Enigma Variations

Enigma Variations is a transcription of a major work for orchestra written by Edward Elgar (see below) in 1899. The transcription was written by Earl Slocum (see also below) in 1965.

On the evening of Friday, October 21, 1898, after a tiring day’s teaching music theory to marginally interested students, Edward Elgar sat down at the piano and absent-mindedly began to “plink out” a simple ditty. The melody he played caught the attention of his wife and she encouraged him to use it in a composition. He began to improvise variations on it in styles which reflected the character of some of his friends and challenged her to guess the name of the friend he was thinking of. These improvisations, expanded and orchestrated, became the Enigma Variations. Elgar dedicated the piece to “my friends pictured within” and in the score each variation is prefaced the initials, name or nickname of the friend depicted. As was common with painted portraits of the time, Elgar's musical portraits depict their subjects at two levels. Each movement conveys a general impression of its subject's personality. In addition, many of them contain a musical reference to a specific characteristic or event, such as a laugh, a habit of speech or a memorable conversation.

The piece was finished and published in February 1899. It was first performed at St James's Hall in London in June 1899, conducted by Hans Richter. Critics were at first irritated by the layer of mystification, but most praised the substance, structure and orchestration of the work. Elgar later revised the final variation, adding 96 new bars and an organ part. The new version (which is the one usually performed today) was first heard at the Worcester Three Choirs Festival in September 1899, with Elgar conducting.

The orchestral version of this piece includes a presentation of the theme and fourteen variations. In writing his adaptation of the piece for concert band in 1965, transcriber Earl Slocum decided only of half of the variations were well-suited for concert band. Below is a description of each part. These comments are rather lengthy. Please feel free to skim and skip through it.

The transcription begins with a simple statement of the theme by the flutes, with a subdued accompaniment of chords in the clarinets. The unusual melodic contours of the G minor opening theme convey a sense of searching introspection. A switch to the major key introduces a flowing motif which briefly lightens the mood before the first theme returns, now accompanied by a sustained bass line and emotionally charged counterpoints.

In a program note for a 1912 performance of his setting of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's ode The Music Makers, Elgar wrote of this theme (which he quoted in the later work), “it expressed when written (in 1898) my sense of the loneliness of the artist as described in the first six lines of the Ode, and to me, it still embodies that sense.” Elgar's personal identification with the theme is evidenced by his use of its opening phrase (which matches the rhythm and inflection of his name) as a signature in letters to friends.

The theme leads into Variation I without a pause.

Variation I “C.A.E.” Caroline Alice Elgar, Elgar's wife. The variation repeats a four-note melodic fragment which Elgar reportedly whistled when arriving home to his wife. After Alice's death, Elgar wrote, “The variation is really a prolongation of the theme with what I wished to be romantic and delicate additions; those who knew C.A.E. will understand this reference to one whose life was a romantic and delicate inspiration.”

The second variation in our transcription was actually Variation 4 in the original composition. It’s attribution is “W.M.B.”, a reference to William Meath Baker, squire of Hasfield, Gloucestershire and benefactor of several public buildings in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent. He “expressed himself somewhat energetically” and the music reflects that character. This is the shortest of the variations.

The third variation in our transcription was actually Variation 5 in the original composition. It’s attribution is “R.P.A”, a reference to Richard Penrose Arnold, the son of the famed poet Matthew Arnold, and an amateur pianist. Commentators tell us young Richard “loved listening to music and adored chamber music”. The music reflects very obvious swings from ponderous reflection and periods of gaiety.

The fourth variation, originally Variation 11, is marked “G.R.S”. Though nominally dedicated to George Robertson Sinclair, the energetic organist of Hereford Cathedral, according to Elgar: “The variation, however, has nothing to do with organs or cathedrals, or, except remotely, with G.R.S. The first few bars were suggested by his great bulldog, Dan (a well-known character) falling down the steep bank into the River Wye; his paddling upstream to find a landing place; and his rejoicing bark on landing. G.R.S. said, ‘Set that to music’. I did; here it is.”

The fifth variation in our transcription was actually Variation 9 in the original composition. It is labeled “Nimrod”. The name of the variation refers to Augustus J. Jaeger, who was employed as a music editor by the London publisher Novello & Co. He was a close friend of Elgar's, giving him useful advice but also severe criticism, something Elgar greatly appreciated. Elgar later related how Jaeger had encouraged him as an artist and had stimulated him to continue composing despite setbacks.

Nimrod is described in the Old Testament as “a mighty hunter before the Lord”, Jäger (which can also be spelt Jaeger) being German for hunter.

In 1904, Elgar told a friend that this variation is not really a portrait, but “the story of something that happened”. Once, when Elgar had been very depressed and was about to give it all up and write no more music, Jaeger had visited him and encouraged him to continue composing. He referred to Ludwig van Beethoven, who had a lot of worries, but wrote more and more beautiful music. “And that is what you must do”, Jaeger said, and he sang the theme of the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 Pathétique. Elgar disclosed that the opening bars of “Nimrod” were made to suggest that theme. “Can't you hear it at the beginning? Only a hint, not a quotation.”

This variation has become popular in its own right and is sometimes used at British funerals, memorial services, and other solemn occasions. It is always played at the Cenotaph, Whitehall in London at the National Service of Remembrance. A version was also played during the Hong Kong handover ceremony in 1997, at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and during the 2022 BBC Proms after the season was cut short due to the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The final variation, originally Variation 14, carries the initials “E.D.U.”, which stands for a nickname for Elgar known only to his close friends, from the German Eduard. The themes from two variations are echoed: “Nimrod” and “C.A.E.”, referring to Jaeger and Elgar's wife Alice, “two great influences on the life and art of the composer”, as Elgar wrote in 1927. Elgar called these references “entirely fitting to the intention of the piece”.

Said to depict his struggles and his energies, this variation is none-the-less worked out nonprogramitically so that it caps the series of variations in a triumphant, broad presentation of the theme in a major key. This lengthy variation comprises almost a third of the work.

Sir Edward William Elgar, (1857 – 1934) is considered the premiere English composer of the early twentieth century. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies.

Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition.

He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.

In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere.

Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.

Earl A. Slocum (1902 – 1994) was an American composer, arranger, educator and flautist. He attended a one-room school before his family moved to Albion, Michigan. During his boyhood in Albion, Slocum studied piano, violin, and taught himself to play flute using the Langley Self-Tutor book. Though he became musically proficient, he did not aspire to a career in music education. At that time, bands and orchestras had not yet become recognized as a valued adjunct to education in the public schools. He earned eight athletic letters while in high school, three in baseball, three in football, and two in basketball.

Upon graduation from high school, Slocum had his eyes on a career as an engineer, and his freshman year at Albion College was slanted in this direction. The director of the conservatory at Albion convinced Slocum that his future should be in music. He became the first male student to graduate from Albion with a public school music certificate, and his teaching career began while he was still a college student by being asked to direct the local high school band. Slocum earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Michigan.

After several years of professional playing, he joined the Detroit public school system where he introduced instrumental music in the intermediate schools. During the Music Educators National Conference in Detroit in 1925, an educator heard Slocum's All-City Orchestra, observed two classes in woodwind and brass instruments, and lured him to a teaching position in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he taught music in the public schools for seven years.

In 1933, Slocum became the director of bands and conductor of the symphony orchestra at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. While there, he obtained his master's degree in music from the University of Michigan in 1936. In 1960, Slocum was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree from Albion College. He remained at the University of North Carolina until his retirement in 1967.

Slocum was a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan, Georgia, and Kentucky, and a popular adjudicator at numerous band and orchestra festivals. He also appeared as a flute soloist with many bands, theater, concert and symphony orchestras, and several circus bands. Upon his retirement from the University of North Carolina he joined the Lexington, Kentucky, Philharmonic Orchestra as its principal flutist. After moving to DeLand, Florida, he taught at Stetson University School of Music, served on the board of advisors, and conducted the symphony orchestra for nine years. He was co-organizer and conductor of the DeLand Little Symphony.

Slocum is probably best known for his transcriptions for concert band, which are played extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Dr. Slocum continued to play his flute until shortly before he died. He is remembered for his devotion and loyal support of the American Bandmasters Association, and as one of the outstanding pioneers in the band field.