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Sunday, June 28, 2020

Elgar's Second Bridge Passage Enigma Ciphers

Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.
Cited by Elgar after the extended Finale of the Enigma Variations

This is the fifth installment in a series of articles that explore a trove of cryptograms embedded in three bridge passages of the Enigma Variations by the British romantic composer Edward Elgar. A section in classical music that smoothly connects one movement to another is called a bridge passage, and there are three in the Enigma Variations. The first in bars 18-19 comprises an elaboration of the final cadence from the iconic Enigma Theme. It begins at Rehearsal 2 and precedes Variation I (C. A. E.). The second in bars 185-188 completes the closing section of Variation V (R. P. A). It starts four bars before Rehearsal 19 and links to Variation VI (Ysobel). The third bridge passage in bars 306-308 begins three measures before Rehearsal 33 and forms the ending phrase of Variation VIII (W. N.). A soulful melodic G from the tonic cadence is sustained by the first violins over the barline into Rehearsal 33 to herald the sublime dawn of the most elegiac of the movements, Variation IX (Nimrod).
My first essay covers the Opus Dei Cipher. This cryptogram is formed by three performance directions in the first bridge passage that stand out from the others because they end in a period: tempo., dim., and unis. Those three terms are an anagram of two phrases and one word. The first is the Latin phrase “Opus Dei” which means “The work of God.” The next is “I m,” a phonetic spelling of “I am.” This phrase is a mysterious name given by God to Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb. The third is “mnt,” a phonetic rendition of “mount.” Moses first encountered God on Mount Horeb, a place also known as the Mountain of God. Elgar taught violin at a school called The Mount on the day he first performed the Enigma Theme at the piano for his wife. first performed the Enigma Theme The decryptions “Opus Dei”, “I AM,” and “mount” evince a coherent theological framework. They further hint at the identity of the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII because Christian theologians classify the episode on Mount Horeb as a Christophany, an appearance of the pre-incarnate Jesus in the Old Testament.
My second article presents the Psalm 46 Ciphers. The word psalm is encoded as an acrostic anagram by five performance directions in the first bridge passage. The numbers 4 and 6 are enciphered in this first bridge passage in two ways by its orchestration. The first is conveyed by the breakdown of the notes in the opening G major chord in bar 18. This tonic major chord is constructed of ten written notes that may be categorized as four unisons and six discrete pitches. The numbers four and six turn up again in connection with the melodic eighth notes performed by the first violins (bars 18-19) and harmonic eighth notes played by the violas (bar 19). These eighth notes are beamed into groups of four, and there are a total of six beamed groupings. The encoding of the word “psalm” in conjunction with the numbers 4 and 6 is illuminating because the title of the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations originates from the first line of Psalm 46. The repeated slurred pattern of eighth notes in pairs is a pattern that suggests the chapter number 22, a messianic psalm that describes the crucifixion.
My third paper describes the Tau Cross Ciphers. The proximate performance directions “a tempo” and “unis” in the first bridge passage are an acrostic anagram of tau. The tau cross is one of the four iconographic representations of the cross, a Christogram that implicates Jesus as Elgar’s secret friend. The sums of the characters in the separate terms in “a tempo” and “unis.” are an anagram of the number 515. That divine number is the cryptic “enigma forte” from Dante’s Divine Comedy. There are multiple coded allusions to the Divine Comedy and the mysterious number 515 within the Enigma Variations. Like the divine number 515, there are at least two coded references in the first bridge passage to a mathematical ratio known as the Divine Number or Golden Section. Similarly, there are two coded references to Pi in bars 1 and 11 of the Enigma Theme. The Golden Section provides the first two words from the title of Longfellow’s book The Golden Legend. That book contains a homage to Martin Luther that cites all four stanzas of his hymn Ein feste Burg, the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations.
The fourth installment covers other related ciphers embedded within the performance directions of the first bridge passage. Setting aside the performance directions that comprise an acrostic anagram of psalm leaves nine other terms. When these remaining words are treated like an acrostic anagram, their first letters may be reshuffled to form “u ffacd ttt.” This phrase may be interpreted phonetically and symbolically as “You faced crucifixion” and “You effaced death.” There were three crosses at the crucifixion of Jesus. Likewise, there are three bridge passages and three Mendelssohn quotations in the Enigma Variations. These decryptions bolster the conclusion that Jesus is the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII.
Another possible arrangement is “u facd tttf” in which “tttf” is a phonetic rendering of the German word tief meaning deep. The German saying “Stille Wasser sind tief” (Still water runs deep) provides a multilayered linkage to the original German title of Mendelssohn’s overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). Meeres is a word for a large body of water, and stille is identical to that from the German aphorism. When read from this vantage point, the phrase “u facd tttf” may be interpreted as “You faced [the] deep” depths of death. Two coded references to “dead” in the double bass part of Variation XIII bolster this cryptographic interpolation.
The existence of these bridge passage ciphers is consistent with Elgar’s compulsion for cryptography, a subject that merits a chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! A decade of concerted analysis of the Enigma Variations has netted over ninety cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. While this figure may seem incredible, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s psychological profile. More importantly, their solutions provide definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the foundation of the ensuing movements? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by Martin Luther. What is Elgar’s “dark saying” ensconced within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher embedded in the opening six bars. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith.

The Second Bridge Passage
The second bridge passage in bars 185-188 is the closing section of Variation V (R. P. A). It begins four bars before Rehearsal 19 and links to Variation VI (Ysobel). Elgar devised a predominantly scaler countermelody to serve as the main subject of Variation V to contrast with the Enigma Theme’s more open melodic architecture. In bars 185 through 186, the first nine notes of this countermelody are performed twice in octaves by the second violins, violas, and cellos with the opening four-notes of the Enigma Theme played by the second flute with the French horns in octaves. In bars 187 through 188, the first four notes of the countermelody are repeated in a descending melodic sequence in conjunction with a series of four descending sevenths played in unison in bar 187 by the principal flute and first clarinet, and continued by the clarinet in bars 188.


Second Bridge Melodic Anagram Cipher

The second bridge passage layers the first phrase of the countermelody above a four-note incipit of Enigma Theme, first in 185 and a second time with the countermelody an octave higher in bar 186. The countermelody has a time signature of 12/8 and is constructed predominantly from triplet patterns. The Enigma Theme retains its original 4/4 meter and rhythmic structure of two eighth notes followed by two quarter notes. These contrasting time signatures are indicated concurrently in the full score. The placement of the countermelody above the Enigma Theme mirrors Elgar’s condition that requires the hidden tune must play “through and over the whole set” of Variations.
A careful analysis of the countermelody’s opening six notes over the Enigma Theme’s first four notes reveals that it is a melodic anagram. The merger of these two beginnings produces one remarkable ending as these ten notes may be reorganized and revalued rhythmically to form the complete ending phrase of Ein feste Burg.


This is not the only time that Elgar encodes the ending phrase of the secret tune in the form of a melodic anagram. In Variation XIII, three clarinet solo passages that begin with a Mendelssohn quotation are a melodic anagram of the concluding phrase of Ein feste Burg. At Rehearsal 66 in Variation XIV, the countermelody to the Enigma Theme is also a melodic anagram of the hidden tune’s concluding phrase. Consequently, the discovery of the Second Bridge Melodic Anagram Cipher is part of a larger pattern in the Enigma Variations.

Ysobel’s Sea Crossing Ciphers
Variation VI is dedicated to Elgar’s viola pupil Isabel Fitton. “Ysobel” is a variant of her first name with the English equivalent of “Elisabeth.” “Ysobel” is a derivation of the name “Elisheba”, the wife of Aaron mentioned in Exodus 6:23. The chapter number 6 corresponds to the Roman numeral VI, and even more remarkably, Ysobel ends at Rehearsal 23 which corresponds to verse 23. Aaron served as the spokesman for his brother Moses who led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt during the Exodus. Fleeing the Pharaoh's pursuing army, Elisheba escaped with the Hebrew nation across a miraculous landbridge created when God parted the sea. The words “I AM” and “mount” are encoded by the Opus Dei Cipher, and these are prominent terms highlighted in the Exodus account. Two new documentary films — The Red Sea Miracle Parts I and II — present archeological evidence for this pivotal event in Jewish history.
The insertion of a bridge passage between Variations V (R.P.A.) and VI (Ysobel) is a subtle but unmistakable theological allusion to a sea crossing. The key signatures of the bridge passage (C minor) and ensuing movement (C major) drive this point home because that shared key letter is a homonym of sea. A pedal tone C is tied over four barlines throughout the second bridge passage into the downbeat of Variation VI. This feature provides a cunning wordplay on “sea tied.” The pedal tone C is sustained for a total of 50 eighth notes, a number linked to the Exodus account because Moses received God's Law precisely 50 days after Passover. This event is celebrated on Shavuot which is also known as Pentecost. Secular scholars could never see this theologically transparent reference because the scriptural connotations of the name “Ysobel” would never cross their philistine minds.
There is a second allusion to a sea crossing in Variation VI. Elgar wrote concerning this movement, “It may be noticed that the opening bar, a phrase made use of throughout the variation, is an ‘exercise’ for crossing the strings — a difficulty for beginners; on this is built a pensive and, for a moment, romantic movement.” The main motive is a string crossing exercise Elgar devised for Isabel to practice on her viola. The viola is written primarily in the alto clef which is also known as the C clef. Variation VI presents a string crossing exercise in the key of C that is introduced by the viola composed in the C clef. This clever combination of motive, key, and orchestration, results in multiple coded references to a C (sea) crossing.


There are four notes in the string crossing motif which is accompanied by a figure constructed from the first three notes of the Enigma Theme played in harmonic thirds for a total of six notes. Four countermelody notes are played along with three melody notes performed in harmonic thirds for a total of six. This combination of four and six notes is a coded reference to the numbers four and six. Those two numerals are enciphered throughout the Enigma Theme and in its first bridge passage. The significance of the numbers four and six is that covert Theme's title originates from Psalm 46.
Elgar cites in Variation XIII a melodic incipit from Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage to sonically portray a sea crossing. This overture was inspired by the poetry of the German poet and playwright Johann Wolgang von Goethe. The image of a sea crossing intersects with the coded reference to a sea crossing in the C minor bridge passage of Variation V that links to Variation VI with its distinctive string crossing exercise motif. The function of a bridge is to provide a place to cross, a word intimately tied to Jesus, the friend secretly commemorated in Variation XIII. There are three bridge passages within the Enigma Variations, something analogous to the three crosses at the crucifixion of Christ.

IHC Christogram Cipher

The second bridge passage opens with the first nine sounding notes of the countermelody performed in bar 185 and repeated an octave higher in bar 186. The first four notes of the countermelody are next played twice starting a 5th higher on G in bar 187 for a total of eighth notes. A melodic sequence is constructed from these opening four notes in bar 188 that modulates downward in stepwise fashion from F to E-flat. The countermelody is played over a pedal tone C sustained by the bass section and a timpani roll on the same C that later accompanies the first two Mendelssohn quotations in A-flat major. The droning timpani roll on C serves as a link to the Mendelssohn quotations in Variation XIII.
There are nine sounding notes in the countermelody in bar 185 that are repeated in bar 186. There are eight countermelody notes in bar 187 and again in 188. When these discrete note totals of the countermelody (9 and 8) are filtered through a number-to-letter key (1 = a, 2 = b, 3 = c, etc.), the resulting plaintext is I and H. Those are the first two letters in the Christogram IHC. The absent C is conveniently provided by the C pedal tone that accompanies the countermelody throughout the second bridge passage. The enciphering of a Christogram in a bridge passage is contextually appropriate because a bridge provides a place to cross.


Rehearsal 19 PAPE Cipher

The second bridge connects seamlessly to Variation VI with the indication attacca. At Rehearsal 19, there are four proximate performance directions in the staves of the first violins (pp) and violas (p, arco, and express.). These four neighboring performance directions are an acrostic anagram of paper:
  1. pp
  2. arco
  3. p
  4. express.
The French word pape means “pope.” Elgar was an observant Roman Catholic when he composed the Enigma Variations in 1898-99. The word pape is enciphered in bar 189. Remarkably, the 189th pope was Martin IV, the last French pope based in Rome. The Roman numerals for Variation VI are the mirror image of IV. The name Martin is associated with the covert Theme as it was composed by Martin Luther. There are various coded references to Dante’s Divine Comedy in the Enigma Variations, and Pope Martin IV is specifically mentioned in the second cantica, Purgatorio.


Proximate Initials “Parry” Cipher

The second bridge passage connects Variation V (R. P. A.) to Variation VI (Ysobel). The initials of those adjoining titles (R. P. A. and Y) are an anagram of “PARY”. This proximate initials anagram is a phonetic rendering of Parry, the last name of Hubert Parry. He was a prominent English composer who championed Elgar's music. Parry contributed articles to George Grove’s immense Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a work that Elgar consulted during his musical apprenticeship. In 1895, Parry succeeded Grove as head of the Royal College of Music.
Parry may not have merited his own variation, but his name is deftly encoded by two movements linked together by a bridge passage. Parry’s 1916 setting of William Blake’s poem Jerusalem was orchestrated by Elgar in 1922 and has become a permanent fixture at the Proms. The main character of that poem is Jesus, the secret friend portrayed in Variation XIII. Elgar prepared no fewer than five lists of the Variations that varied the order of the movements. He did not arrive at placing R. P. A. before Ysobel until the third list. These divergent lists were Elgar's attempts to construct an assortment of cryptograms as addressed in the article Elgar's Proximate Title Letters Enigma Ciphers.

Elgar’s Initials and Name Ciphers

A distinct subset of cryptograms within the Enigma Variations harbors the composer’s initials or name. For instance, the performance directions in the Enigma Theme’s opening bar are an acrostic anagram of “EE’s Psalm.” The first bridge passage is enclosed by an end bar and a double bar. Those barlines (End and double) are an acrostic of Ed, a shortened version of Edward. Elgar’s initials for his own variation also feature those letters: E. D. U. The decryption of a musical Polybius box cipher in the Enigma Theme’s opening six measures revealed it relied on four different languages: English, Latin, German, and what Elgar reasonably believed to be Aramaic. The first letters of those four languages are an acrostic anagram of Elgar: English, Latin, German, and Aramaic. The Enigma Theme is bookended by coded versions of the composer’s last and first names.
The second bridge passage is sprinkled with pairs of E-flats hinting at Elgar’s initials. The second flute part restates the opening four notes of the Enigma Theme in C minor beginning with E-flat in bar 185, and repeats the same melodic fragment in bar 186. The second flute plays an E-flat on the second beat of bars 185 and 186 to form the first pair of note letter Es. The first and second French horns play octave E-flats in concert pitch in bar 185 and again in bar 186, furnishing two more sets of note letter Es. The third trombone plays E-flat on the first and third beats of measure 187. The third trombone plays an E-flat on the second beat of bar 188, and the second trombone repeats that same E-flat on the third beat. The first violins perform two melodic E-flats in bar 187, and again in bar 188. The consistent appearance of two E-flats in each measure of the second bridge passage bears Elgar’s cryptographic fingerprints.


The first violins perform the notes E-D four times over bars 187-188, providing four instances where Elgar cleverly inserted his first name within the second bridge passage. The scoring of the Enigma Variations includes two B-flat clarinets, a transposing instrument that plays a written note a whole tone lower. In bar 187, the first clarinet performs a written D on the downbeat descending by a minor seventh to E on the second beat. This same melodic pattern is repeated on the third and fourth beats. These four written notes (D-E-D-E) are two reverse spellings of Ed with one conventional spelling (E-D) on beats two and three. On the second and fourth beats of bar 187, the first and second clarinets perform a unison written E that sounds a whole tone lower as D. These unison Es are another coded form of Elgar’s first name because of the relationship between the written (E) and sounding (D) pitches.

Concluding Remarks

This excavation of the second bridge passage in the Enigma Variations uncovered a number of intriguing cryptograms. The countermelody’s opening six notes over the Enigma Theme’s first four notes reveals that this melodic melding is an anagram of the complete ending phrase of Ein feste Burg. This bridge passage is tied to a sea crossing because it is written in C minor and connects to Variation VI (Ysobel). The key letter C is a homonym of sea. The pedal tone C is tied over multiple barlines throughout the second bridge passage, providing a witty wordplay on “sea tied.” The Mendelssohn quotations in Variation XIII symbolize a sea crossing and begin on the note C. The name Ysobel is a derivation of Elisheba, the name of Aaron’s wife and sister-in-law to Moses. The Exodus account describes how the people of Israel escaped Egypt and fled across a miraculous land bridge created when God parted the sea.
The second bridge passage encodes the IHC Christogram. The discrete number of countermelody notes per measure in the second bridge passage are 9 (bars 185 and 186), and 8 (bars 187 and 188). When converted into their corresponding letters in the alphabet, the numerals 9 and 8 produce I and H. The countermelody is performed above a C pedal tone. This sustained note provides the third letter to complete the IHC Christogram.
Variation V (R. P. A.) and Variation VI (Ysobel) are linked by the second bridge passage. The initials for these connected movements (R. P. A. and Y) are an anagram of “PARY”. This is a phonetic spelling of Parry. The British composer and academic Hubert Parry befriended Elgar and played an important role in furthering his career. Parry’s 1916 setting of William Blake’s poem Jerusalem was orchestrated by Elgar in 1922 and is performed on the last night of the Proms.
An array of cryptograms within the Enigma Variations harbor either Elgar’s initials, first name, or last name. The bridge passage ciphers fall into this category. Elgar’s initials are sprinkled throughout the bridge passage as pairs of E-flats. The second flute plays an E-flat on the second beat of bars 185 and 186. The French horns play octave E-flats on the second beat of bars 185 and 186. The third trombone performs two E-flats on beats 1 and 3 of bar 187. The second trombone plays an E-flat on beat 2 of bar 188, and the third trombone follows with a second E-flat on beat 3. The first violins perform two E-flats during beats 1 and 3 of bars 187 and 188. The first and second clarinets perform unison written Es on beats 2 and 4 of bar 187.
Elgar’s first name is spelled out by the first violin line four times in bars 187-188 by the consecutive notes E and D. It is also spelled out in the B-flat clarinet staff by the notes E and D on beats 2 and 3 of bar 187, and twice in reverse as D and E on beats 1 and 2, and again on beats 3 and 4. The B-flat clarinet is a transposing instrument that plays a written pitch a whole tone lower. The first and second clarinets play a unison written E twice in bar 187, and that note sounds in concert pitch as D. Consequently, these unison Es are a coded version of Ed by pairing the written pitch (E) with the sounding pitch (D). Remarkably, Elgar signed his second bridge passage cipher six times. To learn more about the secrets of the Enigma Variations, read my free eBook Elar's Enigmas Exposed. Please help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Elgar's Transposed Enigma Signature

So the last will be first, and the first last.
Jesus speaking in Matthew 20:16

The British romantic composer Edward Elgar was an expert in cryptography, the discipline of coding and decoding secret messages. His obsession with that esoteric art merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! Much of its third chapter is devoted to Elgar’s brilliant decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher presented by John Holt Schooling in the April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. Elgar was so delighted with his solution to Schooling’s reputedly insoluble cipher that he mentions it in his first biography published in 1905 by Robert J. Buckley. Elgar painted his decryption in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate symbol as another name for the Polybius checkerboard is a box cipher. The six-word solution — “He who fears is half dead” — is summarized on a set of nine index cards.


On the sixth card, Elgar relates the task of cracking the cipher to “. . . working (in the dark).” The phrase “in the dark” is enclosed by parentheses, a feature associated with all of the titles from the Enigma Variations except the enigmatic Theme. His use of the word “dark” as a synonym for a cipher is significant because Elgar employs that same phraseology in the original 1899 program note to characterize the Enigma Theme. It is an oft-cited passage that merits revisiting as Elgar lays the groundwork for his tripartite riddle:
The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connexion between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played . . . So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some later dramas – e.g., Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’ – the chief character is never on the stage.
A decade of concerted analysis of the Enigma Variations has netted over eighty cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. While this figure may seem incredible, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s obsession with ciphers. More significantly, their solutions provide definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the foundation of the ensuing movements? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by Martin Luther. What is Elgar’s “dark saying” ensconced within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A Musical Polybius Cipher embedded in the opening six bars. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith.
A conspicuous feature of some of these ciphers is their proximity to double barlines, particularly those situated in unexpected or unusual locations. For example, the Enigma Theme has an oddly placed double bar line at the end of measure 6. The presence of a double bar line so close to the beginning is decidedly anomalous. This condition also applies to the first bridge passage framed by an end bar line at the start of bar 18 and a double bar line at the end of bar 19. The insertion of numerous double bar lines in less than twenty measures is conspicuously inordinate.
The most sophisticated cryptogram ensconced within the opening six measures of the Enigma Theme is a Musical Polybius Box Cipher. As his personal library and first biography amply attest, Elgar studied the Polybius box cipher years before he composed the Enigma Variations. Some striking parallels between the melody and the secret tune’s title implicated the presence of this cipher. There are 24 melody notes in bars 1-6, and likewise, there are 24 letters in the covert Theme’s six-word German title. Over these opening six bars, there are six discrete note letters in both the melody and bass lines. Elgar’s Polybius Box Key consists of six columns and six rows that contain 36 cells, a figure that corresponds to the opus number of the Enigma Variations. Plaintext letters from the covert Theme’s title were placed in specific cells within the checkerboard grid. Melody notes are assigned to columns and bass notes to the rows. With this key, a pair of melody and bass notes cleverly designates the intersection of the corresponding column and row, pinpointing a given solution letter.
Elgar reshuffled the letters from the six-word German title to construct an elaborate anagram of short words and phrases in English, Latin, and what he reasonably believed to be Aramaic relying on popular biblical commentaries. This is his “dark saying” in the Enigma that is first mentioned in the 1899 program note. Many of the words revealed by the decryption are rendered phonetically, a trademark of Elgar’s writing style as evinced by his personal correspondence. The first letters in the four languages found in the full decryption are an acrostic anagram of ELGAR: English, Latin, German, and Aramaic. The decryption must be authentic because Elgar’s last name is enciphered within a second layer of encryption. Elgar uses this method of encipherment more than once because the first letters of the performance directions in bar 1 of the Enigma Theme are an acrostic anagram of “EE’s Psalm,” a cryptogram known as the Enigma Theme Psalm Cipher.


Elgar’s last name is encoded as an acrostic anagram of the languages revealed by the decryption of his Music Box Cipher. This cryptogram is located in the opening six bars of the Enigma Theme. The same pattern is reprised at the end of the Enigma Theme where his first name is also encoded. This cipher is constructed from the two types of double barlines that frame the Enigma Theme’s bridge passage in bars 18-19. There is an end bar at the beginning of bar 18 and a double bar at the end of bar 19. The first letters of these barlines (End and Double) form an acrostic anagram of Ed, va shortened version of Edward.


It has been shown how Elgar’s last name is encoded at the beginning of the Enigma Theme, and his first name at its end. By bookending the Enigma Theme with a coded version of his signature, Elgar stealthily delineates the full length of his melody. The transposition of his first and last names within the Enigma Theme further implies the covert Theme’s ending phrase is also at the beginning, and its starting phrase at its end. The Enigma Theme’s ABA’C structure deftly alludes to such a retrograde counterpoint because those letters are a phonetic spelling of aback, a word that means “backward” and “by surprise.” A contrapuntal mapping of Ein feste Burg backward “through and over” the Enigma Theme affirms the efficacy of this approach. The perplexing title Elgar gave to his baffling melody is exquisitely appropriate because the definition of enigma is “something hard to understand or explain.” A retrograde counterpoint is an enigma since the hidden melody is played in reverse, rendering it far more difficult to detect and recognize. To learn more about the secrets of the Enigma Variations, read my free eBook Elgar’s Enigmas ExposedPlease help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria

Friday, June 19, 2020

Elgar's First Bridge Passage Words Ciphers

The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
    And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls;
The little waves, with their soft, white hands,
Efface the footprints in the sands,
    And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveller to the shore,
    And the tide rises, the tide falls.
The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Today marks the 121st anniversary of the Enigma Variations’ premiere in 1899, a symphonic work by the British Romantic composer Edward Elgar that catapulted him to international acclaim. This is the fourth installment in a series of articles that explore a trove of cryptograms embedded within three bridge passages from the Enigma Variations. A section in classical music that smoothly connects one movement to another is known as a bridge passage, and there are three in the Enigma Variations. The first in bars 18-19 forms the concluding phrase of the iconic Enigma Theme. It begins at Rehearsal 2 and precedes Variation I (C. A. E.). The second in bars 185-188 completes the closing section of Variation V (R. P. A). It starts four bars before Rehear-al 19 and links to Variation VI (Ysobel). The third bridge passage in bars 306-308 begins three measures before Rehearsal 33 and forms the ending phrase of Variation VIII (W. N.). A soulful melodic G from the tonic cadence is sustained by the first violins over the barline into Rehearsal 33 to herald the sublime dawn of the most elegiac of the movements, Variation IX (Nimrod).


My first essay covers the Opus Dei Cipher. This cryptogram is formed by three performance directions in the first bridge passage that stand out from the others because they end in a period: tempo., dim., and unis. These three performance directions are an anagram of two phrases and one word. The first is the Latin phrase “Opus Dei” which means “The work of God.” The next is “I m,” a phonetic spelling of “I am.” This phrase is a mysterious name given by God to Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb. The third is “mnt,” a phonetic rendition of “mount.” Moses first encountered God on Mount Horeb, a place also known as the Mountain of God. The decryptions “Opus Dei”, “I AM,” and “mount” evince a coherent theological framework. They further hint at the identity of the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII because Christian theologians classify the episode on Mount Horeb as a Christophany, an appearance of the pre-incarnate Jesus in the Old Testament.
My second article describes the Psalm 46 Ciphers. The word “psalm” is encoded as an acrostic anagram by five performance directions in the first bridge passage, and the numbers 4 and 6 are enciphered in multiple ways by its orchestration. The first is conveyed by the breakdown of the notes in the opening G major chord in bar 18. This tonic major chord is constructed of ten written notes that may be categorized as four unisons and six discrete pitches. The numbers four and six turn up again in connection with the melodic eighth notes performed by the first violins (bars 18-19) and harmonic eighth notes played by the violas (bar 19). These eighth notes are beamed into groups of four, and there are a total of six beamed groupings. The encoding of the word “psalm” in conjunction with the numbers 4 and 6 is illuminating because the title of the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations originates from the first line of Psalm 46. The repeated slurred pattern of eighth notes in pairs is a pattern that suggest chapter number 22, a messianic psalm that describes the crucifixion.


My third article describes the Tau Cross Ciphers. The proximate performance directions “a tempo” and “unis” in the first bridge passage are an acrostic anagram of “tau.” The tau cross is one of the four iconographic representations of the cross, a Christogram that implicates Jesus as Elgar’s secret friend. The sums of the characters in the separate terms in “a tempo” and “unis.” are an anagram of the number 515. That divine number is the cryptic “enigma forte” from Dante’s Divine Comedy. There are multiple coded allusions to the Divine Comedy and the mysterious number 515 within the Enigma Variations. Like the divine number 515, there are at least two coded references in the first bridge passage to a mathematical ratio known as the Divine Number or Golden Section. Similarly, there are two coded references to Pi in bars 1 and 11 of the Enigma Theme. The Golden Section provides the first two words from the title of Longfellow’s book The Golden Legend. That book contains a homage to Martin Luther that cites all four stanzas of his hymn Ein feste Burg, the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations.
The discovery of these ciphers is consistent with Elgar’s compulsion for cryptography, a subject that merits a chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! A decade of concerted analysis of the Enigma Variations has netted over eighty cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. While this figure may seem incredible, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s psychological profile. More importantly, their solutions provide definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the foundation of the ensuing movements? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by Martin Luther. What is Elgar’s “dark saying” ensconced within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher embedded in the opening six bars. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith.

Related Performance Directions Ciphers

My first article analyzed how five performance directions from the first bridge passage are an acrostic anagram of “psalm.” Those five performance directions in bar 18 are listed below:
  1. pp
  2. sordino
  3. a
  4. L’istesso
  5. molto

Patterns in the orchestration and notation of the first bridge passage implicate chapters 46 and 22 from the Book of Psalms. The title of the covert Theme originates from the opening line of Psalm 46. A vivid description of Christs crucifixion is given in Psalm 22 that Jesus cited from the cross. These two Psalms reveal the title of the covert Theme and the identity of Elgar’s secret friend depicted in Variation XIII.
These five performance directions are merely one part of a broader interlocking set of acrostic anagrams. Setting aside these five performance directions leaves nine other terms in bar 18 that are shown below in alphabetical order:
  1. a
  2. con
  3. dim
  4. f
  5. f
  6. tempo
  7. tempo
  8. tempo
  9. unis.
When treated as an acrostic anagram, the first letters of these remaining terms may be reshuffled to form “u ffacd ttt.” The easiest of these to decipher is the letter u which is a homophone of you. The German equivalent of you is du, the familiar form of “you” used among friends. This word appears in the initials of Elgar’s musical self-portrait (E. D. U.). The letters “ffacd” may be read phonetically as effaced and faced. Three ts resemble three crosses, a universal Christian symbol of Christ’s crucifixion at Golgotha where he was executed between two criminals. Other coded references to Psalms 22 and 46 support this interpretation of three ts as emblems of the cross. Indeed, the lowercase t closely resembles the Latin cross.
The Gospel account records there were three crosses at the crucifixion of Jesus. This revered figure executed almost two millennia ago is the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith and the secret friend commemorated in Variation XIII. Three Mendelssohn quotations in his movement symbolize an ocean crossing and are an allegory of three crosses. In Goethe’s poetry that inspired Mendelssohn’s overture, the picture of a calm sea depicts the stillness of death (“Todestille fürchterlich!”). A deadly sea crossing is a nuanced allusion to crossing over from life to death. It is precisely for this reason that Variation XIII was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra at Elgar’s Memorial Service in March 1934 along with the Enigma Theme, Variation I (C. A. E.), and Variation IX (Nimrod).
The acrostic anagram “u ffaced ttt” may be interpreted phonetically and symbolically as “You faced crucifixion” and “You effaced death.” These are robust theological allusions to Jesus whose death on the cross defeated death. This is why the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:55-17:
    “O death, where is your victory?
    O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Elgar was employed for years as the organist of St. George’s Church. His personal library housed multiple hymnals including a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern. The word “efface” is common in many hymns. For example, it may be found in the fourth and final stanza of Hymn 76:
That He may all our sins efface,
Adorn us with the gifts of Grace,
And join us to the angel band
Forever in the Heavenly Land.
In The Parochial Hymn Book published in 1881 in both English and Latin, hymn no. 556 (“Supplication to Jesus Agonising to obtain the Grace for a Happy Death”) has the following 6th stanza:
When the priest with holy unction
    Prays for mercy and for grace,
May the tears of deep compunction
    All my guilty stains efface.
        Jesus! Jesus!
Let me find in thee a refuge,
    In thy heart a resting place.
Another possible ordering of the first letters of the nine remaining performance terms is “u facd tttf.” The letters “u facd” is another phonetic rendering of “You faced.” The letters “tttf” are a phonetic version of the German word tief. This is the fourth word in the saying “Stille Wasser sind tief” (Still water runs deep). Stille appears in the title from Mendelssohn’s concert overture (Meerestille) quoted in Variation XIII. When viewed through the poetic prism of the Mendelssohn quotations, the combination “u facd tttf” may be interpolated as “You faced” the depths of death. This conclusion is bolstered by four notes played by the bass section four bars after Rehearsal 55 and 59 that literally spell “DEAD.” The performance of these four notes by the lowest voice of the string choir conveys a sense of depth and portends the deathly stillness of the Mendelssohn quotations. There are a variety of open and concealed allusions to death within the Enigma Variations. 


The American educator and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was highly esteemed by Ann Elgar, the mother of Edward Elgar. She faithfully passed on her reverence for Longfellow’s prose and poetry to her son. Longfellow’s writings served as the stimulus for five of Elgar’s compositions. The first is Spanish Serenade Op. 23, a work for chorus and orchestra written in 1892 based on Act I of Longfellow’s play The Spanish Student. The second is The Black Knight Op. 25, an oratorio composed in 1893 and inspired by Longfellow’s translation of Uhland’s “Der schwarze Ritter” from his novel Hyperion: A Romance. The third is Rondel Op. 16 No. 3, a song for voice and piano set in 1894. The fourth is The Saga of King Olaf, a cantata composed in 1896 that was inspired by Longfellow’s epic poem sharing the same title. The fifth is The Apostles, a sacred oratorio premiered in 1903 that is based partly on Longfellow’s The Divine Tragedy (1871). Longfellow’s epic Christian poem forms a trilogy with The Golden Legend (1851) and The New England Tragedies (1868).
Longfellow composed his poem The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls in 1879 at his seaside summer home in Nahant, Massachusetts. In the first stanza, he describes a traveler walking at dusk on a beach towards a nearby town to represent the inevitable approach of death. In the second stanza, darkness envelops the seascape and town as little sea waves wash away the traveler’s transient footprints left behind on the sand. In the third stanza, a new day dawns but the traveler remains lost to the past. Like his footprints in the sand, death swept him away during the night to nevermore “return to shore.” Four times Longfellow repeats the line, “The tide rises, the tide falls,” to symbolize the cycle of life and death.
The ninth line of the poem reads, “Efface the footprints in the sands.” The word “efface” was uncovered by the decryption of the acrostic anagram formed by nine performance directions from bar 18 of the first bridge passage. The letter e appears twice in “efface,” a suggestive parallel with Elgar’s initials of two capital cursive Es. The marine imagery and the sandy shoreline of Longfellow’s poem allude to the transience of life as the darkness of death overtakes the twilight of life. Three stanzas furnish a parallel with the Enigma Variations’ three bridge passages and three Mendelssohn quotations in Variation XIII. There are fifteen lines in all, and likewise, there are fifteen movements in the Enigma Variations. Like the four-letter word “dead,” the term “dark” also has four letters and begins with the letter d. Elgar was certainly contemplating Longfellow’s poetry when he composed the Enigma Variations because he cites Stanza XIV from Elegiac Verse on the last page of the expanded version of Variation XIV completed in July 1899.
Elgar’s unusual choice of words for the original 1899 program note is redolent of Longfellow. Elgar wrote, “The Enigma I will not explain — it’s ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed . . .” An intimate association exists between the words dark, enigma, and Christ in Longfellow’s The Golden Legend. The protagonist Elsie offers to sacrifice her own life to save that of Prince Henry, a redemption theme eerily reminiscent of Senta’s role in The Flying Dutchman. As they journey to the place where Elsie is to lay down her life, the following exchange takes place:
Prince Henry
This life of ours is a wild aeolian harp of many a joyous strain,
But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain.

Elsie
Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma
Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma.
In her reply, Elsie deftly surmises the crux of Longfellow’s massive trilogy of verse plays, Christus: A Mystery. With terms like “enigma” and “dark saying,” Elgar’s unusual language in the original 1899 program discloses Longfellow’s influence.
Longfellow’s poetry was the foundation of Arthur Sullivan’s cantata The Golden Legend. Elgar served as a sectional violinist in performances of that work in May 1887, September 1887, and November 1892. He also attended a performance of it in September 1898, a month before he began intense work on the Enigma Variations. Elgar’s daughter Carice wrote, “My father always spoke with great feeling and respect for Sullivan and admired The Golden Legend.” The record proves that Elgar was intimately familiar with Sullivan’s cantata and Longfellow’s poetry that inspired it.

Concluding Remarks

This overview identified a variety of interlocking cryptograms within the performance directions of the first bridge passage (bars 18-19). The first was an acrostic anagram of five performance directions that spell psalm. The sparse orchestration of this first bridge passage links this decryption to the numbers 22 and 46. Jesus cited the opening line of Psalm 22 from the cross, a chapter that gives a vivid prophetic account of his crucifixion. Martin Luther obtained the title of his most famous hymn from the first line of Psalm 46. It is noteworthy that in both cases, the first line of the respective Psalm is cited. These specific coded references to Psalms 22 and 46 reveal the secret friend and the covert Theme.
A second anagram cipher is constructed from three performance directions that end with a period: tempo., dim., and unis. The letters of those three terms may be reshuffled to spell “Opus Dei” (Latin for “The work of God”), “I M” (phonetic for “I AM”), and “mnt” (a phonetic spelling of “mount”). God told Moses at the burning bush on Mount Horeb that His name is “I AM,” an encounter Christian theologians classify as a Christophany or preincarnate appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament canon. In his correspondence, Elgar used the opening bar of the Enigma Theme as a substitute for the phrase “I am.” This was possible because the pattern of two eighth notes followed by two quarter notes is the equivalent of two dots followed by two dashes in Morse code, the sequence for the letters I and M.
The proximate performance directions “a tempo” and “unis.” are an acrostic anagram of the word tau, the nineteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. One of the four iconic representations of the cross is the tau cross, a Christogram that implicates Jesus as Elgar’s secret friend. The presence of this cryptogram within the first bridge passage is fitting because a bridge serves as a crossing point. There are fourteen stations of the cross, and similarly, there are fourteen movements numbered by Roman numerals in the Enigma Variations. According to Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus was crucified at the age of 33. Likewise, there are precisely 33 written notes in the first bridge passage, a place to cross over from one movement to the next. There are also 33 characters in all of the Roman numerals from I to XIV.
Setting aside the performance directions that are an acrostic anagram of psalm leaves nine other terms. When they are treated like an acrostic anagram, their first letters may be reshuffled to form “u ffacd ttt.” This phrase may be interpreted phonetically and symbolically as “You faced crucifixion” and “You effaced death.” There were three crosses at the crucifixion of Jesus. Likewise, there are three bridge passages and three Mendelssohn quotations in the Enigma Variations. These decryptions bolster the conclusion that Jesus is the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. Another possible arrangement is “u facd tttf” in which “tttf” is a phonetic rendering of the German word tief that means “deep.” The German saying “Stille Wasser sind tief” (Still water runs deep) provides a multilayered linkage to the original German title of Mendelssohn’s overture Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). Meeres is a word for a large body of water, and stille is identical to that from the German aphorism. When read from this vantage point, the phrase “u facd tttf” may be interpreted as “You faced [the] deep” depths of death. Two coded references to “dead” in the bass part of Variation XIII bolster this cryptographic interpolation.
Although divergent in their construction, the first bridge passage word ciphers encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary answers to the core riddles of the Enigma Variations. He conveniently signed the first bridge passage as “Ed” using the first letters of the end bar at the beginning of measure 18 and the double bar at the end of measure 19. Some secular academics will reflexively dismiss these cryptograms and their solutions as contrived, the product of confirmation bias or an overactive imagination. Their blind insistence that there can be no definitive answers to the Enigma Variations is the product of a lack of imagination melded with a rigid confirmation bias perpetuated by the echo chambers of academia and a rancid peer-review process. Elgar rightly despised the parochial and soulless formalism of his academic contemporaries. The anomalous Mendelssohn fragments point to the solutions to Elgar’s enigmas. After all, water is a solution and plays an integral role in the Christian rite of baptism. One must first be immersed in a Christian worldview to recognize and comprehend the innermost secrets of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. To learn more about the secrets of the Enigma Variations, read my free eBook Elgar's Enigmas ExposedPlease help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria

About Mr. Padgett

My photo
Mr. Padgett studied violin with Michael Rosenker (a student of Leopold Auer), and Rosenker’s pupil, Owen Dunsford. Mr. Padgett studied piano with Sally Magee (a student of Emanuel Bay), and Blanca Uribe (a student of Rosina Lhévinne). He attended the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in psychology. At Vassar he studied music theory and composition with Richard Wilson. Mr. Padgett has performed for Joseph Silverstein, Van Cliburn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maria Shriver, Steve Jobs, Prince Charles, Lady Camilla, Marcia Davenport, William F. Buckley, Jr., and other prominent public figures. His original compositions have been performed by the Monterey Symphony, at the Bohemian Grove, the Bohemian Club, and other private and public venues. In 2008 Mr. Padgett won the Max Bragado-Darman Fanfare Competition with his entry "Fanfare for the Eagles." It was premiered by the Monterey Symphony under Maestro Bragado in May 2008. A member of the Elgar Society, Mr. Padgett is married with five children.