed a few tears right now, but this provides the best, not the worst of reasons for doing so.

The balance of the orchestra in all these works is obviously affected enormously by the need to group the players in front of the large acoustic horn, but in a peculiar way this gives them a greater sense of presence. It's easy to 'hear' the visual equivalent of the well-known photos taken of the making of recordings like these, and it all adds to the splendid atmosphere of this unique period of music-making and recording, with Elgar at the helm.

There's a nice booklet with photos; my only quibble is that there's no information about the digital processing - about the decisions that needed to be taken, when transferring and transforming the 78s to CD. Perhaps we don't need to know, but I'd have been interested.

Essential stuff for any Elgarian, this - preferably taken together with Jerrold Northrop Moore's comprehensive and fascinating (but sadly out of print) book: Elgar on Record:

Thanks Elgarian!
I knew it had to be here somewhere. It sounds like a fascinating compilation based on your impressions. I have a tendency to feel strongly for historical recordings for some reason (perhaps it is the sound..). I think I need to hear these 78s...~~~~!!!! 

[Elgarian]

Thanks Elgarian!
I knew it had to be here somewhere. It sounds like a fascinating compilation based on your impressions. I have a tendency to feel strongly for historical recordings for some reason (perhaps it is the sound..). I think I need to hear these 78s...~~~~!!!!

The only proviso I would make, in hindsight, is that while it's wonderful to hear them once ... or even twice ... there really is a marked difference between the acoustic and electrical recordings, and I can't say I've played the acoustic set anything like as often as the electrical one.

[Moonfish]

The only proviso I would make, in hindsight, is that while it's wonderful to hear them once ... or even twice ... there really is a marked difference between the acoustic and electrical recordings, and I can't say I've played the acoustic set anything like as often as the electrical one.

An acquired taste, perhaps?  I love historical recordings so I suspect they will grow on me quickly!

[revdrdave]

In short, I haven't got a hope of approaching the music as pure music, at all. I suspect that for many more musical folk than I, that might discredit vast swathes of what I say about it!

Oh, I'd say just the opposite--I think it's your inability to approach Elgar as pure music that gives your insights into it the prescience they have. That, and the fact you can actually walk where Elgar walked, see what he saw, etc.

The need to experience a composer's music relative to his/her life--both inner and outer--is, for me, one of the most compelling (and, often, consuming) aspects of collecting classical music. We don't just collect symphonies, concerti, and quartets. In the realest of senses we collect lives and histories, ways of seeing and understanding. I find a composer I want to experience more, I don't just buy CDs and download mp3s. I buy biographies and memoirs and critical studies so that I'm assembling a reference library along with a music collection. Not with every composer I encounter...just those, like Elgar, whose music resonates with me at a deeper level.

[Elgarian]

We don't just collect symphonies, concerti, and quartets. In the realest of senses we collect lives and histories, ways of seeing and understanding.

I must say, that's exactly how I see it too. The composers that really resonate with me have nearly always shown me something valuable - something I never saw (or heard) before, but which, once seen (or heard), effects a permanent change. I wonder if you know that passage by Ruskin where he talks about his notion of a Book (as opposed to a book)? He's writing about Books, but it can be a Book, a Painting, a Symphony - any kind of art.

"The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; - this, the piece of true knowledge or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, 'This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.' "

Listening to Elgar is like that, for me. It often seems as if he's at my elbow, saying, 'listen to this', and 'look at that'. And should anyone think I might be being too fanciful, it's worth pointing out that (a) we know that Elgar read Ruskin; and (b) he quoted the last bit of this very passage on the manuscript of Gerontius.

[Mirror Image]

I would just like to say I've been enjoying reading your posts, revdrdave. Keep up the good work!