Violin Concerto (Elgar) - Enigmatic Inscription

Enigmatic Inscription

The concerto is dedicated to Kreisler, but the score also carries the Spanish inscription, "Aqui está encerrada el alma de ....." ("Herein is enshrined the soul of ....."), a quotation from the novel Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage. The five dots are one of Elgar's enigmas, and several names have been proposed to match the inscription. It has been widely believed to allude to Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the painter John Everett Millais. She was Elgar's dear friend whom he nicknamed "Windflower", and his love for her and her inspiration to him are well known. There is no proof linking her to the inscription of the concerto, although Elgar dubbed several of the themes "Windflower", and in his letters to her he referred to it as "our concerto".

Another possible inspiration for the concerto was Elgar's early love Helen Weaver, to whom he was briefly engaged in the 1880s. Dora Powell ("Dorabella" of the Enigma Variations) suggested a third possible candidate, Elgar's American friend Julia "Pippa" Worthington: Powell recalled an occasion at the Elgars' house, Plâs Gwyn, when she was looking at a copy of the score of the concerto:

…I came next to the Spanish quotation ... the five dots caught my eye and a name immediately sprang to my mind. The Lady came and stood by me, saw what I was looking at, and translated the Spanish sentence: "Herein is enshrined the soul of ....." Then she went on to fill in the name – that of a personal friend ... Mrs. Julia H. Worthington, a most charming and kind American friend. She was known to intimate friends by another name – also of five letters, and I cannot say definitely whether the composer had this name or her first Christian name in mind. Nor does this matter; the gap is now filled.

The Elgar biographer Jerrold Northrop Moore suggests that the inscription does not refer to just one person, but enshrined in each movement of the concerto are both a living inspiration and a ghost: Alice Stuart-Wortley and Helen Weaver in the first movement; Elgar's wife and his mother in the second; and in the finale, Billy Reed and August Jaeger ("Nimrod" of the Enigma Variations).