Abstract
Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations (Op. 36) opens with a nineteen-measure Theme whose “dark saying” and absent principal melody have long remained unsolved. This study argues that Martin Luther’s Ein feste Burg (“A Mighty Fortress”) is mapped in retrograde as a counterpoint “through and over” the Enigma Theme. When read forward, the Theme’s ABA’C phrase structure yields the archaic sailing term “aback” (meaning “backward” and “by surprise”). When read in reverse, it produces the phonetic phrase “See Abba.” The chorale’s retrograde phrase order (BFEDCBA) encodes its initials backwards (BFE), a short form of Elgar’s forename (ED), the acronym CB for “Chorale Book,” and the initial A of his wife Alice. When combined, the two phrase structures form the larger anagram “EFB ABAC BC AD,” linking the covert Theme to the BC/AD calendar designations associated with Jesus Christ (the secret friend of Variation XIII) and to Elgar’s own signature “Ed Elgar.” Bar counts further encode 46 (Luther’s Psalm), 72 (the disciples of Luke 10), and 36 (the work’s opus number and the traditional number of hymns attributed to Luther). Supporting evidence includes a musical Polybius cipher, fragments of the covert Theme’s ending phrase in Variation XIV, Mendelssohn key-letter anagrams, and contemporaneous Turin Shroud allusions. These layered devices align with Elgar’s documented passion for cryptography and wordplay, indicating that Ein feste Burg offers a coherent solution warranting serious consideration.
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| June 19, 1899 Richter Concert Program p. 206 (Elgar’s program note) |
On being asked for some elucidation of “the composer’s intentions,” Mr. Edgar [sic] replied: “It is true that I have sketched for their amusement and mine, the idiosyncrasies of fourteen of my friends, not necessarily musicians; but this is a personal matter, and need not have been mentioned publicly. The Variations should stand simply as a ‘piece’ of music. The Enigma I will not explain—its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection 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 late dramas—e.g., Maeterlink’s [sic] ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’—the chief character is never on the stage.”
Charles Ainslie Barry citing Edward Elgar
Elgar the Cryptographer
The English composer Edward Elgar (1857–1934) was drawn to linguistic games that encompassed phonetic spellings, wordplays, and anagrams. A well-known instance is Elgar’s naming of his Malvern home “Craeg Lea,” where his family resided between 1899 and 1904. That peculiar moniker is an anagram obtained from a reverse spelling of “Elgar” (Craeg Lea) interwoven with the initials for his daughter (Carice), wife (Alice), and himself (Edward). Elgar delighted in testing his friends about its origin. When he challenged Rosa Burley (1866–1949) to decipher the name of his residence, she quickly unraveled its meaning as recounted in her memoir Edward Elgar: The Record of a Friendship.
Edward called the place Craeg Lea and challenged me to guess how he had found the name. By some stroke of luck, I realized that the key lay in the unusual spelling of “Craeg” and immediately saw that the thing had been built up anagrammatically from (A)lice, (C)arice, (E)dward ELGAR. I think he was a little annoyed that this mystification had fallen flat.
Elgar’s enthusiasm for word games spilled over into his obsession with cryptography, the science of coding and decoding secret messages. Ciphers elevate wordplay to a higher plane of complexity by obfuscating terms behind a smokescreen of seemingly disorganized letters and symbols. His interest in that esoteric art merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! The bulk of its third chapter is devoted to Elgar’s skillful decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher by John Holt Schooling, published in an April 1896 issue of The Pall M
all Magazine. A Nihilist cipher is a derivative of a Polybius checkerboard cipher. Elgar was so gratified by his solution that he mentions it in his first biography, published in 1904 by the music critic Robert J. Buckley (1847–1938). Elgar painted the solution in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate medium given that another name for the Polybius checkerboard is a box cipher.
Elgar’s methodical decryption of Schooling’s challenge cipher 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).”
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| Index Card No. 6 (in the dark) |
Elgar’s use of the word “dark” as a synonym for “cipher” is significant because this same adjective re-emerges later in his 1899 program note for the premiere of the Enigma Variations. It is an oft-cited passage that deserves revisiting as he lays the groundwork for his triplex 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.
Elgar uses the words dark and secret interchangeably in a letter to August Jaeger (1860–1909) dated February 5, 1900. He confessed, “Well—I can’t help it, but I hate continually saying ‘Keep it dark’—‘a dead secret’—& so forth.” According to Merriam‑Webster, one definition of dark is “secret,” while a saying is “a series of words that form a coherent phrase or adage.” Taken together, these definitions suggest that Elgar’s unusual expression—“dark saying”—functions as an oblique reference to coded or concealed language. In an indirect manner, Elgar implies that the Enigma Theme conceals a hidden message.
Elgar composed the Enigma Variations from October 1898 to February 1899, expanding the Finale by 96 measures in June and July 1899. That extraordinary work elevated him from provincial obscurity to international acclaim, transforming his career from an itinerant music teacher to a respected composer. The original title on the autograph score is “Variations for orchestra composed by Edward Elgar Op. 36.” With the opening theme dubbed “Enigma,” the work is popularly referred to as the Enigma Variations. In the 1899 program note and other primary sources, Elgar explained that the Theme is called “Enigma” because it is a counterpoint to a famous melody that is not heard but can play “through and over” the entire set of variations. This absent tune is the cornerstone underlying the whole work, a subject that has provoked considerable debate about what could be the correct melodic solution.
Most mainstream scholars insist there can be no valid solutions to the Enigma Variations because Elgar allegedly concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, a practical joke, or a marketing ploy. The editors of the Elgar Complete Edition preemptively deny the likelihood of any stealthy counterpoints or cryptograms. Relying on Elgar’s recollection of playing new material at the piano to gauge his wife’s reaction, they tout the standard lore that he must have extemporized the idiosyncratic Enigma Theme, mirabile dictu, without any forethought or planning.
There seems to have been no specific ‘enigma’ in mind at the outset: Elgar’s first playing of the music was hardly more than a running over the keys to aid relaxation. It was Alice Elgar’s interruption, apparently, that called him to attention and helped to identify the phrases which were to become the ‘Enigma’ theme. This suggests it is unlikely that the theme should conceal some counterpoint or cipher needed to solve the ‘Enigma’.
Such a blanket renunciation conveniently relieves musicologists of any duty to probe for counterpoints and ciphers. Prominent offenders include such luminaries as Robert Anderson (1927–2015), Jerrold Northrop Moore (1934–2024), and Julian Rushton (1941–). The unavoidable irony is that proponents of such denialism extol the validity of their position based on a dearth of evidence for which they never executed a diligent or impartial search. Such a ridiculous state of affairs is a textbook case of confirmation bias palmed off as “scholarship.” Carl Sagan (1934–1996) warns against that perilous persuasion with the antimetabole, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” There is no easy way to sugarcoat such intellectual dishonesty and neglect. A legacy scholar “convinced against his will is of the same mind still.”
Embraced by those who take Elgar at his published word, the more judicious view accepts the challenge of a famous melody lurking behind the Enigma Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. In his sanctioned 1904 biography, Elgar bluntly states, “The theme is a counterpoint on some well-known melody which is never heard …” Most scholars insist the answer can never be known because Elgar allegedly took his secret to the grave. Such a supposition precludes the possibility that he encoded solutions within the Enigma Variations for posterity to discover and decode. Indeed, such a rigid judgment glosses over or blatantly ignores Elgar’s known obsession with cryptography. That incontestable facet of his psychological profile raises the possibility that solutions are deliberately encoded within the orchestral score.
The title Ein feste Burg comes from the first line of Psalm 46, a chapter traditionally designated as “Luther’s Psalm” on account of its close association with his most renowned chorale. Luther often referred to Ein feste Burg simply as “the 46th Psalm.” In times of adversity, he rallied his companions with the exhortation, “Come, let us sing the 46th Psalm, and let them do their worst!” The superscriptions and marginal annotations preserved in the Book of Psalms contain numerous directives concerning performance practice, including specifications for instruments, leaders of song, melodic formulas, and stylistic manner. Despite these textual indicators, no authentic musical settings from the ancient Temple repertoire have survived. This absence of the original Psalm melodies presents a striking analogy to the condition of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, whose structure is predicated upon an undisclosed principal Theme. Indirectly, Elgar models his work on scriptural forms and absent themes.
The Enigma Variations by the late Romantic composer Edward Elgar is a musical homage to cryptography, the art of encoding and decoding secret messages. Trawling that symphonic masterpiece netted over one hundred cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that sum may seem extraordinary, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s obsession with ciphers. More significantly, their solutions give definitive answers to the riddles posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the melodic foundation for 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 positioned in the opening six measures. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith.
The Enigma Theme Phrase Structures Ciphers
A superb example of a musical cipher is the ABA’C phrase structure of the Enigma Theme. Over nineteen measures it unfolds as a basic ternary form (ABA’) followed by a short bridge (C). Section A is six measures in the key of G minor. This opening section is demarcated from the next by a double barline at the terminus of measure 6. Section B is four bars in the contrasting parallel key of G major. Section A Prime (A’) returns to G minor and has seven measures. In measure 17, it concludes with a Picardy cadence in G major followed by a final barline. Section C continues in G major for one bar before modulating back to G minor in measure 19, which is separated from Variation I by a double barline. The Enigma Theme begins and ends in G minor with brief forays into the parallel major, generating a modal smokescreen that adroitly obscures the secret melody’s key. The letters of the three accidentals that define the key signatures of G minor (B♭ and E♭) and G major (F♯) supply the anagram “EFB,” the initials of Ein feste Burg. Remarkably, the keys of the Enigma Theme unlock Elgar’s melodic vault.
The Enigma Theme has a total of thirteen measures in G minor and six in G major. These figures are remarkable because they hold special significance throughout the Enigma Variations, patterns explored at length in prior analyses of the number six and the number thirteen. Bar totals from Sections A (6) and B (4) supply a reverse encoding of 46, the Psalm chapter that inspired the composition of Ein feste Burg. Bar totals from Sections A’ (7) and C (2) encode 72, the number of witnesses Jesus sent out to preach the Gospel as documented in Luke 10:1 and 10:17 based on established Roman Catholic translations, the Latin Vulgate and Douay–Rheims Bible.
How Many Bars?
Scholars and laypersons proffer conflicting opinions on the Enigma Theme’s length. Patrick Turner adopts the most restrictive view by limiting it to Section A in the opening six bars. Mainstream scholars like Diana McVeagh are more generous in their assessments, expanding it to a ternary form (Sections ABA’) while overlooking the bridge (Section C). Both views are misguided as they conflict with Elgar’s published position regarding the Enigma Theme’s actual length. In explanatory notes supplied for a set of pianola rolls published by the Aeolian Company in 1929, Elgar wrote the following concerning Variation I: “There is no break between the theme and this movement.” That disclosure is crucial because the Enigma Theme’s first variant is not introduced until measure 20. That reality, when considered in the context of Elgar’s explanatory note, confirms that he defined the Enigma Theme’s duration as measures 1 through 19.
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| My Friend Pictured Within by Edward Elgar: Var. I (C. A. E.) |
The two-bar bridge in measures 18 and 19 does not belong to Variation I, something deceptively implied by a final barline at the end of measure 17. On the contrary, Section C represents an elaboration of the Enigma Theme’s closing cadence. A conspicuous series of ties connecting the notes between bars 17 and 18 supports this conclusion, linking the Enigma Theme and the bridge in a way not observed with Variation I. The bridge serves to unwind the Picardy cadence, circling back to the minor mode in preparation for the first variation from which it is separated by a conspicuous double bar.
The Enigma Theme’s ABA’C structure encodes solutions relevant to both the covert Theme and the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. When read forward, the Enigma Theme’s phrase structure generates a phonetic spelling of aback, an archaic sailing term that means “backward,” describing when the sails of a ship are blown backward into the mast. A sailing context is significant as Elgar sonically depicts a marine atmosphere in Variation XIII using the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm as an undulating ostinato. In modern usage, aback means “by surprise” and “unawares.” Both of these definitions — backward and surprise — perfectly describe Elgar’s retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg “through and over” the Enigma Theme. The counterpoint is backward, and the secret melody is a Protestant anthem, a surprising choice for a Roman Catholic composer.
When the backward definition of aback is applied to the phrase structure of the Enigma Theme, it generates “CABA.” Before attempting to decrypt that reverse reading, it is instructive to recognize Elgar’s affinity for inventive phonetic spellings. Some examples of his phoneticisms from his published correspondence are listed below:
Bizziness (business)
çkor (score)
cszquōrrr (score)
fagotten (forgotten)
FAX (facts)
frazes (phrases)
gorjus (gorgeous)
phatten (fatten)
skorh (score)
SSCZOWOUGHOHR (score)
Xmas (Christmas)
Xqqqq (Excuse)
Xti (Christi)
When read phonetically, the reverse phrase pattern “CABA” presents an intriguing solution. “C” is a homonym of see, a word that harbors Elgar’s initials. “ABA” is a phonetic version of “Abba,” the Aramaic word for “Father” used by Jesus to address God in prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion (see Mark 14:36). Based on these phonetic readings, “C ABA” may be read as “See Abba.”
Why would Elgar encode “See Abba” via the inverted phrase structure of the Enigma Theme? A musical Polybius cipher in the opening six measures of the Enigma Theme supplies an answer. In bar 1, it encodes “GSUS,” a phonetic spelling of Jesus. In John 14:9, Jesus told his disciples, “Those who have seen me have seen the Father.” According to that tenet, seeing Jesus is equivalent to seeing God. A subset of cryptograms from the Enigma Variations encodes references to the Turin Shroud, a sacred burial cloth that many Christians believe bears the faint impressions of Jesus’ crucified body. Pia produced the first official photographs of the Turin Shroud in May 1898, five months before Elgar began openly composing the Enigma Variations. When Pia developed his first batch of glass plates in a dark room, he was shocked to discover that the photographic negatives displayed vivid positive images. This inversion is only possible if the anterior and dorsal images on the Turin Shroud are photographic negatives on a non-photographic medium.
Elgar’s interest in the Turin Shroud was undoubtedly fueled by widespread press coverage of Secondo Pia’s astonishing photographic negatives of that famous relic. The prestigious British technical magazine The Photogram covered the Turin Shroud on page 267 of its August 1898 issue with this opening sentence, “The Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican, has announced a remarkable miracle at Turin, by which ‘after eighteen centuries, an authentic likeness of Jesus Christ has been obtained.’” In their December 1898 issue, The Photogram published the article “Photographic Miracles” accompanied by one of Pia’s certified photographic negatives of the Turin Shroud. The London journal English Mechanic and Mirror of Science reported on December 9, 1898, that The Photogram published a 20-inch by 5.5-inch image of Pia’s incredible negative “intended for framing.” By Christmas of that year, many Roman Catholic households in England proudly displayed reprints of Pia’s photographic negative of the Turin Shroud to venerate the Holy Face of Jesus. Pia’s famous photographs of the Turin Shroud likely motivated Elgar to add the word “pictured” in his dedication of the Enigma Variations: “Dedicated to my Friends pictured within.”
Coded messages infused with theological allusions are consistent with Elgar’s expansive knowledge of the Bible and theology. In his essay “‘Everything I Can Lay My Hands On’: Elgar’s Theological Library” from the July 2003 issue of The Elgar Society Journal, Geoffrey Hodgkins studiously documents an immense assortment of religious texts that filled Elgar’s personal library. Based on available records, Hodgkins concludes “there could have been more than one hundred bibles and theological books in Elgar’s collection…” Elgar referred to these and other borrowed books to compose the librettos for choral works and sacred oratorios. Many of these resources were written or edited by Protestant scholars. William H. Reed, an accomplished violinist and confidant, recalls how Elgar consulted Roman Catholic and Anglican experts when compiling the libretto for The Apostles.
Elgar’s interest in Protestant editions of the Bible and biblical commentaries spilled over into Protestant music. Professor Charles Edward McGuire of Oberlin College and Conservatory observes “…Elgar began distancing himself from elements of Catholicism both in private and public communication for the last three decades of his life.” McGuire further notes that Elgar “publicly presented himself as someone who, though Catholic, could appreciate the art and cultural offerings of Protestants…” To drive home that point, McGuire refers to remarks by Elgar to Rudolph de Cordova in the May 1904 issue of The Strand Magazine:
I attended as many of the [Anglican] Cathedral services as I could to hear the anthems, to get to know what they were, so as to become thoroughly acquainted with the English Church style. The putting of the fine organ into the Cathedral at Worcester [1874] was a great event, and brought many organists to play there at various times. I went to hear them all. The services at the Cathedral were over later on Sunday than those at the Catholic church, and as soon as the voluntary there was finished at the church I used to rush over to the Cathedral to hear the concluding voluntary.
Endings as Beginnings
At various points throughout the Enigma Variations, Elgar places a coded emphasis on the ending phrase of Ein feste Burg. For instance, at Cue 68 in the Finale, the chorale’s ending phrase is stated as a counterpoint to the opening of the Enigma Theme. The first four notes of that ending phrase appear at the beginning of the countermelody in the bass staff, and the remaining six emerge two bars later. This bifurcation of the ending phrase into four and six-note fragments alludes to “46,” the chapter from the Psalms that inspired Martin Luther to compose his most famous hymn.
Variation XIII features four-note incipits of a subordinate theme from Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt). Each incipit is accompanied by an ostinato figure that reprises the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm from Section A. These four-note incipits are presented in the three contrasting keys with two in A♭ major, one in F minor, and one in E♭ major. The incipits in major keys are enclosed by quotation marks because they reflect the original source melody, which is also in a major key. These three key letters are an anagram of “FAE,” the acronym of the romantic German motto “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely) coined by the violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim. This discovery resonates with Elgar’s statement that the Enigma Theme “…expressed when written (in 1898) my sense of the loneliness of the artist…” Remarkably, the keys of the Mendelssohn incipits supply in order of appearance the final three notes of the chorale’s ending phrase as realized in Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. The keys of the Mendelssohn fragments form the tail of the secret melody as realized by Mendelssohn.
The pairing of the secret melody’s ending phrase with the Enigma Theme’s beginning prompted a meticulous reassessment of the latter. On closer inspection, it was found that the first six notes of the Enigma Theme’s bass line state the last six notes of the covert Theme’s concluding phrase backward in augmentation.
This notable correspondence raises the very real prospect that Elgar composed his counterpoint with the hidden melody in retrograde. This would mean that rather than mapping out the missing melody forwards as everyone would reflexively expect, Elgar adopted the opposite tactic by crafting his counterpoint with the absent Theme played backward. The Enigma Theme’s ABA’C structure subtly hints at this prospect. When read phonetically, “ABAC” sounds like aback. That term was first used to describe the moment when a ship’s sails are blown backward into the mast. In present usage, it refers to being taken by surprise. Both definitions — “backward” and “by surprise” — elegantly express Elgar’s mapping of Ein feste Burg in retrograde over the Enigma Theme, and are entirely consistent with his well-documented fondness for wordplay.
The ABA’C structure of the Enigma Theme hints at the strategy Elgar deployed to foil straightforward attempts at decoding his counterpoint. In his textbook Counterpoint, Kent Kennan states that retrograde motion is rarely encountered in fugal writing. That Elgar was openly contemplating various contrapuntal techniques is reflected by the fact that on an early sketch of the Enigma Theme, he wrote the phrase “for fuga” above the first bar. Fuga means fugue in Italian and Latin. Considering the relative scarcity of retrograde counterpoint, mapping the covert principal Theme in this manner would be an extraordinarily effective ploy to foil detection. The combination of retrograde motion and free rhythm presents a robust, multilayered strategy for concealing the principal Theme from straightforward detection.
At the conclusion of the extended Finale, Elgar cites a passage by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from his Elegiac Verse: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.” That literary fragment affirms the supremacy of the ending over the beginning — a principle reasserted by the coded recognition that the ending phrase of Ein feste Burg marks the beginning rather than the end of Elgar's counterpoint with the Enigma Theme via retrograde motion. The key to unraveling Elgar’s enigma is to begin at the end and work backward to the beginning.
After determining the scope of Elgar’s counterpoint and the potential of mapping the hidden melody from end to beginning, a retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg covering all nineteen measures of the Enigma Theme was completed. Starting at the end of the bridge (Bar 19), Ein feste Burg is played backward to the beginning with the reverse phrase order of BFEDCBA. Consistent with the archaic meaning of “aback,” the retrograde phrase structure of Ein feste Burg begins with the reverse of the secret melody’s initials (EFB). The third and fourth phrases (ED) spell a short form of Elgar’s forename, Edward. The fifth and sixth phrase letters (CB) form the acronym of “Chorale Book.” 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. The fifth phrase (C) furnishes the initial for Carice, the daughter of Elgar and his wife Alice. The seventh phrase (A) is the initial of Elgar’s wife whom he affectionately referred to in his diary and letters as “dear A.” The ending phrase (B) appears at both the opening and final cadence of the Enigma Theme, while its beginning phrase (A) is deftly inserted above the bridge preceding Variation I dedicated to Elgar’s “dear A.” This mapping mirrors the minor and major modes employed by Elgar to obfuscate the key of the hidden Theme. An audiovisual demonstration of this mapping supports the efficacy of this contrapuntal solution.
The version of Ein feste Burg deployed in Elgar’s retrograde counterpoint is drawn from multiple sources. A side-by-side comparison of Luther’s original composition with iterations by Bach and Mendelssohn reveals that Elgar incorporated elements of all three to assemble a “tribrid” version of the hidden source melody. Please consult the following exhibit to compare all three versions.
When combined with retrograde counterpoint, this “tribrid” theme was undoubtedly devised to complicate detection and decryption while paying homage to three paragons of the German School. Reading in retrograde order, the tribrid theme opens with Phrase B, sourced from Bach’s rendering. Phrase F also traces to Bach. Phrase E reflects Mendelssohn’s more florid version. Phrase D reflects Luther’s original and Mendelssohn's faithful replica. Phrase C bears the melodic contours of Bach's and Mendelssohn's adaptations. Phrase B recurs a second time, here drawn from Luther’s original version. Phrase A, closing the retrograde, is sourced from Mendelssohn’s rendering with rising and falling thirds, prominent features of the Enigma Theme.
Elgar’s Enigma Theme: Phrase-Structures Ciphers
Elgar’s Enigma consists of two Themes, one heard and a second unheard. The introduction establishes how the Enigma Theme unfolds in an ABA’C phrase format while Ein feste Burg plays “through and over” it as a retrograde counterpoint with the phrase pattern BFEDCBA. Both structures convey coded information. Read forward, ABAC is a phonetic spelling of aback, a term meaning “backward” and “by surprise.” A retrograde mapping of the secret melody satisfies both senses. Read in reverse, the same letters yield the phonetic phrase “See Abba.”
The retrograde phrase pattern BFEDCBA begins with BFE—the initials of Luther’s chorale read backward. The third and fourth phrases (ED) form a short spelling of Edward, the composer’s forename. The fifth and sixth (CB) supply the acronym of “Chorale Book,” a label consistent with the covert melody’s genre. The seventh phrase (A) is the initial by which Elgar referred to his wife, a pivotal figure in the genesis of the Enigma Variations.
These two phrase patterns may be combined into a larger anagram. Merging ABAC with BFEDCBA produces the eleven-letter sequence ABACBFEDCBA. The string contains three A’s, three B’s, two C’s, and one each of D, E, and F, and can therefore be ordered in 554,400 distinct ways. Virtually all of those permutations produce gibberish. Only a vanishingly small fraction yield coherent, mutually consistent readings.
ABAC itself uses three unique letters, and BFEDCBA employs six. Those counts (3 and 6) form 36, the opus number of the Enigma Variations. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the consensus held that Luther composed thirty-six hymns—a view shared by Stevenson (Hymns for the Church and Home, 1873), Bacon (The Hymns of Martin Luther, 1883), and Lambert (Luther’s Hymns, 1917).
When treated as an anagram, ABACBFEDCBA rearranges as “EFB ABAC BC AD.” The first two terms capture the secret melody’s initials followed by a phonetic spelling of aback (in its archaic nautical sense of “backward”). Elgar used the word archaic in an early letter to Dora Penny. Regarding her vocal lessons he wrote, “Alice tells me you are warbling wigorously in Worcester wunce a week (alliteration archaically Norse).” This amusing excerpt is one of many examples where he employs idiosyncratic spellings.
The remaining terms, BC and AD, are the conventional calendar labels that divide history at the traditional date of Christ’s birth. Read backward, BC becomes CB (already encountered as “Chorale Book”), while AD becomes DA—an informal English, Irish, and Scottish form of address for “Dad.” Abba is Aramaic for “Father.” Da is a familiar English equivalent. Both are direct, personal forms of filial address.
The calendar notation engages the same forward/backward logic that runs through the rest of the Theme’s design. BC years count backward from the present, AD years forward from the same fixed point—a hinge in time that is itself Christ. The same duality governs the Theme: read forward, its phrase structure spells aback; read backward, it spells “See Abba.” Whether in bars, phrases, or centuries, the cipher keeps pivoting on a single figure read in two directions at once.
The languages found in the Enigma Theme phrase letters anagrams are listed below:
English: “A” for Alice, aback, BC for Before Christ, Ed for Edward, and C for see.
Latin: AD for Anno Domini.
German: EFB, the initials of Ein feste Burg.
Aramaic: ABA for Abba.
Remarkably, the first letters of those four languages generate an acrostic anagram of “Elgar”: English, Latin, German, and Aramaic. Elgar autographed the decryption of the phrase letters ciphers using a second tier of encipherment. Combining the first tier spelling of his forename (ED) from the retrograde phrase structure of Ein feste Burg (BFEDCBA) with this second tier decryption provides the complete solution “Ed Elgar.” Three days after commencing the Enigma Variations, Elgar penned a letter to August Jaeger dated 24 October 1898. In his letter, Elgar informs Jaeger that he is composing a set of orchestral variations about his friends, with Jaeger’s movement titled “Nimrod.” The letter is signed “Ed Elgar.” This is not an isolated example. In a letter to Mrs. Martina Hyde written sometime between 1901 and 1903, he signed his name as “Ed Elgar.” He signed his name the same way in another letter to Alfred Littleton dated 25 October 1907.
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| 10 October 24, 1898 Letter from Elgar to Jaeger |
Combining the initial “A” from the first tier with the secondary decryption “ELGAR” generates “A. ELGAR.” Elgar’s wife Alice played a vital role in the genesis of the Enigma Variations by recognizing the potential in her husband’s casual piano sketches on the evening of 21 October 1898. Exhausted after a day of teaching, Elgar sat at the piano and began to play through sketches until one melody captured Alice’s attention. She interjected, “Edward, that’s a good tune.” He asked, “Eh! tune, what tune?” “Play it again,” she replied, “I like that tune.” After he played through his material again, she exclaimed, “That’s the tune.” She then asked, “What is that?” He replied, “Nothing—but something might be made of it.” By drawing his attention to the nascent Enigma Theme, Alice helped birth the Enigma Variations and launch her husband’s international career.
Scholars insist Elgar improvised the material that historic evening. However, his usual practice was to sketch new material during pastoral excursions and only later play it at the piano to gauge his wife’s reaction. The British musicologist Christopher Kent documents Elgar’s compositional methods in his essay “Magic by mosaic: some aspects of Elgar’s compositional methods” in The Cambridge Companion to Elgar.
Conclusion
The assembled evidence shows that the Enigma Theme is not a self-contained melodic curiosity, but a deliberately engineered counterpoint and cryptogram built on the chorale Ein feste Burg by Martin Luther. The Enigma Theme’s ABA’C phrase structure and the chorale’s retrograde phrase pattern BFEDCBA yield coherent and mutually reinforcing solutions. When read forward, the Enigma Theme’s phrase pattern ABA’C generates “aback,” a term that means both “backward” and “by surprise.” Those definitions aptly describe the retrograde mapping of Luther’s Protestant anthem over the Enigma Theme. When viewed in reverse, ABA’C reads phonetically as “See Abba,” a theological allusion to Christ as the Incarnation of God. The retrograde BFEDCBA phrase pattern features a backward spelling of the covert Theme’s initials (BFE), a short form of Elgar’s forename (ED), the acronym of “Chorale Book” (CB), and the initial of Elgar’s wife (A). No single solution must bear the entire interpretive weight. The force of the argument lies instead in the redundancy of independently derived clues that point toward a coherent set of mutually supportive solutions.
The numerical layer strengthens this case. Bar totals derived from the Theme’s ABA’C structure spell “46”—the Psalm traditionally associated with Luther’s chorale—and “72,” the number of witnesses commissioned by Jesus in Luke 10 in the Vulgate and Douay–Rheims translations. The unique letter counts of the phrase patterns ABA’C (ABC) and BFEDCBA (ABCDEF) combine to spell “36,” the opus number of the Enigma Variations and traditional number of hymns attributed to Luther. These are not subjective numbers arbitrarily harvested from the score. They arise from structural divisions in the Enigma Theme’s ABA’C phrase structure.
The biographical record supplies motive and means. Elgar’s documented delight in anagrams, phonetic spellings, and cryptographic problem-solving shows that coded language was a persistent feature of his imagination. His 1899 description of the Enigma as a “dark saying,” considered alongside his use of “dark” in connection with cipher work and his later equation of “keep it dark” with “a dead secret,” invites a cryptographic reading. Against that background, the suggestion that the absent principal Theme was only an improvisatory accident leaves too little room for Elgar’s demonstrated habits of design, concealment, and wordplay.
The letter-string layer, while more speculative than the structural and numerical evidence above, offers a consistent secondary confirmation. The combined phrase anagram ABACBFEDCBA can be read as “EFB ABAC BC AD,” and its first tier of decryption yields a short form of Elgar’s forename (ED) already embedded in the retrograde phrase pattern. A second tier of decryption — drawn from the language of origin for each anagram element (English, Latin, German, Aramaic) — can be read as an acrostic of “ELGAR,” with “AR” supplied by the first two letters of Aramaic. Combined with the first-tier “ED,” this yields “Ed Elgar,” the same signature Elgar used in his 24 October 1898 letter to Jaeger — written three days after he began the Enigma Variations — and in later correspondence to Mrs. Martina Hyde and Alfred Littleton. The convergence of an internal cipher-derived signature with Elgar’s own documented epistolary habit is not proof on its own, but it is the kind of independent corroboration the cumulative case depends on. The same forward/backward logic recurs one level further out: the calendar hinge of BC and AD echoes, without claiming to be a newly decoded cipher, the Theme's larger habit of pivoting a single figure between two directions of reading.
The evidence also extends beyond the nineteen measures of the Enigma Theme. Variation XIII’s Mendelssohn incipits, the FAE key-letter anagram, and the retrograde relationship between the Enigma Theme’s bass line and the closing phrase of Ein feste Burg indicate a strategy sustained across the orchestral score. The Turin Shroud allusions and the theological implications of “See Abba” further suggest that the concealment may have served a devotional as well as a musical purpose. Such associations are not alien to Elgar’s intellectual world. They accord with the breadth of his Roman Catholicism, theological library, and documented engagement with Anglican and Protestant musical culture.
Skepticism remains necessary as cipher analysis is vulnerable to false positives and every individual correspondence must be assessed on its own evidentiary merits. Yet the cumulative pattern presented here—formal, numerical, phonetic, contrapuntal, biographical, and theological—makes Ein feste Burg a solution that warrants serious consideration. The absence of an explicit confession from Elgar should not be mistaken for evidence that no solution exists. Rather, the convergences explored here provide grounds for renewed and methodical investigation into what Elgar’s “dark saying” was designed to conceal.
To learn more about the secrets of the Enigma Variations, read my free eBook Elgar’s Enigmas Exposed. Please help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.
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