MEMORIES OF ELGAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 11 (Supplement)

MEMORIES OF ELGAR

FRIEND'S INTIMATE PORTRAIT MODESTY ABOUT HIS MUSIC (By Air Mail) LONDON, Sept. 10 The most intimate portrait of Sir Edward Elgar that lias yet appeared is contained m a book published to-day— Mr. W. H. Reed's ."Elgar as 1 Knew Him." Mr. ileed, who was for many years Hie leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, first learnt to know Elgar in 1902, and soon became one of the great romposer's closest friends. The book gives glimpses of a many-sided Elgar. We find him at one time engrossed in experimental chemistry—with an explosion in a water-butt as the result on one occasion. At another time ho takes up boomerang-throwing, or, again, microscopy. Billiards did not absorb him. Mr. Reed says:—"l don't know whether other people had the same experience as 1 with that billiard-table, but'l never once succeeded in getting Sir Edward to finish a game. We would get as far as .'SO or 40, or perhaps even GO; but he always switched off to the study of diatoms . . .or went to the piano and played, or fetched out a full score to show me in dreadful secrecy how \\ agner had evidently made a close study of Haydn before composing 'Die Mcistersinger.' "I have seen three beautiful microscopes at once on that billiard-table, with slides, condensers and everything complete, strewn all over it." As for Elgar's knowledge of the Turf —the first subject he turned to on opening the newspaper at breakfast —lie convinced Mr. Reed that he could have set up as a fully qualified bookmaker if he had been driven to it. Elgar is described as extremely modest about his own music, but_ proud of his skill in orchestration. "Nothing in his own work ever surprised him when he heard it. . . . He just knew how it would sound and was never disappointed." He loved Schumann and would discuss his symphonies at great length. The music entranced him; but he felt the weakness of the orchestration, and he would also point out weak spots in the scoring of Brahms' symphonies. "Elgar's tastes in music," says Mr. Reed, "were all-embracing. He liked nearly all music that had tune, rhythm or colour." At one time Elgar had the idea of writing an opera and asked Mr. Bernard Shaw for a libretto. A projected opera on a libretto based on Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an Ass," in collaboration with Sir Barry Jackson, was seriouslv worked at. Mr. Reed says:—-"Soon the music grew, until there was a pile of MS. _ori his desk. . . . There was a Spanish dance, a country dance, a bolero and a saraband. Also numerous vocal portions, of which I played the voice part while he accompanied vigorously and excitablv at the piano." Mr. fteed also tells something about the unfinished oratorio, "The Last Judgment," and. mentions a projected piano concerto. This was put on one side in favour of the Third Symphony on which Elgar was working when stricken by mortal illness. Mr. Reed's book contains more than 40 pages of the sketches he made for this work. A few pages of the opening movement are fully scored. Mr. Reed saw Elgar frequently in those last months in 1933-4. On one of these visits the dying man asked that the sketches should bo burnt, but relented when promised that no one should ever tinker with it." The design of the finale will never be known. \\ hen lie showed Mr. Reed the Inst sketch "He would not say whether it was the end of the slow movement or the end of the whole symphony. All he said (with tears streaming down ( his cheeks'* was—'Billy this is the end.