His wife was his muse – he never composed again when she died

THE WIFEALICE - wife, mother-figure and muse - has been thought to have subsumed her life into his. But the change from a life of comfort and social privilege did not depress the new bride.

She brought her own artistic skills to the marriage, having already penned several delightful poems, including one used in later life as a code for telegrams from abroad.

Living in the small rooms of Forli - as they called their home Alexandra Road, Malvern Link - one can imagine the tentative conception of the Enigma Variations as described by Elgar himself that October evening when Elgar was playing at the piano for his wife.

She liked a new theme he played and asked what it was. "Nothing," he replied, "but something might be made of it."

This is from Elgar's own notes, written for production of pianola rolls and later published by Novellos.

It gives an intimate picture of Alice and Edward working together in the cramped space of Forli's pokey rooms and shows how Alice was in close sympathy with Edward's compositional mood, coaxing Enigma XlI into life.

In the early years of their acquaintance, Alice became aware of his inspiration. She would also have been aware that, having no Royal School or university training, he lacked the stamp or badge of a degree in music.

She would ensure that the gap of social distinction could be overcome. Except in the eyes of snobs, the career of the professional artist overarches social distinctions but it was the musical elite that was the greatest bar. Alice would have seen this as a challenge.

She would have been the necessary support and teacher for his forays into society.

She achieved it, making his career progress, making sure his reputation was ever growing in the circle of their friends.

After Alice's death on April 7, 1920, Elgar produced little of any note. She took her inspiration with her to her grave and, as if in recognition of the force she had been in the shaping of his life, Elgar buried his tangible honours with her.

THE DAUGHTERBEARING in mind Alice's age, the biological clock and the state of obstetrics at the end of the last century, Carice - her name derived from her mother's, Caroline Alice - must have seemed a wonderful, perhaps unexpected, gift from God Although her childhood was perhaps difficult, her natural exuberance having to be suppressed to allow the quiet time for composing, she was constantly in Elgar's thoughts when away from her, but was banished to boarding school for his benefit. She and Elgar had a variety of nicknames for each other, and he peppered his correspondence to her with many cartoon sketches, often of animals. Carice had a rabbit called Pietro di Alba, but although Elgar was fond of dogs, a love he indulged in later life, there were none in the house, because Alice didn't like them.

Carice rememberd all her life, her mother's indomitable will: "You might almost call ruthless where my father was concerned everything had to give way to what was right for him." As a child she had been subjected to endless moves of house, and experienced the rise from poverty to relative affluence, and the change in social milieu.

Carice also watched her father through his various illnesses. He exhibited gruffness, selfishness and hypochondria in the form of chills, bowel upsets, eye trouble and bad throats, which always seemed to occur at times of stress, nerves, disappointment, or when the matter in hand was of no interest to him.

Perhaps it was her devotion to her father that prompted her to marry an older man, a fact that left her widowed at a young age and childless.

THE FATHERWILLIAM Henry Elgar was born in Dover to a musical middle class family and was taught the keyboard by a local organist.

Old enough to be apprenticed, at 14 he was sent to the London piano firm Coventry And Hollier to learn the craft of piano tuning.

In 1841, he had been sent specially to tune the instruments at Witley Court, the seat of the Earl of Dudley. Witley Court was at the time let to the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV. This young man tuned the Queen's pianos and then made the most of this fact to promote, advertise and build-up for himself a fashionable clientele.

Through his music he became friendly with the Leicester family, Roman Catholics who regularly attended St George's Church, which had been built by the Jesuits soon after Catholic Emancipation in 1829. They persuaded Elgar sen to become organist at St George's, a job which was to last 37 years.

In January, 1848, he married Ann Greening, the sister of his landlord and the youngest child of a yeoman farmer.

They were to have seven children and lived in a series of rented houses near the cathedral and, for just two or three years, at Broadheath, before finally taking a High Street shop in the early 1860s and settling the family in the rooms above. W H Elgar continued to tune pianos and also sold instruments and music from the shop.

A man who loved music, he probably disliked his work and was not as attentive to business as he might have been. He seems to have been impatient with his children and must have felt both pride and jealousy as he watched Edward's growing musical skill.

It was he who took the young Edward into the cathedral to hear the choir and who was to arrange for him from 1866 to hear rehearsals of the Three Choirs Festivals. Together father and son played in the second violins in the Three Choirs orchestra and Edward's success must owe a great deal to his father's influence, even if he was somewhat unassuming and cantankerous.

THE BEST FRIENDONE of Elgar's greatest friends was Arthur Troyte, architect and inspiration for one of his Enigmas.

The two natural scholars must have exchanged views and ideas about each others' disciplines and perhaps made Elgar more aware of how architecture was relevant to the received sound of his music.

To most people, architecture is an element of history, showing past form and design, but underlying this is the practical use of the created building and its influence on the way we live. Elgar would have been aware of the acoustic properties of any building in which his music might be performed. How sounds were reflected from the Purbeck marble of the vaulted shafts of Worcester Cathedral, the resonance of concert halls, the acoustic qualities of space and height for the orchestra, choir or quartet, must have been in his thoughts when composing large works.

The size and stately proportions of the wards in Powick lunatic asylum, where Elgar for some time directed the band, made the acoustic properties of the building a great advantage. What joy the resounding music must have brought to those unfortunate enough to be kept in such an institution, much as Vivaldi brought music and a sense of achievement to the girls in the orphanage in Venice.

THE CELEBRITY PALS IN the later years of his life, Elgar entertained such people from all walks of life, including fellow protagonists of the arts, such as Bernard Shaw and his wife, but memorable among them was T E Lawrence, known today as Lawrence of Arabia.

In August 1932, during the Three Choirs festival, Lawrence was among a group being entertained by the composer.

He was moved to write to Elgar two months later: "I have liked most of your music - or most I have heard - for many years and your Second Symphony hits me between wind and water.

"It is exactly the mode that I most desire and so it moves me more than anything else of music that I have heard the news of your proposed Third Symphony was like a week's sunlight.

"I do hope you will have enough enthusiasm to finish it."

Thirteen months later and in poor health Elgar wrote back: "I am glad the Second Symphony wears so well with you and your friends, but mark you the Third, if ever I am well enough to finish it, will make it look small."

Sadly, both men were to die soon after this exchange, Elgar never finished the Third Symphony and Lawrence never heard any part of it.