The life of an artist is so bound up in his works that the arrangement by which one volume is labelled “Life” and the other “Works” is a little embarrassing to the writer, though it has practical advantages for the reader. The story of Sir Edward Elgar’s career would be meaningless without some discussion of the place which each work took in his life at the time of its composition; and Mr Basil Maine has rightly been willing to allow a certain amount of duplication in the two volumes in order to secure this in the first. When the story has been brought up to date (a footnote mentions the announcement that the BBC will produce the “Third Symphony” next autumn) Mr Maine closes his first volume where in fact he had begun it, that is with a pleasant character study of Sir Edward surrounded by his dogs, and then turns to the second volume, to group the works in a less personal setting according to musical types.

But duplication is not the only possible source of embarrassment. The story began with the dogs in Sir Edward Elgar’s car, when the great composer took his biographer to enjoy “an indescribable experience”, the sight of his birthplace. “That experience”, says Mr Maine, “shall be the motive of all that is written in the following pages.” He is faithful to this resolve. The cottage by the roadside and the score of The Dream of Geronlius have alike enshrined genius, and Mr Maine approaches genius with becoming reverence. That is well, but it produces difficulties for him in describing his subject’s relations with other men, some of them not without a genius of their own, who failed to bow the head at the first glimpse of the genius of Edward Elgar. He describes Elgar at an early stage as “beginning to taste that bitterness which is an element in the life of almost every creative artist”. He is gentle towards its manifestations in this case, but is less so towards possible displays of bitterness in others. He might have been wise to reflect, for example, that in describing the conflict of personalities which unfortunately arose between Elgar and the late Sir Charles Stanford he can have first-hand knowledge of only one side of the case. There are plenty of signs that in his study of this and other delicate relationships Mr Maine desires to write with fairness, but his determined view of injured genius on the one side and of a “remarkable and contradictory character” on the other prevents him from attaining his desire in the total of his comments on that situation. There is near the beginning a curious passage in which the attitudes of Stanford and Parry towards Elgar are likened respectively to those of Kozeluch and Haydn towards Mozart. Subsequent allusions almost make us suspect that if Elgar had died young Stanford would have been recast for the traditional part of Salieri.

Happily, however, Elgar did not die young but has lived to produce musical works of all classes, save opera, which run to very nearly ninety opus numbers, and which may yet reach a hundred. With Richter’s production of the “Enigma Variations” in 1899 every one at home recognized the presence of genius, and The Dream of Gerontius soon after brought a similar recognition from abroad. The first symphony produced by Richter at Manchester at the close of 1908 “was given over a hundred performances during the first year of its life”, and the reception of the subsequent major works up to “Falstaff”’ at Leeds in 1913 was scarcely less whole-hearted. Indeed this music was so enthusiastically received on its first appearance that some contrary wave of taste was bound to ensue, even had the times been normal, which they were not. The best part of Mr Maine’s criticism is his study of “Elgar in the Edwardian Age”, in which he shows not only why Elgar was the musician laureate of Edwardian England, but why the spirit his music evokes has a new significance for us at the present time.

It has to be realized, however, that its significance now is new, not merely a partial revival of the enthusiasms of a quarter of a century ago. It is as futile to go about shouting that Elgar is the English Beethoven as it would be to proclaim Mr Bernard Shaw as the English (or Irish) Goethe. There is no real relevance in analogies of that kind. In Elgar’s case they can mean no more than that in his music there is some quality which has already been found to outlive the fashion of the time in and for which it was produced. When the first symphony was getting its hundred performances a year there were those, among them some excellent musicians, who thought that its success was ephemeral. They were wrong, but they had excuse for their wrongness. Those who heard it at Worcester under the composer in September or at Queen’s Hall under Sir Landon Ronald in November last could, without taking any merit to themselves, realize the expression of a distinct personality which underlies the whole course of the work. They could, as it were, keep at a distance the qualities which made such an immediate appeal twenty-five years ago, enter more intimately into the ideas underlying what may be called the tone of voice (harmonic mannerisms, instrumental combinations, etc), and estimate the place this symphony takes as part of the sum of their musical experience. It is by such processes of assimilation that music passes from its first interest as a novelty into being accepted, or rejected, as a classic; for a “ classic” does not mean something to which preternatural respect is thoughtlessly paid because it is old or composed by someone of world-wide reputation, but a work in company with which people, differing widely from the composer in every circumstance, want to spend some part of their lives.

Since most of Elgar’s major works were written musicians have had to encounter a great many conflicting experiences in regard to their art. It is interesting to find that Mr Maine, who, still a young man, has passed through these experiences, comes out of them so firmly on the side of the ideal for which Elgar has consistently stood. In his second volume he goes steadily through each work, shows his knowledge of their contents and considerable power of analysis. Sometimes he may be too ready to assume the defensive, for example, where, in discussing the first movement of the Symphony in A flat, he says, “It is typical of Elgar’s impatient and elusive spirit to abbreviate his re-statement episode. Those who have understood need no emphasis or length here; the rest are of no account.” But as a matter of fact Elgar has abbreviated very little at that point, and some who have understood are inclined to wish that there had been less emphasis or length of recapitulation. The objection, if it was ever raised, falls to the ground by the simple process of counting bars.

Those who are re-studying Elgar’s works as they come up for performance will find much to help them in Mr Maine’s second volume; and, having in view this kind of use, we could wish that the list of works which forms his “Appendix A” had been made also an index to the pages in both volumes where they are discussed. Such references in a general index are less conveniently handled. The present generation has still to find out how much of Elgar’s music it has room for, and some contemporary opinions which have suggested that the answer is “not much” must necessarily have been painful to the artist as they have been offensive to his friends. The crude expression of that view by Professor Dent in Adler’s “Handbuch” naturally brings Mr Maine to the counter-attack in both volumes. It need only be said here that in that matter, as elsewhere, he preserves the decencies of controversy, but that the continuance of such controversy in any form must delay the final answer to the question.

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