Thomson and Fuller’s essays explore Elgar’s musical success in the public and private realms. In Fuller’s essay, entitled “Elgar and the Salons: The Significance of a Private Musical World,” I was struck by Elgar’s simultaneous affinity for and discomfort with the women and homosexual men in his musical circle. These individuals supported him emotionally and financially, a fact that both aided in Elgar’s popularity but also compromised his image as a “masculine” composer. Fuller notes that writings by women in Elgar’s life chronicle “…the often intense and passionate nature of Elgar’s relationships with these and other women – all of whom, in various ways, invested vast amounts of energy in nurturing and supporting the moody and self-doubting composer.”[1] Particularly telling is Elgar’s relationship with Frank Schuster, a flamboyantly homosexual man that it appears both boosted Elgar’s reputation and may have been in love with him. Elgar was grateful for Schuster’s patronage but hesitant about his own association with an effeminate man. Fuller concludes, ‘This was a world that opened its doors to women, to lesbians and gay men, to foreigners, to Catholics and Jews – to all those who were different and face exclusion from the Anglican, patriarchal system.”[2]
In contrast, Thomson’s article entitled, “Elgar’s Critical Critics,” studies the British school of musical thought at the time, a school which excluded Elgar because of his musical ties to Wagner and Strauss and because of his “…lower-middle-class, self-taught, provincial Roman Catholic…” heritage.[3] I find it ironic however that the British school seemed to yearn for the raw, heartfelt music of a self-taught composer, yet when someone of this actual condition faced them they turned their backs. I deduced from class discussion today that a discomfort that critics may have felt with Elgar’s musical similarity to Wagner is the growing nationalism in Europe as the continent approaches World War I. British strived for a quintessential musical sound that would match its individual entity. They deemed five composers, including Stanford and Parry, as leaders in the British music movement (just as France had “Les Six”). I found it amusing that British critics were so harsh in their criticism of Elgar, especially considering Elgar’s affinity and respect for Parry, the most popular British composer in the late 19th century. It was not as if Elgar was trying to sound so different from his colleagues. It seems that like many great composers, his music was for a future generation of Englishmen. Thomson quotes Hadow: “Elgar had ‘remodeled the musical language of English: he [had] enlarged its style and enriches its vocabulary, and the monument of his work is not only a landmark in our present advance but a beacon of guidance for its future.”[4]
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