Elgar's Variations for Orchestra, commonly known as the 'Enigma' Variations, marked an epoch both in his career, and in the renaissance of English music at the turn of the century. First performed in 1899 under Hans Richter, the work became his passport to national fame and international success. From the first it intrigued listeners to know why it was called 'enigma', and who were the 'friends pictured within', to whom the work is dedicated. Appearing in the centenary year of the work's composition, this book elucidates what is known, and what has been said about the work and the enigma, and directs future listeners to what matters most: the inspired qualities of the music.
From André Aciman, the author of Call Me by Your Name (now a major motion picture and the winner of the OscarTM for Best Adapted Screenplay) comes “a sensory masterclass, absorbing, intelligent, unforgettable” (Times Literary Supplement). André Aciman, hailed as a writer of “fiction at its most supremely interesting” (The New York Review of Books), has written a novel that charts the life of a man named Paul, whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence. Whether the setting is southern Italy, where as a boy he has a crush on his parents’ cabinetmaker, or a snowbound campus in New England, where his enduring passion for a girl he’ll meet again and again over the years is punctuated by anonymous encounters with men; whether he’s on a tennis court in Central Park, or on a New York sidewalk in early spring, his attachments are ungraspable, transient, and forever underwritten by raw desire—not for just one person’s body but, inevitably, for someone else’s as well. In Enigma Variations, Aciman maps the most inscrutable corners of passion, proving to be an unsparing reader of the human psyche and a master stylist. With language at once lyrical, bare-knuckled, and unabashedly candid, he casts a sensuous, shimmering light over each facet of desire to probe how we ache, want, and waver, and ultimately how we sometimes falter and let go of those who may want to offer only what we crave from them. Ahead of every step Paul takes, his hopes, denials, fears, and regrets are always ready to lay their traps. Yet the dream of love lingers. We may not always know what we want. We may remain enigmas to ourselves and to others. But sooner or later we discover who we’ve always known we were.
THE STORY: Nobel Prize-winning author Abel Znorko lives as a recluse on a remote island in the Norwegian Seas. For fifteen years, his one friend and soulmate has been Helen, from whom he has been physically separated for the majority of their affai
Two anthropologists work to ascertain the authenticity of some South American tribal and slave artifacts, encountering collectors, native carvers, and museum officials, all of whom have different ideas of what constitutes "authentic."
Novello presents a choral setting of Edward Elgar's 'Nimrod' from the Enigma Variations for SSAATTBB Choir, as arranged by John Cameron. This single pieces includes, as well as eight vocal lines, a piano score accompaniment for use in rehearsals.
Elgar: Variations and Enigmas Musician Rodney Baldwyn made an interesting observation in 1989 while looking through his copy of Elgars memorial service. The service in March 1934 had been arranged by Ivor Atkins to whom, late in life, Elgar had disclosed his feelings about his first fiance, Worcester-born Helen Weaver. Atkins chose three Enigma Variations for the London Symphony Orchestra to play at the service: Variation I, dedicated to CAE (Alice) and to whom Elgar had been devoted for over thirty years; Variation IX evoked Nimrod (August Jaeger), whom Elgar described as my dearest and truest friend; Variation XIII was dedicated to ***. To most people, the first two Variations might seem obvious choices, being two people to whom Elgar was very close for many years, but only Atkins knew the truth behind his third choice. He believed that the unnamed, and therefore mysterious, Enigma XIII was in memory of Helen Weaver. Elgar: Variations and Enigmas examines why Elgars engagement to Helen ended and why she left Worcester. It investigates Helens enigmatic friend from Bradford, Annie Groveham. Annie stayed with Elgar and Helen at the Hotel Sedan in Leipzig in 1883 and, nearly fifty years later, following a rather tangled life, she re-entered Elgars life. This book reveals new information about Helen Weaver as a musician and includes previously unpublished photographs of her family. The sad tale is also related of one more enigmatic person in Elgars life: his brother-in-law Stanley Napier Roberts, whose personal misfortunes, particularly in the carefree hands of actress Lady Gipsy Rodgers, are notable and readable.
This record of Elgar's intimate friendship with Alice Stuart Wortley--daughter of the painter Millais and wife of an MP--and her family chronicles a period of great artistic accomplishment set against a brilliant background of Edwardian theater, Royal Academy dinners, and private concerts. Containing some of Elgar's finest letters, many never before published, the volume also draws on diaries, manuscript notes, and personal recollections to fill gaps in the correspondence, creating a rich and full portrait of a fascinating society and a great artist at the height of his powers.
