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

Elgar's Title Page Box 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

Enigma Variations in 1898-99. That extraordinary work catapulted him 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 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 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 dispute, conventional scholarship insists the solution can never be known 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 an intractable 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 in the Enigma 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 a symphonic homage to cryptography.

The Title Page Box Cipher

The title page of the Enigma Variations possesses a unique feature not found on any other autograph score by Elgar. On the lower lefthand corner of the title page, he penned a tilted square with the dates and location of the orchestration.

He used “FEb” as an abbreviation of February to designate the start and end dates of the orchestration. The second letter in “FEb” is incorrectly capitalized, intimating that it is the first letter in a title. Remarkably, the abbreviation “FEb” is an anagram of the initials for Ein feste Burg. The two Es in “FEb” present a coded version of Elgar’s initials (EE). Ten of the fifteen titles in the Variations consist of initials, so it is contextually appropriate to find the initials of the covert principal Theme on the title page, albeit in an anagrammatized format.

Finding the hidden melody’s initials on the cover of the autograph score enhances the prospect that Elgar may have also enciphered the initial of its composer (Luther). The dates and location of the orchestration are enclosed by a tilted box with a slight opening in the lefthand corner. Due to this gap, the box may be envisioned as two large capital Ls, one facing upright and forward and the other oriented upside down and backward. This is not the only coded form of the initial “L” in that unique area of the score. There is a long square bracket to the right of the start and end dates with a small notch in the middle and a short line pointing to the year 1899. This square bracket also appears to be constructed from two capital Ls separated by a small notch. The uppermost L is upside down and backward, and the lower L is upright but facing backward. These backward-facing Ls subtly hint at Elgar’s contrapuntal mapping of Ein feste Burg in retrograde above the Enigma Theme. In this squared-off area of the cover page, there are two coded forms of “EFB” and two more of the capital letter “L” that stealthily convey the initials of Luther’s Ein feste Burg.

The squared-off region on the title page openly conceals the initials for Luther and his most famous hymn. Remarkably, it is feasible to assemble the remaining letters of Luther from other elements in the bracketed area of this square. Immediately to the left of the square bracket is th, the third and fourth letters in Luther. The th after 19 closely resembles u, the second letter in Luther. The L-bracket, th from “5th”, and u glyph from “19th” furnish the first four letters in Luther. The numbers 5, 18, and 19 appear next to the double-L bracket. The application of a number-to-letter key (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc.) to those figures generates E, R, and S. The E and R complete the spelling of Luther, and the S permits the possessive form as “Luther’s.” This outcome is fitting as the covert principal Theme is Luther’s Ein feste Burg. The decryption is constructed exclusively from the square bracket and features immediately to its right and left.

The position of the square cipher on the cover page overlays the same staves used on the next page to orchestrate the opening section of the Enigma Theme. A facsimile of the first page of the Enigma Theme is shown below:

What makes the position and shape of this square cipher containing a square bracket so extraordinary is that the Enigma Theme also contains a “square” cipher called a Polybius square. Elgar carefully studied that encipherment technique in an 1896 article by John Holt Schooling in The Pall Mall Magazine. This sophisticated cryptogram encodes the complete 24-letter German title of Luther’s hymn. Ultimately, the presence of one square cipher on the cover hints at another on the next page of the autograph score. No other autograph score by Elgar displays such an unusual square on its cover, and now the explanation is manifest. Contrary to the claims of experts, Elgar did indeed write down the melodic solution to the Enigma Variations by constructing an elaborate musical Polybius cipher in the opening six bars of the Enigma Theme. This ensured its survival, eventual discovery, and decryption. Such an outcome accounts for Elgar’s cryptic language in the original 1899 program note, “The Enigma I will not explain — it’s ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed . . .” A decryption cannot be guessed but must be methodically worked out. To learn more concerning the innermost 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 Title Word Lengths Cipher

Variations

for orchestra

composed by

Edward Elgar

Op. 36

Title on the autograph score of the Enigma Variations

The British romantic composer Edward Elgar composed his symphonic Enigma Variations in 1898-99. That extraordinary work elevated him from provincial notoriety 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 melodic cornerstone of the work, a covert principal Theme that has provoked a prolonged debate about what could be the correct solution.

Some argue 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 the debate, conventional scholarship insists the solution cannot 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. Such an opinion overlooks his 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 Enigma Variations.

A decade of trawling the Enigma Variations has netted over ninety cryptograms in varying formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may appear too high to be believable, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s obsession with 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. 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 overwhelming.

The Title Word Lengths Cipher

With so many ciphers ensconced within the Enigma Variations, it makes sense to sift its title for prospective ciphers. The title page from the autograph score is shown below:

The original title of the 'Enigma' Variations appears as follows:

Variations

for orchestra

composed by

Edward Elgar

Op. 36

In recognition of Elgar's expertise in cryptography, that title was subjected to some basic cryptanalysis. First, each word was reduced to its character count as summarized below:

Next, those nine sums were converted to their corresponding letters of the alphabet using an elementary number-to-letter key (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc...):

The first two plaintext letters in order are JC. Those are the initials for Jesus Christ, the secret friend depicted in Variation XIII. In an interesting parallel, the sum of those two letter numbers (10 + 3) equals thirteen, the equivalent of XIII.

The second through fourth plaintext letters (CIH) forms an anagram of IHC. That is a historic Christogram. A Christogram is an abbreviation for the name of Jesus Christ that appears in Christian churches. This solution elegantly intersects with the initials for Jesus Christ unveiled by the first two plaintext letters.

The fifth through seventh plaintext letters (BFE) is an anagram of EFB. Those are the initials for Ein feste Burg, the covert principal Theme to the Variations. Elgar's original title deftly conceals the initials for the covert principal Theme.

The final two plaintext letters are an anagram of BC. Those are the initials for “Before Christ” used to classify the era before the birth of Christ. This solution is mutually consistent and complementary with the first and second sets of initials (JC and IHC).

This series of decryptions consists exclusively of initials generated by contiguous plaintext letters.

1. JC
2. IHC
3. EFB
4. BC

Three of the four sets — JC, IHC, and BC — unmask the identity of the secret friend commemorated in Variation XIII. The remaining set (EFB) unveils the initials of Ein feste Burg, the covert principal Theme. Initials are the predominant species of title for the Variations, providing ten out of the fifteen headings. This simple yet elegant cryptogram is named the Title Words Lengths Cipher. Elgar’s title for the Enigma Variations ingeniously enciphers the initials of the covert principal Theme and the secret friend depicted in Variation XIII. 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