Arrangements and Transcriptions, 1921–32 As a young man Elgar arranged much music, from Handel's Ariodante overture in 1878 to Wagner's Good Friday Music in 1894, scored for whatever local group he was involved with. Before radio and gramophone, the dissemination of orchestral works was mostly through arrangements or the domestic pianist. Brahms composed his Haydn Variations for two pianos and for the orchestra. In the present day, Howard Ferguson did the same for his Partita. Often the motive was the publishers’ financial reward. Salut d’amour was arranged for every imaginable combination – and some unimaginable. Karg-Elert's transcriptions of Elgar's symphonies for piano are remarkable in their own right, and Elgar's reduction of his ‘Enigma’ Variations is a delight to play.

Nowadays, when authenticity is expected, there is seen to be an aesthetic, even a moral, issue in changing the medium. In Elgar's time not even the distinction between transcription and arrangement was clear. For most of his life he did not arrange other men's music. In the 1920s and 1930s he transcribed Bach, Handel, and Chopin, telling Eugene Goossens that he depended on ‘people like John Sebastian’ for inspiration now that his wife was dead.

Long before, he had written to Ivor Atkins that Bach ‘heals and pacifies all men & all things’. In April 1921 his daughter noted that he was playing Bach fugues on the piano. Perhaps, at this sad time, his mind went back to his organist days. In April and May 1921 he transcribed Bach's C minor Organ Fugue (BWV 537) for orchestra, as his Op. 86. Eugene Goossens gave the first performance, on 27 October 1921 at the Queen's Hall. The following January Richard Strauss visited London, and Elgar gave a lunch for him and some young British composers. They discussed the Bach fugue, which Elgar had already recorded. Strauss favoured a more restrained approach than Elgar's. Elgar challenged him to orchestrate the Fantasia, but Strauss declined. So the next year Elgar did so himself, and conducted both pieces at the Gloucester Three Choirs on 7 September 1922.