Replies

It’s time for a bit of Veterans’ Day classical music, in the original sense that it was Armistice Day, putting a finish to “the war to end all wars”.

Edward Elgar was the quintessential English composer of the First World War. With his bristling mustache, he embodied the English spirit of going into the trenches and marching into machine gun fire “for King and Country”. One would not have guessed that by 1917, Elgar was having his doubts about the slaughter.

The Germans were the first to have appreciated Elgar’s music, and they acknowledged that he was continuing the tradition that Brahms had put aside with his death from liver cancer in 1897. There was something about fighting the German people that nagged at Elgar’s conscience.

Rudyard Kipling, who headed the propaganda shop at British Intelligence, had been pumping out stories about German atrocities, such as the rape of nuns and the bayoneting of babies. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of German military discipline knew that those stories were impossible, and Elgar, who died in 1934, didn’t live long enough to find out that most of those stories were manufactured out of whole cloth by Kipling at the request his close personal friend, King George V, and his government. Kipling was to lose a son in the war, and even he was angered by British military incompetence.

Elgar was the perfect English patriot as the war began and worked for a year in London as principal conductor of the London Symphony. Like Kipling, Elgar couldn’t fathom why the British military machine hadn’t settled the Kaiser’s hash in the first weeks of the war. As both men saw it, something had gone radically wrong when the war ended its three week fluid phase and settled into desultory trench warfare. Elgar’s depression deepened, and by 1917 he and his wife Alice headed for Sussex and a cottage called “Brinkwells”, located in the woods. Plumbing was outdoors, but Elgar was thrilled to be away from London and the war.

Behind Brinkwells was a rise on which there was a stand of ancient trees gnarled into fantastic shapes. The local legends told of Spanish monks who engaged in weird sexual practices and were frozen by God into those shapes. Of course there were never any monks, Spanish or otherwise, on the site of Brinkwells, but Elgar got a kick out of the story, and the strange scene made its way into the principal piece he wrote in 1917-18 in the countryside.

For the first time in 30 years, Edu, as his wife called him, was writing chamber music, and his Quintet for Piano and Strings in A minor was his tribute to the war dead – and his own mixed feelings about the war. It was premiered in 1919 to great acclaim.

It begins with a moderato introduction in 2/4 that illustrates the trees in their weird and fantastic shapes, the Gnarled Trees Motif. The music is dissonant and very different from anything he had written in the past. The famous Dies Irae of the Requiem Mass begins A-G-A-E. Edu begins with the A-G-A, but when you’re leaning forward, expecting that E, you get a sforzando D instead. From the beginning, Elgar plays against expectation. This motif will come back to haunt the piece again and again. The strings then come in with the dissonant Spooky Motif that will also come back to haunt us.
At 1:38, the exposition begins in 6/8, marked allegro. Despite the triple-time signature, it’s a determined march. It stops cold for the return of the Spooky Motif, and the key switches to A Major for the second subject.
At 3:37, the third subject arrives in E Major, and it’s English restaurant music at its best. This theme will come back much later in the finale in a very different role. You can just wallow in this kind of melody. It’s a fine day in London before the war started, and it’s a nostalgic moment.
It winds down, and at 4:58 the Gnarled Tree Motif intrudes in E minor, as we return to the present. The rest of the introduction is developed in four-against-three in the piano. Things heat up as the development picks up the first subject, and then Elgar slams on the brakes with the piano playing loud chords, followed by triplet figures from the strings.
At 7:56, the recap comes with the march, as the troops again go to war,
The key changes to E Major as the Spooky Motif is recapped enthusiastically. Things quiet down to bring back the restaurant scene. But things turn dark with the strings quoting the Gnarled Trees Motif, and then at 11:50, the Spooky Motif returns at length. At 12:33, under a quietly shuddering piano the strings quote the Spooky Motif.
At 13:17, the Gnarled Trees sing their version of the Dies Irae with the dissonant string figurations. It ends quietly, with a pizzicato, and a hint of the graveyard.

The adagio movement in 3/4 is an elegy to the war dead in E Major, and it sounds a lot like Brahms. This was one of Elgar’s favorite pieces, and he asked that it be performed at his funeral. Some of the greatest, saddest and most solemn music is written in major keys, and this movement is a monument in English music.
At 16:48, the piano asks a question in A Major, and the strings answer with the Spooky Motif. “Was this all worth it?” The first violin answers accompanied by the piano.
At 19:11, there is a Neapolitan modulation to F Major as the elegy is restated. The intensity builds in a return to E.
Then at 20:11 comes one of the most astonishing passages in Elgar’s output. It’s not just crying and wailing. It’s all the tears of the world rolled into one. It’s inconsolable grief.
At 20:50, the storm passes, and the E Major elegy returns. It’s a different sadness, a British stiff upper lip. The piano asks its question, and the strings affirm. The wind down is sublime. All is peaceful at the end. In performances in Seattle, the handkerchiefs were all out at this point.

The finale in A Major starts in 2/4, andante, and it brings back the Spooky Motif. But this time we are treated to a British waltz of sorts, an allegro in 3/4, that celebrates the end of hostilities.
At 28:26 the second subject appears in E Major. The opening returns.
At 30:07, development begins darkly in the minor. At 30:36, the Gnarled Trees and Dies Irae waltz in 3/4 time. The Spooky Motif follows. At 31:39, the restaurant music from the first movement returns, but as though from a distance. This isn’t the actual scene before the war, it’s the memory of the scene.
At 32:44, the recap comes in a moment of consolation. “It’s all right, Jack. We taught those damned Jerries a lesson. They won’t bother us again.” At 33:46, the second subject returns but in A Major.
The long coda begins with the first subject in a triumphant mood, and the second subject is stated grandly. But the end comes a bit too soon. The late Toby Saks, who ran the artistic side of the Seattle Chamber Music Festival for 30 years, said that it ended in a false optimism, almost as though Elgar sensed the English would have to revisit this subject in the future.

Elgar: Piano Quintet in A minor