The ‘Enigma’ Variations surely rate as Elgar's masterpiece, notwithstanding his own inscription “This is the best of me” on the last page of the autograph score of The Dream of Gerontius. The piece originated quite casually while Elgar was improvising at the piano, and his wife Alice remarked “Edward, that's a good tune”, whereupon he began playing it in different ways which might remind her of one or other of their particular friends. The short score was finished by the end of 1898, and Elgar's close friend A.J. Jaeger of Novello's (‘Nimrod’) was shown it in January 1899. The great German conductor Hans Richter agreed to conduct the premiere; but the story of how Richter came to see the work in the first place is not so well known: one evening the composer Hubert Parry “was sitting at home after dinner at his house in Kensington Square, when Jaeger turned up and asked to see him. He had the score of the Variations under his arm, and showed it to Parry. It was a terrible night, with a howling gale and sheets of rain, and any sensible man would have put off his good deeds until the morrow. But one look at the score was good enough for Parry. He jumped into a hansom and drove off with it to Richter” (Fifield 2005:6). The rest is history: the work achieved enthusiastic reviews in both England and Germany, and Elgar at last became an international composer of stature.

The work's publication history is complicated by revisions. After the first performance Elgar was persuaded to lengthen the Finale considerably; after 763 it originally raced quite perfunctorily to a final ƒƒ flourish in just four bars. This revision was in time for publication, and though some, including Donald Francis Tovey, regretted the new “tub-thumping” ending, it is now wholly accepted and always played (the original is published for the first time in Ue). But there were subsequent tweakings, mainly to the dynamics, and although a revised printing of score and parts was issued in 1904, this carries no sign or admission of any difference, and as a result the revisions were apparently forgotten, and further Novello reprints, even including Ue, inadvertently appeared with the original text.