| In the twilight of his long life (1857-1934)
and sometime after The Music Makers of 1912, Edward Elgar was to write: "I am still at heart that dreamy child
who used to be found in the reeds by the Severn side with a sheet of paper trying to fix
the sounds and longing for something very great.I am still looking for this."
Drawn to dreams as to a world beyond reach, this theme in
word or mood courses through much of Elgar's music: his Dream Children, 'Dreaming'
from the Nursery Suite, Sea Pictures and the Dream of Gerontius. So it
is no surprise that Elgar should have been drawn to the text of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's Ode
of 1873 with its opening: We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.
Much criticism has been levelled at the quality of the poem by O'Shaughnessy, an
antiquities employee of the British Museum, but in the words of Basil Maine: "In
itself the verse is a self-conscious, word-sounding utterance, but Elgar lifts it above
its own level and endows it with that very quality of wistful idealism for which it seems
to be striving". It is as though Elgar catches the poem's vision of the role of the
creative artist in inspiring the history and future of Mankind and directs it into the
music. In a letter to Ernest Newman Elgar reveals that the poem's music makers are
"all artists who feel the tremendous responsibility to "renew the world as of
yore". O'Shaughnessy's Ode holds the past and the future in balance:
For each Age is a dream that is dying
Or one that is coming to birth
Yet in Elgar's hands the music appears to undermine the
poem's hope for the future. In his own words "the atmosphere of the music is mainly
sad". yet. "there are moments of enthusiasm and bursts of joy occasionally
approaching frenzy: moods which the creative artist suffers in creating or in
contemplation of the unending influence of his creation. Yes suffers - this is the only
word I dare use for even the highest ecstasy of 'making' is mixed with the consciousness
of the sombre dignity of the eternity of the artist's responsibility."
And in 1912, the year of The Music Makers, Elgar was indeed suffering both from
bouts of giddiness and from depression. "I have been very dreary ... and have felt
this terrible Titanic disaster acutely and I have been lonely." Originally entitled
The Dreamers, Elgar embarked on the piece - a work that he had been considering for
the past decade. Acutely aware of the potential of creative artists to be the movers
and shakers of the world, Elgar had a deep sense of the artists' loneliness dwelling
in our dreaming and singing, a little apart from ye. He identifies so closely
with the motivation of the poem that he declares "in the Ode . I have shewn
myself". As a composer who has readily used motives in his works, it is therefore
completely natural in this piece about the nature of the creative artist that he should
use self-quotation, as had Mozart, Wagner and especially Richard Strauss before him. For
the original programme notes Elgar wrote to Ernest Newman: "Please do not insist on
the extent of the quotations" and declared that "they form a very small part of
the work", but this self-quotation is nevertheless hugely significant and integral to
the tapestry of the The Music Makers.
The work is dedicated to Nicholas Kilburn, one of Elgar's oldest and dearest friends and
the conductor of the premiere on 1st October 1912, who exhorted his performers |
"Sing and play. as though
you were in dreamland and all will be well.."
|
| The orchestral
prelude has two contrasting motives. The first is a passionate chromatic rising and
falling figure, generally descending with rhythmic repetition.
The second idea is also rhythmically repetitive, but begins
quietly singing and rises sequentially.
Before long the main Enigma theme is heard from Elgar's
Variations. It is traditionally the theme representing Elgar himself (following the
natural rhythm and shape of the name Edward Elgar). In his own words: "I have used
the theme because it expressed when written (in 1898) my sense of the loneliness of the
artist as described in the first six lines of the Ode and, to me, it still embodies that
sense".
As the prelude dies away the chorus enter unaccompanied with
what Elgar describes as "a sort of artist's theme" which is to return several
times to mark the structural framework of the piece.
At the first mention of dreams the Judgement motif from
Gerontius can be heard mysteriously in the orchestral distance, followed by a fleeting
glimpse of Sea Pictures, then Enigma again as we picture the artist sitting by desolate
streams. As the music makers stir fiery emotions and fashion an empire's glory, Rule
Britannia and the Marseillaise can be heard in quick succession. Elgar did not regard
these "as being peculiarly fabulous stories, but as the things music makers have
achieved." One man with a dream is treated with suitably prolonged
diminished 7ths and the chorus decisively trample a kingdom down in descending whole tone
scales.
We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; -
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down. |
A strong one-bar phrase insistently repeated
in the orchestra builds Nineveh city until the falling tower of Babel cascades down the
orchestra, overthrown by prophesying as the dream of one age is dying or another surges
forward in coming to birth. The return of the artist's theme wistfully concludes the first
section of the poem.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth. |
The fourth stanza of the Ode is introduced by
the second theme of the orchestral introduction. The music makers' hushed breath of our
inspiration injects seemingly impossible life to rouse to unity the soldier, the king and
the peasant until our dream shall become their present and, their work ..done, chorus and
then orchestra subside into obscurity. Into the silence moves the solitary voice of the
alto soloist, Elgar's characteristic choice of solo sonority. He writes " Here I have
quoted the Nimrod Variation as a tribute to my friend [deceased] A J Jaeger [and by
implication himself?]: by this I do not mean to convey that his was the only soul on which
light had broken or that his was the only word that wrought flame on another man's
heart."
go to the top of the right column |
Here the finale of the second symphony
erupts as the music bursts into flame:
A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming -
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart |
The sixth verse begins on frenzied orchestra
and wave upon wave of thrilling surges as the multitudes are enlisted to
fulfil yesterday's dreams woven by the music makers. The emblazoned artist's theme exults
from the chorus with the words of the opening stanza: the movers and the shakers of
the world forever it seems. But eventually overcome by the dream's sorrow the
orchestra, by way of the prelude's opening theme, subsides into chromatic and unearthly
murmurings.
A return to the reference to Gerontius' Grace theme carries the music makers' dreaming
and singing as, ringing with high music, they glimpse glorious futures. The
Enigma is to make its final appearance along with the violin concerto (the theme Elgar
wanted engraved on his tombstone) in a spine-tingling moment as, in their dreaming and
singing, the music makers forever dwell a little apart.
And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted
And, scorning the dream of tomorrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye. |
Beginning quietly apart the artists' theme in
the original key soars into infinite morning with the main theme of the first symphony.
References to the military music of the soldier and the peasant of verse four, the
cascading orchestral fall of the world's great cities and the descending whole-tone scale
previously used to trample a kingdom down, are now used to warn of the death of those of
the past.
The words of the final stanza are given to the soloist who, in a flame-like burst of
inspiration, addresses the future music-makers from the dazzling, unknown shore. But,
imbued with sadness, the second prelude theme, expanding into arching yet ever falling
phrases, implores these music makers to teach new songs and dreams. Elgar blends the words
of the seventh stanza with those of the ninth, subtly altered from the first person to the
second so that the soloist continues to address the music makers, while the chorus
continue their dreaming and singing, afar with the dawning, a little apart from ye. In
solitary beauty over the Gerontius Novissima hora theme, the Ode's last couplet sinks
chromatically and sequentially into the dreamer's slumber of the singer who sings no more.
As if grieving for the music makers' passing and the dreamer who slumbers, the Ode's
opening artist's theme is heard floating into the distance.
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry --
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers,
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more. |
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