 |
| Edward Elgar posing in his library before a portrait of Richard Wagner |
The new house was named with an anagram of the family’s initials: E, A, C. E L G A R—‘Craeg Lea’. He sent the new name to Dora Penny, teasing her with the anagram’s secret.
The British composer Edward Elgar reveled in phonetic spellings, wordplays, and anagrams. One notable example is the appellation “Craeg Lea” that he bestowed on his Malvern residence where his family resided between 1899 and 1904. That strange moniker is an anagram sourced from a reverse spelling of “Elgar” (Craeg Lea) mingled with the initials for his daughter (Carice), wife (Alice), and himself (Edward). Elgar challenged Rosa Burley to decipher the meaning of his home’s odd name. Rosa caught on quickly 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 the field of cryptography, the discipline of coding and decoding secret messages. Ciphers elevate wordplay to a higher plane of complexity that conceals words behind a smokescreen of seemingly disorganized letters or symbols. His obsession with 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 unfurled by John Holt Schooling in an April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. Elgar was so pleased with his solution that he mentions it in his first biography published in 1905 by the music critic Robert J. Buckley. Elgar painted the solution in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate medium as another name for the Polybius checkerboard is a box cipher.
Elgar’s methodical decryption of Schooling’s 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).”
%22.jpg)
His use of the word dark as a synonym for cipher is revealing as this same adjective turns up later in Elgar’s 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 threefold 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 composed the Enigma Variations in 1898-99. 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 appears on the autograph score as “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 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 Variations. This absent tune is the cornerstone underlying the whole work, a subject that has provoked considerable debate about what could possibly be the correct melodic solution.
Some contend there is no answer by insinuating Elgar concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, practical joke, or marketing ploy. These myths obdurately reverberate in the echo chamber of academia. Others take Elgar at his word and accept the challenge that there is a famous melody lurking behind the Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. Regardless of what side is taken in this debate, conventional scholarship stalwartly maintains the solution cannot be known with certainty because Elgar allegedly took his secret to the grave in February 1934. They insist Elgar never wrote down the answer for posterity to discover. However, this opinion overlooks his documented obsession with cryptography. This incontestable fact enhances the probability that the solution is encoded within the Enigma Variations’ orchestral score.
A decade of trawling the Enigma Variations has netted over one hundred cryptograms in diverse forms that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may seem extravagant, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s lifelong passion for ciphers. More significantly, their solutions provide definitive answers to the central 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 box cipher embedded in its inaugural six bars cordoned off by an oddly placed double barline. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith. The cryptographic evidence supporting these discoveries is diverse, prodigious, and decisive. Ongoing research continues to uncover new cipher discoveries in Elgar’s symphonic homage to cryptography.
The Title Page Acrostic Anagram Ciphers
With so many ciphers expertly woven into the fabric of the Enigma Variations, it is prudent to sift the title page of the autograph score for ciphers. A facsimile of the original title page is shown below:
Elgar penned three distinct sections on the title page:
- The Dedication.
- The Title.
- The Square listing the dates and place of orchestration.
The first section is the Dedication that reads, “Dedicated to my Friends pictured within.” Two of the words are capitalized, and the remaining four are lowercase. This breakdown of capitalized and lowercase terms in the six-word dedication may be combined to form 24, the sum of the letters in the six-word German title Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. The initials from the three sequential words “. . . my Friends pictured . . .” form an acrostic glyphs anagram of “EFb,” the initials of Ein feste Burg. This decryption is feasible because the m is the glyph for a capital cursive E, and the p is the same character as the letter b. This cryptogram is deemed an acrostic anagram because only three of the Dedication’s six initials are used in its construction. In this instance, the glyphs and initial are sequential and appear in the correct order.
Interpolating the glyphs m and w as coded versions of a capital E is justified by Elgar’s pliable treatment of that character in the Dorabell Cipher. For this cryptogram dating from July 1897, Elgar invented a series of 24 curlicue characters constructed from the letter c. The choice of c as the building block for this odd cast of characters was ostensibly inspired by the related words cipher and cryptogram. The ciphertext begins with a capital cursive E that is later reoriented to duplicate the letters M and W. Elgar did not officially begin work on the Enigma Variations until October 1898, fifteen months after devising the Dorabella Cipher.
 |
| The Dorebella Cipher from Dora Powell’s biography |
A second acrostic glyphs anagram of “EFb” is produced by the initials from the contiguous words “. . . Friends pictured within.” The dedication’s second line (“. . . my Friends pictured within.”) harbors two overlapping acrostic glyphs anagrams that encipher the initials for Ein feste Burg, the Variations’ covert principal Theme.
The cover page’s second section is the Title consisting of nine terms with four beginning with capitalized letters. The Title contains at least two acrostic anagrams of “Efb.” The first is generated by the initials from its second, fifth, and sixth words, namely for, by, and Edward, respectively. The “L” pattern formed by drawing lines between those three initials outlines the initial for Luther, the composer of Ein feste Burg. “L” is also the initial for various titles for Jesus such as Life, Light, Lion, and Lord. In the Roman numeral system, “L” is the number 50.
The positions of those three title words are conspicuous because the alphabet’s second, fifth, and sixth letters furnish the initials of Ein feste Burg. This form of encipherment is known as a number-to-letter key in which a numeral is converted into its corresponding letter of the alphabet (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc.). According to this formula, the number two converts to the second letter B, the number five to the fifth letter E, and the number six to the sixth letter F. Remarkably, Elgar deployed two contrasting modes of encipherment with the title words “for,” “by” and “Edward” to encode the initials “EFB.” The first is an acrostic anagram cipher, and the second is a title word position cipher. These overlapping ciphers encode the same solution using two contrasting techniques that serve as two-factor authentication.
A second “Efb” is encoded by the title words for, by, and Elgar as an acrostic anagram. The initials appear in lines 4, 5, and 6 of the title page with the Dedication consisting of lines 1 and 2. The first and last lines of the Title Section “EFb” ciphers are 4 and 6 respectively. The numerals 4 and 6 may be combined to form 46, the chapter from the Psalms that inspired Luther to compose Ein feste Burg. Similar to the two “EFb” anagrams in the second line of the dedication, the two “EFB” acrostic anagrams in the title share two common words, i.e., by and for. The similar construction of the Dedication and Title “EFB” ciphers presents a subtle yet discernible symmetry that affirms a deliberate design. The “V” configuration of the second “EFB” acrostic anagram in the Title suggests the initial for Variations. In the Roman numeral system, the letter “V” is the number five.
There is another acrostic anagram in the Variations’ title that spells “VocE,” the Italian performance direction for voice. This acrostic anagram is traced to the initials from Variations, orchestra, composed, and Elgar. Connecting these initials with straight lines yields two more “L” formations. The first “L” faces backward and is tilted about 45 degrees. The second overlapping “L” is flipped upside down at a 45-degree angle. In all, there are three capital “L” formations tied to acrostic anagrams in the Title that spell “EFb” and “VocE.” These similarly shaped acrostic formations link the two anagrams, proclaiming Ein feste Burg as the absent “voice” of the Variations.
The “VocE” anagram is created by the initials from the first, third, fourth, and seventh words from the title. Converting those positions into their corresponding letters of the alphabet generates the plaintext A, C, D, and G. The first and third letters (AD) furnish the Medieval Latin initials for Anno Domini. This comes from the original phrase “anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi” which translates as “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholicism is the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. Jesus Christ is named in the second stanza of A Mighty Fortress. Not only is the letter C the initial for Christ, it is also a homonym for see and sea. Elgar cites a melodic incipit from Mendelssohn’s overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in Variation XIII (✡✡✡). The last two letters (G-D) are a phonetic spelling of God. In a revealing gesture, the first two melody notes of Variation XIII are “G-D.” A central article of faith in Roman Catholicism is the belief that Jesus is the Incarnation of God.
%20%E2%80%9CG-D%E2%80%9D%20and%20%E2%80%9CD-E-A-D%E2%80%9D%20Note%20Ciphers.png)
The double bass section performs the notes “D-E-A-D” starting four bars after Rehearsal 55. This discovery is consistent with the Mendelssohn quotations that depict the “deathly stillness” of a calm sea. The spelling of the word “dead” by the lowest voice of the string choir is immediately followed by three melodic statements in the woodwinds of “G-D,” a phonetic spelling of “God.” Three statements of “G-D” symbolize the Roman Catholic belief in the Trinity. These same note sequences are reprised later in the movement. The coding of “DEAD” followed by three statements of “G-D” intimates the person of the Trinity who died. A central tenet of Christianity is the belief that Jesus—the human manifestation of God—suffered a gruesome death on the cross and was miraculously resurrected from the tomb. Elgar’s “Dead God” Notes Cipher implicates Jesus as the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII.
Proceeding to the third section of the title page, the Square houses no less than six “EFB” anagrams. The first and most obvious are the “FEb” abbreviations of the month February for the start and end dates of the orchestration.
The abbreviation “FEb” is a transparent anagram of “EFb.” The second letter in “FEb” is conspicuously capitalized when the rules of grammar require that it be lowercase. Those same rules demand that the first letter of a title be capitalized, and that is certainly the case with Ein feste Burg. Those two incorrectly capitalized Es in “FEb” furnish a coded form of Elgar’s initials (EE). To the right of the orchestration’s start and end dates are two capital Ls camouflaged as brackets with a notch at the center pointing to the year 1899. The letter “L” is the initial for Luther as well as various titles for Jesus.
There are five initials from terms within the Square that furnish the letters and glyphs needed to construct six acrostic anagrams of “EFb.” These letters and glyphs are provided by the initials for FEb 5th, ended, Feb 19th (with the anomalous F nearly duplicating a backward B), Forli, and Malvern (with the M approximating a capital cursive E as observed in the Dorabella Cipher).
The outlines of the acrostic anagrams “EFb” and “VocE” in the Title section generate “L” and “V” formations. In addition to being the initial for Luther, “L” is also the initial for various titles for Jesus mentioned earlier. “L” is also a homonym for El, the Hebrew word for God. On the original short score of Variation XIII, Elgar gave this movement the title “XXX Var. L.” The “XXX” and “L” are in blue pencil, and “Var.” is in black ink. These title elements form a reverse acrostic of “LVX”, a classical Latin spelling of “LUX.” Lux Christi (Light of Christ) is Elgar’s first sacred oratorio that recounts an episode from the Gospel of John about Jesus restoring sight to a man who was born blind. The short score of Variation XIII is mentioned due to the prominence of the initial L which is emblematic of the L-formations of some acrostic anagrams on the title page.
The word acrostic is suggestive of the phrase “a cross” due to its spelling and pronunciation (acrostic). For this reason, the prominence of acrostic anagrams on the title page hints at the identity of Elgar’s secret friend. As previously observed, some acrostic anagrams on the title page are presented in “L” and “V” configurations. When treated as Roman numerals, the letters “LV” represent the number 55. That figure may be interpreted as a coded reference to Elgar’s initials (EE) as E is the fifth letter of the alphabet. Rehearsal 55 marks the beginning of Variation XIII, a movement dedicated in secret to Jesus Christ. The letters “LV” may also be read phonetically as love and live.
There are four “EFB” anagrams in the dedication and title sections, and six more within the square for a total of ten. This distribution of the “EFB” anagrams alludes to the numbers four and six. These same numbers are also emphasized by four acrostic anagram “EFB” ciphers and six acrostic anagram glyph “EFB” ciphers. These same numbers are emphasized by the Enigma Theme with four melody notes per measure in Section A (bars 1-6) and A’ (bars 11-16), and six melody notes per measure in Section B (bars 7-10). The coded references to the numbers 4 and 6 allude to 46, the chapter from the Psalms that inspired Luther’s Ein feste Burg. Psalm 46 is known as “Luther’s Psalm.” Seven discrete performance directions in the opening measure of the Enigma Theme are an acrostic anagram of “EE’s Psalm.”
“EEs Psalm” begins with the possessive form of Elgar’s initials, permitting the decryption to be read as “Edward Elgar’s Psalm.” 46 characters in this cryptogram implicate the chapter from the Psalms that inspired Luther to compose Ein feste Burg.
On the cover of the autograph score to the Variations, Elgar records that the orchestration “commenced” on “FEb 5th” and “ended” on “FEb 19th”. These start and end dates are enclosed by two L-brackets with a notch in the center pointing to the year 1899. Curiously, the second letter E in Elgar's abbreviation of February is capitalized rather than lowercase. As previously observed, these two conspicuously capitalized Es suggest a coded form of his initials.
Elgar’s script for the F in “FEb 19th” is markedly different from the first in “FEb 5th”. It was initially suspected that it is a slipshod backward B. On closer inspection, the anomalous F turns out to be a monogram of three overlaid letters in descending order consisting of E, F, and b. Those are the same letters and cases observed in Elgar’s abbreviation of February as “FEb”. The transparently concealed E is followed by another in “FEb”, presenting another coded rendition of Elgar’s initials.
The cover page “EFb” monogram resonates with my original research that determined the initials of the covert Theme to the Variations are also “EFB.” It was observed earlier how the L-brackets conveniently provide the initial for Luther, the composer of that famous absent melody.
Elgar’s Cue 65 Ciphers
There is a nexus of cryptograms at Cue 65 (bar 583) in Elgar’s musical self-portrait, the martial Finale of the Enigma Variations. Cue 65 designates the opening of the subordinate theme with a counterpoint based on Section B (bars 7-10) of the Enigma Theme. The subordinate theme is built on a repeated four-note motif, a feature that mirrors the four-note Mendelssohn fragments cited in Variation XIII. Various note ciphers at Cue 65 encode Elgar’s initials and forename, the initials of Ein feste Burg, phonetic spellings of God and Dei, and the Italian initials of Jesus Christ. The most conspicuous of these cryptograms is constructed from the melodic motif “E-E-E-D” performed in unison by the principal flute, B♭clarinets, and French horns I and II. The first two melody notes (EE) form Elgar’s initials. These are followed by two melody notes (ED) that spell a short form of Edward. This is not an isolated encoding of Elgar’s forename. The second violins perform the pickup note D at the end of bar 582 followed by E on the downbeat of Cue 65. These two notes are a reverse spelling of Ed.
The B♭clarinet is a transposing instrument that performs a written pitch a whole tone lower, meaning that the sounding pitches “E-E-E-D” are written as “F♯-F♯-F♯-E.” The French horn is another transposing instrument that plays a written pitch a perfect fifth lower, making the sound pitches “E-E-E-D” appear on the staff as the written notes “B-B-B-A.” Remarkably, the written pitches for these opening three melody notes at Cue 65 played by the principal flute, clarinets and horns generate “EFB.” There are three iterations of this “EFB” melody notes cipher. The numeral for three (3) is the mirror image of Elgar’s capitalized cursive E. The spelling of “three” also contains Elgar’s initials in the lower case.
The written pitches for the B♭clarinets on the third and fourth beats of Cue 65 are F♯ followed by E. Directly below these notes in the bassoon staff is B, completing an encoding of “EFB” by proximate notes in the score.
Scanning downward, the written melody notes on beat 4 of Cue 65 are D, E, and A. The first two are a reverse spelling of Ed, and the third note is the initial for Alice, the middle name of Elgar’s wife. Her variation is cited later in the Finale starting at Cue 73. The written melody notes D, E, and A are also an anagram of “DAE” which is a phonetic rendering of Dei, the Latin word for God. Elgar inscribed the acronym “A.M.D.G.” as a dedication for his major sacred works such as The Dream of Gerontius. The D in that acronym is the initial for Dei. According to Roman Catholic doctrine, God is the author and sustainer of the marital covenant. He is the foundation, sanctifier, and sustainer of the sacrament of marriage, empowering the couple to live out a holy, lifelong union that mirrors divine love and serves as a path to holiness. The melodic union of Elgar’s forename with Alice’s initials on the fourth beat of Cue 65 is accompanied by a reverse phonetic spelling of God (D-G) played by the first cellos. The phonetic spelling of God closely aligns with the phonetic spelling of Dei, highlighting their linguistic and theological connection.
Bar 583 is permeated by unconventional Christograms. The first cellos play the grace notes C and G at the outset of Cue 65. Those two proximate note letters form the Italian initials of Cristo Gesù (Christ Jesus). The formation of Christ’s initials via grace notes is suggestive of the Christian doctrine of God’s grace. At Cue 65, the bass trombone and tuba sustain two Cs at the octave as the timpani plays a G simultaneously on the downbeat. The note letters G and C generate the Italian initials for Gesù Cristo. Jesus is the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. There are precisely thirty-three written note heads in bar 583. Roman Catholic tradition holds that Jesus was 33 years old when he was crucified. The performance direction tranquillo begins with a lower case t, a glyph that closely resembles a Latin cross. The musical term tranquillo appears three times on the staff, mirroring the three crosses at Christ’s crucifixion, where He was executed between two criminals. This passage is in common time, a meter conducted in a manner that resembles making the sign of the cross. The symbol for common time is a capital C, the initial for Christ and cross.
The bass notes “C-B” are performed in unison at Cue 65 by the second bassoon and second cellos. According to the 1892 edition of A Dictionary of Hymnology edited by the priest John Julian, the abbreviation “C.B.” stands for “Chorale Book.” A coded allusion to the initials “CB” hints at the character of the covert Theme because it is a famous chorale. The Chorale Book for England published in 1865 by William Sterndale Bennett includes the hymn Ein feste Burg. When read in reverse, the bass notes “C-B” yield “BC,” the abbreviation for “Before Christ” used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars. A coded reference to “BC” points to the identity of Elgar’s secret friend.
The title of the covert Theme declares that God is a mighty fortress. In bar 583, Elgar employs written melodic notes to encode the initials of Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) three times followed by a phonetic realization of the Latin word for God (Dei). These melodic decryptions are mutually reinforcing, consistent, and complementary. Remarkably, the overt melody notes encipher the acronym for the covert melody's title.
A consideration of more than merely the notes provides other means to encode “EFB” at Cue 65. In bar 583, the staff for the first and second horns has the dynamic mf (mezzo forte) and directive express. (espressivo) above the repeated written note B. The proximity of the e, f and note B presents a coded form of the covert Theme’s initials. This cryptogram is adjacent to another “EFB” cipher in the staves for the clarinets and bassoon formed by proximate notes. Another set of “EFB” ciphers is encoded by the number 65 and adjacent performance directions poco and più. The number 65 encodes the letters F and E using a basic number-to-letter key (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C. etc.). The lower case p in poco and più is an inverted lower case b. In his Dorabella Cipher created in July 1897, Elgar rotates the E glyph to reproduce the letters W and M. In the lowest staff for the second cellos, the contiguous performance terms mf and poco generate an “EFB” glyphs cipher. The lower case m is an E rotated 90 degrees, and as previously noted, a lower case p is an inverted b. When viewed in isolation, each “EFB” cryptogram may be plausibly dismissed as coincidental. When considered collectively, however, this constellation of “EFB” ciphers becomes compelling and conclusive.
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.
