Let the music die

A STORM HAS ARISEN in the genteel world of classical music. Edward Elgar, England's foremost Catholic composer this century, appealed from his near-death bed in 1933 for nobody to tinker with his unfinished Third Symphony. Now his family has hired a composer to do just that, to finish the piece.
Two questions arise from this development: is it honourable to disregard the wishes of a dying person, for whatever good cause; and, will the resultant musical piece be any more than a pastiche, owing almost all to the creativity of the commissioned musician, and very little to the original genius whose name — and income-generating reputation — will be associated with it? Elgar himself knew, when penning the few sketches and themes for the Third, that his powers were no longer what they were since the great Cello Concerto. He agreed to undertake the project solely because he was strapped for cash — so much so that George Bernard Shaw, who had persuaded the BBC to commission the piece, had had to lend him about £5,000, a fortune in those days.
It does no favour to the composer's memory to stitch together the few bars he had managed to summon up and to pad out the rest of the work "in his style". Such an exercise can be a useful method in the training of future musicians, but is unworthy of an established one. Let Elgar's dyingwishes be respected.