A sweeter music: Two essays and a colloquy on an Elgar part-song

Edward Elgar's 1907 part-song ‘There Is Sweet Music’ (Op. 53 No. 1) is at once a ‘minor’ piece and a highly significant one that richly rewards investigation. It is notable as an early instance of bitonality, being notated simultaneously in two keys – the male choir in G major and the female choir in A♭. Yet despite the apparent discordance of the two semitonally adjacent keys, the result is remarkably mellow – indeed ‘sweet’, aptly realising the music described in Tennyson's text. As befits the subject matter, this contribution consists of a pair of complementary essays on Elgar's song by two different authors, followed by a colloquy in which they engage with each other's readings in more explicit dialogue. In offering a discussion of the same song, the two inevitably go over some of the same material, but frequently in different registers and from different perspectives, sometimes rubbing against each other in mild dissonance, sometimes in complete accord. Both manifest a strong concern with detailed analytical engagement with the song and a close reading of the text and music, to this end drawing on music theory and hermeneutics. And both are open to the plurality of narratives that may be constructed around a single piece and its diverse interpretative possibilities, in their different ways exploring the current standpoint of a wider discipline through the differing interpretative possibilities of a single, small musical object.