Music
Homage to Elgar
Robin Holloway
The event of the decade in English music is the rescue of Elgar's 3rd sympho- ny. It has been handsomely handled: the BBC, who originally commissioned the work in 1932, laid on a studio try-out last autumn which will not easily be forgotten by those lucky enough to attend. And co- inciding with this month's public premiere comes a score (Boosey and Hawkes) and a recording with the BBC Symphony Orches- tra 65 years on, directed so idiomatically by Andrew Davis as to sound classic already. The ripples will die down leaving a substan- tial addition to the orchestral repertory and permanent gratitude to Anthony Payne, whose carefully formulated 'elaboration' of the sketches is, in fact, a practical act of homage of the most fascinating kind.
His brief — to realise Elgar's fragments with the family's approval before their copyright ends in 2004, opening the way to possibly less loving and certainly less skilful hands — might appear straightforward. What he has actually achieved is far more remarkable: a living simulacrum of a large- scale late-romantic/early-modern sympho- ny by one of its greatest masters, using that master's own material (for the most part already existent, albeit patchy), and intuit- ing his forms and processes (which for the most part did not exist) by analogy or like- lihood.
Which is quite different from the never- theless comparable case of symphonic retrieval from the same stylistic epoch, Mahler's 10th. Mahler left a complete scheme of compelling architectural and rhetorical power, with some sections fully- worked and scored, some bare and rudi- mentary, and plenty betwixt and between; a draft to be worked up with his usual inten- sity of detail. Whereas Elgar left no overall shape beyond the indication of the four movements, and a mass of material much of whose place and function is unspecified.
Yet, this is how he had always worked. A list of 'ingredients' for both completed sym- phonies can still be disconcerting; such dis- crepant sources — thumbnail sketches of friends or pets, landscapes and moon- scapes, city lights and shadows, grief per- sonal and ceremonial, a facetious entry in a guest book — in some instances dating back down the decades. If by chance the end products hadn't come about, we would doubt that they could have. Elgar's process- es are the antithesis of organic growth from germinal cells. His diverse materials fuse and synthesise at final rather than primal stage. In so doing they gather many passing inspirations of detailed working, and also the wealth of internal relationships that such methods would seem to have ruled out: and, incidentally yet inevitably, the most basic element of all, symphonic form.
So it would possibly have been with the 3rd. Material lay to hand, some compara- tively recent (incidental music of 1923 for Laurence Binyon's Arthur), some pre-war; and Payne is surely right to sense a renais- sance of creative vigour in the attempts to work them together that were cut off by Elgar's final illness. (Hats off for perceiving this so many years back, when the going consensus even among fervent Elgarians was negative.) All the same, the sympho- ny's most vital material is its oldest. This is true in a metaphorical sense, because through its every page Payne's (and our) love of the great canonical works constant- ly shines. And true specifically in that its best music — the very opening, realised in every detail by Elgar himself, including the orchestration — hails from his richest peri- od (1899-1913), being intended originally for The Judgement, third in the oratorio- triptych abandoned after The Kingdom.
Probably because it is imbued through- out with the granitic memorability of this opening stretch, the first movement strikes me as the most successful as a whole. The purposeful trajectory carries over some wobbly moments; and many places, notably the return of the second subject, and the entire coda, are wholly convincing, indeed masterly.
Payne excels at codas. By far his hardest task, he explains on the disc setting out the sketches and what he has done with them, was to discover, in the absence of indica- tion, how the complete work should end. His finale convincingly realises from the start a full Elgarian texture and momen- tum, made from the work's sparsest sources. Material from the Arthur music touches off a vein of chivalry familiar since Froissart back in 1890 and reaching its noblest incarnation to depict Prince Hal in Falstaff (1913). Mistress Quickly is also present from that wonderful work; later the fat knight himself unmistakably appears, also a reminder of the percussion motif that characterises the scarecrow army. All this is skilfully woven together without solv- ing the problem of the ending. Payne's answer is to crown the weightiness of the preceding movements by growing darker and more serious. An inspired transition leads to a coda specifically recreating the effect of The Wagon Passes, the one strong number in the otherwise tedious Nursery Suite that Elgar had put together in 1931 for the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. Payne's adaptation of the obsessive rhythm to the finale's authentic material is a stroke of genius, admirable equally in imaginative boldness and technical address. The concluding gong-stroke, however, seems whimsical, a gesture borrowed from the alien world of Mahler and Viennese expressionism.
The two inner movements raise more difficulties than the two outer, though in very different ways. The second is closest to echt-Elgar, extant music from Arthur requiring minimal handling; one of Elgar's `dream children', wistful and fragile, grow- ing momentarily forceful before nearly revealing its elusive heart, then fading out at inconsequential length. The slightly fusty quality is focused by comparison with its sibling in the two Wand of Youth suites, vivid material from boyhood springs, touched with the mature mastery of prime. After this, the 3rd symphony intermezzo seems droopy, and not really belonging to the total scheme despite some cross-refer- encing.
Reservations about the adagio that fol- lows are harder to voice. At the BBCSO's try-out last autumn, this movement made the deepest impression, and it sounds mag- nificent still, 'at a distance'. Closer proximi- ty reveals the flaws the internal weakness of the two principal melodies, a solemn funeral march and a consolatory pastoral vision; their short-circuitings, peterings out, general lack of focus, stand in sharp contradistinction to the confident melodic paragraphing in the slow move- ments of both completed symphonies. The dithery character is moving in itself, and one would willingly rise to the big elegiac emotion clearly intended, were it fully pre- sent. Wholly convincing, though, is the tiny link been the two melodies by the master, which is, in fact, entirely Payne's doing.
Which suggests a wry question that might resonate beyond the admiration and grati- tude occasioned by this particular event. Could 'elaboration' like Payne's be achieved in the absence of an actual cause, such as a master's unfinished opus from an epoch of well-loved and understood musi- cal language? Elgar's 4th and Rachmani- nov's, Mahler's 11th, a 9th from Sibelius (since his 8th, known to have been com- pleted before being disseminated in marginalia then destroyed, is already a can- didate for direct rescue) just for a start, before reaching back to Tchaikovsky, Schu- mann, Mozart, Monteverdi, Josquin ... The uncertain idioms of 'difficult' mod- ern music, together with its palpable failure to gain popular acceptance, have much to learn from the enormous sigh of welcome raised by such essentially nostalgic work of reclamation and replication. It might enable many current composers to come clean and dare to write the music that they, too, have secretly preferred all along. It might liberate embargoed knowledge and unstrangulate expressive gold.
Elgar/Payne Symphony No.3 is recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis on NMC D053; Anthony Payne introduces Elgar's sketches and his elaboration of them on NMC D052.
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