Chapter 4 - Elgar and Bulwer Lytton: Hidden Narrative and the Piano Quintet, op. 84

Summary

‘Who does not know the power of music?’

The exploration of narrative in Elgar's music often takes as its starting point a literary quotation that the composer deliberately attached to specific compositions – Shelley's ‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight’ in the Second Symphony, Keats' ‘When chivalry lifted up her lance on high’ in Froissart, the textual block from Charles Lamb's Dream Children in Elgar's two pieces of 1902 – or the nature of extra-musical meaning suggested by evocative titles and explanatory programme notes. Although scholars can enjoy wrestling with the potential implications of these references, examples where literary connections seem to have been somehow obscured are particularly intriguing. One fascinating example is Elgar's Piano Quintet, op. 84 – a work that has often bemused critics, both in relation to the nature of its musical material and the particular succession of musical events. Given Ernest Newman's confirmation of a ‘quasi-programme that lies at the base of the work’, one might search for a literary source that could account for some of these ‘problematic’ musical features; this chapter suggests that one particular novel – Edward Bulwer Lytton's A Strange Story – could be usefully read in conjunction with the Quintet, as it contains striking parallels in terms of atmosphere, imagery and narrative structure.