August Jaeger was an Anglo-German music publisher, who developed a close friendship with the English composer Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...

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Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, Jaeger met Elgar through his employment at the London music publisher Novello

Novello

-Places:England* Novello Theatre, a theatre in the City of Westminster, LondonItaly* Novello, Piedmont, a comune in the Province of Cuneo-People:* Agostino Novello, an Italian religious figure* Antonia Novello, a Puerto Rican physician...

. His advice and friendship became invaluable to Elgar, causing the composer to rework many famous musical passages, including the finale to his Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma Variations

Enigma Variations

Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...

) and the climax of The Dream of Gerontius

The Dream of Gerontius

The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...

. Jaeger has been immortalized in the famous ninth variation "Nimrod" from the first above-mentioned work, recalling a conversation on the slow movements of Beethoven (Nimrod

Nimrod

Nimrod means "Hunter"; was a Biblical Mesopotamian king mentioned in the Table of Nations; an eponym for the city of Nimrud.Nimrod can also refer to any of the following:*Nimród Antal, a director...

 was a Biblical hunter, a pun on the German word for hunter, Jäger).

Jaeger championed the work of the young black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer who achieved such success that he was once called the "African Mahler".-Early life and education:...

; to Elgar he claimed that Coleridge-Taylor was "a genius".

He married Isabel Donkersley, a pupil of Henry Holmes in the Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

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