The following pages provide additional information about the subjects discussed in the film, including Edward Elgar and the Enigma Variations and Stem Cells & The Immune System.

Then find out more about the inspiration and background of the production in an interview with writer/director Adam Whitmore.

Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar was born in Worcester in 1857.  His father owned the music store in the high street and also worked as a piano tuner.  Edward began playing and composing while still a child but received no formal musical education.  This probably in part accounted for his relatively late development as a composer.  His first great success, the Enigma Variations, was written when he was in his early forties, and he was 50 when his wrote his first symphony.

His most famous piece of music remains Pomp and Circumstance March Number One.  In Britain, set to words (not Elgar’s) as Land of Hope and Glory it became almost a second national anthem, and across the Atlantic the music has provided the soundtrack for millions of graduations.  Elgar also wrote two symphonies, an extraordinary choral work, the Dream of Gerontius, and concertos for Violin and Cello which retain the affection of both public and performers.

Elgar’s reputation as a composer has tended to be mixed up with the image of the times in which he lived and worked.  With distance from those times it is now possible to see him in context alongside other late-romantic period composers such as Dvorak and Sibelius.  Elgar had a gift for melody and for orchestration – for example, his is the orchestration usually used for the hymn Jerusalem - and his longer works eventually showed his a mastery of large-scale structure.

Alice Elgar

Edward Elgar married Caroline Alice Roberts in 8th May 1889, almost exactly 10 years before the first performance of the Enigma variations.   He was almost 32, she was 40.  They had a daughter, Carice, the following year, their only child, who was sent off to boarding school from an early age.  Alice died in 1920.  Elgar himself died in 1934.

Alice was from a respectable Victorian family, the daughter of Major General.  Before she married she had literary tendencies, writing a good deal of poetry and a novel.  However following her marriage she became dedicated almost exclusively to supporting her husband and his music.

August Jaeger

August Jaeger was born in Dusseldorf, Germany and after moving to England worked for Elgar’s publisher, Novello.  He recognised Elgar’s talent and constantly supported him through his many practical and emotional difficulties, frequently making suggestions and comments on his music.  Jaeger’s health was poor and he died aged only 48.  Elgar described him simply as “the best friend I ever had”.

Letter from Edward Elgar to August Jaeger

March 13th 1899

The Enigma Variations

In late 1898 and 1899 Elgar composed a series of variations on a theme he had found one day while improvising on the piano.  The variations were each musical portraits of people he knew – although in some cases they included something associated with the person, such as a house or, in one memorable variation, a dog running into the river.  They were Elgar’s first major success and the beginning of an illustrious career that would see him knighted and receive honours from around the world.

The variations were dedicated to “My Friends Pictured Within”.

Alice Elgar, Edward Elgar and August Jaeger attending the premier of the Enigma Variations, as depicted in Quatzalan Productions’ “Friends Pictured Within”

The first variation, CAE, refers to his wife Alice.  Variation nine depicts August Jaeger, and is named Nimrod, after the hunter of Greek mythology (Jaeger is the German for hunter).  The final variation EDU depicts Elgar himself.

The film features music from each of these variations.

After the premiere of Jaeger suggested that this final variation was incomplete as it stood.  Elgar objected at first, but eventually agreed, adding approximately two minutes to give us the version we now have.

The only music in the film not from the Enigma Variations is the tune played on the piano under the opening titles just before the Enigma theme. This which is a transposition into the minor key of Elgar’s earlier work Te Deum.  Director Adam Whitmore reports that “this was an idea that came from Stefan, who plays Elgar and is fortunately a wonderful pianist with a vast knowledge of music. He needed to play something before finding the theme, and this was what he came up with.  I think it sets the mood beautifully."

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Stem Cell Research – The Problem of Rejection

Stem cell research is at the forefront of modern biology.  It holds great promise for new treatments for many medical conditions because embryonic stem cells can be grown into many different types of cells – for example heart cells or liver cells - and so have great potential for helping repair damaged tissue. 

However the medical use of stem cells to repair damaged tissue also faces some major challenges.  One of the most fundamental is rejection of the therapeutic stem cells by the patient’s immune system.  One approach is to transfer a nucleus from an adult body cell into an egg, which is persuaded to develop into stem cells that in turn generate new tissues.  This gets round the problem of rejection because the DNA in the nucleus is identical to that of the body it’s going in to, so the body does not recognise it as foreign tissue.   However this approach faces both practical and ethical barriers. 

An alternative approach is to persuade the immune system to tolerate the therapeutic stem cells.  A special class of cells, T-cells, do the job of safeguarding the body from foreign tissue.  Other types of cells, dendritic cells, produce an initial signal – a sort of alarm within the immune system - which mobilizes the T-cells into action.  They provide this alarm by switching from an immature to a mature form. 

Researchers hope to enable greater tolerance of stem cells by manipulating this alarm signal.  This involves using the stem cells to make both the therapeutic cells, such as heart tissue, and matching dendritic cells.   Dendritic cells created in this way can be retained in their immature form, as they share DNA with the therapeutic cells, and they send no alarm signal.  This may in effect fool the immune system into allowing the therapeutic stem cells to be tolerated long enough for treatment to be effective, even though their nucleus has not been replaced and they retain different DNA. 

Paul Fairchild and others at Oxford University’s Dunn School have now worked out how to make dendritic cells from stem cells.   This work remains in its early stages and treatments remain years or perhaps decades off yet, but this area of research holds vast promise of new medical benefits.

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Why did you want to make this film?

Because it’s about something I believe is important.  It’s about how much our friends can mean to us and how others in our lives may react to this.

Why use the story of a real composer, Edward Elgar?

Simply because as far as I know Nimrod, the variation Edward Elgar wrote in tribute to his friend August Jaeger, is the finest, most moving expression of deep and loving friendship ever created.   For me, nothing evokes the feeling like that.  There are some profound expressions of friendship elsewhere in culture, notably in Shakespeare – Hamlet and Horatio for example, or friendship betrayed by Lord Scrope in Henry V – but they don’t have the same power in the context of a film as this music does.

How closely is the period story based on reality?

Quite closely.  It’s not a documentary, but it corresponds in most respects to what we know.  The first scene, for example, is based almost exactly on the historical record, some lines of dialogue are adapted from Elgar’s letters, and the letter that Alice reads is based on an actual letter Elgar wrote to Jaeger.  There is no evidence that Alice reacted to the Enigma Variations as shown in the film, but I think it would have been natural if she had.  We did, however, reduce the size of Elgar’s moustache!  

Why do the period and modern stories relate to each other?

They are intended to show how similar feelings are expressed by different people in different times and different circumstances.  I think if we had restricted it to period it would have been distancing – you’d feel “that’s how things are in period-movie-land”.  By making a contemporary story parallel to it I was hoping to explore these emotions further.

Is the modern story based on fact?

No.  Individual elements of it are based on fact.  For example the patent referred to in the film is a real one.  It’s the work of Dr Paul Fairchild at Oxford University, who kindly gave me permission to use it, although we’ve obviously only been able to include a very simplified version of his work.  Other elements have analogues in reality.  For example, some scientists are financially motivated but many are not.  I know of at least one eminent scientist who has earned a lot from patents but has ploughed most of it back into the lab where he works, even though it’s his own personal money.  However the story and the characters are entirely fictional.

Why did you make the modern story about a scientist?

I wanted something that could match the levels of creativity that Elgar possessed.   Modern science at the highest level requires much the same talent, determination and vision that the great achievements in the arts require.  It’s also central to our culture today.

The second part of the title, Two Variations on the Theme.  Does that refer to the two pieces of music we hear? The variations about Elgar’s wife and best friend?

That’s certainly one thing.  The other is that the two stories, the period and the contemporary, are variations of each other.  They have similar underlying structures but because the characters and the settings are different they feel very different.  In this respect I envisaged them as like two musical variations with a common theme but different expression.

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