Why and What I Will Write

"If a few combinations of pitches, durations, timbres and dynamic values can unlock the most hidden contents of man’s spiritual and emotional being, then the study of music should be the key to an understanding of man’s nature."

Nicholas Cook

Since the greatest minds over the past century failed to penetrate the secrets of the Enigma Variations, the reader is probably wondering about my qualifications for tackling such a difficult task. I never attended conservatory, but then neither did Elgar. On closer analysis, we share an astonishing number of similar life experiences. Like me, Elgar was: 

1. The son of a musician father who “who hated all religions”[1]
2. The son of a devout Christian mother who taught him to revere God and the arts
3. The fourth child born to his parents
4. A husband and father
5. A Christian
6. A concert violinist
7. A piano accompanist
8. An instructor of violin, viola and piano
9. A violin student of a respected teacher
10. A Self-taught composer
11. An enthusiast for golfing, kite flying, bicycling, and experimenting in a home laboratory
12. A law student in his youth
13. Employed for a few years in an asylum as a musician
14. Planning to attend conservatory but could not afford to do so
15. An ardent admirer of Bach, Mendelssohn and Wagner
16. A Native English speaker
17. Able to speak, read and write German
18. An award winning composer
19. Considered an outsider because of his faith, profession and class
20. Suspicious of career academics
21. Fascinated by puns, anagrams, and cryptograms 

While there are even more parallels between my life and Elgar's, those described above are the more significant because in the final analysis they are my qualifications. Such a large number of similar life experiences undeniably help me get into the mind and motives of Elgar on a much deeper level. Real life experiences like those mentioned above, could never be duplicated by spending endless hours scouring book and journal articles on his life and music. This is no argument against the benefit of reading biographies, for how could I have ever learned about these commonalities in the first place? More vital than reading alone is the crucible of experience. Forged in that white hot flame, the sword of learning is heated and hardened until it may be sharpened into the finest, most discerning blade. Experience is the best teacher, and my life has taught me things about Elgar that I could never have gleaned from every article and book ever written about him and his music.

Sir Edward Elgar became an anachronism of the post-Romantic era when his music fell out of favor during his lifetime with the gaudy rise of the second Viennese School and the nemesis of classical music, atonalism. Thankfully his work has fallen back in favor, and not a moment too soon.  While outwardly embracing tradition with his Victorian manner and quasi-military dress, Elgar inwardly remained a devoted iconoclast who first mastered, then transcended, the conventional rules of counterpoint and harmony.  Considered among his greatest if not most performed works, the Enigma Variations broke the mold. Following its first performance in 1899 under Hans Richter, the history of English music has never been the same. It quickly became a standard in the orchestral repertoire, and now stands as one of the crown jewels of British symphonic music. Its hallowed place in England’s national conscious is justified by performances of Nimrod at the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana, the ceremony observing the return of Hong Kong to China, and on Remembrance Sunday before the Cenotaph (England’s World War I monument for “The Glorious Dead”). In England, Nimrod has become a national hymn for the fallen, a way of saying goodbye with reverence and honor.

For over a century, the mysteries of Elgar’s Variations have both eluded and entertained the public, spawning an entire genre of scholarship and research. Like his other famous enigma – the Dorabella Cipher – the Variations are a vault of secrets still locked away despite the passage of over a century.  Most experts assert the task of solving it is impossible since he took his secret to the grave. Or did he? The Enigma Variations were not commissioned, and neither was this book. Similarly, it was Elgar’s first score to be published, and the same holds true for this volume. Elgar was 41 years old when he wrote it, and so was I when this book was completed. The chief aim of this blog is to decisively answer one of most baffling riddles in the history of Western music:  What is the unstated Principal theme of the Enigma Variations? A second objective is to dispel some misleading claims about Elgar and his music. These falsehoods proffered under the guise of “scholarship” are:

1. Elgar – an aficionado of riddles, puzzles, ciphers and cryptograms – did not deliberately premeditate his enigma, but added it merely as an afterthought or publicity stunt.
2. Statements by Elgar declaring the existence of a hidden principal melodic theme were made as a practical joke (“jape”) because none exists (i.e., “athemeism”[2]).
3. A hidden principal melodic theme may exist, but it only plays “through and over” the first six measures of the Enigma theme, not the full seventeen bars.
4. The secret dedicatee of Variation XIII is Lady Mary Lygon or Helen Weaver.
5. Elgar took his secret to the grave without writing down the answer for posterity to discover. 

Elgar loved secret codes, music, and God, and my new solution to the Enigma Variations powerfully integrates all three. In this blog I will cover important background information about Elgar’s life and heroes leading up to 1898 when the Enigma Variations were composed. Four unsolved riddles in the Enigma Variations will be described, and specific conditions formulated by the composer for unmasking the missing Principal theme will be delineated. I will also make the case for Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) as the famous missing Principal theme of the Variations. Confirmation of this discovery is found in a cleverly concealed musical cipher embedded in the first six measures of the Enigma theme, and this amazing discovery will also be presented. The decrypted cipher text consists of a ‘dark saying’ giving the name of the hidden dedicatee for Variation XIII. Even more tantalizingly, the ‘dark saying’ forms an ingenious anagrammitization of the missing Principal theme’s title, a groundbreaking discovery that obliterates the myth Elgar allegedly never wrote down the answer for posterity.

Evidence confirming the identity of the missing dedicatee for Variation XIII will be outlined based on my discovery of the missing Principal Theme, the solution to the Enigma cipher, and the presence of yet another musical cipher embedded in Variation XIII. In this blog I will also show how Ein feste Burg plays “through and over” each of the variations. Elgar’s grand allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedy and the mysterious enigma forte will also be reviewed. After laying out all of the evidence, this blog will wrap up with a discussion of key findings and their cumulative impact, concluding the Enigma Variations are resolved by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence.

     Modern scholars will predictably recoil at my overt Christian faith, reflexively dismissing my findings as speculative and unfounded. My reply to their predictable objections is to point out Elgar was a devout Christian who dedicated the majority of his works to God, and that their collective failure to weigh this fact most carefully unduly clouds their narrowly academic, secular understanding of the Enigma Variations. George Bernard Shaw correctly observed that those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. How right he was then, and even more so today, especially about the sclerotic state of post-modern academia desperately in need of deconstructing itself.

Secular scholars will never be satisfied with any answer that leads to God, preferring instead to wander in a dark, meaningless wilderness of their own making. In my dealings with secular scholars – the Pharisees of higher education – I take comfort in the words of the Apostle Paul: 

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.[3] 

Fortunately I do not need nor require the permission of secular scholars to be correct.

Soli Deo Gloria

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[1] McVeagh, D. (2007), Elgar the Music Maker. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, p 57.

[2] “Athemism” is a portmanteau created by combining the words atheism and theme.

[3] 1 Corinthians 1:27-29 New International Version