Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’, Op. 36

Program notes

About the Work

In October 1898 Edward Elgar, then a forty-one-year-old provincial music teacher in Worcestershire with a modest reputation, came home tired after a day of giving violin lessons and sat down at the piano. As his wife Alice later recalled, he began idly playing a melody that caught her attention, and he started to amuse her by improvising variations on it in the manner of their friends: how this one or that one would play it. Out of that domestic game grew the Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, the work that made Elgar a composer of international standing.

The score is dedicated “to my friends pictured within”, and each of its fourteen variations is headed with initials or a nickname standing for one of the people in Elgar’s circle: his wife (“C.A.E.”), amateur musicians and neighbours, a young woman who stammered slightly (“Dorabella”), the organist of Hereford Cathedral, and at the end the composer himself (“E.D.U.”, from Alice’s pet name for him, “Edu”). The most famous of them, “Nimrod”, portrays Augustus Jaeger, Elgar’s editor at the publisher Novello and his closest musical confidant. Jäger is German for “hunter”, and Nimrod is the mighty hunter of the Bible. Elgar said the variation recalled a conversation in which Jaeger had spoken about the slow movements of Beethoven.

Then there is the enigma. Elgar wrote that “through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played”, and he never revealed what it was. For more than a century people have proposed solutions, from familiar tunes such as “Auld Lang Syne” or “Rule, Britannia!” to more abstract ideas, and none has been generally accepted. Elgar seems to have enjoyed the mystery, and it has certainly done the work no harm.

The first performance was given in London at St James’s Hall on 19 June 1899, conducted by Hans Richter, one of the most celebrated conductors of the day. Its success was immediate. At Jaeger’s urging Elgar then extended the finale, and it is this longer version that is always played today. Within a few years the Enigma Variations had been performed across Europe, and the work that began as an improvisation at the piano became one of the cornerstones of the English orchestral repertoire.

What to Listen For

Theme (Andante). The melody is played softly by the strings: short, hesitant phrases broken by rests, in G minor, with a warmer major-key middle section. Remember its shape, because every variation that follows is built from it.

Variations I–V. The first variation, “C.A.E.”, is a tender portrait of Elgar’s wife Alice. It is followed by a series of quick, contrasting characters: the nervous pianist of “H.D.S-P.” with its skittering strings, the gentle grace of “R.B.T.”, the explosive energy of “W.M.B.” (a country squire who would slam the door as he left), and the serious, then playful “R.P.A.”.

Variations VI–VIII. “Ysobel” features a solo viola, portraying a viola-playing friend. “Troyte” is a thunderous, rhythmic outburst full of timpani: an architect friend’s clumsy attempts to play the piano. “W.N.” is elegant and graceful, an evocation of a country house and its owner.

Variation IX, “Nimrod”. The heart of the work. It begins very quietly in the strings and grows slowly, over only a few minutes, into a noble, radiant climax before fading away. Listen for the way the melody keeps rising, phrase by phrase: it is one of the most moving passages in English music, and it is often played on its own at occasions of national mourning.

Variations X–XIII. “Dorabella” is a light, fluttering intermezzo, with woodwinds imitating the slight stammer of the young woman it portrays. “G.R.S.” depicts the organist George Robertson Sinclair’s bulldog, Dan, falling into the River Wye, paddling upstream and barking on the bank. “B.G.N.” is a warm cello melody for a cellist friend. In “***”, listen for the clarinet quoting Mendelssohn’s overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage over a soft drum roll, suggesting the throb of a ship’s engines: a portrait of a friend who was travelling abroad by sea.

Variation XIV, “E.D.U.” (Finale). Elgar’s self-portrait, bold and confident, bringing back the themes of Alice and Nimrod, the two people who supported him most. Listen for the organ joining the full orchestra in the final pages for a grand, triumphant close.