Who's "Hus" in Elgar's Dorabella Cipher?

1894 engraving of the execution of Jan Hus

Today you will roast a lean goose, but a hundred years from now you will hear a swan sing, whom you will leave unroasted and no trap or net will catch him for you.

Jan Hus prophesying at his martyrdom in 1415

The English composer Edward Elgar (1857–1934) and his wife enjoyed a long weekend visit in mid-July 1897 with the family of Reverend Alfred Penny (1845–1934), the rector of St. Peter’s Collegiate Church in Wolverhampton. Caroline Alice Elgar (1848–1920) was a childhood friend of the Reverend’s wife, Mary Frances Baker, who married the widower in 1895 and became the stepmother of his only daughter, Dora Penny (1874–1964). On their return to Great Malvern, Alice penned a letter thanking the Penny family for their hospitality. Elgar added a short enciphered missive to his wife’s correspondence, addressing it to “Miss Penny” on the back. The incisive salutation is a classic Elgarian pun. “Miss” is an honorific title for an unmarried woman or girl, but it also functions as the verb “miss” to express regret or sadness over a person’s absence. Elgar was clearly missing Miss Penny when he created his cryptographic pièce de résistance. Dora was unable to decipher Elgar’s enigmatic script and filed it away for over 40 years before eventually publishing it in her 1937 biography.

Elgar’s coded message to Dora Penny is popularly known as the Dorabella Cipher. The name comes from Variation X of the Enigma Variations (1899), a movement dedicated to her that bears the title “Dorabella.” Elgar procured that playful pseudonym from a soprano role for a young unmarried woman in the opera Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. An operatic nickname for Dora was befitting because she was an avid vocalist who sang in the Wolverhampton Choir Society and her father’s rectory choir. As she recalled in her biography, “I was so mixed up with tunes in those days; Choral music, Church music, and orchestral music – and my own solo-singing, scenes from opera, songs, ballads –, and so on.”

The Dorabella Cipher has 87 curlicue symbols arranged in three rows of varying character lengths followed by a fourth row providing the date “July 14 [18]97”. There are 29 characters in row one, 31 in row two, 27 in row three, and 8 in row four. A conspicuous dot appears over the sixth symbol in row three. Three others appear in row four with small dots to the right of “1” and “4”, and a larger dot affixed to the bend in “7”. In all, there are 87 symbols, four rows, four dots, four letters, and four numbers on the Dorabella Cipher.

Fortunately, the key for translating this confounding cast of characters into recognizable cleartext is preserved in one of Elgar’s surviving notebooks. A facsimile of his cipher key is displayed below:

Elgar’s notebook key (1924)

Elgar sketched three distinct glyphs relying on the lower case c as the primary building block. His motive for selecting that particular letter is easy to surmise because c is the initial for cipher and cryptogram. There is persuasive evidence in support of this hypothesis as Elgar wrote some of those identical symbols around the word “Cryptogram” on an index card dating from 1896.

With his three prototypes assembled from one, two, and three stacked cs, Elgar systematically arranged them into eight different triplets using various angles and orientations to generate 24 alphabetic avatars. Elgar assigned the alphabet’s 26 letters to these 24 odd characters by conflating i with j and u with v. Combining similar letters is a standard convention in cryptography. The resemblance of some of Elgar's curlicue characters to the capital cursive “E” from his initials is deliberate, embellishing the cipher with his imprimatur in contrasting guises. Relying on Elgar’s notebook key, the Dorabella Cipher converts into the following unintelligible cleartext:

Elgar used twenty symbols from his lineup of twenty-four characters, omitting those for M, N, O, and Z. The three contiguous absent letters (M, N, O) are an anagram of nom, the French term for “name.” That word appears in nom de plume which is a pseudonym or pen name. Elgar’s signature is conspicuously absent from his coded missive. Could this nom anagram sourced from his missing letters be a clue that Elgar’s name is hidden within the ciphertext? The absence of these four letters parallels the structural emphasis placed on that number by four rows, four dots, four letters, and four numbers. Elgar is clearly hinting at the importance of the number four. One possible explanation could be that the fourth letter of the alphabet is D, the initial for Dora.

Cryptographers are perplexed by the Dorabella Cipher’s seemingly incoherent cleartext. In his history of unbroken cryptograms titled Unsolved!, mathematics professor Craig P. Bauer concedes that the Dorabella Cipher appears to be a simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher (MASC) in which one letter is replaced by one symbol. Gaps between words are excised to make the code even more difficult to unravel. Like modern ciphers, ancient Greek and Classical Latin text omit spaces between words in a practice called scriptio continua. Bauer laments that when applied to the Dorabella Cipher, none of the standard techniques for solving a MASC yield any sensible or credible results. Even the most advanced computer programs fail to make any inroads. Bauer briefly describes and dismisses purported solutions by Eric Sams, Tony Gaffney, and Tim S. Roberts. He laments that the Dorabella Cipher has not yet been solved because Elgar’s system of encipherment must be “something more complicated.”

Recent cryptanalysis of the seemingly impregnable Dorabella Cipher determined that its dotted symbols encode solutions in Latin (AMDG) and German (Magd). Elgar penned the Latin abbreviation “AMDG” on some of his master scores as a sacred dedication. Used to refer to a young unmarried woman, the German word Magd means “maid” and “virgin.” This solution is consistent with the recipient of Elgar’s coded missive, Miss Dora Penny, the young unmarried daughter of Reverend Penny. The Dorabella Cipher also presents some English words as the note is addressed to “Miss Penny” and the month is shown as “July”. Remarkably, these three languages — English, Latin, and German — are an acrostic anagram of the first three letters of ELGAR. The linguistic sophistication of the Dorabella Cipher easily explains why experts failed to penetrate it since they naively assumed it was confined to English. Such a unidimensional mindset is utterly incompatible with an autodidactic polymath like Elgar.

Three of the four absent letters (M, N, O, Z) from the Dorabella Cipher are an anagram of nom, the French word for “name.” Remarkably, the dot above the sixth character in row three of the Dorabella Cipher pinpoints a familiar nickname for Elgar. Relying on Elgar’s notebook key, the raw decryption of the character below the dot in row three is the letter E. A single dot in International Morse Code is also E. Consequently, the dot and the symbol encode Elgar’s initials (EE). Immediately following the encoded E, the next two characters encode the letters D and U/V. The small dot above the ciphertext in the third row tags the text sequence “E D U” which is Elgar’s primary nickname.

Elgar’s wife coined the pet name “Edoo” using the first three letters of the German version of her husband’s forename, Eduard. Elgar assigned this pseudonym to his musical self-portrait in the Enigma Variations (1899), the martial Finale with the title “E. D. U.” Dora Penny was familiar with this pet name as she spent a substantial amount of time around the Elgar family and heard Alice call her husband “Edoo.” This fragmentary decryption confirms that the Dorabella Dots Dedication Cipher is covertly signed by its author. The solution is consistent with the feasibility of spelling nom from absent letters in the cipher and the glaring absence of Elgar’s signature from his note. The discovery of Elgar’s nickname is consistent with other cryptograms in the Enigma Variations that are similarly tagged by his name or initials.

Far from being a random assortment of letters as posited by investigators like Keith Massey, the cleartext presents a coded form of Elgar's name expertly woven into the fabric of the cleartext. Elgar made it an obvious place to look because of the anomalous dot above the sixth character in row three. This “EDU” Dot Cipher furnishes the author's signature conspicuously missing from his missive to Miss Penny. It is astonishing that his signature remained undetected since the cipher was first publicized 85 years ago. One reasonably wonders what else the so-called experts like Massey failed to detect lurking just beneath the surface of the Dorabella Cipher. After all, Elgar's encoded signature was not difficult to spot.

The Dorabella Dot Ciphers encode the abbreviation (A. M. D. G.) for the Latin motto “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,” the German word for maid and virgin (Magd), and Elgar’s pseudonym (EDU). The cleartext also has five discrete Spanish words: Peca, ir, cerré, se, and ser. In order of appearance, the first (peca) in row one means “spot” and is directly relatable to the conspicuous dots on the Dorabella Cipher. The second (ir) in row one means “go,” suggesting to go to the singular spot above the sixth character in row three where Elgar’s nickname is enciphered. The third (cerré) in row two means “I closed,” an apt characterization of closing up a message via a cipher. The position of cerré in the second row overlays Elgar’s pseudonym in the third row, visually confirming it is Elgar who is issuing this cryptic statement. The fourth (se) in rows two and three means “I know”, affirming that he knows the solution to his cryptogram. The fifth (nullser) in row three means “to be,” a verb that could serve a clue about the cipher’s construction or key.

My cryptanalysis of the Dorabella Cipher found it has ciphers that encode solutions in Latin, German, and Spanish. Elgar studied Latin and German, but not Spanish. The discovery of these Spanish words in the Dorabella cleartext indicates the participation of Elgar’s wife who was fluent in that Romance language. These cryptograms evaded detection because the experts naively presumed Elgar’s message was confined to English. Additional research uncovered another three-letter name immediately preceding Elgar’s pseudonym in row three where characters 63-65 spell “h-u/v-s”. Those cleartext letters may be read as HUS and HVS. That same name is also produced by characters 50-52 in the second row of ciphertext. 

Elgar provides a vital clue regarding the identity of “Hus” by immediately preceding the first occurrence in row two by characters 48-49 that encode “fr”. Those letters are the standard abbreviation for the Roman Catholic title “Father.” For example, Jerrold Northrop Moore employs this abbreviation in his book Edward Elgar: A Creative Life. Consequently, the cleartext “f r h u/v s” in the second row may be read as “Father Hus.”

Who is Father Hus? Jan Hus (c. 1372–1415) was an influential Czech theologian whose ideas sparked the Bohemian Reformation led by the Hussites, a precursor of Protestantism. Anglicized as John Hus, he was heavily indebted to the writings of John Wycliffe (c. 1320–1384), a priest and seminary professor at the University of Oxford. Wycliffe is recognized as the morning star of the English Reformation that paved the way for the establishment of the Anglican Church. He championed the supremacy of scripture, rejected extra-biblical traditions such as simony and indulgences, and called for the translation of the Bible into the vernacular so it may be read by the people. Wycliffe was the first to translate the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. For these beliefs that led him to question the infallibility of the papacy, Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic at the Council of Constance.

Henry Morley, Emeritus Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London in 1891, trace a continuity of thought between John Wycliffe and John Hus:

In Wycliffe, the young students who came, full of zeal, from Prague to Oxford, found a power beyond that of Milicz and Janow. They studied his philosophy, they listened reverently to his interpretations of the Scripture, and for three years he was a living presence to them. After his death he lived in his writings. The Bohemians copied them and took them home to Prague. The soil was ready for the seed: and among the Bohemians, John Wycliffe’s spirit passed into the body of John Hus.

Like Wycliffe, Hus was studiously unconventional. At the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, he preached in the Czech language rather than Latin as required by the Roman Catholic Church. His church could accommodate three thousand people, and he delivered more than three thousand sermons during his tenure at Bethlehem Chapel. He refused to don priestly vestments because it promoted an artificial division between clergy and laity. When celebrating the Eucharist, Hus administered both bread and wine in defiance of Roman Catholic convention that arbitrarily reserved the wine exclusively for priests. He championed congregational singing and called for the translation of the Bible into the vernacular so it may be consulted directly by the people. These same beliefs were embraced a century later by the Augustian monk and professor, Martin Luther.

Hus was a trailblazer who exited life’s stage in a literal blaze of glory. He paid the supreme penalty for his convictions by being stripped of his priesthood, excommunicated, and burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. The significance of Hus to Christianity is affirmed by his inclusion in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. As the flames and smoke rose around his funeral pyre, he issued a prophetic wordplay on his Czech name “Hus” which means “goose” in Czech. The idiom “Your goose is cooked” probably originated from this event. Hus proclaimed to onlookers gawking at his grim execution:

Today you will roast a lean goose, but a hundred years from now you will hear a swan sing, whom you will leave unroasted and no trap or net will catch him for you.

Many interpret his avian prophecy to portend the rise of Martin Luther. A little over a century after Hus’ death, Luther launched the German Reformation when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses on the door of Castle Church in late October 1517. While scouring the library stacks at the University of Erfurt, Luther was surprised to stumble across sermons by Hus. As Luther later recalled, “I was overwhelmed with astonishment. I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill.” Luther was so impressed by Hus’ scholarship that he translated some of his letters and theological writings from the original Latin into German. Luther publicly acknowledged, “We are all Hussites without realizing it.” For Luther, Hus exemplified the original Christian faith espoused by early Church fathers like Paul and Augustine. In contemporaneous paintings and prints, Luther is shown with a swan to represent the fulfillment of Hus’ final prophecy.

The conviction of Hus for heresy was partly orchestrated by Johann Zachariae of Erfurt, a friar in the same Augustinian order that welcomed Luther. Zachariae’s grave is located in front of the high altar of the Augustinian Church in Erfurt. That is the very place where Luther prostrated himself in 1506 when he was inducted into that order. In a profoundly ironic act, Luther consecrated his life to God on the grave of one of Hus’ assassins. An engraving shows Luther symbolically standing next to Hus as they administer the Eucharist. “Hus” is spelled “HVS” using the medieval Latin alphabet. The cleartext sequence “h-u/v-s” in the second and third rows of the Dorabella Cipher permits that identical spelling. Elgar was educated in Latin and would have easily recognized the alternative spelling of “Hus” as “Hvs.”

Another engraving shows a symbolic torch of truth being passed from Wycliffe to Hus and then to Luther. Like the previous example, “Hus” is spelled as “HVS”.

The name “Hus” is not the only Czech word embedded in the seemingly random Dorabella Cipher cleartext. Characters 65-68 in row three spell sedu, the Czech word for seat. This word bridges “HUS” and “EDU” in row three.

Is there some rationale for why Elgar would encode the Czech word for seat? The answer may be found in the trial of Hus at the Council of Constance. In his book Jan Hus Between Time And Eternity, professor Thomas A. Fudge describes how five years of legal proceedings against Hus culminated in a sermo generalis that condemned him as a heresiarch. During this malicious diatribe, Hus was forced to sit on an elevated seat so the assembly could gawk and glare at the condemned. Professor Fudge describes the proceedings:

On a Saturday morning, Hus was made to sit on an elevated seat in the Cathedral of Constance so everyone could see him clearly. The sermon delivered by the Bishop of Lodi took its theme from a phrase extracted out of context from Romans 6:6: “The sinful body should be destroyed.” That Pauline sentence was made to act as a proof text for arguing heretics and heresies must be suppressed. Drawing upon patristic sources, the bishop pointed out that diseased sheep must be expelled from the sheepfold to prevent the entire flock from becoming infected. Moreover, a small fire must be immediately extinguished to save the entire house from destruction. By implication, heretics are infected animals and uncontrollable fires. They must be contained and condemned. Toleration of such threats was tantamount to ecclesiastical misfeasance.

A second explanation for a coded “seat” reference within the Dorabella Cipher’s cleartext may be connected to an incident recounted by Dora about Elgar’s visit in July 1897. She describes his arrival and the events that soon unfolded in her memoir:

The train came in and, of course, not having seen one another for an age, the two friends [Alice and Mary] fell upon each other and Mr. Elgar was left for me to look after. I quickly found out that music was the last thing he wanted to talk about. I think we talked about football . . .
He came into the drawing-room before luncheon: ‘Hullo, there’s the black piano. Let’s see how its inside has stood the move.’
    Although I had not left school very long I had heard a number of good pianists, but I had never heard anything quite like this. He didn’t play like a pianist, he almost seemed to play like a whole orchestra. It sounded full without being loud and he contrived to make you hear other instruments joining in. It fascinated me . . .
    After luncheon that first day we all went to the drawing-room for coffee and he took hold of a high-backed wooden chair to bring it forward—and its back came off.

    ‘Here’s another old friend and its back still comes off. Why don’t you mend it?’
    I said it was a job which got put off to another day.
    ‘Well, this is the day. Got any tools?’
    So, after coffee, bearing with us the chair, we departed to my sitting-room and started on it.
    ‘Now clearly understand,’ he said, ‘if this is a success I mended it; if it’s a failure you did it.’
    That, I think, sealed our friendship.

In this charming anecdote, Elgar likens a chair to an old friend. More significantly, he and Dora became fast friends over a derelict chair. One of the synonyms for chair is seat. Elgar’s Czech camouflage ensured his cleartext reference to a seat remained transparently concealed.

The inclusion of some Spanish words in the Dorabella Cipher’s cleartext may have been motivated by an episode from Hus’ imprisonment. A Spanish Minorite Friar and Chaplain to King Ferdinand of Aragon, Fra Andreas Didachus de Moxena, pretended to be a lowly simple monk when he repeatedly interrogated Jan Hus during his incarceration in the dungeon of a Dominican monastery. He carried out this ruse in an attempt to dupe Hus into committing heresy in the seclusion of his cell. Hus refused to fall for such a transparent ruse.

Why would Elgar encode the name of a proto-reformer in a message to Dora Penny? There are unmistakable parallels between Dora Penny’s father and Hus who were educated in theology, ordained as ministers, and served as rectors. Raised in the Anglican tradition, Dora would have known about the life and legacy of John Hus. She was an active participant in congregational singing, a means of educating the people about God and the scriptures through song. Hus was a proponent of congregational singing. On his way to the stake to be burned alive, he sang psalms and responsories.

Would Elgar have known about Jan Hus? Living and working in a predominantly Anglican society enhanced that probability. His access to an eclectic library during his youth also likely introduced him to that Bohemian reformer. As Elgar would later recollect:

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 had an interest in Reformist literature. For example, in a letter he wrote, “I found a lovely old volume ‘Tracts Against Popery’ – I appeased Alice by saying I bought it to prevent other people seeing it - but it wd . make a cat laugh.” Elgar’s wife was born into a prominent Anglican family and was still practicing that faith when they married in 1889. In response to her decision to marry beneath her social status and outside of her faith, the family retaliated by writing her out of the will. Alice’s influence on the Dorabella Cipher is evident by the appearance of some Spanish words in the cleartext. Her knowledge of Anglican Church history surely included an awareness of the connection between Wycliffe and Hus. For this reason, she was undoubtedly instrumental in commending Hus as a worthy subject to encipher within the cleartext.

Like Hus, Elgar was a serious student of the Bible. His friend Billy Reed remarked that Elgar’s “knowledge of the Bible and the Apocrypha was profound.” Elgar’s personal library held many translations of the Bible and biblical commentaries. He served for over a decade as an organist at St. George's Catholic Church where congregational singing in English was common. He composed sacred choral works in the English language and set many biblical passages to music in works like Lux Christi, The Apostles, and The Kingdom. He attended both Catholic and Protestant services. One of his personal heroes was General Gordon, a high Anglican. He befriended Roman Catholics and Protestants. For example, the majority of his friends depicted in the Enigma Variations were Anglican. Like Luther, Elgar could claim to be a Hussite without ever fully realizing it. The pairing of “Hus” with “EDU” in the third row of the Dorabella Cipher favors this conclusion.

My cryptanalysis of the Dorabella Cipher found it employs at least five different languages: Czech, English, German, Latin, and Spanish. Elgar’s use of five languages is an effective strategy for hardening his cipher against decryption. The experts were so convinced that the Dorabella Cipher had to be solely in English that they never bothered to check for Czech. That prospect did not even occur to me until I stumbled on the cleartext in row two that unveils “Father Hus.” More work remains to be done as the complete message of the Dorabella Cipher has yet to be decoded. The available evidence suggests that it consists of words in multiple languages. The added complexity of a polyglot cryptogram will it far more onerous to decrypt. To learn more about Elgar’s obsession with cryptography, 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 Enigma Score Acrostic Anagram Ciphers

Variations

for orchestra

composed by

Edward Elgar

Op. 36

Title on the autograph score of the Enigma Variations

Edward Elgar produced his symphonic 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 opening theme dubbed “Enigma,” the work is popularly referred to as the Enigma Variations. Elgar explained the Theme is called “Enigma” because it is a counterpoint to a famous melody that is not heard but can play “through and over” the Variations. This absent tune is the cornerstone underlying the entire work, a subject that has provoked a prolonged debate about the correct melodic solution.

Some contend there is no solution by insinuating Elgar concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, practical joke, or marketing ploy. Others take Elgar at his word and accept the challenge that there is a famous melody lurking behind the Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. Regardless of what side is taken in this debate, conventional scholarship insists the solution cannot be known with certainty because Elgar allegedly took his secret to the grave in February 1934. They insist Elgar never wrote down the answer for posterity to discover. However, this opinion overlooks Elgar’s expertise in cryptography, the discipline of coding and decoding secret messages. His obsession with that esoteric art merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! A compulsion for cryptography is a reigning pillar of Elgar’s psychological profile. This incontestable fact raises the possibility that the solution is encoded in the score of the Enigma Variations.

A decade of trawling the Enigma Variations has netted over one hundred cryptograms in diverse forms that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may seem extravagant, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s lifelong obsession for ciphers. More significantly, their solutions provide definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the melodic foundation for the ensuing movements? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by Martin Luther. What is Elgar’s “dark saying” ensconced within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher embedded in its inaugural six bars cordoned off by an oddly placed double barline. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith. The cryptographic evidence supporting these discoveries is diverse, decisive, and prodigious.

The Acrostic Anagrams Title Page Cipher

With so many ciphers interwoven throughout the Enigma Variations, it makes sense to sift its title for other ciphers. Recent research uncovered various anagrams encoded by character sums from each title word utilizing an elementary number-to-letter key (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc.). These anagrammatic decryptions generate four sets of initials: JC, IHC, BC, and EFB. The first three sets (JC, IHC, BC) identify Jesus Christ as the secret friend depicted in Variation XIII. The fourth set (EFB) gives the initials for Ein feste Burg, the title of the covert Theme. The encoding of so many sets of initials is consistent with the majority of the Enigma Variations’ titles that also consist of initials. Could there be other cryptograms within the original title of the Variations? The title page from the autograph score is exhibited below:

The original title of the Enigma Variations appears as follows:

Variations

for orchestra

composed by

Edward Elgar

Op. 36

Elgar's penchant for cryptography invites a cryptanalytic approach to detect and decrypt prospective ciphers. As previously observed, the character sums in each word encipher initial anagrams that identity the covert Theme and the secret friend. The titles’ initials may also conceal yet another cipher. This hunch is bolstered by an acrostic anagram ensconced within the seven discrete performance directions of the Enigma Theme’s first bar. Those seven performance directions encode “EE’s Psalm.”

This cryptogram consists of precisely 46 characters, a sum that alludes to the 46th chapter of the Psalms. Martin Luther obtained the title of Ein feste Burg from Psalm 46, a chapter known as “Luther’s Psalm.” The Enigma Theme’s Psalm 46 Cipher elevates the prospect that the Variations’ original title harbors some acrostic anagrams.

There are nine terms in the Variations’ title. These may be reduced to the following case-sensitive initials: V, f, o, c, b, E, E, O, and 3. There are four lower cases letters, three capital letters, and one number. The first significant acrostic anagram to be detected was “Efb,” the initials for Ein feste Burg.

This acrostic anagram is formed by tracing a line from the initial “E” in “Edward” upwards to the “f” in “for” over to the “b” in “by.” The configuration of this acrostic anagram outlines the glyph for a capital “L” — the initial for Luther. Remarkably, the original title of the Variations enciphers the initials of the covert principal Theme. The title of the hidden melody is hidden in the overt title as an acrostic anagram. The initials “EFB” are also encoded as an anagram by the character sums of the sequential words “by Edward Elgar” using a simple number-to-letter key. Two of those three initials are also enciphered by the initials for “by” and “Edward” or alternatively, “Elgar.”

The second notable acrostic anagram that was observed is “VocE,” the Italian word for “voice.”

Similar to the “Efb” acrostic anagram, the initials for “VocE” are traced by two overlapping capital L configurations. The initials for “VocE” appear in an orderly descending sequence. This common performance direction appears in phrases such as sotto voce, mezza voce, and messa di voce. The combination of the anagrams “EFb” and “VocE” intimates that Ein feste Burg is the true voice of the Enigma Variations. Extending the line connecting the “c” in “composed” to the “E” in “Elgar” arrives at the “3” in “36.” This produces the acrostic anagram “VocE 3.” These initials may also be reshuffled as “3 VocE.”

When preceded by a number, the word “voce” specifies how many independent melodic lines appear in a contrapuntal work such as a fugue. This means that “3 VocE” may be read as “Three-Voice.” That decryption proves revelatory as my contrapuntal mapping of Ein feste Burg in retrograde above the Enigma Theme verified that Elgar spliced together three different versions of that hymn to generate a unique “tribrid.” Elgar patched together recognizable phrases from the original hymn by Martin Luther, and adaptations by Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn. Elgar was a disciple of the German School of composition. Splicing together distinct phrases of Ein feste Burg by these three masters represents a musical homage to the German School. More importantly, mixing and matching different renditions stifles detection of the hidden melody, particularly when played in an augmented form in reverse as a retrograde counterpoint. The title “Enigma” is amply justified by these complications.

After assembling the acrostic anagrams “Efb” and “Voce 3”, this leaves unaccounted for the initial “O” from “Op.” The letter “O” is a phonetic rendering of the exclamation “Oh.” Merrian-Webster defines “Oh” as “used to express an emotion (such as surprise or desire)” or “express acknowledgment or understanding.” This decryption is supported by Elgar’s use of phonetic spellings in his correspondence. Some examples of these inventive 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 capital letter O is shaped like a circle. That geometric form is highlighted by the opening four scale degrees of the Enigma Theme (3-1-4-2) that encode a rounded form (3.142) of Pi, the mathematical ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. This seminal discovery was achieved by a retired engineer named Richard Santa and published in 2010 by Columbia University’s journal Current Musicology. It was Santa’s breakthrough that first persuaded me that Elgar incorporated cryptograms within the Enigma Variations. The discovery that the Enigma Theme enciphers the mathematical constant Pi got my mental gears turning and set the proverbial ball rolling with my quest for other cryptograms.

The nine initials from the original title of the Variations may be rearranged to form the acrostic anagram “3 Voce Efb O.” This may be interpolated as “Three-Voice Ein feste Burg, Oh.” This solution affirms that Ein feste Burg is the absent principal Theme to the Variations. Prior research established that three versions of Ein feste Burg form the contrapuntal foundation of the Variations. The phrase “3 Voce” meshes elegantly with Elgar’s use of three contrasting versions of that famous hymn. The expression “Oh” is a common interjection that denotes surprise and understanding, reactions that are contextually appropriate. It is absolutely a surprise that Elgar, a Roman Catholic, would adopt the battle hymn of the Reformation as the secret melody. At the same time, it is understandable why Elgar would embrace a melody quoted so prominently by titans of the German School.

The languages from this complete anagram are English, Italian, and German. When treated as an acrostic anagram, the initials of those three languages may be reordered to spell “GIE.” That is the Scottish word for “give.” It turns up frequently in the 1881 book Scottish Proverbs by Andrew Henderson. For example, the Scottish saying “Gie the deil his due” translates as “Give the devil his due.” The implication of this second tier of encryption is Elgar’s anagram “gives” the answer to his melodic enigma.

Another prospective anagram in the Variations’ title is “OVE,” the singular ablative of the Latin word for “sheep” (ovis). 

Elgar attended Latin Mass and was educated in three Roman Catholic schools that mandated the study of Latin. A coded reference to a sheep is associated with one of the titles for Jesus as the Lamb of God. The encoding of “OVE” within the title as an acrostic anagram theologically alludes to the identity of Elgar’s secret friend. The language of that acrostic anagram is Latin. Appending the initial of that language to “OVE” permits the spelling “LOVE.” This ancillary acrostic anagram affirms the deity of Elgar’s secret friend because the First Epistle of John teaches “God is love.” According to Roman Catholicism, Jesus is the incarnation of God.

Setting aside the acrostic anagrams “Efb” with “OVE” leaves behind the initials o, c, and 3. The anagram “co” is a prefix that means “joint, mutual, common.” It appears in such words as coequal and cohost. It is feasible to rearrange all nine initials from the original title of the Variations to produce the alternate anagram “3 co Efb OVE.” This may be read as “Three co[mmon] Ein feste Burg” followed by the singular ablative Latin word for sheep (Ove). This acrostic anagram implicates Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” as the covert principal Theme, and Jesus as the secret friend. The number specifies three versions of Ein feste Burg that form the basis for Elgar’s counterpoints with the Variations. The languages revealed by this title acrostic anagram cipher are English, Latin, and German. Elgar studied all three of these languages. Remarkably, the initials of those three languages form an acrostic of “ELG,” an abbreviated form of “Elgar.”

The purple lines connecting the initials “3 co” form the outline of a capital “L.” That is the initial for Luther, Lord, and Lamb. A “V” is formed by the dark blue lines connecting the initials “Efb.” The purple line connecting “co” creates a cross member in the “Efb” V-formation that resembles a capital “A.” The capital “A” is the initial for “Agnus,” the Latin word for lamb. A second “V” is generated by the red lines connecting the initials “EVO.” The capital “V” is the initial for Variations. The combination of “LV” approximates a phonetic spelling of “Love.”

A cryptanalysis of the Variaitons’ original title evaluated its nine initials (V, f, o, c, b, E, E, O, 3) for prospective anagrams. The first acrostic anagram obtained from those nine initials is “3 VocE Efb O.” This may be read as “Three Voice Ein feste Burg” followed by the interjection “Oh.” The second acrostic anagram generated by those nine initials is “3 co Efb OVE.” This may be interpolated as “Three co[mmon] Ein feste Burg[s]” followed by the singular ablative Latin word for sheep (“Ove”). Both of these acrostic anagrams affirm that Ein feste Burg is the covert Theme to the Variations. The second acrostic anagram further verifies that Jesus is Elgar’s secret friend based on the theological connection between “sheep” and the title “Lamb of God.” The languages from these two acrostic anagrams are English, German, Italian, and Latin. The initials of those four languages are an acrostic anagram of “LIEG.” That is a phonetic spelling of liege, a noun meaning lord or sovereign. One of the titles for Jesus in the Book of Revelation is “King of kings and Lord of lords.”

The Acrostic Anagram Final Page Cipher

After the premiere of the Variations on June 19, 1899, the conductor Hans Richter and August Jaeger from Novello urged Elgar to further develop and expand the last movement. Elgar initially hesitated to make any changes to his Finale. By June 30, he began sketching 96 extra bars and completed the orchestration on July 20, 1899. At the end of this revised and expanded movement, Elgar capped it off with a quotation from Longfellow’s Elegiac Verse: “Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending.” Longfellow’s name begins with a capital “L” which is the same initial for Luther, the composer of Ein feste Burg. Next to his autograph, Elgar wrote “Fine” and “Birchwood Lodge,” the site where he completed his Variations. The first letters of Elgar, Fine, and Birchwood forms an acrostic anagram of “EFB.” The “V” configuration of this acrostic anagram suggests the initial for Variations. The initial from “Lodge” provides the first letter of Luther. The same cryptographic techniques observed on the title page resurface on the final page of the autograph score. The prevalence of acrostic cryptograms alludes to the cross, a symbol for Elgar's secret friend.

This investigation determined that Elgar enciphered the initials “EFB” at least five times on the cover page of the Master Score, and a sixth time on the last page of the extended Finale. The “L” configurations of some of these anagrams give the initial for Luther, the composer of the secret melody. The acrostic anagram “EFB” on the final page of the autograph score is also accompanied by a capital L from the Longfellow quotation and the word “Lodge.” Scores of cryptograms within the score present a coherent and discrete set of decryptions that implicate Luther’s Ein feste Burg as Elgar’s mysterious missing melody. Contrary to the presumptuous claims of career academics, the answers to Elgar’s enigmas are hidden in plain sight on the autograph score. 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 Enigma Square Word Lengths Cipher

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.

Edward Elgar

122 years ago on June 19, Hans Richter conducted the premiere of Elgar’s Enigma Variations at St. James Hall in London. That extraordinary work propelled Elgar from provincial obscurity to international acclaim, transforming his career from an itinerant music teacher to a celebrated composer. The original title on the autograph score is “Variations for orchestra.” The somber theme is labeled “Enigma,” hence the work is popularly referred to as the Enigma Variations. Elgar advised the Theme is called “Enigma” because it is a counterpoint to a famous melody that is not heard but can play “through and over” the Variations. This absent tune is the melodic cornerstone of the work. The identity of that elusive melody fuels an ongoing debate as scholars and laypersons refuse to coalesce around any particular solution.

Some argue there is no answer at all by insinuating Elgar concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, practical joke, or marketing ploy. Others take Elgar at his word and accept the challenge that there is a famous melody lurking behind the Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. Regardless of what side is taken in this debate, conventional scholarship insists the solution can never be known with certainty because Elgar took his secret to the grave in February 1934. They assert Elgar never wrote down the answer for posterity to discover. However, such skepticism minimizes or completely overlooks Elgar’s expertise in cryptography. A compulsion for coding and decoding secret messages is a reigning pillar of his psychological profile. Elgar’s obsession with that esoteric art merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s treatise Unsolved! That incontestable fact raises the possibility that Elgar enciphered the answer to his Enigma within the Variations.

A decade of trawling the Enigma Variations has netted over one hundred cryptograms in diverse formats. These ciphers encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may appear excessive, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s obsession with ciphers. More significantly, they provide definitive answers to the core questions posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the missing principal Theme? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by Martin Luther. What is the “dark saying” in the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius box cipher embedded in its inaugural six bars. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith. The cryptographic evidence authenticating these discoveries is extensive, diverse, and formidable. These discoveries reveal that the Enigma Variations is Elgar’s symphonic homage to cryptography.

It was recently observed that word lengths in the Variations’ title convey coded information about the covert principal Theme and the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. The Title Word Lengths Cipher converts the number of letters from each word into their corresponding letters of the alphabet using a basic number-to-letter key (1 = a, 2 = b, 3 = c, etc.). Through this method, the word lengths of the Variations’ title encipher anagrams of the initials for Jesus Christ (JC), the Christogram IHC, the abbreviation BC meaning “Before Christ,” and the initials for the covert principal Theme (EFB). It was theorized that Elgar may have also applied the same form of encipherment to what he wrote in a squared-off area on the lower left-hand portion of the title page. What follows are some preliminary findings.

The Title Page Square Word Lengths Cipher

The cover sheet of the Enigma Variations has a unique feature not found on any of Elgar’s other autograph scores. On the lower left-hand corner of that inaugural page, he penned a tilted square with the dates and location of the orchestration. A magnified view of that portion of the page is shown below:

Most of the script is written with thick, dark lines consistent with the rest of Elgar’s writing on that page. The only exception is “C.as” in the uppermost corner consisting of a smaller font with thinner lines and a lighter hue. For these reasons, one may reasonably suspect that “C. as.” was added sometime after the square and its other contents were first penned.

To probe what Elgar initially wrote within this square for prospective word-length ciphers, the text strings were cataloged and counted. There are four words (commenced, ended, Forli, Malvern.), three numbers (5th, 1899, 19th), two abbreviations (FEb & FEb), and one set of initials (wn). These are listed below followed by their number of characters:

There is a total of 46 characters in these ten text strings. That number is conspicuous because Luther’s hymn Ein feste Burg was inspired by Psalm 46. As an aside, it is intriguing that Luther composed 36 hymns because that figure matches the opus number of the Variations.

The application of a number-to-letter key converts the character sums of the various text strings within the title page square into the following ten letters: I, C, C, E, D, C, D, E, H, and B. Before proceeding with the decryption of these seemingly random letters, it is instructive to recognize that Elgar used phonetic spellings in his correspondence. Some examples of his inventive 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)

When the ten plaintext letters (ICCEDCDEHB) are treated as an anagram, one possible permutation is “E CC IHC B DED.” Caroline Alice Elgar is the dedicatee of Variation I. In her diary, she routinely refers to her husband as “E.” “CC” is a phonetic realization of “sees.” “IHC” is a Christogram drawn from the first three letters of the Greek spelling for Jesus. “B” is a phonetic version of “be.” “DED” is a rendering of “dead.” Armed with these decryptions, the anagram “E CC IHC B DED” may be interpolated as the phrase “E[lgar] sees Jesus be dead.” The phrase “Jesus be” appears repeatedly in The Parochial Hymn Book published in London for Roman Catholic services. Elgar served at St. George’s Church as the assistant organist to his father from 1865 to 1875, and as chief organist from 1875 until 1879 for a total of fourteen years of service. Factoring in the five-character sequence “C.as.” would add an extra “E” and permit the anagram “EE CC IHC B DED” (EE sees Jesus be dead). Elgar often signed his letters with his initials “EE”.

Why would Elgar encode such a statement? The Italian photographer Secondo Pia took a series of photographs of the Turin Shroud in May 1898. The Turin Shroud is an ancient Jewish burial cloth bearing the faded image of a crucified man that many believe to be the body of Jesus. As Pia developed his pictures in a dark room, he was stunned by the positive life-like images on his photographic negatives. Miraculously, the Turin Shroud is a photographic negative that predates the invention of photography by millennia. This discovery became an immediate sensation in the religious and secular press. For the first time, Christians could gaze on the face and crucified body of Jesus in a way never experienced before. The statement “Elgar sees Jesus be dead” is an apt description of what Elgar saw in Secondo Pia's historic and widely publicized photographic negative of the Turin Shroud. The timing is right because Elgar did not begin work on the Variations until five months later in October 1898. This conclusion is bolstered by coded references to the Turin Shroud in the Enigma Variations.

The Turin Shroud
Photographic Negative (Left) and Positive (Right)

Another anagram that may be obtained from those ten plaintext letters is “DED CC EB IHC.” “IHC” is a Christogram for Jesus. “DED” is a phonetic spelling of “dead.” “CC” is a phonetic rendering of “seas.” “EB” is an incomplete spelling of “ebb.” Consequently, the anagram “IHC DED CC EB” may be interpolated as “Jesus — dead sea’s ebb.” Alternatively, the plaintext letters may be reshuffled as “DED CC BE IHC” and decrypted as “Dead seas be Jesus.” Both solutions establish an association between Jesus and a dead sea. The phrase “be Jesus” appears in the 1886 edition of The Family Prayer Book published in London for Roman Catholics. That same phrase also surfaces in the 1881 edition of The Parochial Hymn Book.

As previously mentioned, Variation XIII is dedicated in secret to Jesus. In that movement, Elgar cites a melodic incipit from Mendelssohn's overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage to symbolize the “deathly stillness” of a calm sea. These melodic fragments are accompanied by an ostinato figure that reprises the Enigma Theme’s palindromic rhythm to sonically portray the ebb and flow of the sea. Elgar associates the “deathly stillness” of the sea with the death of Jesus. The phonetic anagram “Jesus, dead sea’s ebb” covertly acknowledges the marine symbolism tied to the crucifixion of Christ. The word “sea” is a transparent wordplay on the letter C, the initial for Christ. Psalm 46 invokes the imagery of the sea in verses 2 and 3, presenting a literary link between the secret melody and Variation XIII.

There is a theological foundation for associating the ocean with the death and burial of Jesus. When the religious leaders demanded that Jesus give proof of his heavenly authority, he responded by invoking the Sign of Jonah. Matthew 12:39-41 records his reply:

But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Jonah was a prophet who was swallowed up by a whale and spent three days in the depths of the ocean before being miraculously released onto the shore to resume his mission to the city of Nineveh. Jesus explained that Jonah’s oceanic plight prefigured his own death and resurrection. Jonah’s harrowing account still makes headline news. For example, diver Michael Packard was recently ingested by a whale off of Cape Cod and spit out after spending a short time in the mouth of the great fish. Journalists liken Packard’s ordeal to the prophet Jonah’s miraculous whale encounter.

A square on the cover of the Variations contains text pertaining to the dates and location of the orchestration. This is the only known example of a square on the cover of any of Elgar’s scores. The terms used in this squared-off area were analyzed for prospective cryptograms by adding up the number of characters in each text string and converting those sums into their corresponding letters of the alphabet. The plaintext was then assessed for possible anagrams. One possible outcome is “E CC IHC B DED” which may be interpreted as “E[lgar] sees Jesus be dead.” The addition of an extra “E” based on the questionable text string “C.as.” would permit Elgar’s dual initials in this anagram: “EE CC IHS B DED.” Coded references to the Turin Shroud in the Variations account for this unexpected decryption. Another possible anagram is “DED CC BE IHC” which may be read as “Dead seas be Jesus.” The plaintext may also be rearranged as “IHC DED CC BE” and read as “Jesus — dead sea’s ebb.” These alternate anagrams bolster the link between Christ and the marine atmosphere of Variation XIII, a movement dedicated in secret to Jesus. 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