Edward Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination (review)

Nostalgia has long been identified as a central element in Elgar's music. Writers have variously focused on the 'autumnal' nature of the later chamber music, highlighted poignant thematic reminiscences in the concertos and symphonies, or even suggested that, in addition to a sense of retrospection within specific works themselves, Elgar's music becomes indelibly bound up with the nostalgic personal associations of the listener. Given this range of approaches, Matthew Riley's book is timely in providing a thorough examination of the role, nature, and complexity of nostalgia in both Elgar's music and responses to it. After a brief focus on the striking nature and order of musical events in the cadenza of Elgar's Violin Concerto, Riley begins by discussing the reception of nostalgia itself—first by providing a historical overview of the term, delineating its particular manifestations in late nineteenth-century Britain, and then by high-lighting the range of nostalgic contexts invoked in writings on Elgar: ceremonial as 'vanished greatness', the lament for times past, childhood as musical subject matter (and perceptions of biographical resonances), pagan associations, and the countryside of an old England. The complexity of this issue is mirrored in the recent debate on nostalgia's value and place in the modern world—what Riley, citing arguments by writers such as Susan Stewart and David Lowenthal, terms the 'nostalgia wars'. These divergent positions on the place of nostalgia in contemporary thought are echoed within Elgar scholarship—hence the contrary views of writers such as Jerrold Northrop Moore and David Cannadine. The way forward, Riley suggests, is to examine the multifarious aspects of musical nostalgia, divested from its reactionary associations, and this is what his book aims to do.

Riley's second chapter, 'Memory', focuses on thematic reminiscence in Elgar. This is obviously a striking feature of Elgar's music: restatements of themes are often incomplete (the end of Dream Children), muted (the end of the second movement of the Serenade for strings, the motto theme at figure 54 in the First Symphony), and stuttering (the second movement of the String Quartet, for example, which might have been explored in this chapter), encouraging comparison with previous versions of the same material, and hence creating a sense of retrospection. Riley limits himself to aspects of return that are not part of expected functional norms (therefore avoiding discussions of recapitulations), concentrating on examples that punctuate the frame of a movement, parachuting in as an intrusion to the musical fabric. He provides a useful distinction between different types of thematic reminiscence; while the retrospective allusions in the Serenade finale represent 'seamless integration' (p. 22), others suggest 'a search for a half-remembered idea or the gradual disintegration of normal consciousness' (p. 23). Some of these references occur at sectional boundaries; Riley's examples include the muted restatement of the 'Welsh' tune in the Introduction and Allegro for strings (representative of Elgar's own musical memory of this tune, four years after hearing it in Cardigan Bay), and the fleeting references to the motto theme in the opening movement of the First Symphony. However, a more poignant positioning of these semantically charged moments, Riley suggests, is in a penultimate position in a movement or work—hence the cadenza of the Violin Concerto, the return of the 'spirit of delight' motif in the Second Symphony, the disintegrating references in Falstaff to the protagonist's musical past, the reference to the Romance theme before the final Coda of the Violin Sonata, the frequent thematic punctuations in the Piano Quintet, and the return of the slow movement material in the finale of the Cello Concerto (although in the latter, a greater sense of an unfolding from covert to overt reference might have been suggested). Riley highlights the nature of some of these memories as being akin to hauntings, characterizing references as 'pushing their way through to consciousness unsought for and unsummoned'; the material 'does not participate fully in the overall musical argument . . . it just appears...