SIR EDWARD ELGAR
The weaknesses that seem to be inseparable from genius—and, most
particularly, from artistic genius—are precisely those one would
not expect to discover associated with greatness of mind. It would
appear that few men are so great as their work, or, if they are, their
greatness is spasmodic and evanescent. Works of genius, it is sometimes
stated, are created in moods of exaltation, when the spirit is in
turmoil, when the mind is lit and the nerves are tense. In some cases
it may be so. It was so, I believe, in the case of Wagner, who had
long spells, measured by years, of unproductiveness, when his creative
powers lay fallow; and it was so in the case of Hugo Wolf, Beethoven,
Shelley, Poe, Berlioz and many other men whose names spring to the
mind. But it certainly was not so with Balzac and Dickens, any more
than it is to-day with Arnold Bennett.
There is in Sir Edward Elgar’s work a strange contradiction: great
depth of understanding combined with a curious fastidiousness of style
that is almost finicking. Many aspects of life appeal to his sympathies
and to his imagination, but an innate and exaggerated delicacy, an
almost feminine shrinking, is noticeable in even his strongest and most
outspoken work.... It is this delicacy, this shrinking, that to the
casual acquaintance is at once his most conspicuous and most teasing
characteristic.
My first meeting with Elgar was ten years ago, when, being commissioned
to interview him for a monthly musical magazine, I called on him at the
Midland Hotel, Manchester, where he was staying for a night. On my way
to his room I met him in the corridor, where he carefully explained
that he had made it a strict rule never to be interviewed for the Press
and that under no circumstances could that rule be broken. His firm
words were spoken with hesitation, and it was quite obvious to me that
he was feeling more than a trifle nervous. I have little doubt that
this nervousness was due to the fact that in an hour’s time he was to
conduct a concert at the Free Trade Hall. However, he was kind enough
to loiter for some minutes and talk, but he took care, when I left him,
to remind me that nothing of what he had said to me must appear in
print.
I, of course, obeyed him, but, in place of an interview, I wrote an
impressionistic sketch of the man as I had seen him during my few
minutes’ conversation at the Midland Hotel. Of this impressionistic
sketch I remember nothing except that, in describing his general
bearing and manner, I used the word “aristocratic.” At this word Elgar
rose like a fat trout eager to swallow a floating fly. It confirmed
his own hopes. And I who had perceived this quality so speedily, so
unerringly, and who had proclaimed it to the world, was worthy of
reward. Yes; he would consent to be interviewed. The ban should be
lifted; for once the rule should be broken. A letter came inviting
me to Plas Gwyn, Hereford—a letter written by his wife and full of
charming compliments about my article.
So to Hereford I went and talked music and chemistry. It was Christmas
week, and within ten minutes of my arrival Lady Elgar was giving me hot
dishes, wine and her views on the political situation. The country was
in the throes of a General Election, and while I ate and drank I heard
how the Empire was, as Dr Kendrick Pyne used to say, “rushing headlong
to the bow-wows.” Lady Elgar did not seem to wish to know to what
particular party (if any) I belonged, but I quickly discovered that to
confess myself a Radical would be to arouse feelings of hostility in
her bosom. Radicals were the Unspeakable People. There was not one, I
gathered, in Hereford. They appeared to infest Lancashire, and some had
been heard of in Wales. Also, there were people called Nonconformists.
Many persons were Radicals, many Nonconformists; but some were both.
The Radicals had won several seats. What was the country coming to?
Where was the country going?
Where, indeed? I did not allow Lady Elgar’s rather violent political
prejudices to interfere with my appetite, and she appeared to be
perfectly satisfied with an occasional sudden lift of my eyebrows,
and such ejaculations as: “Oh, quite! Quite!” “Most assuredly!” and
“Incredible!” If she thought about me at all—and I am persuaded she did
not—she must have believed me also to be a Tory. After all, had not I
called her husband “aristocratic,” and is that the sort of word used by
a Radical save in contempt?
After lunch Elgar took me a quick walk along the river-bank. For the
first half-hour I found him rather reserved and non-committal, and I
soon recognised that if I were to succeed in obtaining his views on
any matter of interest I must rigidly abstain from direct questions.
But when he did commit himself to any opinion, he did so in the
manner of one who is sure of his own ground and cannot consider, even
temporarily, any change in the attitude he has already assumed.
I found his views on musical critics amusing, but before proceeding to
set them down I must make some reference to his relations with Ernest
Newman. Newman, it is generally agreed, is unquestionably the most
brilliant, the fairest-minded and the most courageous writer on music
in England. His power is very great, and he has done more to educate
public opinion on musical matters in England than any other man. For
some little period previous to the time of which I am writing he and
Elgar had been close friends, and their friendship was all the stronger
because it rested on the attraction of opposites. Elgar was an ardent
Catholic, a Conservative; Newman was an uncompromising free-thinker and
a Radical. Elgar was a pet of society, a man careful and even snobbish
in his choice of his friends, whilst Newman cared nothing for society
and would be friendly with any man who interested or amused him.
Up to the time Elgar composed _The Apostles_ he had no more
whole-hearted admirer than Newman, but this work was to sever their
friendship and, for a time, to bring bitterness where before there
had been esteem and even affection. Newman was invited by a New York
paper—I think _The Musical Courier_—to write at considerable length
on _The Apostles_. As his opinion of this work was, on the whole,
unfavourable, he may possibly have hesitated to consider an invitation
the acceptance of which would lead to his giving pain to a friend. But
probably Newman thought, as most inflexibly honest men would think,
that, on a matter of public concern, silence would be cowardly. In the
event, he wrote his article and sent it to America, also forwarding
a copy to Elgar himself, telling him that, though it went against
his feelings of friendship to condemn the work, he thought it a
matter of duty to speak what was in his mind. That letter and that
article severed their friendship, and the severance lasted for some
considerable time.
My visit to Elgar took place during his estrangement from Newman, and
when I mentioned the subject of musical criticism to him it was, I
imagine, with the hope that the name of the famous critic would crop
up. It did.
“The worst of musical criticism in this country,” said Elgar, “is that
there is so much of it and so little that is serviceable. Most of those
who are skilled musicians either have not the gift of criticism or
they cannot express their ideas in writing, and most of those who can
write are deplorably deficient in their knowledge of music. For myself
I never read criticism of my own work; it simply does not interest me.
When I have composed or published a work, my interest in it wanes and
dies; it belongs to the public. What the professional critics think of
it does not concern me in the least.”
Though I knew that Elgar had on previous occasions given expression to
similar views, his statement amazed me. So I pressed him a little.
“But suppose,” I urged, “a new work of yours were so universally
condemned by the critics that performances of it ceased to take place.
Would you not then read their criticisms in order to discover if there
was not some truth in their statements?”
“It is possible, but I do not think I should. But your supposition is
an inconceivable one: there is never universal agreement among musical
critics. I think you will notice that many of them are, from the
æsthetic point of view, absolutely devoid of principle; I mean, they
are victims of their own temperaments. They, as the schoolgirl says,
‘know what they like.’ The music they condemn is either the music that
does not appeal to their particular kind of nervous system or it is
the music they do not understand. They have no standard, no norm, no
historical sense, no——”
He stammered a little and waved a vague arm in the air.
“There are exceptions, of course,” I ventured. “Newman, for example.”
“No; Ernest Newman is not altogether an exception. He is an unbeliever,
and therefore cannot understand religious music—music that is at once
reverential, mystical and devout.”
“‘Devout’?” whispered I to myself. Aloud I said:
“A man’s reason, I think, may reject a religion, though his emotional
nature may be susceptible to its slightest appeal. Besides, Newman has
a most profound admiration for your _The Dream of Gerontius_.”
Elgar was silent for a few minutes. Then, with an air of detachment and
with great inconsequence, he said:
“Baughan, of _The Daily News_, cannot hum a melody correctly in tune.
He looks at music from the point of view of a man of letters. So does
Newman, fine musician though he is. Newman advocates programme music.
Now, I do not say that programme music should not be written, for I
have composed programme music myself. But I do maintain that it is a
lower form of art than absolute music. Newman, I believe, refuses to
acknowledge that either kind is necessarily higher or lower than the
other. He has, as I have said, the literary man’s point of view about
music. So have many musical critics.”
“And so,” I interpolated, “if one has to accept what you say as
correct, have many composers, and composers also who are not
specifically literary. And, after what you have said, I find that
strange. Take the case of Richard Strauss, all of whose later symphonic
poems have a programme, a literary basis. Do you, for that reason,
declare that Strauss regards music from the literary man’s point of
view—Strauss who, of all living musicians, is the greatest?”
He paused for a few moments, and it seemed to me that our pace
quickened as we left the bank of the river and made for a pathway
across a meadow. But he would not take up the argument; stammering a
little, he said:
“Richard Strauss is a very great man—a fine fellow.”
But as that was not the point under discussion, I felt that either his
mind was wandering or that he could think of no reply to my objection.
A little later, on our way home, we discussed the younger generation of
composers, and I found him very appreciative of the work done by his
juniors. He particularly mentioned Havergal Brian, a composer who has
more than justified what Elgar prophesied of him, though perhaps not in
the manner Elgar anticipated.
Apropos of something or other, Elgar said, I think quite needlessly and
a little vainly:
“You must not, as many people appear to do, imagine that I am a
musician and nothing else. I am many things; I find time for many
things. Do not picture me always bending over manuscript paper and
writing down notes; months pass at frequent intervals when I write
nothing at all. At present I am making a study of chemistry.”
I think I was expected to look surprised, or to give vent to an
exclamation of surprise, but I did neither, for I also had made a study
of chemistry, and it seemed to me the kind of work that any man of
inquiring mind might take up. I did not for one moment imagine that I
was living in the first half of the nineteenth century when practically
all British musicians were musicians and nothing else and not always
even musicians.
When we had returned to the house we sat before a large fire and,
under the soothing influence of warmth and semi-darkness, stopped all
argument. In the evening Lady Elgar accompanied me to the station, and
all the way from Hereford to Manchester I turned over in my mind the
strange problem that was presented to me by the fact that, though I was
a passionate, almost fanatical lover of Elgar’s music, the creator of
that music attracted me not at all. I saw in his mind a daintiness that
was irritating, a refinement that was distressingly self-conscious.
Some years later Sir Edward Elgar moved to London, and when I saw him
in his new home he tried to prove to me that living in London was
cheaper than living in the country.
His attitude towards me on this occasion was peculiarly strange. I
represented a Labour paper, but Elgar did not know that I was at the
same time writing leading articles for a London Conservative daily.
He treated me with the most careful kindness, a kindness so careful,
indeed, that it might be called patronising. It soon became quite clear
to me that he imagined I myself came from the labouring classes, but
I cannot boast that honour, and as he, the aristocrat, was in contact
with me, the plebeian, it was his manifest duty and his undoubted
pleasure to help me along the upward path. I was advised to read
Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare,” said he, “frees the mind. You, as a journalist, will
find him useful in so far as a close study of his works will purify
your style and enlarge your vocabulary.”
“Which of the plays would you advise me to read?” asked I, with
simulated innocence and playing up to him with eyes and voice.
The astounding man considered a minute and then mentioned half-a-dozen
plays, the titles of which I carefully wrote down in my pocket-book.
“And Ruskin,” he added as an afterthought. “Oh, yes, and Cardinal
Newman. Newman’s style is perhaps the purest style of any man who wrote
in the nineteenth century.”
“I do not think so,” said I, thoroughly roused and forgetting to play
my part. “The _Apologia_ is slipshod. My own style, faulty though it
may be, is more correct, more lucid, even more distinguished than
Cardinal Newman’s.”
He turned away, either angry or amused.
“It is true,” said I, with warmth. “Anyone who has tried for years,
as I have done, to master the art of writing, and who examines the
_Apologia_ carefully will perceive at once that it is shamefully
badly written. For two generations it has been the fashion to praise
Newman’s style, but those who have done so have never read him in a
critical spirit. I would infinitely prefer to have written a racy book
like—well, like _Moll Flanders_, where the English is beautifully clean
and strong, than the sloppy _Apologia_.”
“_Moll Flanders_,” he said questioningly; “_Moll Flanders_? I do not
know the book.”
“It is all about a whore,” said I brutally, “written by one Defoe.”
And that, of course, put an end to our conversation. I rose to leave.
The impression left on my mind by my two visits to Elgar is definite
enough, but I am willing to believe that it does not represent the
man as he truly is. He is abnormally sensitive, abnormally observant,
abnormally intuitive. Like almost all men, he is open to flattery,
but the flattery must be applied by means of hints, praise half
veiled, innuendo. If you gush he will freeze; if you praise directly,
he will wince. His mind is essentially narrow, for he shrinks from
the phenomena in life that hurt him and he will not force himself to
understand alien things. His intellect is continually rejecting the
very matters that, in order to gain largeness, tolerance and a full
view of life, it should understand and accept. Yet, within its narrow
confines, his brain functions most rapidly and with a clear light.
I have been told by members of the various orchestras he has conducted
that when interpreting a work like _The Dream of Gerontius_ his face is
wet with tears.
He has a proper sense of his own dignity, and it is doubtful if he
exaggerates the importance of his own powers. Many years ago, as I
have related, I employed the word “aristocrat” in describing him, and
to-day I feel that that word must stand. He has all the strength of the
aristocrat and many of the aristocrat’s weaknesses.