Here’s a snatch from Aidan J. Thompson’s review of Edward Elgar, Modernist by J.P.E. Harper-Scott in February’s Music & Letters.

“The foundations of his analysis are Schenkerian voice-leading and Hepokoskian sonata deformation, but certain features of Elgar’s musical language – in particular the static Kopfton that leaves the Ursatz unclosed, and the ‘immuring-immured tonal structure’ (where one key begins and ends a work, but is often subservient to a second key that, for large sections of the piece, acquires a tonic function) – necessitate a reformation of the traditional, monotonal Schenkerian model.”

Terribly interesting, I think you’ll agree.

That's a truly awful bit of writing about something that might actually be very interesting, and a book by someone who would never put it so pompously himself.

Funnily enough, I happened to catch the tail-end of Elgar 2 in the car the other day. I don't think I'd ever heard it before. I knew it was Elgar of course because it had that Elgar sound that I don't care for at all, but harmonically there was something more interesting going on I thought, sorry if that sounds patronising to Elgarians out there, I mean I really don't like his themes or his orchestration, but in so far as it's possible to separate these things from one another his harmonic thinking seemed to be on a much more sophisticated level.

(I think that would be a "Great Bores of Today" rather than a "Pseuds' Corner".)

It's hard to say whether Elgar himself would have been angered or amused by such a discussion of his music. I'm certainly of the opinion that it belongs more to the 20th century than even Mahler's.

A. Eaglefield Hull, in his excellent book Modern Harmony, its Explanation and Application, published around 1912, goes to the heart of Elgar's modernism. It is seldom realised that Elgar was one of the first of the twelve-noters (or should we say "duodecuplists"). Hull cites a number of passages from the Apostles and Falstaff, and points out that both Elgar's "semitonal progressions" and his "too exact sequencing" tend (here is the key phrase) to loosen all ties with the tonic. "It was only natural that new chords should spring into being with the new system," continues Hull. "In some ways, the 'tonal' scale is included in the 'semi-tonal,' and its explanation as an arpeggio in the normal scale of twelve semi-tones is probably one of the richest seams yet remaining to be worked. Where is the composer who will do for it all the tremendous things done with the diminished seventh chord by J.S. Bach?" Well we are still waiting are not we?

We for one are not holding our breath since the analogy seems not to be the strongest. What with the way the diminished seventh connects itself but loosely to any single key whereas the 'tonal' scale does tend to nail one down so to speak.