Elgar’s Bridge Passages Acrostic and Anagram Ciphers

Old Wye River Bridge

Most of my ‘sketches’,—that is to say the reduction of the original thoughts to writing, have been made in the open air. I finished the Wye round about Mordiford & completed many pencil memoranda of compositions on the old bridge, of which I have vivid & affectionate memories.

Edward Elgar in a letter to G. H. Jacks

The British composer Edward Elgar played the Enigma Theme for the first time at the piano for his wife Alice on October 21, 1898. After hearing that melancholic melody, she inquired in an approving tone, “What is that?” He replied, “Nothing — but something might be made of it.” This private premiere of the Enigma Theme is commemorated by Elgarians every October 21 as Enigma Day. 125 years ago today marks that pivotal event heralding the dawn of the Enigma Variations. In honor of that anniversary, my 215th article will present some previously unrecognized ciphers in that extraordinary symphonic masterpiece. In a coded parallel, the number 215 is an anagram of 125.

Elgar was fascinated by phonetic spellings, wordplays, and anagrams. One notable example is the title “Craeg Lea” which he imparted to his Malvern home where his family resided between 1899 and 1904. That atypical moniker is an anagram obtained from the reverse spelling of “Elgar” (Craeg Lea) mingled with the initials from the first names of his daughter Carice, himself, and his wife Alice (Craeg Lea). Elgar challenged Dora Penny to decipher the meaning of his home’s bemusing name. She caught on quickly as recounted in her memoir:

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 permeated his obsession with cryptography, the discipline of coding and decoding secret messages. His expertise in that esoteric art is extensively documented by Craig P. Bauer in his book Unsolved! The bulk of its third chapter is devoted to Elgar’s brilliant decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher by John Holt Schooling featured in an April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. A Nihilist cipher is a derivative of the Polybius square, a system for fractionating plaintext that was invented by the ancient Greeks. Elgar was so delighted with his solution that he bragged about it in his first biography published in 1905 by Robert J. Buckley. Elgar painted the solution in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate medium as another name for the Polybius square is a box cipher. The historical record is unambiguous. Elgar was an accomplished expert in the field of cryptography.

Elgar’s methodical decryption of Schooling’s conundrum 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 use of the word “dark” as a synonym for a cipher is relevant to this investigation as this same adjective turns up later in the 1899 program note for the premiere of the Enigma Variations. It is an oft-cited passage worth revisiting because 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 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 celebrated composer. The original title appears on the autograph score as “Variations for orchestra composed by Edward Elgar Op. 36”. With the unconventional theme dubbed “Enigma”, the work is popularly referred to as the Enigma Variations. In the 1899 program note and other primary sources, Elgar explains 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 secret tune is the cornerstone underlying the whole work, a subject that has provoked interminable debates and disagreements about the correct solution.

Some contend there is no answer to Elgar’s Enigma by insinuating he concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, practical joke, or marketing gimmick. The editors of the Elgar Complete Edition of the Enigma Variations blithely deny the likelihood there could be any covert counterpoints or cryptograms. Relying on Elgar’s recollection of playing new material at the piano to gauge his wife’s reaction, the editors tout the standard lore that he 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 abnegation conveniently relieves scholars of any obligation to probe for ciphers or counterpoints. Proponents of such an obtuse nihilism extol the validity of their position based on a dearth of evidence for which they never executed a diligent or impartial search. This tautological cul-de-sac is a textbook case of confirmation bias pawned off as ersatz scholarship. In the fourth chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Elgar, Christopher Kent meticulously documents how Elgar sketched and accumulated musical ideas in the countryside long before ever trying them out on the piano. Those familiar with Elgar’s compositional methods should know better than to proffer the lore that he miraculously improvised the Enigma Theme without advanced planning and preparation.

A more sensible view (embraced by those who take Elgar at his published word) accepts the challenge that there must be a famous melody concealed behind the Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. Regardless of the side taken in this debate, legacy scholars insist the answer can never be known with absolute certainty because Elgar allegedly took his secret to the grave in February 1934. The intellectual nomenklatura presumes he never wrote down the solution for posterity to discover. Such a staid opinion glosses over or flagrantly ignores Elgar’s documented expertise in cryptography. That incontestable facet of his psychological profile raises the possibility that the solution is scrupulously enciphered within Enigma Variations’ orchestral score.

A decade of trawling that sublime symphonic masterpiece has netted over one hundred cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may seem extraordinary, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s lifelong fascination with ciphers. More significantly, the solutions give definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the absent 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 the “dark saying” nestled within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher embedded in its inaugural six bars cordoned off by a strangely positioned double barline. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith. The cryptographic evidence supporting these discoveries is diverse yet mutually consistent, multivalent, and decisive.

Some Bridge Passages Enigma Ciphers

Such an extensive trove of ciphers affirms that the Enigma Variations is Elgar’s musical homage to cryptography. Scores of ciphers within the score justify an ongoing search for additional cryptograms. Prior research uncovered a matrix of ciphers shrouded within its three bridge passages. A section in classical music that links one movement to another without interruption is called a bridge passage. The first bridge passage couples the Enigma Theme to Variation I (C. A. E.). Some cryptograms hidden in that first bridge passage are the Opus Dei Cipher, the Psalm 46 Ciphers, Tau Cross Ciphers, and interrelated word ciphers embedded within its performance directions. There is a cluster of cryptograms in the second bridge passage linking Variation V (R. P. A) to Variation VI (Ysobel). Fourteen cryptograms are concealed within the third bridge passage connecting Variation XIII (W.N.) to Variation IX (Nimrod). Other ciphers are formed collectively by these three bridge passages. Could there be more bridge ciphers yet to be discovered?

Elgar’s Bridge Passages Acrostic Ciphers

Six of the movements from the Enigma Variations are connected by three bridge passages. The sums three and six may be merged as “36” to reproduce its opus number. When reversed as “63”, it yields the tempo marking used for the Enigma Theme, Variation I (C. A. E.), and Variation V (R. P. A.). These three movements are associated with the first and second bridge passages. A short score reduction of these three bridge passages is exhibited below:

The Enigma Theme is joined to Variation I (C. A. E.) by the first bridge passage in bars 18-19. Variation V (R. P. A.) is connected to Variation VI (Ysobel) by the second bridge passage in bars 184-187. Variation VIII (W. N.) is linked to Variation IX (Nimrod) by the third bridge passage in bars 305-307. A total of nine bars make up these three bridge passages with two in the first, four in the second, and three in the third. The bar lengths of these three bridge passages are two, four, and three. The first two numerals may be merged to form 24, the sum of the letters in the title Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Six words in that German title mirror the six movements conjoined by bridges. The third bridge passage consists of three bars, a total that corresponds to the common three-word title Ein feste Burg.

Six movements joined in pairs by three bridge passages encompass a distinct subset of variations. The titles of these bridge movements are listed below in order of appearance:

Enigma
C. A. E.
R. P. A.
Ysobel
W. N.
Nimrod

There is a conspicuous symmetry with the titles of these six bridge movements. Three are six-letter words (Enigma, Ysobel, and Nimrod) which are traceable to the Bible. Nimrod is described in Genesis 10:9 as “. . . a mighty hunter before the LORD.” Elgar dedicated Variation IX (Nimrod) to his German friend August Jaeger whose last name means “hunter” in German. The nickname “Nimrod” is a scriptural wordplay on “hunter.” A standard abbreviation of Genesis is “Ge.” This is affirmed by The Treasury Bible published in London in 1833. Remarkably, the first two melody notes of Nimrod — G descending a major 3rd to E-flat — are a coded abbreviation of Genesis. Nimrod is the tenth movement and the ninth variation, supplying the chapter and verse to complete the cipher “Ge. 10:9”. Genesis 10:9 conveniently provides the first two words of the covert Theme's title: A Mighty Fortress.

Ysobel is a derivative of Elisheba, the wife of the high priest Aaron mentioned in Exodus 6:23. Enigma is defined as a “dark saying,” a phrase that appears in Psalm 49:4, Psalm 78:2, and Proverbs 1:6. Elgar employs the phrase “dark saying” in his original 1899 program note to describe the Enigma Theme. The recurrence of the phrase “dark saying” in the Psalms appears to be a clue about the origin of the covert Theme. The covert Theme’s title is drawn from the first line of Psalm 46, a chapter known as “Luther’s Psalm.” The remaining three titles are composed of initials: C. A. E., R. P. A., and W. N. These two sets of three titles suggest the mirror image of Elgar's initials (33). Roman Catholic tradition holds that Jesus was crucified at age 33.

Like the two sets of three titles that intimate a coded form of Elgar’s initials, there are precisely two capital Es in the titles of the opening two movements: Enigma and C. A. E. These two Es are the first and last letters of those two titles. The Theme and Variation I are joined together by the first bridge passage.

Before venturing any further, it is crucial to recognize that Elgar used phonetic spellings in his personal correspondence. Some examples of his 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)

The three bridge titles consisting of six-letter names produce the acrostic “EYN”: Enigma, Ysobel, and Nimrod. “EYN” is the phonetic equivalent of Ein with y substituting for i, a spelling convention observed in words like my and cry. This phonetic acrostic encodes the first word in the covert Theme’s title Ein feste Burg.

The three remaining titles composed of initials yield the acrostic “CRW”: C. A. E., R. P. A., and W. N. “CRW” is a phonetic rendering of crow. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the verb crow as “cry” and provides the sample sentence, “When a cock (an adult male chicken) crows, it makes a very long and loud sharp cry.” The Authorized King James Version of Matthew 26:34 recounts Jesus prophesying to Peter, “Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.” The disciple Peter vehemently Jesus three times on the night of his arrest before the rooster announced the arrival of dawn and the fulfillment of Christ’s dire prophecy. The word crow is intimately linked to the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus, Elgar’s secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII (✡ ✡ ✡). The identification of Christ as the dedicatee of that movement readily explains why it was performed during Elgar’s memorial service at Worcestershire Cathedral in March 1934.

A bridge is a place to cross, a word intimately associated with the crucifixion of Jesus and the Roman Catholic ritual of making the sign of the cross. Like the three bridge passages, there were three crosses at the crucifixion of Christ. Similarly, there are three Mendelssohn quotations in Variation XIII that sonically portray a sea crossing. The first bridge passage in bars 18-19 begins in G major and modulates to G minor. The second bridge passage in bars 185-188 begins in C minor and resolves to C major at the start of Variation VI (Ysobel). The key letters of the first and second bridge passages are G and C, respectively. The letters of these modes provide the initials for Gesù Cristo, the Italian translation of Jesus Christ. The encoding of Christ’s initials in Italian by the modes of the first and second bridge passages is consistent with Elgar’s reliance on Italian nomenclature for the instrumentation and performance directions in the autograph and published scores.

The third bridge passage in bars 305-307 modulates from G major to E-flat major at the arrival of Variation XI (Nimrod). When treated as an anagram, the key letters G and E may be reshuffled as “EG”, a phonetic spelling of egg. The Easter egg is a traditional Christian symbol of Christ’s resurrection. It is noteworthy that Elgar hid his Easter egg cipher in the third bridge passage, a number that equals the three days and nights that Jesus spent in the tomb. The term egg is also encoded extensively by notes in the E-flat ostinato accompanying the third Mendelssohn quotation in Variation XIII.

E-flat ostinato “EGG” cipher accompanying the third Mendelssohn quotation

The number three is emphasized by the location and length of the third bridge passage with its three bars. These two references to the number three may be combined to produce “33”, the alleged age when Jesus was crucified.

There are fifteen lowercase letters in the three six-word bridge titles: nigma, sobel, and imrod. When treated as an anagram, the letters igmasobelimrod generate 178,572 possible combinations with accurate spellings. The overwhelming majority of these anagrams are utterly nonsensical with the notable exception “lamb is mooring ed”. “Ed” is a short form of Edward, Elgar’s first name. In John 1:29, Jesus is called the “Lamb of God” (Agnus Dei) by John the Baptist. A core tenet of Christianity is that Jesus was sacrificed at Calvary as the Passover Lamb to redeem the world from sin and death. The Cambridge Dictionary defines mooring as “a place to tie a boat.” This definition relates to Elgar’s depiction of a ship crossing a calm sea in Variation XIII, a movement dedicated in secret to Christ who fulfilled the prophetic Sign of Jonah. Merriam-Webster furnishes another definition of mooring as “an established practice or stabilizing influence.” Jesus is the ultimate mooring to whom Christians fasten their faith. Based on this analysis, the anagram “Lamb is mooring Ed” may be interpreted as Jesus securing Elgar in his faith. This interpretation is supported by Elgar’s sizable output of sacred cantatas and oratorios. Elgar was born, educated, married, and buried as a Roman Catholic. He dedicated his major sacred works to God by invoking the Jesuit motto “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” (For the Greater Glory of God).

Another defensible anagram obtained from the lowercase letters igmasobelimrod is “mooring lamb dies.” In this context, “mooring” refers to “an established practice or stabilizing influence.” As previously shown, “Lamb” is a title for Jesus. The term “dies” denotes the death of that lamb. The anagram “mooring lamb dies” effectively conveys a central article of faith from Elgar’s Roman Catholicism that acknowledges the sacrificial death of Jesus. The anagram “mooring lamb dies” is mutually consistent with the “Dead God” Cipher in Variation XIII where note sequences in bars 497-500 and 529-532 encode the phrase “DEAD G-D”. Roman Catholicism teaches that Jesus is the incarnation of God and a member of the Trinity who died and rose bodily from the grave.

Elgar completed many of his sketches on the Old Wye River Bridge during pastoral excursions in search of solitude and bucolic stimulation. He clearly associated his musical creations with bridge crossings. Another type of crossing is an acrostic “in which sets of letters (such as the initial or final letters of the lines) taken in order form a word or phrase.” When arranged in order of appearance, the first letters of the six bridge titles generate the acrostic “E CRY WN”.

Enigma
C. A. E.
R. P. A.
Ysobel
W. N.
Nimrod

The verb “CRY” indicates that Elgar’s ordering of these bridge movements is not random. The verb cry is a synonym for crow, a term encoded as a phonetic acrostic by the three titles consisting of initials. The “E” may be safely interpreted as Elgar because he signed and sealed his correspondence with that letter. “CRY” is an intransitive verb defined by Merriam-Webster in four ways. The first is “to call loudly, shout.” The second is “to shed tears often noisily, weep, sob.” The third is “to utter a characteristic sound or call.” The fourth is “to require or suggest strongly a remedy or disposition.” “WN” is a phonetic spelling of when. This analysis shows that the acrostic “E CRY WN” may be decoded as the command, “Elgar, cry ‘When!?’” This decryption vents his frustration with waiting to be recognized by London's musical establishment for his prodigious musical endowment.

Elgar may have encoded the word “cry” because it turns up in one of his favorite poems, Ode penned by Arthur O’Shaughnessy in 1873. Elgar set the entirety of that poem in The Music Makers for contralto or mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra. It was composed sporadically between 1903 and 1912 before premiering at the Birmingham Festival in October 1912. The Musical Times published a preview of The Music Makers by Ernest Newman in September 1912 that deftly encapsulates the thrust of O’Shaughnessy’s Ode:

    The ‘motif’ of O’Shaughnessy’s poem is the idea that the poets—the music makers and dreamers—are really the creators and inspirers of men and their deeds, and the true makers of history and of human societies. Their dreams and their visions are the foreshadowings of what the rest of mankind are predestined to work out in endless conflict: to-day is a realisation of a dream of the generations past; to-morrow will bring into being the dream of to-day.

The Music Makers is a retrospective piece that cites themes from the Enigma Variations, Sea Pictures, The Dream of Gerontius, Symphony No. 1, Symphony No. 2, Violin Concerto, Rule, Britannia!, and La Marseillaise. The inclusion of the Marseillaise is interesting because the German poet Heinrich Heine famously extolled Ein feste Burg as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.” In The Music Makers, Elgar invokes incipits from the Enigma Theme and Variation IX (Nimrod). It is possible that Elgar cites melodic extracts from the Enigma Theme, Nimrod, and the Marseilaise to hint at Heine’s equation of that French paean to Ein feste Burg, the covert Theme of the Enigma Variations. According to Elgar, the Enigma Theme is quoted more than once because “it expressed when written (in 1898) my sense of the loneliness of the artist as described in the first six lines of the Ode, and, to me, it still embodies that sense.” The familiar phrase “movers and shakers” appears in line 7 of Stanza I of O’Shaughnessy’s Ode. The ninth and final stanza employing the word “cry” is cited below:

Great hail! we cry to the comers
    From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
    And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
    And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
    And a singer who sings no more.

There are nine stanzas in O’Shaughnessy’s Ode, and coincidentally there are nine bars in Elgar’s three bridge passages. O’Shaughnessy’s Ode invokes sea imagery in its opening and closing stanzas. Line 3 of Stanza I states, “Wandering by lone-sea breakers . . .” Line 2 of Stanza IX reads, “From the dazzling unknown shore . . .” Elgar depicts a calm sea in Variation IX (Nimrod) by citing a four-note incipit from Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. This sonic portrayal of the sea resonates with marine references in O’Shaughnessy’s Ode tied to the lonely artist who conjures new music and new worlds.

“WN” is also a phonetic rendering of Wen, a term defined by Merriam-Webster as “an abnormal growth or a cyst protruding from a surface . . .” During the 1820s, William Cobbett coined the derogatory nickname “The Great Wen” for the city of London. That epithet remained in common usage during Elgar’s lifetime. For example, it appears twice in an 1892 issue of The National Review published (ironically) in London. Cobbett was a staunch advocate for Catholic emancipation and England’s working class, two constituencies associated with Elgar’s upbringing as a Roman Catholic and denizen of the working class. Relying on that peculiar nickname, the acrostic “E CRY WN” may also be decoded as “Elgar, cry ‘London!’” Shortly after his marriage in 1889, Elgar moved to London to launch his career as a professional composer. After encountering many obstacles and setbacks, he retreated back to the provinces to resume the daily drudgery of teaching. Fortunately, Elgar did not abandon his dream and continued to expand his portfolio of new works. A decade later in June 1899, he returned to London in triumph for the premiere of the Enigma Variations under Hans Richter. The overlapping decryptions “Elgar, cry ‘When!?’” and “Elgar, cry ‘London!’” aptly communicate this polarity of his vexation and ascendency.

In addition to the acrostic “E CRY WN,” the remaining initials (AEPAN) from the titles of I, V, and VIII form the anagram “PAEAN”. Merriam-Webster defines paean as “a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph.” That is a fitting description of Luther’s Ein feste Burg, a hymn sung as a spiritual and patriotic paean. As previously mentioned, Heine praised Ein feste Burg as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation,” a national paean of France. In the April 1913 issue of The Lutheran Quarterly, C. J. Kiefer writes that Thomas Carlyle considered Ein feste Burg “the world’s greatest hymn, and says there is something in it like the sound of an Alpine avalanche or the first murmur of an earthquake.” Kiefer adds that Ein feste Burg “. . . has become the national hymn of Germany.”

Elgar’s interest in Ein feste Burg is consistent with his devotion to the German School and reverence for such Lutheran composers as Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Richard Wagner. After the outbreak of the Great War, Elgar could never disclose the hidden melody of the Enigma Variations without the risk of being ostracized from English Society. Anti-German sentiments ran so hot that Jaeger’s widow was forced to change her surname to Hunter. Even the Royal Family deemphasized its German heritage by reinventing itself as the House of Windsor. Ernest Newman supplied an essay about The Spirit of England for the May 1916 issue of The Musical Times that amplified the anti-German hysteria pervading English society during that troubled era. Below is an excerpt from Newman’s screed:

We gladly leave the writing of Hymns of Hate to the race that has shown us in too many other respects also how near its instincts are to those of the barbarian. An older and better civilisation looks to its leading artists for something different from the German froth and foam, bellowing and swagger. We are not “too proud to fight,” but we are too proud to abase our emotions about the war to the level of our bestial foe; to do that would be disloyalty to the memory of our holy dead.

The association between Ein feste Burg and German nationalism readily explains why Elgar refused to talk about the Enigma Variations’ absent Theme during and after the cataclysm of World War I.

The acrostic “E CRY WN” and associated anagram “PAEAN” may be merged into the larger anagram “A WRY PENANCE”.

Merriam-Webster defines penance as “a sacramental rite that is practiced in Roman, Eastern, and some Anglican churches and that consists of private confession, absolution, and a penance directed by the confessor.” Merriam-Webster defines wry as something “ironically humorous.” Elgar was fond of practical jokes that he referred to as japes. His earliest recorded tune is Humoresque written in 1867 in a sketchbook along with the word “Jape.” Merriam-Webster defines jape as “something designed to arouse amusement or laughter.” Elgar's reliance on the battle hymn of the Reformation as the covert Theme of the Variations is ironically humorous in light of his Roman Catholicism.

The use of the word wry in the bridge passages titles anagram is important because it also appears in Elgar’s Liszt Fragment Cipher. In April 1886, Elgar attended a concert at London’s Crystal Palace in honor of Franz Liszt. Elgar penciled eighteen curlicue-like symbols in the margin of his program known today as the Liszt Fragment Cipher. This cryptogram employs the same characters observed in the more famous Dorabella Cipher. The Liszt Fragment Cipher defied decryption for over a century before finally being cracked. Its solution is the phrase, “STRING QUARTET IS WRY.” Elgar used the word “wry” in his correspondence. In a letter to Troyte Griffith dated February 10, 1918, Elgar lamented, “Well, I wish you were here: I have had a long and dreary time and should like a sight and a word, but these wry-necked times make it impossible to move.” Those “wry-necked times” also made it inconceivable for Elgar to divulge the hidden melody of the Enigma Variations.

Summation

Three bridge passages in the Enigma Variations forge a nexus of cryptograms that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. The first bridge passage in bars 18-19 contains the Opus Dei Cipher, the Psalm 46 Ciphers, Tau Cross Ciphers, and various word ciphers embedded within its performance directions. The second bridge passage in bars 184-187 also conceals another sequence of cryptograms. The third bridge passage in bars 305-307 harbors at least fourteen cryptograms. Other ciphers are enciphered collectively by these three bridge passages.

A reassessment of the six titles associated with the three bridge passages identified some remarkable symmetries. The numbers three and six may be combined to reproduce the opus number 36. When reversed, they give the tempo marking for the Enigma Theme, I (C. A. E.), and V (R. P. A.). Three titles consist of six-letter terms found in the Bible: Enigma, Nimrod, and Ysobel. The other three titles are made of initials: C. A. E., R. P. A., and W. N. The six-letter bridge titles form the acrostic “EYN”, a phonetic rendering of Ein which is the first word in the covert Theme’s German title. The remaining three titles consisting of initials generate the acrostic “CRW”, a phonetic realization of crow, a synonym of cry. The verb crow is associated with the crucifixion of Jesus. On the eve of his arrest, Jesus issued a stark prophecy in Matthew 26:34 that “before the cock crow” Peter would deny him thrice.

A bridge offers a place to cross, a word indelibly linked to the crucifixion of Jesus. There were three crosses at his brutal execution as Jesus was crucified between two criminals. Similarly, there are three bridge passages in the Enigma Variations. The letters of the modes used for the first and second bridge passages are G and C, the initials in order for Jesus Christ in Italian (Gesù Cristo). This cipher is consistent with the Italian nomenclature and performance directions dispersed throughout the autographed and published scores. The letters of the modes associated with the third bridge passage are G and E, an anagram of “EG” which is a phonetic rendering of egg. The Easter Egg is a traditional Christian symbol of Christ’s resurrection. Consisting of three bars, the third bridge passage parallels the same tally of days and nights that Jesus spent in the tomb before miraculously rising from the dead. The word egg is spelled out by adjacent note letters throughout the E-flat ostinato accompanying the third Mendelssohn quotation in Variation XIII. The third bridge passage consists of three bars. Its location and length encode two threes that may be merged to form “33”, the traditional age ascribed to Jesus at his death.

Fifteen lowercase letters from the titles of Enigma, Ysobel, and Nimrod yield the anagrams “lamb is mooring ed”. Jesus is the Lamb of God. Mooring may be defined as “an established practice or stabilizing influence.” “Ed” is a short form of Edward, the composer’s first name. Jesus is the conclusive mooring to whom believers fasten and secure their faith. Elgar was born, educated, married, and buried as a Roman Catholic. He dedicated his major sacred works to God by invoking the Jesuit motto “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” (For the Greater Glory of God). A second combination obtained from the lowercase letters igmasobelimrod is “mooring lamb dies.” This anagram expresses a key belief in Roman Catholicism about the sacrificial death of the Lamb of God. The “DEAD G-D” Cipher in Variation XIII reiterates this solution.

When the six bridge movements are listed in order of appearance, they generate the acrostic “E CRY WN”. The initial “E” represents Elgar. “CRY” is a synonym of the verb crow, an acrostic formed by the three bridge movements comprised of initials. The word cry occurs in the ninth stanza of O’Shaughnessy’s Ode, a poem Elgar set to music between 1903 and 1912. “WN” is a phonetic realization of when. The acrostic “E CRY WN” may be decoded as the directive, “Elgar, cry ‘When!?’” This solution conveys Elgar's exasperation with waiting to be accepted and acknowledged by London's musical establishment. “WN” is also a phonetic rendering of Wen, a nickname for London. Consequently, “E CRY WN” may also be read as “Elgar, cry ‘London!’” Following his 1889 marriage in London, Elgar struggled to launch his composing career in that city but was forced to beat a retreat back to Malvern to resume his duties as an instructor of violin, viola, and piano. A decade later, Elgar returned triumphantly to London for the premiere of the Enigma Variations.

After setting aside the initials used to generate the acrostic “E CRY WN”, the remaining initials (AEPAN) from I, V, and VIII may be reshuffled to form the anagram “PAEAN”. A paean is “a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute, thanksgiving, or triumph.” Throughout its history, Ein feste Burg has been sung as a spiritual, patriotic, and military paean. In praising Ein feste Burg as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation,” Heine places that hymn on the same level as the national anthem of France. It is conceivable that Elgar quotes the Enigma Theme, Nimrod, and the Marseilaise to hint at Heine’s comparison of that French paean to Ein feste Burg, the hidden melody of the Enigma Variations. After the outbreak of World War I, Ein feste Burg could never be acknowledged by Elgar as the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations because that hymn was a nationalistic paean of Germany.

The acrostic “E CRY WN” and the anagram “PAEAN” may be consolidated to generate the larger anagram “A WRY PENANCE”. Wry is a synonym for “humorously ironic.” From the very outset, Elgar associated the serious work of composing with humor. On his earliest surviving sketch called Humoresque written in 1867, Elgar appended the word “Jape.” A jape is a practical joke. Elgar employs the word wry in correspondence and his Liszt Fragment Cipher. Penance is a sacramental rite carried out by Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations. There is a profound dichotomy between Elgar’s Roman Catholicism and his reliance on a Protestant anthem as the secret tune of the Enigma Variations. 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

Elgar’s Tasso Fragment Ciphers

“Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio” (sic, 1595)

(I essay much, I hope little, I ask nothing)

Elgar’s paraphrase and translation from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered

The English composer Edward Elgar cites a poetic fragment from Torquato Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) on the last page of the first Finale to the Enigma Variations. Tasso’s epic poem mythologizes the First Crusade (1096–1099) when an army led by valiant Christian knights liberated Jerusalem from Muslim occupation. The poem climaxes in Stanza CXLIV of Canto XX with the knight Godfrey laying down his arms and piously discharging his sacred vow before the Holy Sepulcher of Christ. Elgar’s Italian quotation is penned in black ink followed by “(sic, 1595)”, the name Tasso penciled in brackets sometime later, and an English translation on the reverse page. A facsimile of the autograph score is displayed below:

Autograph Score XIV (E. D. U.) Original Ending with Tasso Paraphrase

Elgar’s use of literature in this case presents three anomalies. First, the quotation is modified from the third to first person. The original passage has seven words and reads, “Brama assai, poco spera e nulla chiede”. Elgar’s first person paraphrase is pared down to six words. Second, Jerusalem Delivered was published in 1581, not 1595 when Tasso died. Third, Elgar’s translation is partly inaccurate as it should read “I desire much” rather than “I essay much.” Elgar was far too fastidious with literary sources to carelessly commit such flagrant errors. A prime example is his parenthetical comment “sic” signifying an awareness of the erroneous year. The inevitable conclusion is that Elgar’s conspicuous errata must be deliberate.

Tasso’s poetry was a fount of inspiration for German romantics like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) who wrote the play Torquato Tasso. Goethe’s poetry is the namesake and inspiration for Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt), a work cited by Elgar in Variation XIII. Franz Liszt (1811–1886) composed his symphonic poem Tasso: Lamento e trionfo (Tasso: Lament and Triumph) as an overture for the play Torquato Tasso to commemorate the centennial of Goethe’s birth. Liszt’s music interested Elgar whose earliest known cryptogram is the Liszt fragment, a baffling string of ciphertext penciled in the margin of a concert program dating from April 1886. It is intriguing that Liszt cites the original phrase from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered in a letter to Olga Von Meyendorff dated February 4, 1873:

    I also know Tasso’s graceful line Bramo assai, poco spero, e nulla chiedo. Young ladies in bouts of melancholy like to apply it to themselves, but for my part I retain only the last two words without concerning myself anymore with the bramare and sperare in this world.

Elgar’s first-person version of the Tasso fragment can be traced to the 1595 book The Most Honourable Tragedie of Sir Richard Grinuile, Knight by Gervase Markham. That book was published in the same year as Tasso’s demise. Like Jerusalem Delivered, Markham’s book memorializes the exploits of a Christian knight.

Markham extols Richard Grenville, a daring British naval commander who was “undeviatingly Protestant”. In his fateful last stand at the Battle of Flores in 1591, Grenville commanded the 46-gun English galleon Revenge when it was captured and sunk by the Spanish fleet. Grenville’s unwavering Protestantism and the sum of 46 guns on the Revenge pose suggestive parallels with Martin Luther (a leading Protestant Reformer) and his martial hymn Ein feste Burg (inspired by Psalm 46). Extensive research verifies that Luther’s rousing song is the covert Theme of the Enigma Variations.

Grenville’s sacrifice at the Battle of Flores shares some discernible parallels with General Gordon’s fate at the Siege of Khartoum. Grenville and Gordon were Protestant. They were British military commanders whose two-syllable names begin with the letter G. They led their forces against overwhelming odds dominated by alien faiths before dying in battle. Grenville resisted the Roman Catholic navy of Imperial Spain in the northern Azores. Gordon defied a Mahdist army of Muslim slavers in Sudan. Following their heroic deaths, Grenville and Gordon were lionized as warriors and martyrs. In 1898, Elgar planned to write a symphony in honor of Gordon. By October 1898, he abruptly changed course and composed the Enigma Variations. That work is based on a famous Protestant hymn imbued with a martial flare that resonates with the Protestant and military characters of Grenville and Gordon.

Could Elgar’s Tasso fragment be cryptography? If so, then honing in on its anomalies is critical for cracking it wide open. As Simon Singh explains in The Code Book, “Cracking a difficult cipher is akin to climbing a sheer cliff face: The cryptanalyst is seeking any nook or cranny that could provide the slightest foothold.” Singh makes a compelling case for tackling ciphers by leveraging their anomalies. Odd features that seem out of place are chinks in a cipher’s armor. Inconsistencies in the Tasso fragment are the keys to unlocking its secrets.

The Tasso Quotation Ciphers

An exhaustive analysis determined that Elgar’s Tasso fragment is a nexus of cryptograms. An elementary example is how it forms part of an acrostic anagram that enciphers the initials of Ein feste Burg. On the final page of the manuscript score with the original ending of Variation XIV, Elgar penned Fine, the Tasso quotation beginning with the word Bramo, and his autograph. The first letters of these three entries form the acrostic anagram “EFB”, the initials of the secret melody. This is not an isolated incident as Elgar encodes the identical initials with another acrostic anagram on the last page of the extended Finale completed in July 1899. The recapitulation of these initials using the same enciphering technique is compelling confirmation that both solutions are authentic and accurate.

Autograph Score XIV. Original Ending “EFB” Ciphers

The anomalous date on the last page of the original Finale — “FEb 18 1898” — furnishes yet another anagram of “EFB.” Elgar finished the orchestration of the Enigma Variations on February 19, 1899, not one year and one day earlier as erroneously indicated on the original Finale. The incorrect completion date marks the anniversary of Luther’s death on February 18, 1546. “FEb” also appears twice on the cover of the manuscript score to denote the start and end dates of the orchestration. The tempo marking for the Enigma Theme is 63 quarter beats per minute, a number that corresponds to Luther’s age of death. Luther’s remains are interred in front of the pulpit of Schlosskirche (Castle Church) in the city of Wittenberg. The full title of Ein feste Burg is emblazoned around the top of the bell tower. Coded references to Luther’s death are huge clues as Luther’s final resting place advertises the title of the hidden melody.

Counting the number of characters from the Tasso fragment in black ink yields some tantalizing results. There are precisely 36 characters excluding spaces in the Tasso quotation — “Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio” — a figure that corresponds to the opus number of the Enigma Variations. That sum rises to 46 when the ten characters from the parenthetical comment in black ink are included — “Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio” (sic, 1595). Elgar penciled in the name Tasso in brackets sometime after the original quotation in black ink. The number 46 is revealing as it matches the chapter from the Psalms that inspired the covert Theme. In a similar manner, Elgar uses seven discrete performance directions with precisely 46 characters to encode the acrostic anagram “EE’s Psalm” in the first bar of the Enigma Theme. Appending the character count generates the more specific solution “EE’s Psalm 46.” Luther referred to his hymn Ein feste Burg as Psalm 46. William Swan Plumer writes in his 1866 book Studies in the Book of Psalms, “In the darkest days of the Reformation, Luther said, ‘Come, let us sing the 46th Psalm, and let them do their worse.”

Elgar’s Tasso quotation obliquely alludes to the Psalms because that word recurs in a popular 19th-century English translation of Jerusalem Delivered by Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (1792–1836). It appears in line 3 of Stanza II from Canto I, “The Angels warbling their celestial psalms”. It surfaces again in line 3 of Stanza XXVIII from Canto VIII, “And in low accents murm’ring mystic psalms”. It emerges a third time in line 6 of Stanza II of Canto XI, “And tuneful psalms with suppliant voices raise”. It is fascinating that the discrete numerals of those Stanza lines (3 and 6) coincide with the opus number of the Enigma Variations.

Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Elgar’s Tasso paraphrase hints at the poetic wellspring for the hidden theme as Ein feste Burg begins with a paraphrase from Psalm 46. One paraphrase hints at another. That is precisely how J. W. Clokey characterizes the lyrics of that hymn on page 104 of his 1896 book David’s Harp in Song and Story. Clokey describes Ein feste Burg as a paraphrase of Psalm 46.

In his 1880 Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Psalms, Professor Thomas Chalmers Murray equates the Psalms to epic poetry that ranks with other great works like Jerusalem Delivered. As he explains in his discourse:

    Psalm lxxviii., with its seventy-two verses, is the longest of the Songs of Asaph, and is one of the most interesting specimens of Hebrew epic poetry.

    Epic poetry . . . is simply narrative poetry, in which the singer clothes with verse the facts or objects, either real or imagined, of the external world which surround him, or of which he has learned from history. In a word, it is objective poetry, differing thus from lyric or subjective poetry in which the artist throws on his canvas only the pictures of the imagination, arising from the subjective passion or emotion of the moment, and which is purely the expression of personal excitement or exaltation. . .

    The epic, you further know, may have its rise among the people, from the recollections which cluster around some eponymous hero, or national epoch; such as the Iliad, the Nibelungen, the Cid, or our own Arthurian Cycle. Or it may be the original product of a poetic artist, whose imagination has cast into new shape the materials of history and tradition; such as Virgil’s “Æneid,” Camoen’s “Lusiad,” and Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered.”

    It has, of late, become a common phrase, in all our histories of literature, that the Shemitic mind is utterly destitute of the creative and fictile faculty, essential to the composition of an epic, and that nowhere in Shemitic literature is an epic to be found. It is one of the astounding statements for which the history of literature is indebted to M. Renan, which, as everything he writes, is presented by him with such grace of style, and apparent fairness, that a layman is first charmed, and then persuaded.

    One would find it difficult, however, to exclude this Psalm from the epic cycle, under any definition of it which could be given. The poet, to whom the history of his people is familiar, reproduces it in an epic song which only fails of being a great one from his fatal didactic habit, which always clips his wings when about to make his highest flight. The truth is that there is not less epic poetry among the Shemitic than other peoples. You need go no further than our Psalter to find no less than a dozen epic songs . . . 

Elgar’s indirect references to the Psalms through the Tasso quotation are supported by an impressive array of acrostic anagrams. A superlative example is the standard abbreviation of Psalm (Ps) formed as an acrostic by the third and fourth words “poco spero”. Tasso’s epic poem is centered in Jerusalem with its earliest settlement called the City of David. The eponym comes from King David, the chief author of the Psalms.

The initials of the first, second, fifth, and sixth words are an acrostic of Banc: “Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio”. Merriam-Webster defines the English word Banc as “a bench on which the judges of a court sit.” David served as king and judge of Israel. Banc is also Old French for bank, an institution where valuables and documents are securely stored in a safe. There are precisely 46 characters in Elgar’s Tasso fragment written in black ink. That figure and the two acrostic anagrams may be combined to produce “Banc Ps 46.” A plausible interpretation of this solution is that Psalm 46 is locked away in Elgar’s contrapuntal vault.

Banc is the antecedent of bank. There are distinct associations between the word bank and Psalm 46. The Whole Book of Psalms, Collected Into English Metre was published in London in 1728. That work only uses the word bank (in its plural form) in verse 3 of Psalm 46. In an 1865 edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan with notes by the Rev. Robert Maguire, there is a scene in Chapter XV where the characters Christian and Hopful encounter a “pleasant river” called “the river of God.” Maguire cites Psalm 46:4 as the foundation for this scene where Bunyan writes, “Now their way lay just upon the bank of the river : here therefore Christian and his companion walked with great delight.” Based on these references, the solution “Psalm 46 bank” harbors subtle references to Psalm 46:3 and 46:4. Elgar associated music with river banks because he sketched material while walking along the River Wye. As he explains in a letter to H. G. Jacks:

Most of my ‘sketches’,—that is to say the reduction of the original thoughts to writing, have been made in the open air. I finished the Wye round about Mordiford & completed many pencil memoranda of compositions on the old bridge, of which I have vivid & affectionate memories.

The letters of Banc may be reshuffled to “can B,” a phonetic realization of the phrase “can be.” Such a pliable treatment is endorsed by Elgar’s use of inventive spellings and the phrase “can be” in some of his letters. The first letters of the Tasso quotation are an acrostic anagram of “can B ps”. When the sum of its 46 characters in black ink is included, the expanded solution is “can B Ps 46.” This may be decoded as “Can be Psalm 46”, a statement that fits with Elgar’s reliance on Ein feste Burg as the covert Theme to the Enigma Variations.

In his 1888 book A New Rendering of the Hebrew Psalms Into English Verse, Abraham Coles devotes considerable attention to Psalm 46. In his introduction to that chapter, he singles out Luther, Ein feste Burg as the Marseillaise of the Reformation, and past “Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre . . .” These references comport with Elgar’s Tasso quotation from a Crusader poem at the end of a symphonic work based covertly on Luther’s Ein feste Burg with Variation XIII dedicated in secret to Christ.

The fourth and sixth words of the Tasso fragment contain an e: “Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio”. These two letters appear to be a coded form of Elgar’s initials (EE). This is consistent with other cryptograms in the Enigma Variations which are marked by those initials. The placement of these two letters in the fourth and sixth words suggests the number 46. It was observed earlier how the third and fourth words are an acrostic of the standard abbreviation for Psalm. The quotation is six words in a foreign language, traits shared by the title of the covert Theme: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Elgar’s inaccurate translation of assai as essay highlights their shared letters (ass). That is remarkable because “ASS” presents the initials for “A Safe Stronghold,” a familiar English translation of Ein feste Burg by Thomas Carlyle. In a 24 October 1898 letter to August Jager, Elgar uses the word “asses” to describe his friends’ imagined attempts at composing:

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?

The Tasso quotation is in Italian. The Italian translation of Psalm is Salmo, a word that may be assembled using five discrete letters from the Tasso quotation: a, l, m, o, and s. There are four As, two Ls, one M, five Os, and three Ss for a total of fifteen available letters. That sum is conspicuous as there are fifteen movements in the Enigma Variations. Those letters from the Tasso fragment are highlighted in yellow: “Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio”. The frequencies of each letter (a = 3, l = 2, m = 1, o = 5, s = 3) permit 120 possible combinations of Salmo (4 x 2 x 1 x 5 x 3 = 120). Fifteen out of 34 letters represent 44 percent of the text.

Fifteen letters from the Tasso fragment generate over a hundred anagrams of Salmo. Seventeen letters from the quotation are set aside: One B, two Cs, two Es, two Gs, one H, three Is, one N, two Ps, two Rs, and one U. When the sums fifteen and seventeen are paired together, they form the year 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the door of Castle Church. The seventeen unused letters may be reshuffled to form 175 three-word anagrams, virtually all of which are nonsensical. Only five anagrams use the word Burg, the third word from the covert Theme’s German title. One of these five three-word anagrams stands out: “Epic ciphering Burg.” Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered is an epic poem. Ciphering means to transcribe a message into secret writing or code. Burg is the third word in the title Ein feste Burg. This anagram suggests that Tasso’s epic poem enciphers references to the secret melody of the Enigma Variations. As will be shown, my original research uncovered multiple confirmations of this decryption in 19th-century English translations of Jerusalem Delivered.

As he lay dying at Sant’Onofrio monastery in Rome, Tasso sang psalms with his confessor and other Roman Catholic Fathers. Sensing his impending death, Tasso began to recite Psalm 30:6 from the Biblia Vulgata, “In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum . . .” The numerals 3 and 6 recall the opus number 36. This passage appears in Protestant translations of Psalm 31:5 as “Into your hand I commit my spirit . . .” Moments before he died on the cross, Jesus cried out this passage as his seventh and final saying. Remarkably, Martin Luther recited that same Psalm multiple times on the eve of his death. The incorrect year of the Tasso quotation and the erroneous completion date point to the deaths of Tasso (1595) and Luther (February 18). A common theme shared by Tasso, Luther, and Jesus is that they recited the same Psalm just before their deaths. Jesus is the secret friend whose sacrificial death is memorialized in Variation XIII and whose name is cited in the second stanza of Ein feste Burg.

Tasso Fragment Titles Ciphers

Recent research uncovered various English renderings of Ein feste Burg in different translations of Jerusalem Delivered. One notable example is an 1828 English adaption by John Joshua (1751–1828), Earl of Carysfort. In his translation of Canto XIX, Joshua employs the phrase “a mighty fortress” in line six of Stanza LIV. This description is for the Tower of David, the last remaining citadel in Jerusalem vanquished by the Crusaders.

Joshua served in various offices under Lord Grenville, a surname linked to the Tasso paraphrase in Markham’s 1595 book about Sir Richard Grenville. In 1853, Frederick H. Hedge translated the title of Ein feste Burg as A Mighty Fortress. Hedge’s popular English title may have been influenced by Joshua’s translation of Tasso’s magnum opus.

The Mendelssohn fragments in Variation XIII are set in the keys of A-flat major, F minor, and E-flat major. The letters of those three keys are an anagram of “FAE”, the acronym of a German romantic motto “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely) coined by the famed violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). In a remarkable convergence, Joachim’s initials “JJ” correspond to those for John Joshua. One of Elgar’s youthful ambitions was to become a famous concert violinist like Joachim.

A 1874 translation of Ein feste Burg is “A Fortress Strong” by Edward Thring (1821–1887). He translated Luther’s famous hymn for the Uppingham School Hymn Book where he served as Headmaster between 1853 and 1887. He was the brother of Godfrey Thring (1823–1903), an Anglican clergyman and a composer of hymns. It is conceivable that Thring drew inspiration from translations of Jerusalem Delivered by Hunt and Wiffen.

An 1818 English edition by John Higgs Hunt (1780–1859) employs the phrase “a fortress strong” in Canto IV. Hunt was ordained in 1815 and served as Vicar of Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, from 1823 until his passing in 1859.

An 1824 edition of Jerusalem Delivered translated by J. H. Wiffen uses the phrase “a fortress strong” in line three of Stanza LXVII from Canto I:

In an 1826 volume, Wiffen uses the phrase “a fortress strong” in line 8 of Stanza CIV from Canto XVIII:

In his synopsis of Canto XVIII, the Reverend John Higgs Hunt uses the phrase “a strong tower” in his 1818 edition. This reference is to the Tower of David named after the king who authored Psalm 46.

In Canto XIX of his sweeping epic Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso describes a battle within the city when the crusading knights Rinaldo and Godfrey pursue Sultan Solyman and King Aladine from the Temple Mount to the Tower of David. In Canto XX, Raymond (the count of Toulouse) slays King Aladine and hoists the Christian standard over the Tower of David. This is the very citadel described as “a strong tower” by the Reverend J. H. Hunt (1818), and “a mighty fortress” by John Joshua (1828).

J. H. Wiffen’s translation features the phrase “strong tower” in Stanza XC of Canto VII:

The partial English title of the covert Theme is followed by the word essays. That word mirrors Elgar’s mistranslation of assai as essay on the manuscript score. It is conceivable that he incorrectly translated assai as essay to hint at the covert Theme’s title in Wiffen’s translation of Jerusalem Delivered. 

Elgar’s youthful obsession with reading ensured he would have been familiar with these 19th-century English translations of Jerusalem Delivered. He recalls his intensive reading regimen during an illustrated interview by Rudolph De Cordova published in a 1904 issue of The Strand Magazine:

I had the good fortune to be thrown among an unsorted collection of old books. There were books of all kinds, and all distinguished by the characteristic that they were for the most part incomplete. I busied myself for days and weeks arranging them. I picked out the theological books, of which there were a great many, and put them on one side. Then I made a place for the Elizabethan dramatists, the chronicles including Barker’s and Hollinshed’s, besides a tolerable collection of old poets and translations of Voltaire and all sorts of things up to the eighteenth century. Then I began to read. I used to get up at four or five o’clock in the summer and read—every available opportunity found me reading. I read till dark. I finished reading every one of those books—including the theology. The result of that reading has been that people tell me that I know more of life up to the eighteenth century than I do of my own time, and it is probably true. 

Elgar’s career as a composer was assured when the Wagnerian protégé Hans Richter (1843–1916) consented to conduct the London premiere of the Enigma Variations in June 1899. Following that triumph, Elgar was urged by Richter and August Jaeger (the dedicatee of Variation IV Nimrod) to expand the last movement. Elgar initially balked at this request. In a letter dated June 30, 1899, he wrote to Jaeger, “You won’t frighten me into writing a logically developed movement where I don’t want one by quoting other people! Selah!” Jaeger was privy to the secret melody and would have perceived Elgar’s allusion to the covert Theme because “Selah” appears at the end of verses 3, 7, and 11 of Psalm 46.

Fortunately, Elgar soon relented and sketched a 96 bar extension to the Finale between June 30 and July 20. Maestro Leonard Slatkin does a masterful job comparing the original ending with the revised version. Elgar capped off his new ending with a quotation from the poem Elegiac Verse from Longfellow’s 1882 book In the Harbor: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.” Longfellow was clearly on Elgar’s mind when he put the finishing touches to the Enigma Variations in July 1899. Longfellow’s prose and poetry served as a potent catalyst for Elgar’s musical output.

Like the Mendelssohn quotations in Variation XIII, this gesture intimates that Longfellow also cites the covert Theme in his poetry. In his trilogy Christus: A Mystery, Longfellow eulogizes Martin Luther by citing each stanza of Ein feste Burg punctuated by his own verse. Longfellow’s unique translation of the first line from Luther’s hymn is, “Our God, a Tower of strength is he, a goodly wall and weapon . . .” Remarkably, Elgar encoded the initials of Ein feste Burg as an acrostic anagram on the last page of the extended Finale.

Enigma Variations Master Score Extended Finale Last Page “EFB” Acrostic Anagram

Richter’s endorsement of the Enigma Variations presented new opportunities for Elgar to compose more serious and large-scale works. As a token of his gratitude, Elgar presented Richter with a copy of Longfellow’s 1839 novel Hyperion: A Romance. In an October 1899 letter accompanying the book, Elgar explained, “I send you the little book about which we conversed & from which I, as a child, received my first idea of the great German nations.” Richter’s limited command of English prevented him from appreciating the invaluable contents of Elgar’s gift. Little did the Maestro realize that ensconced in the final chapter of that novel are the answers to Elgar’s enigmas. Hyperion furnishes the title of the covert principal Theme, the name of its composer, and the identity of Elgar’s anonymous friend depicted in Variation XIII. Elgar suspected that the answers to his enigmas would soon be discovered because he literally gave away the answers.

Summation

Elgar penned an Italian paraphrase from Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered at the conclusion of the original Finale. Three anomalies associated with that poetic fragment intimate the existence of ciphers. This survey found that Elgar’s anomalous Tasso quotation is a nexus of cryptograms that divulge the initials of Ein feste Burg, its scriptural foundation in Psalm 46, various English translations of the hymn’s title, and the secret friend’s identity. Like the German title Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, Elgar’s Tasso quotation is six words in a foreign language. Elgar’s Tasso paraphrase suggests how Luther paraphrases Psalm 46 at the beginning of his hymn Ein feste Burg.

Tasso’s epic poem alludes to the Psalms which contain some epic poetry. The quotation forms part of an acrostic anagram that encodes the initials “EFB”. The incorrect year next to the Tasso quotation is the year of his death (1595), a clue that resolves the erroneous completion date marking the anniversary of Luther’s death (February 18). Luther’s final resting place is Castle Church which has the complete title of Ein feste Burg emblazoned around the upper rim of its bell tower. Elgar’s coded references to their deaths hint at the Psalms because as Tasso and Luther sensed mortality’s tightening grip, they quoted Psalm 30:6 from the Latin Vulgate. Remarkably, the first and last numerals from that scriptural reference form 36, the opus number of the Enigma Variations.

The original Tasso quotation and parenthetical addendum are written in black ink with a total of 46 characters. That sum correlates with the chapter from the Psalms that inspired Ein feste Burg. There are 36 characters in the Tasso quotation, a figure that matches the opus number of the Enigma Variations. The word psalms appears in Cantos I, VIII, and XI in Wiffen’s English translation of Jerusalem Delivered. Jerusalem is called the City of David, an eponym drawn from the primary author of the Psalms. Elgar’s incorrect translation of assai as essay subtly emphasizes their shared letters (ass). Those are the initials for “A Safe Stronghold,” Carlyle’s well-known English translation of Ein feste Burg. Elgar’s friends depicted in the Enigma Variations became the proverbial butt of one of his wordplays when he referred to them in a letter as “asses” regarding their idiosyncratic attempts to compose. 

The third and fourth words from the Tasso quotation are an acrostic of “ps”, the standard abbreviation for Psalm. The remaining initials from the first, second, fifth, and sixth words generate the acrostic Banc, a phonetic spelling of Bank. These acrostic anagrams combined with the character sum generate “Banc ps 46”. When read as “Bank Psalm 46”, this decryption clarifies that Psalm 46 is locked away in Elgar’s contrapuntal vault. Banc may be reorganized as “can B,” a phonetic rendering of the phrase “Can be”. This permits the phrase “can B ps 46” which translates as “Can be Psalm 46”. This alternative solution raises the prospect of a famous Protestant anthem that Luther equated with Psalm 46. The appearance of the letter e in the fourth and sixth words of the Tasso paraphrase suggests a coded form of Elgar’s initials as well as the number 46.

An analysis of the Tasso quotation illustrates how fifteen of its letters form 120 anagrams of Salmo, the Italian word for Psalm. Its remaining seventeen letters generate the three-word anagram “Epic ciphering Burg.” The letter counts fifteen and seventeen may be merged to form 1517, the year when Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the door of Castle Church. The anagram “Epic ciphering Burg” suggests that Tasso’s epic poem encodes the title of the hidden melody. Following that lead, an analysis of various 19th-century English translations of Jerusalem Delivered identified three English renditions of Ein feste Burg. They are:

1. A Mighty Fortress
2. A Fortress Strong
3. A Strong Tower

These three-word phrases predate their corresponding Enligh versions of Ein feste Burg, suggesting that translators were influenced by earlier translations of Tasso’s epic poem. Elar’s voracious reading habits assured he was familiar with popular English translations of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. Although Elgar did not conceive of the Tasso paraphrase, he undoubtedly appreciated its immense cryptographic possibilities. Independent research verifies that his citation of a fragment from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered is a sophisticated multitiered cryptogram that encodes mutually consistent and definitive answers to the Enigma Variations. The decryptions of these Tasso fragment ciphers are too specific and compatible to be fortuitous or random. To learn more about the secrets of that symphony masterpiece, 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

Bell Tower of Castle Church (Wittenberg)