Page 20 - Phil 21-22 PROGRAM BOOK MOTH digital_Neat

The fifth variation, R.P.A., Moderato, depicts Richard Penrose Arnold, the dreamy, witty son of poet
Matthew Arnold. “He was a great lover of music, which he played (on the pianoforte) in a self-
taught manner, evading difficulties but suggesting in a mysterious way the real feeling. His serious
conversation was continually broken up by whimsical and witty remarks.”
The sixth variation, Ysobel, Andantino, is a tribute to Isabel Fitton, an amateur violist who played
chamber music with Elgar; it features a solo for the viola.

The seventh variation, Troyte, Presto, is named for an excitable and argumentative architect, Arthur
Troyte Griffith. This variation memorializes Troyte’s attempts to play the piano. “The strong rhythm
suggests the attempts of the instructor (E.E.) to make something like order out of chaos, and the final
despairing ‘slam’ records that the effort proved to be vain.”

The eighth variation, W.N., Allegretto, depicts a gracious lady, Winifred Norbury, and her dream of life
a century earlier. “W.N. was more connected with music than others of the family . . .; to justify this
position a little suggestion of a characteristic laugh is given.”
The ninth variation, Nimrod, Adagio, portrays the composer’s publisher and close friend, August
Jaeger. Nimrod was a hunter; the German word for “hunter” is Jäger. Elgar called this a reminiscence
“of a long summer evening talk where Jaeger grew nobly eloquent — as only he could — on the
grandeur of Beethoven, and especially of his slow movements. It will be noticed that the opening bars
are made to suggest the slow movement of the Eighth Sonata (‘Pathetique’).”

The tenth variation, Dorabella, Intermezzo, Allegretto, sensitively sketches Miss Dora Penny, a
charming, light hearted close friend. She was nicknamed Dorabella, from the Mozart opera, Cosí
fan tutte. “The movement suggests a dance-like lightness.” Dora Penny wrote a whole book on the
Enigma Variations and the people to whom the movements were dedicated.

The eleventh variation, G.R.S., Allegro di molto, takes its initials from the organist George Robertson
Sinclair, but the subject is really his bulldog, Dan. “The first few bars were suggested by his great
bulldog Dan (a well-known character) falling down the steep bank into the River Wye. . ., his paddling
up stream to find a landing place. . ., and his rejoicing bark on landing. . .. G. R. S. said, ‘Set that to
music.’ I did; here it is.”

The twelfth variation, B.G.N., Andante, depicts the cellist Basil Nevinson, the trio partner of Elgar and
Stuart Powell of Variation II. Including a cello solo, “The Variation is a tribute to a very dear friend,
whose scientific and artistic attainments and the wholehearted way they were put at the disposal of
his friends, particularly endeared him to the writer.”

The thirteenth variation, * * *, Romanza: Moderato, is identified with Lady Mary Lygon, who was on
a voyage to Australia when it was written, and thus Elgar could not ask permission to use her initials,
hence the asterisks. “The drums suggest the distant throb of the engines of a liner over which the
clarinet quotes a phrase from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.”

The grandiose finale, the fourteenth variation, Allegro, with the initials E.D.U., belongs to the ambitious
composer. He cryptically labeled it to spell out “Edoo,” his wife’s affectionate nickname for him. He
musically describes himself as “bold and vigorous in general style.” Before the restatement of the
first and original theme, the woodwinds repeat a phrase from Alice’s variation, which used to be
Elgar’s family whistle with Alice. In the finale, the Nimrod variation also reappears.

PAGE 18 Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra