AUGUST JAEGER: PORTRAIT OF NIMROD Frontispiece Visiting the sick. Lady Olga Wood and Professor Sanford take their leave of Jaeger and the children outside 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill, c. 1905. August Jaeger: Portrait of Nimrod A Life in Letters and Other Writings KEVIN ALLEN First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing Reissued 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Kevin Allen, 2000 The author has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. 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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-73208-7 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-315-18862-1 (ebk) Contents list of Plates vii Foreword by Percy M. Young ix Acknowledgements xiii A Note on the Elgar—Jaeger Correspondence xvi Part One 1860-1904: 'And your young men shall see visions' 1. 1860-95: Dusseldorf to London 3 2. 1896-97: Composers Old and New 25 3. 1898: The Russian Campaign 36 4. 1899: A Quaint Idee 56 5. 1900: Mystic, Sublime, Superb 72 6. 1901: 'I must wax enthusiastic over something ... ' 98 7. 1902: Kensington to Muswell Hill 118 8. 1903: 'Let someone other than Jaeger give answer!' 136 9. 1904: Remission and Relapse 162 Part Two 1905-09: Prisoner of Hope 10. 1905: 'This Godforsaken, lonely Hole' 191 11. 1906: 'Please not lose heart' 207 V vi Contents 12. 1907: Dum Spiro Spero 221 13. 1908: The Road to HeU 233 14. 1909: 'I can no more ... ' 264 15. In Memory of a Seer 278 Notes 290 Index 308 List of Plates Frontispiece Visiting the sick. Lady Olga Wood and Professor Sanford take their leave of Jaeger and the children outside 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill, c. 1905. Between pages 110 and 111 1 Jaeger as a young man. Like Elgar, he liked to dress well. 2 Early days in London: Jaeger with his mother and sisters 3 16 Margravine Gardens, West Kensington 4 Isabella Jaeger: a portrait photograph by Edgar Thomas Holding, 1902 5 Another portrait, with the Guadanigni violin 6 The first page of Elgar's Variations for Orchestra, Op. 36. The word 'Enigma' has been added in Jaeger's hand. 7 'My dear Sir Hubert... ': Parry in middle life 8 Walford Davies 9 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor 10 Horatio Parker 11 Sydney Loeb 12 Jaeger replaces his jacket after a bout of single-stick at Hasfield Court, September 1901 13 37 Curzon Road, Muswell Hill 14 Jaeger, Isabella and the 'bairns' at Ivy Cottage, Honley vu viii List of Plaies Between pages 206 and 207 15 Jaeger and Alfred Rodewald at Bettwys y Coed, 1903 16 Elgar driving 'the Shover' at Bettwys. A postcard from Rodewald: 'Nimrod had better look to his laurels ... \ 17 Jaeger and Alice Elgar at Cologne, 1904 18 Jaeger with an unidentified companion, Cologne, 1904 19 Jaeger, by Edgar Thomas Holding. Jaeger inscribed a copy for Dora Penny, 'EE's No IX "Nimrod" to his sempre "Scherzando" neighbour 'DORABELLA' with sincere regard & great admiration, (for EE's MUSIC) LONDON 29.XI.02'. 20 Sydney Loeb's 'schnappssot' of Cosima Wagner at Bayreuth, 1904 21 Muswell Hill Broadway, c. 1905 22 Isabella Hunter in later life 23 'This Godforsaken, lonely Hole ... ': Jaeger at Davos 24 The Davos Valley 25 The Hotel Buol 26 Davos propaganda, from The Courier^ 20 December 1907 27 'I have been on the road to Hell... ': Jaeger's letter of 29 August 1908 to Parry 28 Jaeger's last letter to Walford Davies, written three weeks before he died. 'I can make no promise in my present state of collapse. I may be dead in August ... ' 29 Poster for the Jaeger Memorial Concert Foreword The most significant event in English musical history during the twilight days of the nineteenth century was the arrival in London in 1878 of the Jaeger family from Dusseldorf. They came as refugees from Bismarckian misrule of Germany. The second son of the family, the eighteen-year-old August, was keenly musical. Other­ wise knowledgeable and with good English, apparently without difficulty he found work with the firm of George Washington Bacon & Co., Map and Chart Sellers and Publishers. Apart from work he devoted himself to learning about English music through earnest membership of two choirs: the Novello Oratorio Choir conducted by Sir Alexander Mackenzie; and an amateur choir, with many German members, partial to Brahms, conducted by the Austro-Hungarian Hans Richter. In 1890 Jaeger successfully applied for the senior post in the Publishing Department of Novello, which was responsible for much of the music then being used by choral societies. In consequence of his appointment, a new future for English music was deter­ mined. Jaeger not only supervised the publication of music accepted by the firm (normally requiring the composer to undertake the cost of publication!) but submitted it also to critical examination. A problem for Jaeger was that there were virtually no professional composers; a livelihood otherwise depending either on the post of organist in a cathedral or, more infrequently, on the post of Professor of Music at Oxford or Cambridge. Of that order, the most senior representatives were Stanford at Cambridge, and Parry at Oxford — the latter, however, being independently wealthy. Walford Davies, at the time, was Organist of the Temple Church in London and Professor in a new post in the University of Wales. Edward Elgar in 1890 was, on the other hand, solely a composer. His eventual brief tenure in the first Chair of Music in the new University of Birmingham in 1906, however, remains to this day eponymously honoured in the tide of the senior Chair of Music. Such serious examination of new music as there was, was taken from public performance. Jaeger, however, established his credentials as critic by writing copi­ ously on new music in the Musical Times (published by Novello). During his time the editors at Novello were E.F. Jacques (until 1897) and F.G. Edwards. The first mention of Edward Elgar in the Musical Times, in 1893, commented on the poor audience in Worcester Cathedral, during the Three Choirs Festival, for the first IX x Foreword performance of his choral work, The Light of Ufe. Mr Elgar, observed the critic, was still a young man, his sympathies with orchestra rather than voices, and in need of counselling. But 'he is no wayside musician whom we can afford to pass and forget'. Still in the Musical Times, three years later, in an account of the Cheltenham Festival, progress in reputation for the provincial composer was slow in coming: 'A musician from Malvern, Edward Elgar, appeared at this Festival as conductor of an orchestral work of his own, a Sevillana? Gradually Elgar moved forward with a number of choral works and part-songs accepted and published by Novello. In 1896 there was King Olaf 'and, a year later, the Imperial March and The Banner of St George. In the provinces Elgar was now establishing a place of his own. At this point, at which serious exchange of correspondence began, a graded course for the composer was enshrined under Jaeger's protection and encourage­ ment. Then the mutual passage of letters began — those of Elgar often marked with characteristic and evocative drawings. When it was advertised in The Sunday Times of 5 March 1899, that Mr Elgar intended to follow sad patriotism into a symphony to be dedicated to the late and heroic General Gordon, for performance at the next Worcester Festival, Jaegar called a halt. Elgar was not yet ready, he determined, to compose a symphony. What he did compose in the last year of the century was the Enigma Variations, with its own now immortalized tribute to Jaeger as Nimrod. Elgar's letters to Jaeger vividly show the extent to which he took Jaeger's advice on details of scoring. This remains the case in respect of virtually every major work composed during Jaeger's tragically short lifetime. On 2 June 1899 a characteristic exchange of thoughts found Jaeger suggesting that Elgar should go to a musical festival in Bonn, which Elgar considered an attractive possibility. Otherwise he had this to say to Jaeger: 'I want you to get a further opinion about your nasal business: I have asked a doctor friend in town who recommends Greville Macdonald. I will remind you of this when I am up again next week & we'll talk it over.' Ominously for Jaeger, this was the beginning of an end. Whatever else Jaeger achieved passes into insignificance beside his involvement with The Dream ofGerontius. As is well known, the time allowed for the production of such a major — and controversial — work for an important Festival set a virtually impossible task for the composer to complete, for the publisher to provide the parts, and for the performers to achieve a successful first performance.