Joseph Cooper, once a familiar sight on TV’s Face the Music thought he had solved the riddle and suggested Elgar had used Mozart’s Prague Symphony as the basis. Certainly there is a passage in the second movement which is very similar to Enigma. However, I think other pieces present a stronger case.
For a long time I believed that the original composer was not Mozart, but Thomas Arne and that both Elgar and Mozart had absorbed some of the earlier composer’s music.
Thomas Arne achieved great popularity in his lifetime in London (he lived from 1710 until 1778). One of his later works, Olimpiade, was performed on 27 April 1765. In the audience on this occasion was the young Mozart who had spent most of the previous year in London. I think it is highly likely that Mozart would have come into contact with Arne's music, and since Arne's most famous work was Rule Britannia, it is possible that this was when Mozart made the acquaintance of the piece. It is further possible that the young Wolfgang subconsciously remembered the piece and later in his life drew on it for his Prague Symphony.
Remember that this was the musician who liberated Allegri's Miserere from the Sistine Chapel.
Rule Britannia originally formed the finale to Thomas Arne's masque Alfred. It immediately became popular. Handel quoted it in his Occasional Oratorio of 1745. In future years many composers would either quote it, or use it as the basis for other works. Beethoven wrote a set of Variations for Piano on the tune; Wagner expanded it into a long overture in 1837 - although this was not one of his better works and it fully deserves its obscurity.
The bold print marks the point in the chorus which was used by Elgar. He slows the tempo down considerably and this disguises the original.
Although today many people think that Rule Britannia is just part of the ritualistic “Last Night of the Proms” pageant where it ends the “Fantasia on British Sea Songs” as arranged by Sir Henry Wood, it is actually taken from the masque “Alfred” by Thomas Arne where it provides the finale to the work.
The Enigma Variations carries the opus number 36. Opus number 35 is his dramatic cantata Caractacus about an English King facing invasion from foreign hordes. Surely it would have been natural to think of similar historical events, perhaps Alfred the Great and to recall how these had been treated in the past. I recently discovered that Elgar was not the only English composer to explore Caractacus - Arne himself did so!
There are a couple of CDs which include music composed by Mozart during his stay in London in 1764-5. One of these, The London Chelsea Sketchbooks on Regis RRC1257 includes a short piece in C minor which seems to use a popular melody of that time, Lillibulero
Dr Clive McClelland in the School of Music believes he has a new solution, based on the melody of the popular hymn ‘Now the day is over’. His article appears in the winter volume of the Musical Times - one of the world of music’s most respected journals.
Many solutions have been proposed since the work was first performed, but Dr McClelland believes his idea is the best to date because unlike most others, it accounts for all 24 notes of the theme.
He says: “It is extraordinary that so many of the well-known solutions, such as ‘Auld Lang Syne’, ‘Home, Sweet Home’ and the National Anthem, simply do not fit very well with Elgar’s theme. Nearly all of the previous ideas either don’t account for some of the notes, or have dissonances if they do. Elgar loved a good puzzle, and in setting one he definitely would not have left any anomalies. Of the 24 notes, I have identified 12 precise matches, and the other 12 are all harmonious intervals (11 thirds and a fifth).
“There have been a lot of rather silly suggestions around in recent years, but I have come up with an idea that ticks all the boxes. I think it is a genuinely plausible solution, and I am offering it in order to further the debate on the subject.”
More details at University of Leeds.
One source I've seem (possibly the MT) suggests the tune was in a book of violin pieces that Elgar was using with one of his pupils. Certainly Elgar began improvising on the piano after arriving home from teaching one of his pupils.
From the BBC:
When Elgar was on his deathbed, he spoke to the music critic, Ernest Newman. He said five words to him 'which probably had a bearing on the secret of the enigma', but since they were 'open to misconstruction', his friend vowed never to reveal them and took the secret with him to his own grave 25 years later.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Now | the | Day | is | Over |
Elgar himself said that during the work the original theme is never played. Or try this variation: Elgar himself said that during the work the original theme is “never, never, never” played.
It is a little known fact that during the writing of the Engima variations, Elgar took advice from the Hallé’s timpanist regarding the timpani part. Elgar’s original intention had been for side drum sticks to have been used in variation XIII (*** - supposedly to represent the sound of throbbing engines), however these proved unsuitable for the effect Elgar had in mind, and so he recommended the use of pennies instead.
As regards the new theory, it is very convincing.
If you go to the SSO concert on 21st June this year, you'll get the chance to hear the Elgar for yourself.
Bamberg Competition