Elgar’s Tasso Fragment Ciphers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tasso Quotation Ciphers

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

Autograph Score XIV. Original Ending “EFB” Ciphers

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

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

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

Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (National Portrait Gallery, London)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tasso Fragment Titles Ciphers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soli Yah Gloria

Bell Tower of Castle Church (Wittenberg)