Elgar's counterpoint: Three of a kind

Musical Times, Summer 1999 by Banfield, Stephen

STEPHEN BANFIELD finds evidence for Elgar's originality of style in the composer's unique contrapuntal craft

MANY A musicological investigation starts as pedagogic marginalia. A student essay once informed me that the first Pomp and circumstance march, the acme of populist nationalism in music, was all homophonic tune and harmony without counterpoint. This sent me scurrying to the score to point out that the very first thing we hear in this piece is not the tune that was later set to 'Land of hope and glory', but a tensile passage in two-part counterpoint: just upper and lower melodic parts in restless and rather strained and aggressive contrary motion.1 Chords do punctuate it, but most of the fiery march section sticks with this essentially linear sound. All the strings except the double basses play the ricocheting semiquaver tune in unison, in give-and-take with the double basses, bassoons, bass clarinet and bass trombone. Harmonic movement and individual chords are merely etched in, rather like a continuo realisation - an important point. And, to the horror of every organist who has ever had to play a transcription of the piece, then comes a highly chromatic motif in invertible two-part counterpoint. This passage has the organist's work cut out in the pedals -just as the trombonists' right arms do overtime at the same point in the original version. In fact the counterpoint is invertible at the thirteenth, and is faked (but then, so is most good counterpoint). The point is that, in contrast with some people's opinions even now, Elgar is a master technician whose poetical effects depend significantly on all manner of traditional tricks of the trade.

Taking the subject of Elgar's counterpoint a little further, one of the striking things about whether or not what you hear at the opening of the march matches the above description is the sense of how, at any one time, your awareness of it as a couple of contrapuntal lines or as a harmonic discourse depends on Elgar's scoring; on how he masses the instruments and asks them to play. For instance, at the first statement of the string tune with the semiquavers, the 'etched-in' chords referred to as being like a continuo part are given only to horns and clarinets, and at a lower dynamic marking than the fortissimo massed strings; but when they return a few bars later, the full weight of the brass makes them much more noticeable. As this reference to one of Elgar's most popular works shows, his approach to polyphony can be usefully investigated in the context of his overall approach to texture. And if anyone thinks that praising him as a contrapuntist means that he wrote music in three or four parts that trundle on interminably, they're wrong. It's the variety and planning of his contrapuntal and harmonic strategies, often involving a great diversity of them over a relatively short passage of time, that are so striking, and indeed can suggest clues to the nature of his extraordinary originality of style.

Some further examples will enlarge on this point. Firstly, take the Prelude to The dream of Gerontius. The sequence of its changing textures might be described as follows: opening monody, just a solo melody without accompaniment; melody plus offbeat chordal accompaniment; four-part imitative chromatic counterpoint (including an independent, non-imitative fifth part on the clarinet); three-part homophonic chromaticism, blossoming into four parts (interspersed with a return of the four-part imitative section); two- and threepart tune with harmony and/or counterpoint above a one-bar bass ostinato; four-part chromatic harmony modelled on the `agony style ol Parsifal; three wide-spaced contrapuntal parts, each with octave doubling, the middle part actually consolidated in three octaves; a sort of elaborated fauxbourdon; and a more homophonic passage, rather like a chorale, vaguely in three and four parts. That makes nine ways of writing in all, which is quite a display of different types of texture, though of course it might be expected in a pseudooperatic prelude where the purpose is to introduce in advance of the action the main musical motifs or events of the piece - a sort of trailer for the film.

Where it might not be so obviously expected is in another example, the exposition section of the Introduction and allegro for strings, a piece which many would agree shows Elgar at the very peak of his powers. The suggestion for its composition was contained in a letter from Jaeger:

Why not a brilliant quick String Scherzo ... a real bring down the house torrent of a thing such as Bach could write (remember that Cologne Brandenburg concerto [no.3, heard at the Lower Rhine Festival] ... You might even write a modern Fugue for strings..2

The exceptional athleticism of this piece has much to do with its contrapuntal agenda. The exposition traverses the whole textural (and literal) gamut, from the standard, importunate sensibility of four-part close harmony to a single unaccompanied or merely punctuated line. The fourpart harmony is chiefly heard in the separated passages for the solo string quartet (such harmony has a somewhat pious sound in so far as its history is bound up with Bach chorales). Particularly interesting, however, is the manner in which the divisi orchestral strings respond to the quartet's music by opening it all out. The main theme, carefree and somewhat breezy, is mostly in three parts only though with a great deal of etched doubling, more difficult to work out from the score than it is to hear in performance. As the exposition gathers momentum, the textural moorings are progressively loosened, freeing up the interplay to a pair of extremely independent parts and eventually to exhilarating moments when there is only one. It's a journey of gathering confidence in self-reliance.