Ruminations on the Enigma Variations

I’m still a bit wound up from the election, Luis Valdez’s magnificent performance at the Mexican Heritage Plaza recently, and the afterglow of our wonderful mariachi festival. The election has definitely captured a mood of optimism and the determination to keep our hand on the plow and fix the mess we’re in.

Lately, I’ve been in a writing mood, which only became more insistent after I turned on the car radio the other night and found myself listening to English composer Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. On the long drives home from San Jose, especially after evening gigs where I have to be the host and “on” for the evening, I always turn on the radio for the drive back and listen either to the classical station or show tunes or Sinatra.  If I’m lucky, I get to hear something new that catches my imagination, which helps me to stay alert.

Anyway, back to Elgar’s variations. I got hooked on the opening melody that I guess was marked andante or adagio; it was slow and romantic and I wondered about the lover for whom he must have written it.  When I got home I looked it up and, of course, he wrote it for his wife, who Elgar described as his “romantic and delicate inspiration.” Elgar whistled the tune whenever he returned home to her. But the section which just knocked me over was in the middle of the work: the justly famous “Nimrod” variation. Who, I wondered, did Elgar write this for? What was the nature of their relationship? A lover?  Friend? What kind of person can inspire such beauty?

(Here’s a link to Daniel Barenboim—a beauty himself—conducting the Chicago Symphony playing Nimrod. It’s a mystery to me how anyone can sit down and compose music, or make 100 people play as one; even after all of the rehearsals, it’s always a bit of a gamble when the conductor raises his baton.  There was no risk this time.)

Thanks to trusty Google I learned Elgar wrote the Nimrod variation for his best friend, Augustus Jaeger. It’s said that it depicts a walk the two of them had together, during which they were discussing Beethoven, and it also depicts what Elgar viewed as his friend’s noble character. It was an apt coda to an evening full of love. That same night we attended the wedding reception for our friends Richard Ventura and Patrick Regan.  Richard and Patrick were married in June, but they did not have time to invite any of their friends to help them celebrate at the time, so they planned a reception in November. Since it was raining, the celebration moved indoors. A hundred people were jammed into the tiny house in Millbrae, but it made for a very festive atmosphere. Actually, it was elation mixed with defiance, and also, determination.

And it was terrific—a celebration that combined Mexican and Irish traditions. The guys were draped with a lasso, and one of our mutual friends gave them a little box of arras. Another friend sang an Italian aria. They wore matching tuxes and Richard started crying when they exchanged an Irish soul blessing with each other (me too).  A friend of theirs who is a member of the clergy said a blessing, which consisted of all of us joining in with lighted candles and turning to the North, South, East and West as each blessing was given. I closed my eyes and sent out blessings to them and every one of our family and friends. A ton of good energy went out that night and I came away secure with the knowledge that we’ll get there in the end with this marriage thing.
 
Apparently, there is also an underlying theme to the Enigma Variations which is never heard. Elgar said it was “a chief character that never appears on stage.”  We are left to wonder: What is the hidden message behind the music? It’s interesting for me to think about this in the context in which I first heard it on the night of my friends’ wedding celebration, held subsequent to an election which, at once, invalidated the marriage and upheld the ideal notion of equality for all.  There’s the proverbial rub (and the coincidence I think), because if you stop and think about it, there is an enigma within this election, which I suspect is known to Obama. Its theme is “not played” either (just as Lincoln couldn’t espouse notions of solidarity for the campaign in 1860). If it had been, he may not have been elected.  But I believe there is a clue in the theme Obama did play that had three notes and became a national anthem: “Yes, We Can.”

Where did President-elect Obama find the inspiration for that particular theme? Why did the media not pick up on that? As they might say in Ireland, ‘tis a bit of a mystery.  Or is it? In San Jose, that refrain is well known. It was invented here by another hero, in a different language, but the message is the same:
Si, Se Puede—Yes, we can.

Marcela Davison Aviles is the President and CEO of the Mexican Heritage Corporation (MHC) and the Executive Producer of the San Jose International Mariachi Festival. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and not those of the MHC.