Enigma Variations

Edward Elgar’s Variations on a (more commonly known as the Enigma Variations) is the work that — almost overnight — made the 42-year-old into a famous composer. At the premiere in 1899, the work was greeted as the greatest composition for large orchestra ever written by an Englishman. And, for more than a century now, audiences have delighted in what Elgar wrote. They have been equally intrigued by what he withheld — a secret that he refused to divulge beyond some carefully worded “enigmatic” clues. 

The story of the Enigma Variations began late one night in 1898 when Elgar was improvising at the piano at home in Worcestershire. His wife, Alice, was struck by a particular melody and asked her husband what it was. Elgar replied: “Nothing — but something could be made of it.” As he continued to develop his short theme, Elgar started to toy with the idea of how it could be made to reflect the personalities of some of his friends. Out of this private little game grew what is arguably Elgar’s greatest masterpiece.

With one exception (Variation XIII), each of the 14 variations that follow the theme is preceded by a heading that specifies the person behind the music. Although Elgar only wrote out monograms for each in the score, he quickly admitted who was who — and at various times openly commented about each person’s musical portrait.

At the first performance, the “anonymous” exception helped to reinforce the “enigmatic” nature of the overall work. Even more mysterious, however, were the implications of a statement Elgar made at the time of the premiere: “The Enigma itself I will not explain — its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played. … So the principal Theme never appears.”

The Theme consists of two ideas: an expressive, four-note string melody that is constantly interrupted by rests on the downbeat (and that fits the words “Ed-ward El-gar” surprisingly well), and a second melody that is more continuous, and is built of parallel thirds played by strings and woodwinds.

VARIATION I: “C.A.E.” is a portrait of Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer’s wife. The little motive played by oboes and bassoons was the signal Elgar used to whistle to let Alice know that he was home.

VARIATION II: “H.D.S-P.” — Hew David Steuart-Powell was a pianist and Elgar’s chamber music partner. The violins and woodwind instruments play humorous sixteenth notes, while the main theme appears in the cellos and basses.

VARIATION III: “R.B.T.” — Richard Baxter Townshend, a writer and scholar who used to ride his tricycle around town with the bell constantly ringing. He also participated in amateur theatrical performances, and the oboe solo in the variation is supposed to represent him as his voice occasionally cracked.

VARIATION IV: “W.M.B.” — William Meath Baker was, as Elgar stated, “a country squire, gentleman, and scholar. … This Variation was written after the host had, with a slip of paper in his hand, forcibly read out the arrangements for the day and hurriedly left the music-room with an inadvertent bang of the door.”

VARIATION V: “R.P.A.” — Richard Penrose Arnold was “a great lover of music which he played (on the pianoforte) in a self-taught manner, evading difficulties but suggesting in a mysterious way the real feeling.” The staccato figure in the woodwinds represents his characteristic laugh.

VARIATION VI: “YSOBEL” — Isabel Fitton was a viola player, hence the special treatment of the viola in this variation. She was also quite tall, a circumstance suggested by the wide leaps in the melody.

VARIATION VII: “TROYTE” — Arthur Troyte Griffith was an architect and a close friend of Elgar’s, who wrote, “The uncouth rhythm of the drums and lower strings was really suggested by some maladroit essays to play the pianoforte.”

VARIATION VIII: “W.N.” stands for Winifred Norbury, but the variation was inspired more by the stately 18th-century house where this co-secretary of the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society lived.

VARIATION IX: “NIMROD” — This is the most famous variation in the set, often performed separately in England as a memorial. “Nimrod” was August Jaeger, a German-born musician and Elgar’s closest friend. Here, Elgar took the rests out of the original theme and created a soaring, hymn-like melody with a certain Beethovenian quality.

VARIATION X: “DORABELLA” (Intermezzo) — Dora Penny was a young woman to whom Elgar gave the affectionate nickname “Dorabella,” taken from Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte. She later recollected the day he played through the entire work for her: “My mind was in such a whirl of pleasure, pride, and almost shame that he should have written anything so lovely about me.”

VARIATION XI: “G.R.S.” — George Robertson Sinclair was organist of Hereford Cathedral. Elgar writes: “The first few bars were suggested by his great bulldog Dan … falling down the steep bank into the River Wye (bar 1); his paddling up stream to find a landing place (bars 2 and 3); and his rejoicing bark on landing (second half of bar 5). G.R.S. said, ‘set that to music.’”

VARIATION XII: “B.G.N.” — Basil George Nevinson was a cellist who, with Steuart-Powell (Variation II), often played trios with Elgar, a violinist. This is why, in this variation, the melody is entrusted to a solo cello.

VARIATION XIII: “***” (Romanza) — The identity of the person behind the asterisks is the smaller enigma in Elgar’s work. Elgar himself only said that the “asterisks take the place of the name of a lady who was, at the time of the composition, on a sea voyage. The drums suggest the distant throb of the engines of a liner.”

VARIATION XIV: “E.D.U.” (Finale) — “Edu” was the nickname Alice Elgar had given to her husband, who disguised it as a set of initials to camouflage the fact that the last variation was a self-portrait. The theme is turned here into a march with a sharp rhythmic profile. There are two slower, lyrical episodes, and then the work ends in a magnificent climax.

— Peter Laki

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music at Bard College.