To 19th-century Germans, England was famously “the land without music.” There

had been no British composers of distinction for 200 years. So, when suddenly

and unexpectedly and obscure provincial musician named Edward Elgar brought forth

a strange orchestral piece—a set of variations on an unknown theme in which each

movement was a portrait of one of his friends—it was a matter for astonishment,

an enigma indeed. “Here,” declared on critic, “is a man who knows what he wants to

say and knows how to say it!”

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