From Radiotopia, you're listening to season seven of love and radio.
I'm Nick Vanderkolk.
Today's episode, counter Melody, featuring Bob Padgett.
The Enigma Variations is a symphonic work composed by Edward Elgar.
It's a set of variations based on a theme which he called Enigma.
Following the Enigma theme, of course, is a set of 14 variations, each dedicated to one of Elgar's friends.
For example, variation ten, Dora Bella, is dedicated to his friend Dora, penniless.
She had a stutter, and Elgar poked fun at that kind of a stuttering line.
He did it in a playful way.
He didn't intend it to mean her.
He took something that others may have looked down upon and turned into something beautiful.
This is Elgar describing the enigma variations.
The enigma I will not explain.
Its dark saying must be left unguessed.
And I warn you that the connection between the variations and the theme is often of the slightest texture.
Further through and over the whole set, another and larger theme goes, but is not played.
That sounds like a riddle, right?
Elgar himself said that the enigma theme was, in fact a counter melody to a very famous theme.
Many diverse themes have been proposed.
Pop goes, the weasel, Leel Britannia, old lang syne, Mozart's Prague Symphony.