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| Dora Penny from My Friends Pictured Within |
God writes the gospel, not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
This is what I hear all day – the trees are singing my music – or have I sung theirs?
Music is written on the skies for you to note down.
Variation X from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar is dedicated to Dora Penny (1874–1964), the daughter of the Reverend Alfred Penny (1845–1934) of Wolverhampton. Following the death of his first wife, Reverend Penny wed the sister of William Meath Baker, the friend portrayed in Variation IV. Elgar bestowed on Dora the nickname “Dorabella” after a leading soprano role in Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte. She was a frequent companion on outings, joining him for such pastimes as kite flying and bicycle riding. Dora delighted in improvising dances to Elgar’s music, and her variation captures her graceful, delicate spirit. It also teases her gently about her stutter in the opening woodwind phrase, a halting figure that may be sung to the syllab les of her nickname (“Dor-a-bel-la”). Subtitled Intermezzo, the movement is one of the longest in the set at 73 measures with a duration approaching three minutes.
Do ra made repeated unsuccessful attempts to guess the hidden melody of the Enigma Variations. During one exchange, she begged Elgar for the answer. He replied, “Oh, I shan’t tell you that, you must find it out for yourself.” “But I’ve thought and racked my brains over and over again,” she protested. He answered, “Well, I’m surprised. I thought that you of all people would guess it.” It is significant that Elgar never cooled her quest for the hidden tune by suggesting that there was none to begin with, or that her movement was not a “Variation” at all.
Contrary to the claims of leading Elgar scholars, Variation X is demonstrably a counterpoint to the covert melody. The following short score documents how Ein feste Burg plays “through and over” Variation X as a counterpoint, precisely as Elgar divulged in multiple primary sources. The chorale unfolds in the phrase sequence ABCDEFBAB — nine phrases in all, a compact reordering of the canonical structure (ABABCDEFB). In this permutation, the opening phrase pair returns at the close, mirroring the movement's own reprise design. The hymn remains dormant in bars 359, 371–378, 389–398, and 411–423, accounting for 32 of 73 measures, or approximately 44% of the movement. This comparatively high proportion of dormant bars accords with Julian Rushton’s theory that substantial portions of Variation X predate the Enigma Variations, explaining why certain passages exhibit no discernible counterpoint with Ein feste Burg. Rushton's hypothesis dovetails with Elgar’s well-documented habit of repurposing sketches accumulated during earlier creative periods.
Leading Elgar scholars have made little headway in drawing any substantive connection between Variation X and the Enigma Theme. Some even go so far as to insist that Variation X is not a variation at all. For example, Rushton bluntly states, “‘Dorabella’ is no variation…” Such a claim invites the question of why Elgar used the word “Variation” in connection with this movement. The only obvious explanation is that Dorabella is precisely what Elgar called it. When scholars sharpen their sensibilities to the slightest subtlety, they risk dulling their minds to the agonizingly obvious. Elgar scholarship, like all other disciplines, suffers from more than one example of this disorder. Indeed, Rushton’s blunder is far from being an isolated incident. To his credit, Rushton’s claim proves accurate for 32 out of 73 measures, 44 percent of the movement where Ein feste Burg lies dormant. Nonetheless, such a percentage falls short of a passing grade.
In its original form, Ein feste Burg (like the Enigma Theme) is set in common time (4/4). Variation X, by contrast, unfolds in triple meter with three quarter-note beats per measure (3/4). This metrical disparity necessarily demands some flexibility in threading the notes of the covert melody “through and over” the movement. Just as Elgar freely reconstrued the Enigma Theme in each of the variations, so too must the hidden melody adapt fluidly to the shifting contours of the complete set. Executing these melodic mappings therefore requires careful attention to each movement’s particular meter, key, and melodic and harmonic architecture. This flexible approach finds scholarly precedent in the work of Dr. Clive McClelland, who cogently argues for the application of free rhythm in his paper “Shadows of the Evening: New Light on Elgar’s ‘Dark Saying’.”
The phrases of Ein feste Burg mapped over Variation X originate from three contrasting versions of the hymn, forming a tribrid melody consistent with the pattern established across the Enigma Theme and Variations I–IX. Phrase A reflects Bach’s rendering in the final chorale (“Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn”) of his Cantata BWV 80 in both of its appearances. Phrase B likewise follows Bach’s version in each of its three statements, the second and third sounding in rhythmic augmentation. Phrase C draws on both Bach’s and Mendelssohn’s renderings, while Phrase D presents the contour common to all three versions — Luther’s original, retained alike by Bach and Mendelssohn. Phrase E reflects Mendelssohn’s distinct treatment from the Finale of his Reformation Symphony. Phrase F is based on Bach’s rendering, and the sequence closes with restatements of Phrases A and B as realized by Bach. Although Bach’s and Mendelssohn’s versions predominate on the surface of this mapping, both are elaborations of Luther’s original melody, which supplies the shared foundation audible in Phrase D. Ecclesiastes 4:12 declares that a threefold cord is not easily broken; and so it is with this tribrid theme, woven from the distinct yet harmonious contributions of Luther, Bach, and Mendelssohn. Consult the following exhibit to compare corresponding phrases from all three versions of Ein feste Burg.
Dora recalled in her memoir that Elgar “…said there was only a trace of the ‘Enigma’ theme in the Intermezzo which no-one would be likely to find unless he knew where to look for it.” “Intermezzo” is the subtitle of Variation X. Elgar clarified where to look in explanatory notes written for the Aeolian Company (Duo-Art) pianola rolls issued in 1929. Concerning Variation X, he advised that “the inner sustained phrases at first on the viola and later on the flute should be noted.” His brief remark singles out the inner melody yet offers no reason why — and tellingly, those sustained phrases bear no obvious resemblance to the Enigma Theme as written, leaving Elgar’s hint unexplained by conventional accounts. The word “noted” deftly hints at scrutinizing the notes of the inner phrase. The discovery of the hidden melody supplies the missing explanation. The inner countermelody twice states, in rhythmic augmentation, the first four notes of the concluding Phrase B of Ein feste Burg — G, F♯, E, D — sounding six bars before Rehearsal 42 and again six bars before Rehearsal 45.
The first four-note fragment of Ein feste Burg emerges at measure 382, and the second instance at measure 404. As shown earlier on the short score, both statements of the concluding phrase are followed in mid-measure by a double barline, a notational anomaly that conveniently demarcates the end of the chorale. Little wonder Elgar told Dora that she, of all people, should have guessed the melodic solution. Alone among the variations, the movement bearing her nickname directly quotes the first four notes of the secret melody’s ending phrase, expertly camouflaged in augmentation by the inner voice. This is not the only occasion on which Elgar slips in the chorale’s final phrase, for he cloaks it in a dotted rhythmic pattern at Rehearsal 66 in Variation XIV. While everyone searched in vain for the beginning of the hidden melody, Elgar playfully flaunted its final phrase out in the open, thinly disguised by rhythmic alterations. This calculated emphasis on the chorale’s ending phrase recalls the quotation from Longfellow’s “Elegiac Verse” that Elgar inscribed at the close of the extended Finale: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.” Remarkably, each four-note incipit marks the beginning of the ending phrase, planting Elgar’s emphasis exactly where Longfellow’s priority lies. In the movement dedicated to the friend he insisted should have guessed the tune, Elgar quietly embraced the greater art.
In her memoir, Dora Powell recounts a visit to Craeg Lea when Elgar was scouring various English translations of the Bible to assemble a suitable libretto for The Apostles. As he struggled to find just the right line to follow one of Christ's Beatitudes, he asked Dora for a recommendation, and she promptly supplied a verse from Psalm 85:
The study seemed to be full of Bibles. He had a Bible open on the table in front of him and there seemed to be a Bible on every chair and even one on the floor.
“Goodness!” I said. “What a collection of Bibles! What have you got there besides the Authorized and Revised Versions?”
“I don't know; They've been lent to me. I say, d’you know that the Bible is a most wonderfully interesting book?
“Yes,” I said, “I know it is.”
“What do you know about it? Oh I forgot. Perhaps you do know something about it? Anyway, I've been reading a lot of it lately and have been quite absorbed.”
He appeared to be looking out texts and I offered to help.
“I want something that will fit in here”—pointing to a line [where Christ sang “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.”]
I thought for a moment and fortunately something suitable occurred to me and I quoted it. [“Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”]
“You don’t mean to tell me that comes in the Bible? Show it to me.”
I found the eighty-fifth Psalm in one of the Bibles and laid it before him.
“Well! That is extraordinary! It’s just what I want here.”
As the daughter of the Rector of St. Peter's Collegiate Church in Wolverhampton, Dora was steeped in scripture from childhood, and her ready command of the Psalter explains why Elgar conceded that she, of all people, should have guessed the melodic solution to the Enigma Theme. Ein feste Burg is Luther’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 46, and a rector’s daughter who could summon the eighty-fifth Psalm from memory could surely be expected to recognize the most celebrated psalm-hymn of the Reformation. Yet in his 1899 program note, Elgar stipulated that the solution to his Enigma “…must be left unguessed.” Therein lies the tension: the answer was so far outside the realm of possibility for a Roman Catholic composer like Elgar that no one — not even Dora — would ever suspect the “battle hymn” of the Reformation. There is a characteristically Elgarian irony in the choice: a devout Roman Catholic composer covertly enshrining the defining hymn of the Protestant Reformation composed by a priest whom Pope Leo X excommunicated from the very Church Elgar served.
Dora’s rectory upbringing and training as a soprano immersed her in the hymnody of the English church, the very repertoire in which the hidden theme had taken root. On page 324 of A Dictionary of Hymnology (1892), John Julian records that Ein feste Burg “…has now become well-known in England, and in its proper form is included in the C. B. for England, 1863.” “C. B.” abbreviates the Chorale Book for England, a collection of German chorales in English translation that carried Luther’s hymn into English worship. Elgar advised that the absent melody was “…so well known that it is extraordinary that no one has spotted it yet.” Among Elgar’s friends at the time he composed the Enigma Variations, Dora was the most active musically. As she recalls in her memoir, “I was so mixed up with tunes in those days; Choral music; Church music, and orchestral music — and then my own solo singing, scenes from opera, songs, ballads, and so on.” Church music stands second on her own list — precisely the domain where Ein feste Burg had become naturalized in England.
Choral music, church music, and orchestral music — what popular tune could be featured so prominently in all three genres? One compelling answer is Ein feste Burg. Not only was it a standard in Anglican hymnals, it also became very popular during the Bach resurgence in England beginning in the 1870s because Bach’s most famous cantata (BWV 80) is a series of variations based on that historic theme. In opera, Ein feste Burg is well known because it is featured in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, the most successful grand opera of the nineteenth century. In orchestral music, it is quoted in numerous works by no less than Bach, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Nicolai, Raff, Wagner, Liszt, and Reinecke. No other melody is featured so prominently, frequently or famously by the great German masters. As late as March 1853, Robert Schumann (Elgar’s “ideal!” composer) planned to compose an oratorio titled “Luther” featuring Ein feste Burg in the final climactic chorus. If Ein feste Burg was profound enough to attract the attention of some of the greatest composers of the German school — particularly those Elgar venerated and emulated — then the magnetic allure of this powerful hymn could not have escaped Elgar’s respect and artistic admiration.
In the royal life of England, Ein feste Burg was given a prominent place of honor, as shown by the coronations of 1902 and 1911 — global events in the Edwardian era attended by leaders and representatives from around the world when the sun did not set on the British Empire. At the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII, Ein feste Burg was performed multiple times, first as a hymn during the processional and later as quotations in Wagner’s Kaisermarsch. This same hymn was performed at the 1911 coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, again as part of the processional music and also in the homage anthem composed by Sir Frederick Bridge “making liberal use of Ein’ feste Burg.” Elgar heard and performed Ein feste Burg on numerous occasions in the years preceding the genesis of the Enigma Variations due to the Bach resurgence that swept England beginning in the 1870s. Bach’s works were routinely performed at the Three Choirs Festival from the early 1870s, with the St. Matthew Passion first given there in 1871, and the music of Bach and Mendelssohn remained commonplace in England throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Elgar began playing violin with the Festival orchestra in 1878. The Monthly Musical Record confirmed Bach's cantata A Stronghold Sure (Ein feste Burg) was performed at the Three Choirs Festival on September 10, 1890.
The following short score tracks the contrapuntal course of Ein feste Burg “through and over” Variation X by cataloguing two categories of note matches between the hymn and the movement. A melodic conjunction is defined as any matching note between the hymn melody and the melody line of the variation. A harmonic conjunction is defined as a match between a melody note from the chorale and any non-melodic note sounding simultaneously in the score. Both melodic and harmonic conjunctions require matching notes to sound together. In the annotated short score, a melodic conjunction is represented by a diamond-shaped note head, and a harmonic conjunction by a triangle-shaped note head. Variation X generates 89 melodic conjunctions and 83 harmonic conjunctions, for a combined total of 172 — the total number of melodic and harmonic conjunctions serves as an objective measure of the efficacy of this contrapuntal solution. A robust counterpoint will distribute these matches broadly across the movement rather than clustering them in isolated passages, and the mapping of Ein feste Burg through and over Variation X achieves precisely that objective, with conjunctions registering in forty of the forty-one measures where the hymn sounds.
Various contrapuntal devices are evident in this mapping such as augmentation, diminution, parallel motion, oblique motion, similar motion, and contrary motion. Augmentation is the restatement of a melody using expanded note values, and diminution is its opposite, the restatement of a melody using shorter note values. Parallel motion occurs when two voices move in the same direction by the same interval, while oblique motion transpires when one voice moves as the other remains stationary. Similar motion takes place when two voices travel in the same direction by different intervals, and contrary motion arises when two voices proceed in opposite directions. Instances of similar and contrary motion are labeled SM and CM, respectively, in the annotated short score. An effective counterpoint typically employs a fairly balanced mix of contrary and similar motion, which is clearly evident throughout this mapping, as the SM and CM annotations appear in close alternation across the movement. A particularly striking case of augmentation resides in Elgar’s own score: the inner voice sounded first by the viola and later by the flute presents the first four notes of Phrase B in augmentation, a countermelody Elgar singled out for attention in his program note with the remark that “the inner sustained phrases at first on the viola and later on the flute should be noted.”
The following table identifies 89 melodic conjunctions between Ein feste Burg and Variation X dispersed across 33 active bars, covering 80% of the 41 measures where the hymn sounds. In most bars where melodic conjunctions are absent, harmonic conjunctions maintain the contrapuntal connection. The 89 melodic conjunctions encompass seven note types with frequencies ranging between 2 and 23. Note G leads with 23 matches (26%), followed by D and F♯, tied at 19 each (21% apiece), E with 15 (17%), C with 6 (7%), B with 5 (6%), and C♯ with 2 (2%). The three most frequent notes (G, D, and F♯) account for more than two-thirds (69%) of all melodic conjunctions, reflecting the tonic (G), dominant (D), and leading tone (F♯) of G major, the home key of Variation X.
The following table identifies 83 harmonic conjunctions between Ein feste Burg and Variation X dispersed across 33 active bars, covering 80% of the 41 measures where the hymn sounds. The 83 harmonic conjunctions encompass nine note types with frequencies ranging between 1 and 23. Note D leads with 23 matches (28%), followed by G with 21 (25%), E with 11 (13%), F♯ with 10 (12%), C♯ with 6 (7%), B and C tied at 4 each (5% apiece), E♯ with 3 (4%), and D♭ with 1 (1%). The three most frequent notes (D, G, and E) account for two-thirds (66%) of all harmonic conjunctions, reflecting the dominant (D), tonic (G), and submediant (E) of G major, the home key of Variation X.
There is a combined total of 172 note conjunctions (89 melodic + 83 harmonic) across the active bars of Variation X, covering 40 of the 41 measures where the hymn sounds for a 98% coverage rate. While melodic conjunctions are present in 33 of the active bars, harmonic conjunctions maintain the contrapuntal connection in seven others, ensuring that all but a single active measure (bar 362) features some combination of melodic and/or harmonic conjunctions. This demonstrates that Ein feste Burg engages the full harmonic texture of Variation X rather than merely overlapping with its surface melody.
This comprehensive, note-by-note penetration — resuming undiminished each time the hymn reenters after its dormant intervals at 359, 371–378, 389–398, and 411–423 — embodies the defining hallmark of a genuine contrapuntal mapping. Elgar’s own description of the hidden theme proceeding “through and over” the set of Variations is thus borne out with striking quantitative precision. Far from merely visiting Variation X in passing, Ein feste Burg permeates it at nearly every structural level: melodically with the movement's principal tune, harmonically with its inner voices, and formally with the nine-phrase arc (ABCDEFBAB) spanning the movement. Such a pervasive and structurally coherent alignment — encompassing 172 sequential note conjunctions across seven melodic and nine harmonic note types — provides compelling, quantifiable evidence that Ein feste Burg forms a clear and convincing counterpoint to Variation X.
The test Elgar set is straightforward but demanding. The covert principal theme must play “through and over” the set of Enigma Variations as a counterpoint. More than a century of purported solutions have failed to meet that requirement, for none has ever been successfully mapped contrapuntally above any complete movement. Ein feste Burg satisfies that test from the Enigma Theme to the Finale, replicating sequential note content phrase by phrase while preserving the hymn's phrase architecture. In consideration of that extraordinary feat, Ein feste Burg stands in a class all its own.
Variation X (Dorabella) rewards scrutiny at each level at which Elgar is known to have devised puzzles — cryptographic, musical, and verbal. The movement’s title is itself a borrowed mask: Elgar drew the nickname for Dora Penny from Mozart’s Così fan tutte, an opera whose title (“Thus do they all”) winks at the notion of concealment and deception behind a charming exterior. Dora Penny occupies a singular place in the Enigma’s cryptographic history, for it was to her that Elgar sent the famous Dorabella Cipher in July 1897, fifteen months before the genesis of the Enigma Variations. When Dora later pressed him about the hidden melody, Elgar replied, “I thought that you, of all people, would guess it.” The remark is telling. As the daughter of an Anglican rector, Dora was steeped in Protestant hymnody, and a famous Lutheran anthem is precisely the sort of tune she “of all people” would be able to recognize. Elgar even singled out this movement’s inner voice for special attention, remarking that “the inner sustained phrases at first on the viola and later on the flute should be noted.” The reason for Elgar’s emphasis on those inner phrases is that they cite the first four notes of the ending phrase from Ein feste Burg in augmentation.
The musical evidence is equally exacting. The contrapuntal mapping of Ein feste Burg above Variation X produces 89 melodic conjunctions and 83 harmonic conjunctions for a combined total of 172, spanning 40 of the 41 measures where the hymn sounds for a coverage rate of 98%. Where melodic conjunctions fall silent, harmonic conjunctions consistently maintain the contrapuntal thread, leaving only a single active measure (bar 362) without a match. This is not a scattering of coincidental overlaps but a sustained architecture. The hymn’s canonical phrase structure (ABABCDEFB) unfolds across the movement in the elaborated sequence ABCDEFBAB, preserving the correct order of all seven phrases before closing with appended restatements of Phrases A and B.
As with the Enigma Theme and Variations I through IX, the phrases mapped across Variation X are tribrid in origin, drawn from three distinct historical settings of the hymn: Luther’s original, Bach’s realization in Cantata BWV 80, and Mendelssohn’s rendering in the Reformation Symphony — woven together as a threefold cord not easily broken. That this movement should yield so complete a mapping is fitting. Scholars who deny Dorabella the status of a variation have, in effect, conceded they can find no thread binding it to the Enigma Theme. Scholars who deny Dorabella the status of a variation have, in effect, conceded they can find no thread linking it to the Enigma Theme. That verdict proves threadbare, for absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. 172 note conjunctions form that indelible thread precisely where Elgar said the answer lay all along, in a “larger theme” that “goes” through and over the whole set, sounding even across a movement its dedicatee — the recipient of Elgar’s most famous cipher — was expected “of all people” to guess.
The wordplay and cryptographic threads converging on Dora Penny, the composer’s own directive to attend to the movement's inner voice, and the quantitative rigor of 172 note conjunctions distributed across a structurally intact nine-phrase mapping supply overwhelming evidence that Ein feste Burg is a viable counterpoint to Variation X exactly as Elgar's own accounts of the secret melody require. To learn more about the secrets behind the Enigma Variations, read my free eBook Elgar's Enigmas Exposed. Please support my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.
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