11 - The later orchestral music (1910–34)

Summary

Whatever Elgar actually said concerning ‘absolute music’ in his Birmingham lecture on Brahms's Symphony No. 3, and whatever he actually meant to say, to view his own symphonies and concertos as ‘purely tonal pattern-weaving’, to use Ernest Newman's phrase, would be to deny an essential – perhaps the essential – aspect of one's experience of them. A more productive approach is to see these works as ‘fixing’ by means of a highly sophisticated compositional technique a series of emotional states or attitudes, these being bound up to a large extent with aspects of the composer's own life. Various comments by Elgar confirm – or, at the very least, suggest – that this is the case. Indeed, both the Violin Concerto and Symphony No. 2 have prefatory inscriptions that point to extra-musical impulses, their enigmatic nature increasing the listener's desire to search for ‘meaning’. Meanwhile it could be said that Falstaff, described by the composer as a ‘symphonic study’, differs chiefly to the extent that the subject-matter is precisely identified and specific events illustrated. What follows is an interpretation of Elgar's later orchestral music (the works already mentioned, plus the Cello Concerto and Anthony Payne's elaboration of the sketches for Symphony No. 3) that pivots around what this particular author perceives to be its emotional meaning, but argued from observations about technique intended to provide snapshots of Elgar's symphonic approach.