PERSONAL COLUMN

New variations on Elgar

ROBERT CONQUEST

Clemenceau once remarked that there is no one as aggressive as a pacifist. One might sug- gest also that there is no one as Fascist as a

liberal'.

An interesting example of this has lately come my way. Last year, the late Mrs Carice Elgar Blake, Sir Edward Elgar's daughter, put to me the idea of writing a new libretto for his cantata Caractacus. It had, she said, been suggested that the original libretto, written by my maternal grandfather, H. A. Acworth, was too Victorian. I then dis- cussed the matter with the Elgar Trust, responsible for his works. To write a new libretto of nearly six hundred lines in vari- ous metres to fit strictly with the music would be a considerable undertaking in any case, even if legitimate. On looking through the original, I finally advised them that: 'I can see that the Acworth text, though acceptable to Elgar himself, might seem to have an excessively Victorian tone to the generation of revulsion from that period. I would suggest—if, indeed it is thought necessary to make any changes at all—that this could be toned down quite considerably by some fairly minor verbal changes . . On the whole, though, the libretto reads pretty well as these things go, once one accepts the tone of the period, which was also the period of the music—especially in relation to the plot, which I take it is not in any case subject to amendment.'

I do not suggest that the original was of very high quality. Apart from his various work for Elgar, the only other verse I know of by Acworth, a distinguished Indian civil servant and scholar but no poet, was a translation of Ballads of the Marathas (Longmans, 1894), based on a collection of the Marathi originals published by him and his friend Shankar Tukaram Shaligram in Bombay in 1891a Solid stuff, but scarcely remarkable.

The representatives of the Trust agreed with my assessment, and there, for the moment, the matter stood.

However, when the cantata was per* formed at the Cheltenham Festival this year, it turns out that a revised libretto was used. It seems that Sir Adrian Boult had been mainly responsible for the first suggestions about it last year, and he now said that he would refuse to conduct the piece unless it was at least amended as to what he regarded as its most objectionable features. In this, one understands, he was supported by some elements in the Festival bureaucracy. A look at the two texts makes it perfectly clear what the objections were.

I have not studied the artistic ethics of providing a dead composer with a libretto to replace one which he had personally worked on and approved. But doubtless, if the new version were a work of markedly superior genius, while wholly suited to the composer's intentions and to his music, such considerations could be overridden.

However, the version performed at Chel- tenham differed mainly in one or two verbal changes (of the type I had suggested as toler- able). There was only one large-scale altera- tion. The final chorus, which in Acworth's version had the Britons looking forward to a glorious future in which their country

would be an example to the world, was altered to suit a different ideology, Here are parallel pieces of text:;

1. Acworth:' The light descends from heaven, The centuries roll away, The empire of the Roman Is crumbling into clay; The eagle's flight is ended, His weary wings are furl'd; The Oak has grown and shadow'd The shores of all the world.

New version:

The King is spared from torture His conquerors keep their word But will this peaceful conduct Be followed down the years? For man is hard by nature And cruel when aroused And mercy, peace and goodness Are qualities too rare.

2. Acworth: ... O'er peoples undiscover'd, In lands we cannot know; And where the flag of Britain Its triple crosses rears, No slave shall be for subject, No trophy wet with tears; But folk shall bless the banner, And bless the crosses twin'd, That bear the gift of freedom On every blowing wind; New version: Though nations undiscovered Will operate new laws And man will seek to conquer New worlds of time and space No man shall be downtrodden No law shall make men slaves For men will fight for freedom As long as it is true And men will cherish freedom, As long as it is full.

The original is in a spirit rather different from the fashions of our day—or more particularly, of the anti-Victorian day- before-yesterday, in which Sir Adrian was no doubt raised. One would not, indeed, think its imperialism of a grossly offensive type. Acworth claims admiration for the British on the grounds that they abolished slavery and (further on) instituted law. While being currently dishonoured by British musical liberals, he was being treated differently by modern free India. There, the authorities last winter unveiled a small monument to him at the leper hospital he founded outside Bombay: but such fair-mindedness is doubt- less not to be expected from the Western lunatic left:

Elgar and Acworth were friends and neigh- bours, and it is obvious enough that the final chorus was written in consultation with the composer, and that he thought it suited to his music. No doubt he would have preferred it to have been written more brilliantly: but he would not have preferred it to be written in a contrary vein. Indeed. on the purely art- istic point, one would need a good deal of convincing that the same music could any- how possibly fit equally well two sets of sentiments of such opposite tone.

Acworth's tone is, of course, that of Cowper's lines inscribed on the Boadicea statue: `Regions Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway.'

These do not form an organic part of that statue. of which they may be regarded as the libretto. The County Council (or whoever is responsible) should chip them out and substi- tute: 'Civil liberties militant A lesson for us all today.'

(Or perhaps a reference to the Women's Liberation Front would be more appro- priate.)

The librettos of many other musical works, too, are thoroughly inappropriate by modern standards. We shall soon be hearing of the Sociologists' Chorus from Faust. Something will have to be done about the disgraceful moral repressiveness of Rigolett°, where a girl conceives it to be her duty not to go to bed with someone. (Nor, incidentally, are the costumes suitable: there are two tolerable choices—and one would not wish to offend either party by insistence on the one or the other—the opera, all operas, must be either in the nude or in drag.)

But seriously, have we not had enough of this impertinence? Can there he something authoritarian, and anti-national, in the con- ductor's profession in general, a corruption produced by his little area of absolute power? In his newly published autobio- graphy. Sir Alan Herbert describes Sir Mal- colm Sargent refusing to allow the singing of the 'Jingo verse' of 'Rule Britannia'—`The nations not so blest as thee/ Shall in their turn to tyrants fall . . ('And so they did, every one of them', as Sir Alan rightly re- marks.) Another conductor, it will be re- membered. attempted to suppress the tradi- tional singing at the Proms of 'Land of Hope and Glory', another of Elgar's deplorable concessions to patriotic feeling. But even these did not actually rewrite the verses— which leaves an interesting field open to the keen ideologist.

Acworth's words are, indeed, Victorian— an epithet of horror in the minds of a gener- ation of ageing trendies. They will have to do something about Elgar's only verbal contri- bution to the work—a dedication to the Queen-Empress herself `by Her Majesty's loyal and devoted Servant, Edward Elgar'. This can surely be altered posthumously to Charles Stewart Parnell, or President Kruger, to suit the anti-imperialist mood.

It is worth noting that all this is not merely negative censorship of the old style, the sup- pression of undesirable material, but some- thing in the more modern totalitarian spirit, the positive substitution of the censor's pre- ferred ideology for that actually written or subscribed to by the original creator. The word 'Fascist' has been largely misused of late. But surely such conduct recalls the prin- ciples of Fascism—or Stalinism.

In any case, the point of this extraordi- nary story is- clear. Prominent artistic per- sonages have refused to perform a work un- less it was amended, on purely ideological grounds. I cannot conceive of a non-'pro- gressive' in the same situation refusing to perform, or print, or exhibit a piece of work of left-wing tendencies. We are back, as so often, with Dostoievsky's horrible charac- ters: 'They have this social excuse for every- thing nasty they do'.