Elgar's "HIDE PSALM 46" Titles Cipher

Edward Elgar (Postcard c. 1910) 

During railway journeys amuses himself with cryptograms; solved one by John Holt Schooling who defied the world to unravel his mystery.

Robert J. Buckley in his 1905 biography of Sir Edward Elgar

Today is the 319th day of the year with 46 days remaining until the arrival of 2023. November 15th marks the twentieth anniversary of “I Love To Write Day” founded by John Riddle. Now is an opportune moment to publish my 204th installment exploring the symphonic Enigma Variations by the British romantic composer Edward Elgar. Elgar excelled in coding and decoding secret messages, a discipline formally known as cryptography. 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 brilliant decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher conceived by John Holt Schooling that was published in an April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. A Nihilist cipher is a derivative of the Polybius square. Elgar was so gratified by his solution to Schooling’s reputedly impenetrable code that he specifically mentions it in his first biography released in 1905 by Robert J. Buckley.

Elgar painted his solution in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate medium as another name for the Polybius square is a box cipher. His methodical decryption 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).” His parenthetical expression using the word “dark” as a synonym for a cipher is significant because he deploys that same phraseology in the original 1899 program note to characterize the Enigma Theme. It is an oft-cited passage worth 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.

Elgar employed the words “dark” and “secret'' interchangeably in a letter to August Jaeger penned on February 5, 1900. He wrote, “Well — I can’t help it but I hate continually saying ‘Keep it dark’ — ‘a dead secret’ — & so forth.” One of the meanings of dark is secret, and a saying is a series of words that form a phrase or adage. Based on these definitions, Elgar’s cryptic expression — “dark saying” — is a coded way of saying there is an enciphered message in the Enigma Theme.

A decade of trawling the Enigma Variations has 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” hidden within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher located 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 first persuasive evidence for the existence of musical cryptograms in the Enigma Variations was uncovered by Richard Santa back in 2009. A retired engineer and Elgar enthusiast, Santa (whose name means “Holy” and “Saint”) found the Enigma Theme’s opening bar encodes Pi, a mathematical constant describing the ratio of any circle’s circumference and its diameter. In his groundbreaking research, Santa determined the first four melody notes of the Enigma Theme sequentially approximate a rounded form of Pi (3.142) via its scale degrees in the key of G minor. Its opening melody notes are B-flat, G, C, and A; their corresponding scale degrees are 3, 1, 4, and 2, respectively. Santa generously shared an early draft of his paper with me during the summer of 2009 before it was published by Columbia University’s journal Current Musicology in March 2010.

Santa’s paper offered the tantalizing prospect there could be other cryptograms lurking in the Enigma Variations. That hunch was bolstered in August 2009 when Dr. Clive McClelland of Leeds University kindly forwarded to me his paper Shadows of the evening: New light on Elgar’s ‘dark saying.’ Although his melodic solution fails to satisfy key conditions articulated by Elgar, I eagerly read McClelland’s essay and was impressed by some of his insights. For instance, his analysis of the Enigma Theme’s opening six bars finds circumstantial evidence for a cipher. The basis for this suspicion is that regularly spaced quarter rests at the outset of each bar suggest spaces between words. As McClelland surmises:

Elgar’s six-bar phrase is achieved by the characteristic four-note grouping, repeated six times with its reversible rhythm of two quavers and two crotchets. This strongly suggests the cryptological technique of disguising word-lengths in ciphers by arranging letters in regular patterns.

Following McClelland’s line of reasoning, quarter rests uniformly dispersed over six bars with four melodic notes per bar would suggest that Elgar’s “dark saying” consists of six words with exactly twenty-four letters. Such a conclusion resonates with my thesis that Luther’s Ein feste Burg is the absent Theme because its complete German title is six words with a sum total of twenty-four letters. The numeric parallels are far too precise to be casually chalked up to coincidence. The synergy of Santa’s and McClelland’s insights precipitated an intense search for a musical cryptogram in the opening six bars of the Enigma Theme. My quest began in October 2009 and culminated in the detection and decryption of a musical Polybius cipher in February 2010. My discovery was first announced in September 2010 and has proven to be my most popular article. A more succinct overview of my decryption was released in August 2019. Below is the decryption of that sophisticated Polybius cipher.

The Enigma Theme’s Polybius cipher is the most sophisticated of all the cryptograms in the Variations. It uses 24 pairs of melody and bass notes to encode the 24 plaintext letters from the title Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Elgar ingeniously reshuffles those 24 letters into a series of anagrams in English, Latin, and what he reasonably believed to be Aramaic in accordance with popular biblical commentaries near the turn of the century. Four of the six anagrams are spelled phonetically, an unexpected feature consistent with Elgar’s correspondence that incorporates inventive phonetic spellings. Some examples of these atypical spellings are listed below:

1. Bizziness (business)
2. çkor (score)
3. cszquōrrr (score)
4. fagotten (forgotten)
5. FAX (facts)
6. frazes (phrases)
7. gorjus (gorgeous)
8. phatten (fatten)
9. skorh (score)
10. SSCZOWOUGHOHR (score)
11. Xmas (Christmas)
12. Xqqqq (Excuse)
13. Xti (Christi)

Elgar’s reliance on four languages mingled with phonetic spellings was ostensibly intended to frustrate conventional decryption methods that presume a coded message is restricted to one language and conventional spellings. His education in three Roman Catholic schools ensured he was tutored in both English and Latin. He also studied German in the hopes of attending the Leipzig Conservatory founded by Felix Mendelssohn. Remarkably, the first letters of these four cipher languages is an acrostic anagram of “ELGAr”:

1. English
2. Latin
3. German
4. Aramaic

In a stunning cryptographic feat, Elgar signed the correct decryption to his musical Polybius box cipher employing a second tier of encryption only revealed by successfully unlocking the first. This is Elgar’s proverbial sealed envelope bearing the melodic solution to his Enigma. Supreme confidence in his unexpected answer is assured by Elgar’s stealth signature. He autographed the solution because he recognized it would be unguessed and polemical.

Elgar deposited subtle clues on the title page of the autograph score hinting at a Polybius square cipher. The most conspicuous is a tilted square on the lower left-hand side of the cover. This geometric figure overlays the same staves on the following page where he orchestrated Enigma Theme’s opening bars that house a musical Polybius square cipher. This is the only known instance where Elgar drew a square on the cover of a symphonic score. Within his tilted square, Elgar inserted multiple anagrams of the initials “EFB” accompanied by the capital letter “L” thinly disguised as a square bracket.

The Enigma Variations Autograph Score Title Page

Another breakthrough in 2013 unveiled the meaning and significance of the three asterisks in the cryptic title of Variation XIII (✡ ✡ ✡). It was determined those absent letters are cleverly encoded by the first initials of the titles from the adjoining movements. The first initials from the titles of Variations XII (B. G. N.) and XIV (E. D. U. & Finale) are an acrostic anagram of the initials for the covert Theme (Ein Feste Burg). Elgar deftly frames the question posed by the three asterisks with the answer hidden in plain view.

Elgar experimented with five different orderings of the movements, a process that, in retrospect, was carried out to construct this particular cipher. Such a possibility eludes musicologists such as Julian Rushton who irrationally speculate that Elgar lacked the time to construct any cryptograms. Such a conclusion conflicts with the established timeline. Elgar began composing the Enigma Variations on the evening of October 21, 1898, and completed the orchestration on February 19, 1899. Later that year, he appended 96 measures to the Finale between June 30 and July 20 for an additional 21 days. In all, Elgar invested 142 days composing the Enigma Variations, a period that afforded more than sufficient time and opportunity for Elgar to indulge his passion for cryptography.

The titles of the Enigma Variations are summarized in the table exhibited below. Its fifteen movements with divergent titles have a grand total of 187 characters. There is one dash, three asterisks, and fourteen pairs of parentheses for a total of 28, and 46 periods. There are nine sets of initials with 27 letters, seven words with 49 letters, and fourteen Roman numerals with 33 letters.

The acrostic anagram from the titles of Variations XII and XIV which unveils the initials of Ein feste Burg is an elementary cryptogram labeled the Letters Cluster Cipher. Its discovery eventually precipitated a much broader analysis of all the titles from the Enigma Variations with the goal of uncovering other meaningful and relevant groupings of proximate title letters. This approach is markedly dissimilar from Stephen Pickett’s surgical cherry-picking of single initials from titles and names to assemble a purported solution for the absent Theme. My investigation uncovered an array of terms linked to the absent Principal Theme, the Enigma’s “dark saying,” and the secret friend. The Letters Cluster Cipher was the proverbial tip of a much larger iceberg of coded information.

Another superlative example of a proximate title letters anagram found in the opening three titles of the Enigma Variations is “PIE CHRISTI ABIDE” (Pious Christ Abide). The first two words are in Latin, and the third is English. Remarkably, the spelling of the first word (PIE) is nearly identical to Pi, the mathematical ration lurking in the Enigma Theme's opening bar. In that same measure, a musical Polybius cipher encodes “GSUS”, a phonetic rendering of Jesus. Merging these companion decryptions from bar 1 yields “Pi GSUS” (Pi Jesus), a close approximation of “PIE CHRISTI.” It is surely significant that these divergent ciphers generate mutually consistent and corresponding solutions. Between 1863 and 1872, Elgar attended three Roman Catholic schools where he studied both languages. Remarkably, the spelling of the first word (PIE) is nearly identical to Pi, the mathematical ratio discovered by Santa lurking in bars 1 and 11 of the Enigma Theme. The Latin word for Christ appears in the title of Elgar’s first sacred oratorio, Lux Christi Op. 26. Published under the Anglicanized title The Light of Life, it premiered in 1896 and was extensively revised in 1899 — the same year Elgar completed his Enigma Variations.

The “HIDE PSALM 46” Titles Cipher

It is a privilege to report the discovery of yet another set of interlocking anagrams within the opening three titles of the Enigma Variations. Contiguous title letters in those first three movements encode the anagram “HIDE PSAlm.” The first word (HIDE) is formed by letters from Variations I (C. A. E.) and II (H. D. S-P.). The second term (PSAlm) is sourced from letters in the Theme (Enigma), Variation I (C. A. E.), and II (H. D. S-P.). Although there is no letter L in these titles, the Roman numeral for the number one (I) is a homoglyph (l) of a lowercase L. Interpolating the “I” as a lowercase “l” is consistent with Elgar’s pliable treatment of the E glyph in his Dorabella Cipher to duplicate the letters M and W. The anagram “HIDE PSAlm” accords with Elgar’s novel treatment of Ein feste Burg as the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations.

Another possible anagram obtained from proximate title letters in the opening three movements is “C EE HIID PS”. The letters required for this anagram are sourced from the initial of the Theme (Enigma), the first and third initials from Variation I (C. A. E.), the Roman numerals and initials from Variation II (H. D. S-P.). “C” is a homonym of see. “EE” is Elgar’s initials. “HIID” is a phonetic rendering of hide. “PS” is a standard abbreviation of Psalm. The proximate title letters anagram “C EE HIID PS” may be fully decoded as “See Edward Elgar hide Psalm.”

There are 150 chapters in the Book of Psalms. Out of so many possibilities, which Psalm did Elgar conceal? The answer is furnished by the number of letters in the titles of Variations I and II. There are four letters in the title of the first variation (ICAE), and six in the second (IIHDSP). When paired together, the attendant sums of these title letters from these contiguous movements convey a coded version of the number 46. When considered in the context of the “HIDE PSAlm” anagram, that figure implicates chapter 46 of the Psalms, the afflatus for Martin Luther's Ein feste Burg. This conclusion is bolstered by the “D” in Variation II which stands for David, the author’s name for Psalm 46.

David Playing the Harp by Jan de Bray (1670)

In a revealing gesture, Elgar substitutes the Star of David for standard asterisks in the title of Variation XIII (✡ ✡ ✡). This marine movement with the anomalous Mendelssohn quotations from the overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage is dedicated in secret to Jesus Christ. Elgar’s choice of stars is deeply symbolic as one of the many titles for Jesus is “Son of David” (e.g., Matthew 1:1, Matthew 9:27, Matthew 12:22-23, Matthew 15:21-22, Matthew 20:30-31). Stars are closely associated with Christ. A star announced his birth (Matthew 2:1-2) to the wise men from the East. In a vision, John of Patmos saw Jesus holding seven stars in his right hand (Revelation 1:16). Yet another title for Jesus is the “bright morning star” (Revelation 22:16). Relying on these biblical references, there is a sound theological foundation for concluding that stars are emblematic of Christ.

The titles anagram “HIDE PSAlm” may be elaborated by the inclusion of chapter 46, the initial “E” from Enigma, and “C” from Variation I. With these additional initials, it expands to “C E HIDE PSAlm 46.” C is a homonym of see. E is the initial for Elgar employed extensively in his correspondence and wife’s diary. Armed with these insights, this enhanced anagram may be read phonetically as “See Elgar hide Psalm 46.” Appending that chapter number to the alternate anagram yields “C EE HIID PS 46” which reads as “See Edward Elgar hide Psalm 46.” The precision and specificity of these anagrams are nothing short of extraordinary, supplying an apt characterization of Elgar’s novel treatment of Ein feste Burg as the hidden principal Theme. As a stealth form of authentication, Elgar inserted his initials within this proximate title letters cryptogram. Elgar enjoyed signing his work. 

Elgar initialed other cryptograms embedded within the Enigma Variations. For example, seven discrete performance directions in the first bar of the Enigma Theme generate the acrostic anagram “EE’s Psalm.” There are precisely 46 characters in this remarkable cryptogram, a sum that implicates Psalm 46. Like the titles anagram cipher previously described, this decryption unveils the author’s initials.

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.

Soli Yah Gloria

Another Piece Of Elgar's Retrograde Puzzle

Your course as a candidate was perfectly clear. You took your canto fermo and on it built several species, and several cunning mixtures of species, of strict counterpoint. You took your fugal theme, and having to treat it tonally or otherwise, a vital point, you wrote your exposition, your episodes, your stretto and your pedal, by no means forgetting your augmentation and your diminution, and particularly remembering that while consecutive fifths meant relegation to the darkest depths of Tartarus, no university professor could resist the magic of a canon cancrizans, say in the Hypomixolydian mode.

Robert J. Buckley in Sir Edward Elgar (1905)

The British composer Edward Elgar composed his orchestral Enigma Variations in 1898-99. That masterpiece transformed his reputation from a provincial itinerant music teacher to a world-class composer. The Enigma Variations is a riddle in three parts:

1. An absent principal Theme
2. A “dark saying” in the Enigma Theme, and
3. A secret friend commemorated in Variation XIII.

Elgar advised the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint to a famous melody that is not heard yet plays “through and over” the set of Variations. The search for that absent tune spawned a speculative frenzy that continues unabated to this day. No purported melodic solution has ever gained widespread acceptance because scholars claim Elgar took his secret to the grave in February 1934. Even if the correct tune was proposed, the conventional wisdom insists there is no viable way to authenticate it.

Musicologists presume Elgar never wrote down the answer for posterity to discover. That presumption fails to take into account his lifelong obsession for cryptography. Elgar’s fascination for ciphers merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! The bulk of its third chapter is devoted to Elgar’s meticulous decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher presented by John Holt Schooling in the April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. That particular cryptogram is a derivative of the Polybius square. Elgar was so delighted with his solution to Schooling’s reputedly impenetrable code that he brags about cracking it in his first biography published in 1905. Those inclined to downplay Elgar’s expertise in cryptography are urged to consult the third chapter of Bauer’s book.

The recognition of Elgar’s cryptographic expertise raises the prospect that he encoded the solutions to the Enigma Variations within the score. A decade of concerted analysis has netted over ninety cryptograms in diverse formats. These ciphers encode a narrow set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions that provide definitive answers to its core riddles. 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 and subject of his first sacred oratorio, The Light of Life (Lux Christi).

The Enigma Variations embody a fusion of Elgar’s twin loves for counterpoint and cryptography. A stark gulf between these two disciplines prevents experts in those respective fields from uncovering and authenticating the answers. On the one hand, musicologists lack the expertise to plumb the depths of Elgar’s cryptographic genius. Their inability to detect and decrypt ciphers is routinely misattributed as proof against their existence. On the other hand, cryptographers are commonly recruited from the ranks of mathematicians and computer scientists with little or no background in music composition or counterpoint. Bridging the divide between these two divergent specialties demands an intimate familiarity with counterpoint and cryptography.

Scholars routinely argue that Elgar provided little or no guidance regarding the nature of his contrapuntal puzzle. On the contrary, he publicly challenged the world to decrypt his melodic cipher by offering a series of detailed clues. These criteria appear in four primary sources:

1. The original 1899 program note
2. An October 1900 interview in The Musical Times
3. His 1905 biography, and 
4. His descriptive notes for the 1929 pianola rolls.

The public record provides six precise conditions about the relationship between the Enigma Variations and the covert principal Theme. These specific clues are summarized below:

1. The Enigma Theme is a counterpoint to the principal Theme.
2. The principal Theme is not heard.
3. The principal Theme is famous.
4. Fragments of the principal Theme are present in the Variations.
5. The principal Theme is a melody that can be played through and over the whole set of Variations including the entire Enigma Theme.
6. The Enigma Theme consists of measures 1 through 19.

Elgar never elaborated on the exact nature of the counterpoint between the Enigma Theme and its secretive source melody. Virtually every proposed tune begins its contrapuntal mapping by overlaying the opening of both melodies. This reflexive approach fails to appreciate the possibilities afforded by contrapuntal techniques. Counterpoint offers some ingenious methods for manipulating a melody. Composers during the late Romantic period routinely modified melodic subjects using the standard contrapuntal techniques of stretto, augmentation, diminution, inversion, contrapuntal motion, and retrograde. According to Kent Kennan, the author of the textbook Counterpoint, the most rarified form is retrograde motion in which a melody is played in reverse from back to front. He explains:

Retrograde motion (cancrizans) is rare in tonal music. Not only is it difficult to write, but the average ear has trouble recognizing a melodic line when it is played backwards; consequently the point of the device tends to be lost.

Playing the covert Theme in reverse as a retrograde counterpoint sounds like the most effective tactic for camouflaging a melody. The word cancrizans is medieval Latin for crab, a crustacean noted for its unusual ability to walk backward. For this reason, a retrograde counterpoint is also known as a crab counterpoint. In Variation XIII, Elgar repeatedly cites a melodic fragment of a subordinate theme from Felix Mendelsohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The ostinato figure accompanying those melodic fragments reprises the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm, providing a discernible link between these two ostensibly unrelated melodies. The Mendelssohn fragments sonically portray a calm sea, an environment inhabited by crabs. By conveying a marine atmosphere tied to the Enigma Theme’s distinctive rhythm, Elgar cleverly hints at a retrograde counterpoint.

Multiple lines of evidence point to such an unexpected backward counterpoint. For example, the ABA’C structure of the Enigma Theme is a phonetic spelling of aback, a word that means “backward” and “by surprise.” A retrograde counterpoint satisfies both of those definitions. Phonetic spellings are an idiosyncrasy of Elgar’s personal correspondence. The first six notes of the Enigma Theme’s bass line replicate in reverse order the last six notes of the ending phrase from Ein feste Burg. The discrete note letters of the Mendelssohn quotation in A-flat major (C, B-flat, and A-flat) provide three of the four letters in crab. Only the R is absent as the musical alphabet is restricted to the first seven letters. The Mendelssohn fragments encode the initials of Ein feste Burg in reverse order. Confirmation is provided by a retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg above the Enigma Theme applying such standard techniques as augmentation and diminution.

A new piece of the cryptographic puzzle was recently found that intimates a retrograde mapping of the covert melody above the Enigma Theme. This discovery builds on prior research that determined proximate title letters encode answers to the Enigma Variations. Elgar’s sketches document five differing orderings of the movement, a process carried out to construct these varied cryptograms. The earliest example is the Letters Cluster Cipher that enciphers the initials of Ein feste Burg in the immediate vicinity of Variation XIII (***). A more recent revelation is how Elgar encodes the title of Ein feste Burg by proximate title letters in the Enigma Theme, Variations I-III, and XII-XIV. The latest discovery consists of adjacent title letters in Variations I, II, and III. As shown below, nearby letters produce anagrams of CRAB, STEP, and HID.

The first and second initials of Variations I and III are an anagram of “CRAB.” The first two initials of Variation II in combination with a Roman numeral “I” is an anagram of “HID.” The last initials of Variations I, II, and III are an anagram of “STEP.” Factoring in “Enigma” with these three anagrams permits the construction of the following remarkable phrases:

1. “Enigma hid crab step.”
2. “Crab step hid Enigma.”

These two decryptions implicate a crab counterpoint within the Enigma Theme. This latest cryptographic discovery bolsters the conclusion that Elgar deliberately concealed the covert Theme by disguising it as a retrograde counterpoint. 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. Please help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria

Elgar's Varying Tempi Nimrod Cipher

Since I’ve been back I have sketched a set of Variations (orkestry) on an original theme: the Variations have amused me because I’ve labelled ’em with the nicknames of my particular friends – you are Nimrod. That is to say I’ve written the variations each one to represent the mood of the ‘party’ – I’ve liked to imagine the ‘party’ writing the var: him (or her) self & have written what I think they wd. have written – if they were asses enough to compose – it’s a quaint idee & the result is amusing to those behind the scenes & won’t affect the hearer who ‘nose nuffin’. What think you?

Edward Elgar in an October 24, 1898 letter to August Jaeger

The autographed score of Variation IX (Nimrod) from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations has a metronome marking of 66 quarter beats per minute. The published score reduces that figure to 52 which results in a noticeably slower tempo. Julian Rushton draws attention to this and other discrepancies between the autograph and published scores in the August 2019 issue of The Elgar Society Journal. Remarking on the recovery of a lost score of the Enigma Variations once belonging to August Jaeger, Rushton opines, “. . . nothing bears on the ‘enigma’ — unless, that is, something can be deduced from additional information on Elgar’s indecision about the order of the variations, and metronome markings that differ from the published score . . .” The differences make all the difference as the following analysis unveils.

My original research found that the fifth and final ordering of the variations produces a remarkable matrix of proximate title letters ciphers. These and other cryptograms encode answers to the core questions posed by the Variations concerning the absent principal Theme, a cryptic “dark saying” concealed by the Enigma Theme, and a secret friend commemorated in Variation XIII. Based on these intriguing discoveries, it is reasonable to suspect that the tempo variance between the autographed and published scores of Nimrod may be yet another cipher.

Simon Singh remarks that cryptograms are often cracked by exploiting their anomalies. The differences in tempo between the autographed and published scores of Variation IX is one of those illuminating inconsistencies. The discrete numerals in these divergent tempo markings (52 and 66) are 2, 5, and 6. When those unique numbers are converted into their corresponding letters of the alphabet employing an elementary number-to-letter key (1 = a, 2 = b, 3 = c, etc…), they become B, E and F. Those are the initials of Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress), the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations.

This is not the only cipher at the beginning of Variation IX. The tuning of the timpani is indicated at Rehearsal 33 as E-flat, B-flat, and F. Those three note letters are also an anagram of the hidden theme’s initials — E. F. B. Indeed, a distinct subset of cryptograms within the Enigma Variations encipher those three letters hinted at by three asterisks that form the title of Variation XIII. For instance, the Enigma Theme is written in the parallel modes of G minor and G major. The accidentals for those keys are F-sharp, B-flat, and E-flat. The Enigma Theme’s keys are the key to unlocking Elgar’s melodic safe because they encipher the initials of the hidden melody. To learn more about the innermost secrets of the Enigma Variations, read Elgar’s Enigmas Exposed. Please help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria

Elgar's Mendelssohn Fragments Solo Passages Cipher

The essence of beauty is unity in variety. 

Felix Mendelssohn

Variation XIII from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a reflective Romanza with an austere title of three enigmatic asterisks (✡ ✡ ✡). This movement features three major melodic quotations and one minor adaption from Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt) Op. 27. Each fragment is performed pianissimo or pianississimo to symbolize a calm sea. The ebb and flow of the tides are embodied by the accompaniment, an undulating ostinato that reprises the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm of two alternating pairs of two eighth notes and two quarter notes.

First Mendelssohn quotation in A-flat major

Second Mendelssohn quotation in A-flat Major

Mendelssohn fragment in F minor

Third Mendelssohn quotation in E-flat major

The marriage of these Mendelssohn fragments with the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm intimates a link between these two seemingly disparate melodies. The Enigma Theme is a counterpoint to a famous yet absent Theme, and in a similar vein, the unconventional title of Variation XIII is also absent. Unmasking the connections between the Enigma Theme and Variation XIII demands a mastery of music cryptography, an esoteric art that eludes legacy scholars who stubbornly tout the conventional wisdom that the Mendelssohn fragments are entirely alien to the Enigma Theme. This superficial impression proves to be profoundly misguided.

My search for music cryptograms within the Enigma Variations was precipitated by a marvelous discovery by Charles Richard Santa. A retired engineer and amateur musician, Santa saw that the scale degrees of the Enigma Theme’s opening four melody notes in measures 1 and 11 encipher the mathematical ratio Pi. The Enigma Theme's melody notes in those bars are B-flat, G, C, and A. The scale degrees of those four notes in G minor are 3, 1, 4, and 2 respectively. Those scale degrees in melodic order are a coded reference to the number Pi that is rounded from 3.1415 to four digits as 3.142.

The Enigma Theme Pi Cipher is remarkable because a circle has 360 degrees, presenting an intriguing parallel with the opus number of the Enigma Variations — 36. Santa’s groundbreaking research showed for the first time how Elgar deftly inserted a cryptogram into the Enigma Theme, raising the tantalizing prospect of more ciphers. Elgar used the opening four melody notes from the Enigma Theme to encode Pi, thereby furnishing a numeric convergence with the four-note Mendelssohn fragments in Variation XIII. Could there be other cryptographic connections between these two overtly extraneous melodies?

On four occasions in Variation XIII from the Enigma Variations, Elgar cites a four-note melodic fragment from the starting point of a theme in Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. Three are quoted by the principal clarinet with two in A-flat major, and a third in E-flat major. There is another in F minor performed in octaves by the trumpets and trombones that lacks quotation marks because it diverges from the original major mode.

The key letters of those Mendelssohn fragments are an anagram of a well-known music cryptogram (FAE) coined around 1853 by Joseph Joachim, one of the most celebrated violinists in England and Europe during the latter half of the 19th century. Mendelssohn served as Joachim’s mentor, introducing him to the British public in 1844 at just under 13 years of age in a command performance of Beethoven’s violin concerto for the Royal Philharmonic Society of London. An aspiring violinist in his youth and professional concert violinist as an adult, Elgar lionized Joachim as eloquently portrayed by Arthur Reynolds in the July 2007 issue of The Elgar Society Journal.

The inability of career academics such as Julian Rushton to detect such a relatively simple cryptogram concealed so openly by the Mendelssohn fragments is ample proof of a punctum caecum, a gaping blind spot in their perceptual comprehension. Absent an informed sensitivity to the existence of ciphers, career academics casually dismiss that possibility on contrived grounds and make no effort to detect or decrypt them. This perspective feeds a perverse form of confirmation bias as the presumption that there are no cryptograms stifles and stalls any search for them. Ignorance of these ciphers is elevated to the level of proof that they cannot exist.

The academic establishment missed the proverbial boat regarding the cryptographic significance of the Mendelssohn fragments. The key letters of the Mendelssohn fragments form part of a much larger cache of cryptograms that divulge and authenticate the covert melodic Theme of the Enigma Variations and the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. While astonishing in their scope, these ciphers are entirely consistent with Elgar’s expertise in cryptography. This towering trait of his psychological profile merits an entire chapter in Craig Bauer’s recently published history of the world’s greatest ciphers, Unsolved! A meticulous analysis of the Mendelssohn fragments has so far netted twenty-two cryptograms. This impressive array of ciphers is listed below with links to their detailed descriptions and descriptions:

1. FAE Cipher
2. Mendelssohn FAE Syllables Cipher
3. FACE Cipher
4. AMF Cipher
5. Mendelssohn E.F.B. Cipher
6. Mendelssohn Keynotes Cipher
7. Mendelssohn Scale Degrees Cipher
8. Variation XIII Music Anagram Ciphers
9. Mendelssohn Clarinet Solo Nominal Notes Cipher
10. Clarinet A Major Key Signature Transposition Cipher
11. Mendelssohn Pi Cipher
12. Mendelssohn Pi-C Cipher
13. Mendelssohn Fragments Melodic Intervals Cipher
14. Dual Initials Enigma Cipher
15. Romanza Cipher
16. Dominant-Tonic-Dominant (5-1-5) Cipher
17. “See Abba” Mendelssohn Cipher
18. Mendelssohn Fragments Clefs Cipher
19. Rehearsal 55 Clarinet Solo Cipher
20. Mendelssohn-Wagner Melodic Merger Cipher
21. Mendelssohn Quotations Accidentals Cipher
22. Mendelssohn Quotations Elimination Cipher

It is a privilege to announce the discovery of yet another cryptogram connected to the Mendelssohn fragments, making it the 23rd in the series. This cipher is based on the number of notes in each Mendelssohn fragment and the additional amount of notes added to a given fragment to complete each solo passage. These distinct note sums are then filtered through a number-to-letter key (1=a, 2=b, 3=c, etc.) to generate the plaintext. For this reason, it is dubbed the Mendelssohn Fragments Solo Passages Cipher.

The four-note Mendelssohn fragments cited in Variation XIII are extended into complete solo passages with the addition of five, six, or seven notes. Three quotations are played exclusively by the principal clarinet. The first two are in A-flat major, and the last is in E-flat major. Another fragment in F minor is performed in octaves by three trumpets and three trombones. Although clearly sourced from Mendelssohn’s melody, it lacks quotation marks because it departs from the original major mode.

The Enigma Locks Cipher is located in the opening six measures of the Enigma Theme. It utilizes an elementary number-to-letter key to encode letters from the alphabet based on the sum of the notes played by each string part from bars 1 through 6. Only the four voices of the string quartet are active in these opening six measures that are sectioned off by an oddly placed double bar at the terminus of bar 6. This inaugural section exhibits the distinctive palindromic rhythm that accompanies the four Mendelssohn fragments in Variation XIII. Such a rhythmic convergence suggests applying the same encipherment method to the sum of the notes for each solo passage beginning with a Mendelssohn fragment.

Each Mendelssohn quotation in A-flat major has four notes that are extended by the addition of six more notes to round out the solo passage. The application of a number-to-letter key to the numbers four and six yields the plaintext D and F. The Mendelssohn fragment in F minor is four notes that are elaborated by the addition of five more. When filtered through a number-to-letter key, the numbers four and five produce the letters D and E. The final Mendelssohn quotation in E-flat major is four notes and is augmented by seven notes to complete the solo passage. These numbers coincide with the letters D and G.

When treated as an anagram, these plaintext letters may be reversed, reordered, and condensed to “GD FD ED.” Before laying out its decryption, it is crucial to recognize that Elgar’s personal correspondence bristles with inventive phonetic spellings. For instance, he spelled excuse as “Xqqq”. The decryption of the first layer of the Mendelssohn Solo Passages Cipher is facilitated by the knowledge of Elgar’s affinity for phonetic spellings. The first pair (GD) is a phonetic rendering of God. The second (FD) is phonetic for fed. The final pair (ED) is a shortened version of Edward, the first name of the composer. The decryption reads, “God fed Ed.” This is an apt description of the Eucharist, the rite of Holy Communion celebrated during Mass by Roman Catholics that commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Elgar was a Roman Catholic.

There is a second layer to the Mendelssohn Solo Passages Cipher that relies on the application of the number-to-letter key to the sum of the notes from each Mendelssohn fragment solo passage. There are ten notes in each clarinet solo passage beginning with the A-flat major Mendelssohn quotation. The application of a number-to-letter key to the number ten produces J, the tenth letter of the alphabet. The marine atmosphere of the Mendelssohn fragments alludes to a second letter as the word sea is the phonetic equivalent of C. The pairing of J with C unveils the initials for the secret friend eulogized in this movement, Jesus Christ. Those letters may be reversed as “CJ” to mean “See Jesus” and “Christ Jesus.” Those same initials are encoded by the Variation XIII Roman Numerals Cipher and the Enigma Locks Cipher using the identical number-to-letter key.

Following the two clarinet solo passages commencing with the A-flat major Mendelssohn quotations, the next and most ominous of the Mendelssohn fragments is performed by the brass section in F minor. This four-note minor adaptation is further developed into a complete passage with the addition of five more sounding notes for a total of nine. The ninth letter of the alphabet is I which may also be paired with the letter C due to the maritime atmosphere symbolized by the Mendelssohn fragment. The pairing of I and C is a phonetic version of the phrase "I see,” a reading supported by Elgar’s personal correspondence that incorporates inventive phonetic spellings.

The final clarinet solo commencing with the E-flat major Mendelssohn quotation is extended into a complete eleven note passage due to the addition of a grace note. The eleventh letter of the alphabet is K, an initial Elgar wrote on his scores as a shorthand for kopiert which means “copied” in German. Elgar sometimes respelled copied as “koppied”. Based on the previously decoded initials for the secret friend, the combination “KC” may be read as “Copied Christ.” When the order is reversed as “CK”, it may be interpreted as "See copied," or alternatively “Christ copied.”

The application of a number-to-letter key to the note totals of the four solo passages starting with the Mendelssohn fragments produces the plaintext letters J, I, and K. These may in turn be paired with the letter C as intimated phonetically by each Mendelssohn sea fragment. A preliminary decryption of these plaintext letter pairs is “Jesus Christ” for JC, “I see” for IC, and “Copied Christ” for KC. Why would Elgar encode these phrases in the Mendelssohn fragments solo passages? Another cipher submerged within the Mendelssohn fragments reveals the answer.

The Romanza Cipher encodes a reference to the Turin Shroud, the most famous relic in Christendom. The Turin Shroud is a traditional Jewish burial cloth that exhibits two faint images of the front and back of a crucified man with wounds consistent with those described in the Gospel accounts. These central and dorsal images are a facsimile of what many believe to be the body of Jesus Christ following his gruesome crucifixion. When Secondo Pia took the first official photographs of the Turin Shroud in May 1898, he made the startling discovery that his photographic negatives revealed lifelike positive images. This was only possible because a photographic negative of another negative produces a recognizable positive image. Pia made a startling discovery — the puzzling impressions on the Turin Shroud are photographic negatives that predate the invention of photography by millennia.

Pia's Original Photographic Negative

Pia’s sensational photographic negatives were widely reported and shared in the secular and Catholic press. The timing of Pia’s incredible find is relevant because it transpired five months before Elgar first performed the Enigma Theme for his wife on the evening of October 21, 1898. Elgar was a practicing Roman Catholic during this period and was undoubtedly aware of this astonishing revelation. A coded reference to that sacred burial cloth in Variation XIII, particularly in the context of the Mendelssohn fragments that symbolize the “deathly stillness” of the sea, bolsters the conclusion this movement is indeed dedicated in secret to Jesus Christ.

Positive and negative images of the Turin Shroud facial region.

Armed with the insight that Elgar drew inspiration from Pia’s photographic negatives of the Turin Shroud, the plaintext solution letters encoded by the Mendelssohn Solo Passages Cipher may be treated as a phonetic anagram. The two JCs represent the initials of Jesus Christ and suggest the front and back images on the Turin Shroud. As previously observed, IC is phonetic for “I see.” Based on Elgar’s use of the initial K as a shorthand for copied, CK may be read as “Christ copied” or “See copied.” The raw plaintext in order of appearance is “JC-JC-IC-KC”, a sequence that translates as, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, I see copied Christ.”

The FAE Cipher implies that the plaintext results of the Mendelssohn Solo Passages Cipher should be rearranged to reflect the order of the initials from Joachim’s motto. When the plaintext of the F minor solo passage (IC) is followed by that for the A-flat major solo passage (JC) and the E-flat solo passage (KC), it yields “IC-JC-KC”. The plaintext may be further condensed by dropping the duplicate C from the final pair to produce “IC-JC-K”. This more succinct phonetic anagram reads, “I see Jesus Christ copied.” Such a decryption is a poignant description of the Turin Shroud and Pia’s remarkable photographic negative. This discovery adds a new level of meaning to Elgar’s dedication “. . . to my friends pictured within.”

Cover Page of the Enigma Variations Master Score

The solution to the second layer of the Mendelssohn Solo Passages Cipher is eerily similar to the phrase “Looks like Jesus Christ” encoded by the Enigma Locks Cipher. Both plaintext solutions were unveiled based on the application of a standard number-to-letter key to the note totals of discrete passages in the Enigma Theme and Variation XIII. More significantly, both decryptions represent complementary descriptions of the Turin Shroud.

The commingling of the Mendelssohn fragments with the Enigma Theme’s distinctive rhythmic motif signifies a much deeper link between those two themes. Elgar’s elastic treatment of Mendelssohn’s theme affirms an artistic inclination to modify a source melody’s mode, meter, note values, tempo, dynamics, articulations, and instrumentation. One major implication of this melodic pliability is that it would encompass Elgar’s handling of the covert Theme. This insight proves critical as the last three sounding notes (E-flat, F, G) of the first solo clarinet passage starting with the A-flat major Mendelssohn quotation are actually a retrograde augmented version of the first three notes from the final E-flat major Mendelssohn quotation (G, F, E-flat). This is an enormous clue because Elgar’s mapping of Ein feste Burg through and over the Enigma Theme turns out to be an augmented retrograde counterpoint.

The clarinet solos beginning with the first and last Mendelssohn quotations in A-flat major (measures 507-513) and E-flat major (measures 542-548) are elaborated into a complete seven bar passage. A meticulous analysis of those clarinet solo passages confirms the notes are a music anagram of the concluding phrase from Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress). This is subtly hinted at by the Mendelssohn Keynotes Cipher which encodes the last three notes of that ending phrase as quoted by Mendelssohn in the fourth movement of the Reformation Symphony. When discounting the repeated note in each Mendelssohn fragment, the notes of the first A-flat major and final E-flat major clarinet solo passages may be reshuffled to construct Luther’s original ending phrase from Ein feste Burg.

The decision to quote music by Felix Mendelssohn in the Enigma Variations decisively refutes the false belief that Elgar’s Roman Catholicism would prevent him from citing the works of any Protestant composers. Although born to Jewish parents, Mendelssohn was baptized a Lutheran on the anniversary of another prominent Lutheran’s birth, Johann Sebastian Bach. The FAE Cipher which is formed by the key letters of the Mendelssohn fragments hints at another Jew who was baptized a Lutheran, the famed violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim.

It is incredibly revealing that in these seemingly extraneous Mendelssohn fragments, Elgar refers to two great Jewish musicians who converted to Lutheranism, Felix Mendelssohn and his protégé Joseph Joachim. That one of them bears the name of the earthly father of Jesus (Joseph) is not a coincidence, but a clue regarding the secret friend’s true identity. Elgar would later invite the speculation that Variation XIII was dedicated to Lady Mary Lygon. It is remarkable that her title and first name, Lady Mary, is a thinly veiled reference to the mother of Jesus. To learn more about one of Elgar's greatest symphonic achievements, read my free eBook Elgar’s Enigmas Exposed. Please help support and expand my original research by becoming a sponsor on Patreon.

Soli Yah Gloria