Enigma Wrapped in an Eyenigma: for Edward Elgar’s Birthday

 

Edward Elgar: St Wulstans' R.C. Church, Little Malvern, at bluebell time

For those who raise an eyebrow at my thieving (or ‘Reproduction with Variation’ to use Darwin’s term) of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations title - both for this blog and my string quartet on Darwinian themes concerning the Eye – some belated justification and also my homage to the great man.

My great grandmother Margaret Delaney sang in his choir at the Catholic church in Great Malvern (so family legend says) and I also was suffused with the theology behind his greatest work, the setting of Cardinal Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius, the journey of the soul after death. I sang this with Imperial College Choir in ~1983 and absolutely love it. Although no longer a believer (by Occam’s Razor) in anything beyond nature, I greatly appreciate the Adventure of Faith: an effort to extrapolate beyond what we know (from a firm and reasoned foundation) in many areas of life and thought.

Charles Darwin had to do such an extrapolation, “These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse…”  He had to take on faith that a mechanism would be found for the bit in bold. The first edition of Origin of Species contained a (wrong) guess that something he called ‘gemules’ would pass on information from parents to embryo encoding information about useful/harmful behaviours - pretty much Lamarckism – which he later disowned. If he had wanted a complete theory he would have had to wait for another hundred years for the elucidation of the DNA/RNA/protein mechanism. That’s why I included the genetic code of the Eye protein into Eyenigma variations even though anachronisitic. The enigma had a solution and Darwin’s faith was justified.

I’m sure they would have got on, Elgar and Darwin, despite differences in outlook on religion. Elgar might even have given Darwin a start since, “A study of the composer’s papers reveals that for most of his life he was fascinated by cryptography. His letters and music scores, for example, are dotted with codes and anagrams.” New Scientist. The dedication to Gerontius is AMDG: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam  "For the greater glory of God", similar to J.S. Bach’s S.D.G (only for the glory of God) dedication on most works (and of course he encoded his own name BACH in the Art of Fugue, which I take as a theme for Eyenigma Variations).

Elgar’s most famous coded work is the delightful Enigma Variations itself. The fourteen variations all have coded initials, but these are meant to be easily ‘cracked’ as names of his close friends - amateur music makers, collaborators and family. But the underlying melody: “The Enigma I will not explain – its "dark saying" must be left unguessed”; he kept that secret to his grave (above). Here’s one proposed solution: I rather like that one, and Elgar may have liked my returned compliment in the Victorian hymn tune I cryptically embed (transferred to Lydian mode) in Eyenigma.

I have my own faith that the whole Darwiniana oratorio will someday get performed; here’s an extract (rendition) promised some time in my piece about the Southern Stars (it will get a detailed write-up another time). But there’s no doubt that Elgar’s faith is still an inspiration. I used a figure from his mighty aria Proficiscere, Anima Christiana as an input for Darwin’s words on ‘A Man Looks Forwards & Backwards’ and for the ascent of the holy mountain of Science (in Darwin's case), and the Gerontius demons (everyone’s favourite!) make a brief appearance in a location I’m sure of which Elgar would approve. So, hats off to him for his birthday (actually 2nd June - 'fat fingers' had added another digit).

From 'Three Soliloquies for baritone and c. guitar': spot the Demons!

Picture credits: Katherine Langrish, Little Malvern; David F Gahan (composition copyright)