“Jude Hooke couldn’t believe her ears when her tea-stained musical score by Sir Edward Elgar was valued on the Antiques Roadshow at up to £100,000,” writes David Wilkes in Wednesday’s (7/11) Daily Mail (London). “The discovery of the unique draft score of the Enigma Variations … has sparked a row over who owns it…. Yesterday … the Elgar Foundation threatened legal action. The score was bequeathed to the organization by the composer’s daughter, Carice, and it was held at Elgar’s Birthplace Museum in Worcestershire. But it disappeared in 1994 and its whereabouts was a mystery. Until, that is, Mrs. Hooke turned up with it at Cardiff Castle for the Antiques Roadshow, which was broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday after being filmed last year. Afterwards, she tried to sell the score via the auctioneers Christie’s. The Elgar Foundation has for months been fighting behind the scenes to get it returned to the British Library, where the foundation’s archive is now housed…. Mrs. Hooke said [the score] ‘belonged to my late husband, who had been a lay clerk at Worcester Cathedral and had actually done quite a bit of work on some very, very early Elgar pieces.’ ”
Posted July 13, 2018
