Elgar’s 1911 Program Note Ciphers

 

This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The sketches are not ‘portraits’, but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the composition; but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.

A program note by Edward Elgar for the 

October 1911 Turin International Exposition.

The English composer Edward Elgar (1857–1934) excelled at cryptography, the discipline of encrypting and decrypting secret messages. His obsession with that esoteric science merits an entire chapter in Craig P. Bauer’s book Unsolved! Bauer devotes much of the third chapter to Elgar’s meticulous decryption of an allegedly insoluble Nihilist cipher unleashed by John Holt Schooling in the April 1896 issue of The Pall Mall Magazine. A Nihilist cipher relies on a Polybius square key as its foundation. Elgar was so gratified with his decryption of Schooling’s purportedly impenetrable code that he mentions it in his first biography released by Robert J. Buckley in 1905.

Elgar painted his solution in black paint on a wooden box, an appropriate medium considering that another name for the Polybius square is a box cipher. His process for cracking Schooling’s cryptogram is summarized on a set of nine index cards. His meticulous notes and analysis confirm that he was a self-taught expert. On the sixth card, Elgar likens the decryption process to “. . . working (in the dark).” He uses the word “dark” as a synonym for cipher.

Elgar’s parenthetical remark is revealing as he employs that same language in the original 1899 program note to characterize his eponymous Enigma Theme. Written with veiled terminology, it is an oft-cited passage worthy of revisiting as Elgar lays the groundwork for his threefold riddle:

The Enigma I will not explain–its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connexion between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played . . . So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some later dramas–e.g., Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’–the chief character is never on the stage.

Elgar wields the words dark and secret interchangeably in a letter to August Jaeger dated February 5, 1900. He wrote, “Well—I can’t help it but I hate continually saying ‘Keep it dark’—‘a dead secret’—& so forth.” One definition of dark is “secret.” A saying is a series of words that generate a coherent phrase or adage. Relying on these definitions, Elgar’s odd expression — “dark saying” — may be interpolated as coded language for a cipher. In an oblique way, Elgar hints that the Enigma Theme conceals a secret message.

Mainstream scholars postulate that there are no valid solutions to the Enigma Variation because Elgar allegedly concocted the notion of an absent principal Theme as an afterthought, practical joke, or marketing gimmick. It is on this shaky foundation that the editors of the Elgar Complete Edition preemptively deny the probability of any hidden counterpoints or cryptograms. Turning to Elgar’s recollection of playing new material at the piano to gauge his wife’s reaction, they tout the standard lore that he must have extemporized the idiosyncratic Enigma Theme mirabelle dictu without any forethought or planning. As the editors explain:

There seems to have been no specific ‘enigma’ in mind at the outset: Elgar’s first playing of the music was hardly more than a running over the keys to aid relaxation. It was Alice Elgar’s interruption, apparently, that called him to attention and helped to identify the phrases which were to become the ‘Enigma’ theme. This suggests it is unlikely that the theme should conceal some counterpoint or cipher needed to solve the ‘Enigma’.

Notice that this chain of prejudicial speculations is couched in such tentative language as seems, apparently, suggests, and unlikely. Such a blanket renunciation conveniently relieves scholars of the obligation to probe for counterpoints and ciphers. Prominent offenders are such luminaries as the late Robert Anderson, Jerrold Northrop Moore, and Julian Rushton. The gargantuan irony is that proponents of this stark denialism extol the validity of their position based on a dearth of evidence for which they never executed a diligent or impartial search. Such a ridiculous state of affairs is a textbook case of confirmation bias pawned off as “scholarship.” After legacy scholars fade into history, a new cohort will arise and embrace multidisciplinary lines of inquiry and analysis. Sifting the Enigma Variations for ciphers will eventually be deemed an academic pursuit rather than a speculative fringe pursuit.

Embraced by those who take Elgar at his published word, the more sensible view accepts the challenge of a famous melody lurking behind the Variations’ contrapuntal and modal facade. In his sanctioned 1905 biograph, Elgar plainly states, “The theme is a counterpoint on some well-known melody which is never heard . . .” Most scholars insist the answer can never be known with certitude because Elgar allegedly absconded with his secret to the grave. This presumption precludes from serious consideration the possibility that he encrypted the solution within the Enigma Variations for posterity to discover. Such a rigid judgment glosses over or blatantly ignores Elgar’s documented obsession with cryptography. That incontestable facet of his psychological profile accentuates the possibility that solutions are skillfully enciphered in the orchestral score of the Enigma Variations.

A compulsion for cryptography is a reigning facet of Elgar’s personality. Trawling the Enigma Variations over the past fourteen years netted a haul of over one hundred cryptograms in diverse formats that encode a set of mutually consistent and complementary solutions. Although that figure may seem astronomical, it is entirely consistent with Elgar’s fascination for ciphers. More significantly, their solutions give definitive answers to key riddles posed by the Enigma Variations. What is the secret melody to which the Enigma Theme is a counterpoint and serves as the melodic cornerstone for the ensuing movements? Answer: Ein feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) by the German protestant reformer Martin Luther. What is Elgar’s “dark saying” concealed within the Enigma Theme? Answer: A musical Polybius cipher situated in the opening six bars. Who is the secret friend and inspiration behind Variation XIII? Answer: Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith.

Assorted Enigma Ciphers

Elgar visited the Italian city of Turin in October 1911 to conduct a performance of the Enigma Variations and other works at a world’s fair billed as the Turin International Exposition. He undoubtedly associated some of his compositions with that city because years before he purchased “fine rag scoring paper” manufactured in Turin. In an explanatory note written especially for the occasion, he disclosed that the Variations “commenced in a spirit of humour . . .” The irony of that statement is that the Enigma Theme does not sound remotely comical or whimsical. Elgar relished practical jokes that he called japes, and he sometimes deployed them in his music. Although imbued with a sorrowful aura, the Enigma Theme has two melodic note sequences “G-A-G” that spell gag. The first sequence appears in bar 6 on beats 3-4 at the end of Section A of the Enigma Theme’s ABA’C structure. The second repeats ten bars later in measure 16 on beats 3-4 of Section A’. It is well established that Elgar spelled names and words in his music. For example, he composed the Allegretto on G-E-D-G-E using a musical motif that spells the last name of two sisters who were his pupils. Spellings of gag via musical note sequences in the Enigma Theme are consistent with Elgar’s track record.

Merriam-Webster defines gag as “a laugh-provoking remark or act,” a “prank” or “trick.” A gag is a synonym for jape. Unlike jape, gag is readily spelled by musical notes that are restricted to the first seven letters (A-G) of the alphabet. Elgar advised in the original 1899 program note that the Principal Theme of the Variations is not heard or played. An absent Principal Theme is a type of musical trick or prank. Tasked with preparing the program note for the premiere, Charles Ainslie Barry wrote to Elgar in an April 1899 letter in which he likened the Enigma Variations to a trick:

I will send you some Variations of mine of thirty years ago. Don’t think me impudent in saying that I think I discovered a ‘trick’, which I will impart to you. You won’t guess it, so I am glad to think that there is something enigmatical about my Variations, as well as yours.

Why would Elgar encode the word gag twice in his Enigma Theme? He advised the work began in a humorous mood, but what could be the source of Elgar’s amusement? His expertise in cryptography bolsters the suspicion that the “G-A-G” note sequences in bars 6 and 16 hint at the presence of musical ciphers. More importantly, the credible connection between Elgar’s 1911 program note and the Enigma Theme’s melodic “GAG” sequences implies that his program note may conceal other cryptograms. It is significant that the melodic “G-A-G” sequence in bar 16 is immediately preceded by the notes E-flat, F, and B-flat. Those particular note letters are an anagram of the initials for Ein feste Burg, the covert Theme of the Enigma Variations. The proximity of these two note sequences—“EFB” and “GAG”—encodes the decryption “Ein feste Burg gag.” Citing a Protestant anthem composed by a heretic excommunicated by Pope Leo X is a jarring jape for a Roman Catholic composer like Elgar.

Elgar submitted written remarks for the historic June 1899 premiere of the Enigma Variations in a letter to Barry, a program writer for Hans Richter’s concerts. Cited in Barry’s program note, Elgar’s commentary refers to the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck and two of his plays, L’Intruse (The Intruder) and Les sept Princesses (The Seven Princesses). For a symphonic work dedicated to his circle of friends that includes his wife, it is exceedingly anomalous that the only person named in Elgar’s comments is a foreign poet and dramatist. Why would Elgar refer to a stranger to characterize a work dedicated to his friends? One explanation draws on his expertise in cryptography, the art of encoding and decoding secret messages. As an accomplished cryptographer, Elgar devised impenetrable coded messages like the Liszt Fragment and Dorabella ciphers. Could Elgar’s anomalous references to Maeterlinck and two of his plays be a cipher? And could it be connected to the secret melody of the Enigma Variations and the hidden friend?

The conspicuous phrase “Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’” stands out because it is demarcated by em dashes. These long dashes are often used in place of commas to add emphasis or to set off an explanation. The label “em dash” was in common usage when Elgar penned his commentary as it is described in reference volumes published in London such as Practical Printing (1884) and Lloyd’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary (1896). Two em dashes are a coded form of Elgar’s initials as each “em” begins with an e.

1. Em dash
2. Em dash

Those same em dashes further encipher the initials of Maurice Maeterlinck as a telestich acrostic.

1. Em dash
2. Em dash

When distilled down to its initials, the Maeterlinck phrase enciphers a reverse spelling of psalm using its discrete letters—Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’. A reverse spelling of psalm serves as an important clue because Elgar mapped Ein feste Burg as a retrograde counterpoint “through and over” the Enigma Theme. The first and last words in the Maeterlinck phrase both have two es which suggests an encrypted version of Elgar’s initials. A coded reference to “psalm” is significant because the title of the hidden melody (A Mighty Fortress) originates from the first line of Psalm 46. In a stunning convergence, the seven-word Maeterlinck passage (Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’) has exactly 46 characters excluding spaces. The precision and specificity of these cryptograms decisively precludes a fortuitous formation.

The discovery that the Maeterlink phrase in Elgar’s 1899 program note encodes psalm using exactly 46 characters harmonizes with another cryptogram nestled in the Enigma Theme’s first bar. Seven discrete performance directions in that measure generate the acrostic anagram “EE’s Psalm” using precisely 46 characters. “EE” is the composer’s initials, enabling the full decryption to be read as “Edward Elgar’s Psalm”. The number of characters involved in its construction implicates Psalm 46, the chapter that inspired Luther to compose his rousing hymn Ein feste Burg.

Elgar’s 1899 program note is written in English and cites the French titles of two plays by the Belgian playwright Maeterlinck. Remarkably, those three nationalities—English, French, and Belgian—are an acrostic anagram of “EFB”, the initials of Ein feste Burg.

1. English
2. French
3. Belgian

The 1899 Program Note “EFB” Nationalities Cipher is corroborated by another cryptogram encased by the key signatures of the Enigma Theme. This inaugural movement modulates between the keys of G minor and G major. The accidentals of those parallel modes are B-flat, E-flat, and F. The letters of those accidentals are an acrostic anagram of “EFB”, the initials of the covert Theme. Remarkably, the keys of the Enigma Theme unlock Elgar’s contrapuntal vault to reveal the initials of the hidden melody.

This overview demonstrated how Elgar’s carefully parsed program note for the premiere of the Enigma Variations encodes the German initials (EFB) of the covert Theme Ein feste Burg, and the chapter from the Bible that inspired Luther to to compose it (Psalm 46). The conspicuous Maeterlinck phrase enclosed by em dashes encrypts the word “Psalm” as a reverse acrostic. The number of characters in the Maeterlinck phrase also encodes the chapter number 46. Three nationalities associated with Elgar’s 1899 program note (Belgian, English, and French) generate the acrostic anagram “EFB”, the initials of Ein feste Burg. These ciphers are corroborated by others in the Enigma Theme that encrypt the same discrete series of solutions. These include the Melodic “EFB GAG” Cipher in bar 16 and the Performance Directions “EE’s Psalm 46” Cipher in bar 1.

Elgar’s 1911 Program Note Ciphers

Elgar drafted a second explanatory note twelve years and four months after the June 1899 premiere of the Enigma Variations for an October 1911 concert at the Turin International Exposition in Italy. His supplementary memo is cited in the epigraph. Elgar penciled this new program note on stationery from the Grand Hôtel Ligure & D’Angleterre. The original draft was housed at the Elgar Birthplace Museum until most of the manuscript archive was relocated to the British Library in 2018. High-resolution images of Elgar’s 1911 program note are exhibited below courtesy of the British Library and the joint efforts of Fiona McHenry and Christopher Scobie, Curator of Music Manuscripts.

Elgar’s 1911 handwritten program note (cover)

Elgar’s 1911 handwritten program note (page 1)

Elgar’s 1911 handwritten program note (page 2)

Elgar’s second program note is identified on its cover page as “Note on Variations Op. 36” followed below by the city name “Torino”. The words in his label yield the acrostic “Novo” (Note on Variations Op. 36), the Latin verb meaning to “make new” or “renew.” This discovery comports with Elgar’s new note about the Enigma Variations. The decryption “novo” further hints that his second program note is infused with novel cryptograms. Elgar was proficient in Latin as he studied it at three Roman Catholic schools during his youth and also attended Latin mass into adulthood. A coded reference to “new” is also connected to the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. In Revelation 21:5, Jesus declares, “Behold, I am making all things new.” The initial T from “Torino” on the cover page is a glyph that duplicates the Tau cross which is known as the crux commissa and Saint Anthony cross. The Tau cross is a symbol of the Franciscan order and represents conversion. The complete acrostic “Nova T” is imbued with theological meaning as Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice at Golgotha renews all things.

The transcription below of Elgar’s penciled program note retains its original layout of 24 lines beginning with the Italian title (Variazione), the cross-shaped ampersand (+) in the first sentence, an angled Ichthys-shaped ampersand in the second sentence, two strikethrough words and one strikethrough letter (provides, should and what appears to be a capital cursive E with a vertical line through it represented as Ɇ), and one insertion (^ may). The f in “founded” at the beginning of line 15 closely resembles a treble clef. Elgar’s script is far more legible than other handwritten correspondence, indicating an elevated level of care and deliberation:

               Variazione

This work, commenced in a
spirit of humour + continued
in deep seriousness, contains
sketches of the composer’s friends.
It may be understood that
these personages comment
or reflect on the original
theme + each one provides
attempts a solution of the
Enigma, for so the theme is
called. The sketches are not
‘portraits’, but each variation
contains a distinct idea
founded on some particular
personality or perhaps on
incident known only to
two people. This is the basis
of the composition ; but the work
should ^ may be listened to as a 
‘piece of music’ Ɇapart from
any extraneous consideration.

                        Edward Elgar

Torino, Ottobre 1911.

Elgar’s penciled program note excluding the cover page has 24 lines. The first line is the title, lines 2 through 22 are the body of his program note, line 23 is his autograph, and line 24 identifies the city, month, and year. Line 1 has one word. Line 23 has two words, Lines 7, 22, and 24 each have three words. Line 9 has three words and one ampersand. Lines 4, 13, 14, 15, and 16 each have four words. Line 3 has four words and one ampersand. Lines 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 17, and 21 each have five words. Lines 11, 18, 19, and 20 each have six words.

The penciled note is framed in Italian, English, and Latin. Its title is Italian, the body of the text is in English, and the ampersand symbols are Latin in origin. These three languages are also used for the organ label inserted on the first page of the manuscript score of the Enigma Variations when Elgar appended 96 bars to the Finale during June and July 1899. The “Organo” Label Trilingual Acrostic Cipher encodes the Aramaic expression “Eli” (My God) which Jesus uttered twice at the beginning of his fourth saying from the cross. Jesus recited the opening verse of Psalm 22 in Aramiac as “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The translation reads, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That agonizing passage is famously set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach in the Saint Matthew’s Passion. Elgar revered Bach’s music and his setting of that psalm. Above the orchestral introduction to Part V. “Golgotha” of his oratorio The Apostles, Elgar wrote “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The appeal of that Aramaic question to Elgar is perfectly understandable as the opening two words “Eli, Eli” produce an acrostic of his initials. The Apostles was first performed in October 1903.

Elgar encodes “Eli” a second time with the languages of performance directions at Rehearsal 52 in Variation XII. Remarkably, the three languages of Elgar’s 1911 program note encipher the same Aramaic expression “Eli” as an acrostic anagram. He employs the same linguistic method with his original 1899 program note to encipher the initials “EFB” of the covert Theme.

Three items are crossed out on Elgar’s draft of the 1911 program note. The first is “provides” in line 9. The second is “should” in line 20. The third is “Ɇ” in line 21. The initials of the first two strikethrough words are an acrostic of “ps”, a standard abbreviation of psalm. Two words are crossed horizontally, and a third letter E is crossed out vertically. One vertical line and two horizontal lines suggest the sign of the cross, a ritual practiced by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions. The crossed-out “Ɇ” is a thinly disguised symbol of Elgar crossing himself for he used that initial instead of his name in correspondence.

The application of a number-to-letter key (1 = A, 2 = B, 3 = C, etc.) based on a 24-character alphabet in which similar letters are conflated (I/J and U/V) converts the line numbers 9, 20, and 21 into the plaintext I/J, U/V, and W. Elgar was familiar with this standardized system as he recorded a 24-character cipher alphabet in one of his notebooks. Those letters may be rearranged into the anagram “I VUW J.” The first letter is the personal pronoun “I” and a homonym of “eye.” “VUW” is a phonetic rendering of view, a verb meaning to scrutinize, observe, or watch. Elgar’s correspondence has numerous examples of inventive phonetic spellings such as “gorjus” (gorgeous) and “xqqq” (excuse). “J” is the initial of Jesus. Based on the preceding analysis, the anagram “I VUW J'” may be decrypted as the statement “I view Jesus.” This is a fitting declaration for Elgar to encipher in a program note written in a city famed for the Shroud of Turin housed in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. The faint impression on the Turin Shroud shows the front and back of a crucified man that many revere as a picture of Christ. The Turin Shroud is periodically displayed for public viewing.

Secondo Pia produced the first official photographs of the Turin Shroud in May 1898, five months before Elgar began working in earnest on the Enigma Variations. When Pia developed his first batch of glass plates in a dark room, he was shocked to discover that the photographic negatives yielded positive images. This inversion is only possible if the anterior and dorsal images on the Turin Shroud are photographic negatives. Pia’s remarkable discovery became an international sensation in the secular and Catholic press. In July 1898, the Catholic Champion reported on the amateur photographer Secondo Pia and his miraculous photographic negatives of the Turin Shroud. A similar report appeared in the July 1898 issue of The Photographic News published in London. On August 6 of that year, Scientific American also reported on Pia’s lifelike photographic negatives of the Holy Shroud.

The prestigious British technical magazine The Photogram covered the Turin Shroud on page 267 of its August 1898 issue with this opening sentence, “The Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican, has announced a remarkable miracle at Turin, by which ‘after eighteen centuries, an authentic likeness of Jesus Christ has been obtained.’” In their December 1898 issue, The Photogram published the article “Photographic Miracles” accompanied by one of Pia’s certified photographic negatives of the Turin Shroud. The London journal English Mechanic and Mirror of Science reported on December 9, 1898, that The Photogram published a 20-inch by 5.5-inch image of Pia’s incredible negative “intended for framing.” By Christmas of that year, many Roman Catholic households proudly displayed reprints of Pia’s photographic negative of the Turin Shroud to venerate the Holy Face of Jesus.

A facsimile of the complete Turin program from Elgar’s personal archive was secured from the private collection of Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of the North American Branch of The Elgar Society and a respected member of the London Branch.

October 1911 Turin Concert Program (Cover and Back)

October 1911 Turin Concert Program (Elgar’s Picture and Program)

October 1911 Turin Concert Program (Part 1 Mendelssohn’s Ruy Blas)

October 1911 Turin Concert Program (Pages 4-5)

October 1911 Turin Concert Program (Pages 6-7)

A confluence of factors likely motivated Elgar to pen a second program note about the Enigma Variations, the fourth and final work listed on page 6 of the program in Italian as “VARIAZIONI SINFONICHE” (Symphonic Variations). The concert opened with Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Ruy Blas, Op. 95. In Variation XIII, Elgar cites a four-note melodic incipit from another concert overture by Mendelssohn with the original German title Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) Op. 29. The Friday evening concert was held on October 20, the eve of “Enigma Day” when Elgar first played the Enigma Theme on the piano for his wife. That pivotal event took place on a Friday evening in 1898 after he returned from a long arduous day of teaching violin lessons at The Mount School. The name of the concert hall is Salone Delle Feste, a three-word title that ends with “Feste”. That same word also appears in the three-word title of the covert Theme, Ein feste Burg.

The Italian translation of Elgar’s program note is not strictly literal. His opening sentence reads, “This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends.” The Italian translation of the first sentence reverts into English according to Google Translate as, “The Symphonic Variations, a work begun in a humorous vein and continued with profound seriousness, contains some impressive sketches, referring to the character of people who were friends of the composer.” The translation replaces “This” with “The Symphonic Variations,” and adds an “a” before the word “work”. Elgar’s phrase “a spirit of humour” is recast as “in a humorous vein”. The ampersand is replaced by an “e”, and the translator adds the word “impressive” before “sketches”. As discussed earlier, Elgar used the Italian word “e” as part of the performance directions in Enigma Theme’s opening measure to encode the acrostic anagram “EE’s Psalm.” The letter “e” and ampersand are used interchangeably on the Grand Hôtel stationary. One commonality between Elgar’s English program note and its Italian translation is the spelling of the 8th word in the first sentence (humour) which remains unchanged.

Elgar’s second sentence explains, “It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called.” There are multiple discrepancies between Elgar’s original note and the Italian translation of the second sentence. When translated back into English by Google Translate, the Italian version reads as, “It should be noted that these sketches comment on or reflect the original musical theme, each of them attempts the solution to the—Enigma—which by the way is the name of the theme.” The Italian translation replaces Elgar’s phrase “may be understood” with “should be noted”. It also employs “should” in place of “may” and “sketches” rather than “personages”. The adjective “musical” is inserted before “theme”. A comma replaces the ampersand between “theme” and “each”, and “of them” is substituted for “one”. The definite article “the” before “solution” is replaced by an indeterminate “a”. The translator encloses “Enigma” with two em dashes for added emphasis, something absent from Elgar’s original English note. The phrase “for so the theme is called” is loosely paraphrased as “which by the way is the name of the theme.” The 22nd word in Elgar’s second sentence (Enigma) retains the identical spelling in Italian. It should also be noted that Enigma is also spelled the same way in German.

Elgar’s original third sentence states, “The sketches are not ‘portraits’, but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people.” The Italian translation renders it as, “The sketches are not portraits, but each variation consists of a distinct idea, based on details of character or, perhaps, simply on some incident which occurred and was known to only two people.” The translator replaces “contains a” with “consists of”, and “founded on” with “based on”. The phrase “some particular personality” is replaced by “details of character.” It adds “which occurred” after “incident” and repositions “only” before “two people.” The 11th word in the third sentence (idea) remains unchanged in the Italian translation.

Elgar’s fourth and final sentence reads, “This is the basis of the composition; but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.” The Italian translation renders it as, “This is the foundation of the composition, the work can also be heard and followed as a ‘musical piece’ independently of any extra-musical consideration.” It replaces “basis” with “foundation”, substitutes a comma for the semicolon, eliminates “but”, replaces “may be” with “can also be” and “listened to” with “heard and followed”. It shortens “piece of music” to “musical piece”. It replaces “apart from” with “independently of” and “extraneous” with “extra-musical”. These discrepancies show that the Italian translation sometimes paraphrases or embellishes Elgar’s original English text.

There are numerous reasons to suspect Elgar’s 1911 program note is permeated with ciphers. The city where he composed his second program note is significant as prior research uncovered coded references in the Enigma Variations to the Turin Shroud, a 1st century burial cloth imprinted with a holographic photographic negative of a crucified man that many believe depicts the body of Jesus Christ. As shown earlier, the melodic “GAG” sequences in the Enigma Theme intersect with Elgar’s statement that the Enigma Theme “. . . commenced in a spirit of humour . . .” The discovery of ciphers in Elgar’s first program note from 1899 triggered a cryptanalysis of his second 1911 program note for prospective cryptograms. An exhaustive investigation found that his second program note enciphers references to the hidden melody, its scriptural origin, and the initials of seven friends depicted in the Enigma Variations, most notably the secret dedicatee of Variation XIII.

The spelling of three words from Elgar’s 1911 note remains unchanged in the Italian translation—“humour” in the first sentence, “Enigma” in the second, and “idea” in the third. Three distinct words in three consecutive sentences suggest a coded version of Elgar’s initials in two ways. First, the word three ends with two es. Second, two threes suggest the number “33” which is the mirror image of two capital cursive Es. Would Elgar have realized those three words are spelled the same in English and Italian? His extensive use of Italian performance directions in the Enigma Variations and other works confirms he was familiar with that Romance language. He indicated the location and month of his second program note in Italian as “Torino, Ottobre 1911”. His wife Alice was fluent in Italian and could serve as a resource to help identify words spelled the same in English and Italian. A translator was also employed to translate Elgar’s English program note into Italian for the concert program.

When integrated in order of appearance as “humourEnigmaidea”, those three words generate the cogent command “Hum our Enigma idea.” Such an outcome comports with Elgar’s affinity for word games. This phrase is marked by one uppercase E and a second lowercase e that convey an enciphered version of Elgar’s initials. Merriam-Webster defines the verb hum as “to utter like that of the speech sound \m\ prolonged” and furnishes the sample phrase, “humming along to the music.” The same dictionary defines the adjective our as “of or relating to us or ourselves or ourself especially as possessors or possessor, agents or agent, or objects or object of an action.” The emergence of “our” is consistent with Elgar’s depiction of a group of his friends in the Enigma Variations united by a common theme. “Enigma” is the title of the original Theme that is refracted through the prism of Elgar’s friendships. Merriam-Webster defines the final word idea in a variety of ways including “a formulated thought or opinion,” “the central meaning or chief end of some particular action or situation.”

Elgar uses the German translation of idea as “idee” in a letter to his German friend August Jaeger written only three days after he first performed the Enigma Theme on the piano for his perceptive wife. Note that “idee” harbors Elgar’s initials. In his October 24, 1898 letter, Elgar uses the word idee to describe his conceptualization of the Enigma Variations:

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 integration of humour, Enigma, and idea produces the coherent sentence “Hum our Enigma idea.” This straightforward solution resonates with Elgar’s depiction of his friends striving to compose their peculiar renditions of the Enigma Theme, a process that often begins by humming thematic ideas. This cryptogram is called Elgar’s 1911 Program Note Three Bilingual Words Sentence Cipher.

Elgar’s three unaltered words in the 1911 program—humour, Enigma, and idea—also produce the anagram “Ed A hum our Enigma I.” “Ed” is a short form of Edward. “A” is the initial for his wife Alice. The phrase “hum our Enigma” remains unchanged from the original merger of those three words. “I” is the Roman numeral for Variation I which is dedicated to Alice. Based on this analysis, the anagram “Ed A hum our Enigma I” may be interpolated as “Ed [&] Alice hum our Enigma [Variation] I.” That movement is punctuated by a figure that Elgar would whistle to alert Alice of his arrival home, one that is easily hummed. Variation I merges Alice’s romantic elaboration of the Enigma Theme with Elgar’s distinctive warble in a movement that aptly symbolizes their harmonious marriage. This cryptogram is called Elgar’s 1911 Program Note Bilingual Words Anagram Cipher.

One of the first discernible cryptograms in Elgar’s 1911 program note revolves around two ampersand symbols (&) that appear in its opening two sentences. It is a passage cited by acclaimed scholars, most notably Jerrold Northrup Moore in his magnum opus Elgar: A Creative Life, and Michael Kennedy in The Life of Elgar. The opening two sentences are shown below:

This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. 

There are exactly 24 words between the two ampersands situated in the first and second sentences. The sum 24 is interesting because there are precisely 24 melody notes in the opening six bars of the Enigma Theme which are cordoned off by an oddly placed double bar at the end of bar 6. In a striking parallel, there are exactly 24 letters in the six-word German title Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Six words with 24 letters mirror six bars with 24 melody notes. The ampersand symbol (&) is a ligature of the Latin word “Et” meaning and. For this reason, it is known as the “and sign” because it is a logogram representing the conjunction and. Elgar was certainly aware of the ampersand’s Latin origin as he was educated at three Roman Catholic schools where he studied Latin and attended Latin Mass. In a letter to Troyte Griffith written in June 1920, Elgar specifically mentions two ampersands when designing an insignia for his wife’s gravestone. He wrote:

    You are good & the sketch is admirable: you will see which I like best. If it will look better put (as you suggest) ‘To the memory of’. I am not sure about the two ‘ands’—an ampersand (&) might do to connect the adjectives.

As a symbol for the Latin word “Et”, two ampersands generate an acrostic of Elgar’s initials (EE). Each E is accompanied by a lowercase t that resembles a Latin cross.

Examples of Ampersands “Et” Ligatures

A precursor to the modern ampersand is a crossed lowercase epsilon, the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet. That Greek glyph resembles the bold rounded cursive Es that dominate Elgar’s autograph. Consequently, two ampersands in their archaic format encode Elgar’s initials in his 1911 program note. The presence of those initials is a recurring feature of some cryptograms in the Enigma Variations.

Two Crossed Epsilon Ampersands

Edward Elgar’s Autograph

“Ampersand” is a corruption of the phrase “and per se and.” The Latin expression “per se” generates the acrostic “ps” which is a standard abbreviation of psalm. There are other prospective coded forms of that abbreviation in various places in Elgar’s 1911 program note. In the first sentence, a reverse spelling of “ps” is observed in the first two letters of the 6th word (spirit). The letters p and s are next to each other between the 11th and 12th words (deep seriousness) of that same sentence. In the second sentence, the first and last letters of the 7th word (personages) suggest that abbreviation. The same abbreviation is obtained from the first and last letters of “portraits”, the 5th word in the third sentence. A reverse acrostic of “ps” is also formed by the 16th and 17th words (some particular) in the third sentence. The 19th word (perhaps) in the third sentence ends with the same abbreviation which is also formed by its first and last letters.

It was shown how two ampersands efficiently encode two sets of initials, one for psalm (ps) and the second for Elgar (EE). These decryptions parallel those found in the acrostic anagram “EEs Psalm” encoded by seven discrete performance directions in the Enigma Theme’s opening measure. A “crossed” epsilon further hints at Elgar’s Roman Catholic practice of crossing himself, a ritual that points to the secret friend depicted in Variation XIII via a sea crossing. That secret friend is identified on page 4 of the Turin concert program by the title of Elgar’s first sacred oratorio, “Lux Christi” (The Light of Life). “Christi” is the Latin word for Christ.

Elgar’s first official biography was published in 1905 by Robert J. Buckley. It features a facsimile of a 1901 postcard sent by Elgar to the author. The postcard appears on the page preceding the first chapter.

The missive begins in German and concludes in English. The most salient feature is how Elgar wrote the ampersand. His hasty script makes even his handwriting a challenge to decrypt. The brief postcard begins in German and concludes in English:

Ich habe nicht
vergessen
Home on Mon-
day, & then!

The German phrase “Ich have nicht vergessen” translates as “I did not forget”. Elgar’s ampersand resembles a plus sign or Greek cross. That glyph is commonly imprinted on the Eucharistic host to signify the broken body of Christ. Egar’s way of writing the ampersand hearkens back to its antiquated version as a crossed epsilon. Elgar uses the same cross-glyph for his ampersands in the 1911 program note.

Eucharistic Host with a Greek cross

The cryptographic significance of these two ampersands is enhanced by the realization that they are next to words that furnish Elgar’s forename, nickname, or initials. The first ampersand is followed by the 9th word in the first sentence (continued), a verb ending with “ued”. Those letters are an anagram of Elgar’s pet name “Edoo” spelled phonetically as “Edu.” Variation XIV is Elgar’s musical self-portrait and is emblazoned with the title “E. D. U.” The last two letters of “continued” are a short form of Edward. A lowercase version of Elgar’s initials also appears in the 11th word in the first sentence (deep). The first two letters from “deep” yield a reverse spelling of Ed. The second ampersand is flanked by a lowercase version of Elgar’s initials (theme & each). Lowercase renditions of his initials (“e & e” and “ee”) parallel two crossed epsilons encoding those same initials using the lowercase of that Greek letter. The 21st and 22nd words in the second sentence (the Enigma) are a mixed-case version of his initials. In all, there are at least three coded versions of Elgar’s initials. The glyph for “3” is a mirror image of a capital cursive E. These 1911 program note ciphers are consistent with other cryptograms in the Enigma Variations that are tagged with his initials or some form of his name.

A careful survey of Elgar’s 1911 program note reveals there are eight coded forms of his forename Ed. Four appear as the letter sequence “ed”. The first two are found in the 3rd (commenced) and 9th (continued) words from the first sentence. The third occurs in the last or 28th word of the second sentence (called). The fourth is the 13th word of the fourth sentence (listened). There are also four letter sequences of “de”, a reverse spelling of Ed. The first is embedded in the 11th word of the first sentence (deep). The second emerges in the 4th word of the second sentence (understood). The third emerges in the 12th word in the third sentence (idea), and the fourth is observed in the last or 24th word of the fourth sentence (consideration). There is a distinct symmetry to these iterations of Ed because four are spelled forward and four are spelled backward. There are three in the first sentence (two “ed” and one “de”), two in the second sentence (“de” and “ed”), one in the third sentence (“de”), and two in the fourth sentence (“ed” and “de”).

Elgar enciphers the initials “FAE” in Variation XIII using the Mendelssohn fragments framed 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 the German romantic motto “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely) coined around 1853 by the renowned violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim. 1853 is the same year when Joachim was presented with the F-A-E Violin Sonata, a work composed collaboratively as a tribute by his friends Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Albert Dietrich. In the third sentence of Elgar’s 1911 program note, those same three initials appear backward in the 12th and 13th words (idea founded). Elgar’s forename forms the tail end of “founded”. There is a distinct parallel between enciphering “FAE” in Variation XIII and a coded reference to that acronym involving the 13th word of the third sentence. An acrostic of “FAE” is also generated by the phrase “from any extraneous” near the end of the fourth sentence. These “FAE” ciphers verify that Elgar encodes more than merely the initials for his wife and himself in his 1911 program note.

The initials of some of Elgar’s other “Friends pictured within” appear to be embedded in certain words and phrases from his 1911 program note. The very first word (This) contains an anagram of “IHS”, a Christogram denoting the first three letters of the Greek name for Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ). The Lord and Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith is the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. It will later be shown how the initials “IHS” are encoded in a second way in the first sentence. Elgar enciphers the same “IHS” anagram in his English translation of a fragmentary Spanish epitaph used as a cryptic dedication for his Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61. The concerto premiered in 1910, one year before Elgar wrote his second program note about the Enigma Variations. By encoding the “IHS” Christogram in the first and last sentences of his 1911 program note, Elgar alludes to one of the titles for Jesus as “the first and the last” given in Revelations 22:13.

It is fascinating that Elgar’s 1911 program note spells out terms with letter sequences from adjoining words. The first discernible item encoded in this way is located in the 3rd through 5th words in the first sentence (commenced in a) which have the letter sequence dina. The Latin adjective dina means “godlike” and “divine.” According to Roman Catholic doctrine, those adjectives apply to the secret friend depicted in Variation XIII, Jesus Christ. The female name Dina is Hebrew in origin and means “judgment” or “vindication.” Those meanings are significant as the Enigma Variations vindicated Elgar’s quest to be internationally recognized as a major composer. “Dina” is used in both English and Italian, the languages associated with the original Turin program note and its translation.

Dina is not the only Hebrew name associated with the Enigma Variations. Elgar uses the feminine Hebrew name “Ysobel” as the title of Variation VI, a movement dedicated to his viola pupil Isabel Fitton. The 14th through 16th words in the first sentence (sketches of the) have a letter sequence that spells “soft.” That adjective is the translation of the musical dynamic piano that appears in the first bar of the Enigma Theme. Both the name Dina and the adjective soft are formed by sequential letters from three adjacent words in the first sentence. Two sets of threes suggest a coded version of Elgar’s initials as “33” is the mirror image of two rounded capital cursive Es.

The 8th and 9th words in the second sentence (comment or) have a letter series that spells tor. The Britannica Dictionary defines tor as “a high rocky hill.” The place where Jesus was crucified is known as Golgotha, a craggy hill with the contours of a skull. A leading contender for this historic site is Gordon’s Calvary, a rocky hillock with a skull-like profile located next to a garden tomb. That place is known by that name because its most famous proponent was General Gordon. Elgar planned to compose a symphony in honor of General Gordon in 1898 when he abruptly altered course and began work on the Enigma Variations. There are coded references to General Gordon in that work, most notably in the martial Finale where his initials are encoded at Rehearsal 62. These findings strongly suggest that Elgar incorporated material sketched for his “Gordon” Symphony into the Enigma Variations.

The 8th through 10th words in the second sentence (comment or reflect) have consecutive letters that spell torre, the Italian word for tower. The f that follows the spelling of torre is the initial for forte, a musical term that literally translates as strong. The placement of the initial f after a spelling of torre is tantalizing because it follows the same order as the Italian translation of “A strong tower” as “Una torre forte.” The encoding of the Italian phrase “torre forte” in Elgar’s 1911 program note is consistent with the Italian context of its genesis and publication. The works of the American author Henry Woodsworth Longfellow profoundly influenced Elgar’s output in the 1890s. Remarkably, Longfellow uses the Italian word “Torre” in his dramatic poem about the Italian artist Michael Angelo, an architect of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The significance of discovering torre expertly woven into the text of Elgar’s 1911 program note is that various English translations of Ein feste Burg employ the word tower in their titles. At least eighteen English titles use the word “tower” as compiled by Bernhard Pick in his 1917 pamphlet Luther’s Battle Song “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”:

1. A castle is our God, a tower.
2. A strong tower is our God’s great name.
3. A strong tower is the Lord our God.
4. A sure defense, a fort, a tower.
5. A tower of safety is our God
6. A tower of refuge is our God.
7. A tower of strength is still our God.
8. A tower of strength our God is still.
9. A tower of strength is God our Lord.
10. God is a stronghold and a tower.
11. God is our tower of strength and grace.
12. God, our own God, is a strong tower.
13. Our God, a tower of strength is He.
14. Our God, He is a fortress tower.
15. Our God stands firm, a rock and tow’r.
16. Strong tower and refuge is our God.
17. The Lord our God is a strong tower.
18. Tower of defense is our God.

In the closing chapter of his 1839 novel Hyperion: A Romance, Longfellow translates the title of Ein feste Burg as “Our God, he is a tower of strength.” Elgar gave a copy of Hyperion to Hans Richter in gratitude for conducting the June 1899 premiere of the Enigma Variations. In an October 1899 letter accompanying the novel, 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 within the pages 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.

Letters from the 10th and 11th words (reflect on) in the second sentence spell ton, a term used in upper-class English society to mean fashionable or in style. Merriam-Webster defines ton as “the prevailing fashion,” “vogue,” and “the quality or state of being smart or fashionable.” These definitions of ton are consistent with Elgar’s rise to the upper echelons of English society. As Rushton explains in his paper Elgar and Religion, “Elgar’s social aspirations are sometimes criticized because he was eager to gain a place within the upper echelons of society.” Elgar was knighted by King Edward VII in 1904. King George V awarded Elgar the Order of Merit in 1911, appointed him Master of the King’s Music in 1924, and allotted him a Baronetcy in 1931. Elgar rose to the zenith of English society because he contributed masterpieces to the canon of British oratorio and symphonism. As a member of the ton, Elgar experienced the prestige and heavy burden of fame.

The 12th and 13th words (the original) in the second sentence harbor the letter sequence theo. The Latin prefix theo means “god” or “deity” and is used in such English words as theology and theocentric. Elgar’s cryptic dedication to his Violin Concerto enciphers the word Theos, the Greek word for God. Theos stars with the same four letters as theo. The meaning of the Latin prefix theo is similar to the Latin adjective dina encoded in the first sentence. The 15th and 16th words (each one) from the second sentence have the letter sequence hone. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the verb hone as “to make something perfect or completely suitable for its purpose.” Through self-directed study and hard work, Elgar honed his skills to perfection, equipping himself to produce such masterworks as the Enigma Variations.

The 24th and 25th words (so the) in the second sentence have successive letters that spell soth. “Soth” means “truth” and “justice” in Middle English. These definitions are related to the Hebrew name Dina which means “judgment” and “vindication.” “Soth” has been used as a surname since the 13th century. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 published in 1888 defines the word soth as “true, truth, sooth,” and “soothsaying.” Soth is also the Old Saxon word for “true” and “real.” These definitions are connected to Jesus who called himself “the truth” (John 14:6) and issued prophecies about the destruction of the Temple (Matthew 24:2) and his death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21-23, Mark 9:30-23, Luke 9:21-22).

The 4th through 6th words (basis of the) of the third sentence have successive letters that spell soft. The same word is also encoded by the 14th through 16th words (sketches of the) from the first sentence. As previously observed, “soft” is the literal translation of the Italian performance direction piano that appears in the first bar of the Enigma Theme. The word soft is the only one encoded twice by consecutive letter series in adjacent words in Elgar’s 1911 program note.

The 6th and 7th words (but each) of the third sentence have consecutive letters that spell teach. Elgar served as a teacher of violin, viola, and piano before rising to become a renowned composer. The secret friend depicted in Variation XIII also served as a teacher. Jesus taught his followers through parables and acts of mercy and forgiveness. Jesus is portrayed in Variation XIII, a movement where Elgar sonically depicts a calm sea using an ostinato figure that represents gentle undulating tides. In his 1911 program note, the 11th and 12th words (distinct idea) from the third sentence generate the letter sequence tide. Merriam-Webster defines tide as “the alternate rising and falling of the surface of the ocean . . .”

The 9th through 11th words (contains a distinct) of the third sentence have successive letters that spell sad. That decryption is the definition of mesto, an Italian performance direction used only once in the Enigma Variations in bar 16 of the first violin staff two bars before Rehearsal 2. Elgar served in the first violin section of various ensembles, most notably William Stockley’s Orchestra between 1882 and 1889. He also played violin at the Three Choirs Festival. Elgar advised that he cites the Enigma Theme multiple times in his 1912 work The Music Makers because it “expressed when written (in 1898) my sense of the loneliness of the artist . . . and, to me, still embodies that sense.” The adjective sad is followed by a reverse encoding of the acronym “FAE” (Frei aber einsam) in the 12th and 13th words (idea founded). A synonym for lonely is forsaken.

Sequential letters from the 12th and 13th words (idea founded) in the third sentence spell deaf. Merriam-Webster defines deaf as “having total or partial hearing loss” or “unwilling to hear or listen.” In his 1899 program note, Elgar explained that “. . . through and over the whole set [of Variations] another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played . . .” The silence of the principal Theme renders the audience deaf to the foundational theme of the Enigma Variations.

The 19th and 20th words (perhaps on) of the third sentence have successive letters that spell son, a term used in scriptural titles for Jesus such as “Son of man” and “Son of God.” The 21st and 22 words (some incident)in the third sentence have consecutive letters that spell ein, the first word in the title Ein feste Burg. The 25th and 26th words (to two) in the third sentence have the letter sequence tot. Merriam-Webster defines the noun tot as “a small child.” According to Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith, Jesus became the incarnation of God when he was born to the Virgin Mary as a babe or tot. The word tot is also the phonetic equivalent of taught, the past tense of teach.

The first two words of the fourth sentence (This is) thinly conceal a spelling of isis. This is a coded reference to Isis, one of the most important goddesses of ancient Egypt. Why would Elgar encode the name of a mythical Egyptian goddess in his Turin program note? There are many fascinating links between the city of Turin and the goddess Isis. According to local legend, Turin was founded by a son of Isis named Phaeton. He established the city to honor the bull god Apis. This mythical founding accounts for why the Italian name for Turin is “Torino” which means “little bull.” The city’s coat of arms features a bull, and its flag displays a bull in each of its four quadrants.

Turin’s Church of Gran Madre di Dio (Great Mother of God) was reportedly built on a temple dedicated to Isis. Like the Virgin Mary, one of the titles for Isis is the “Queen of Heaven.” One of the oldest museums devoted to Egyptian antiquity is the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) established in Turin in 1824. In his paper The Isis of Turin Affair, Renaud Gagné describes a scholarly and theological debate that raged between 1758 to 1763 about a black marble statue of Isis housed at the Museo Egizio. Another reason why Elgar likely encoded an Egyptian deity’s name is that it is associated with the Sphinx. In a November 1899 letter, August Jaeger gave Elgar the nickname “Sphinx.” These relevant facts provide more than ample justification for Elgar to encode the name Isis in his 1911 program note for a concert program in Turin. 

The 8th and 9th words of the fourth sentence (but the) have consecutive letters that spell butt, a euphemism for ass. The letters from ass are the acronym for A Safe Stronghold, an English translation of Ein feste Burg by the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle. The 19th and 20th words (music apart) have the consecutive letter sequence capa, the Italian word for head, chief or principal. As the conductor of a program featuring his music, Elgar was the de facto head of the proceedings. The secret melody with English initials that spell ass (butt) is also the head (capa) or principal Theme of the Enigma Variations. The 21st and 22nd words (from any) have consecutive letters that spell many. The dedication of Elgar’s overture Cockaign (In Londontown) Op. 40 uses the word “many” in the context of friendship. The dedication employs virtually the same language as that for the Enigma Variations, opening with “Dedicated to my many friends . . .” By 1911 Elgar had many friends and supporters of his music.

It was shown earlier how the terms torre, the initial for forte, and ein are enciphered by contiguous letters in adjacent words. The 8th through 10th words from the second sentence (comment or reflect) have successive letters that spell torre (tower) followed by the letter f, the initial of the performance direction forte (strong). The 21st and 22 words (some incident) in the third sentence have consecutive letters that spell ein (a). These Italian and German terms may be combined to form “Ein Torre Forte,” a bilingual translation of the covert Theme’s title as “A Strong Tower.” Remarkably, the phrase “a strong tower” appears in some English translations of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

This analysis showed how Elgar’s procedure of enciphering words via letters from adjacent words generates terms in English, German, Italian, and Latin. This series of cryptograms is labeled the 1911 Program Note Multiword Letter Sequences Ciphers. There are two words encoded in the first sentence (dina and soft), five words in the second sentence (tor, torre, ton, theo, and soth), seven in the third sentence (teach, tide, sad, deaf, son, ein, and tot), and five words in the fourth sentence (Isis, soft, butt, capa, and many). In all, there are nineteen words encoded by letter sequences from two or more contiguous words. That sum corresponds to the Enigma Theme’s length of nineteen bars.

The first word of the first and fourth sentences is “This”, a pronoun that begins with a capital T, the shape of the Tau cross. Its remaining three letters (his) yield an anagram of the Christogram “IHS.” As previously mentioned, the Tau cross is also called the crux commissa and the Saint Anthony cross. As one of the Desert Fathers, Saint Anthony of Egypt is revered as the “Father of all Monks” for his advocacy of monasticism. A coded reference to St. Anthony’s cross is relatable to Martin Luther, the author of Ein feste Burg. In July 1505, Luther joined St. Augustine’s Monastery in Erfurt and became a monk. Luther refers to St. Anthony in his letters and sermons. Artists such as Konrad Witz and Giotto depict Christ nailed to a T-shaped cross.

Crucifixion scene with a Tau cross, by Konrad Witz (1400–1447)

There are precisely three capital Ts in Elgar’s 1911 program note situated at the beginning of the first, third, and fourth sentences. Such a sum corresponds to the number of crosses at Golgotha where Jesus was crucified between two criminals. The third sentence starts with “The”, a word that has as its first letter a Tau cross glyph followed by the male pronoun “he”. The first and fourth sentences begin with “This”, a word that also begins with a Tau cross glyph followed by the masculine pronoun “his”, an anagram of the “IHS” Christogram. Jesus and the two criminals flanking him at Calvary were males. It appears Elgar deliberately confined the number of capital Ts to three to allude to the biblical account of Christ’s crucifixion.

As recorded in Luke 23:43, Jesus prophesied to the repentant thief at his right that “. . . today you will be with me in paradise.” The criminal to Christ’s left received no such assurance as he remained impenitent. The distribution of two saved and one condemned is parallel by two occurrences of “This” at the beginning of the first and last sentences, and one “The” at the outset of the third sentence. “This” bears a coded version of the “IHS” Christogram, a sign of salvation. The Apocrypha gives the name of “Dismas” for the penitent thief to the right of Christ, and “Gesmas” for the condemned at his left.

The 23rd word in the third sentence (known) ends with letters that reproduce the initials for Winifred Norbury, the dedicatee of Variation VIII. A singer and director of village choirs, she served as joint secretary of the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society. Winifred was an early supporter of Elgar’s music, patiently proofreading and copying out orchestral parts. In the booklet My Friends Pictured Within, Elgar explains that her movement “suggested an eighteenth-century house” where Winifred resided called Sherridge. He adds, “The gracious personalities of the ladies are sedately shown.” He concludes with, “W. N. was more connected with music than others of the family, and her initials head the movement; to justify this position a little suggestion of a characteristic laugh is given.”

The 10th, 12th, and 13th words from the fourth sentence (work may be) are an acrostic of “WMB”, the initials of William Meath Baker who is depicted in Variation IV. His sister Mary Frances Baker was best friends with Elgar’s wife since childhood and became the stepmother of Dora Penny when marrying the Reverend Alfred Penny.

The 20th word (apart) in that same sentence contains an anagram of “RPA”, the initials of Richard Penrose Arnold depicted in Variation V. Encoding Arnold’s initials as par followed by the letter t is supported by the realization that he accompanied Elgar on many rounds of golf at the Worcestershire Golf Club. Merriam-Webster defines par as “the score standard for each hole of a golf course.” Scoring the requisite number of strokes assigned to a hole is called “a par”, an expression suggested by the a before par in “apart”. The last letter t is phonetic for tee, a small peg used for teeing up the ball. Elgar’s coded application of the lowercase t parallels his use of the capital T in the first word “This” which enciphers the “IHS” anagram.

Arnold was a fixture at tea parties hosted for the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society, His “serious conversation was continually broken up by his whimsical and witty remarks” as recounted in Dora Powell’s memoir. In recognition of Arnold’s regular attendance at these parties, the word “apart” may be interpolated phonetically as the phrase “a party” (a-par-t).

Variation VI is dedicated to Isabel Fitton, a viola pupil whom Elgar nicknamed “Ysobel”. The initials for her name appear as an acrostic formed by the 12th and 13th words (idea founded) in the third sentence.

Elgar’s program note ends with the words “any extraneous consideration.” The initials of those three final words are an acrostic anagram of “CAE”, the initials of his wife Caroline Alice Elgar. Variation I is dedicated to her and has the title “C. A. E.” Just as Elgar mingles her movement with his own in Variation XIV, he likewise encodes his initials with hers in his 1911 program note.

In all, there are coded references in Elgar’s 1911 program note to seven individuals portrayed in variations I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XIV. This number represents half of the fourteen friends depicted in the Enigma Variations. Why would Elgar encode references to those particular movements? The application of a basic number-to-letter key converts the Roman numerals I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XIV into the letters A, D, E, F, H, M, and N. Those plaintext letters may be reshuffled to form the anagram “HEND AMF.” The verb hend is defined by The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language as “to seize; to take; to lay hold on.” The spelling of hend differs from hand by just one solitary letter. The letters “AMF” are the initials of A Mighty Fortress, a popular 1853 English translation of Ein feste Burg by Frederic H. Hedge (1805–1890). The anagram “HEND AMF” may be decrypted as the statement “Seize A Mighty Fortress.” This is Elgar’s coded command directing those clever enough to decode it to seize upon Ein feste Burg as the absent principal Theme of the Enigma Variations. That hend ends with end is also illuminating as Elgar begins his retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg above the Enigma Theme with its ending phrase. This cryptogram is called Elgar’s 1911 Program Note “HEND AMF” Cipher.

There is a second explanation for why Elgar inserted coded allusions in his 1911 program note to Variations I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XIV. The keys of those seven movements are G minor (I, IV), C minor (V), C major (VI), and G major (VIII, XIII and XIV). The key letters of the minor keys are G and C. Likewise, the key letters of the major keys are also G and C. The discrete key letters of these minor and major keys furnish the Italian initials of “Gesù Cristo,” the Italian translation of Jesus Christ. An Italian context is appropriate as Elgar’s 1911 program note was written for a performance in Turin, Italy. The English initials for Jesus are also enciphered by the Roman numerals of Variation XIII, a movement dedicated in secret to Christ. “X” represents the number ten, and the tenth letter of the alphabet is J. “III” stands for three, and the third letter is C. “JC” is the initials for Jesus Christ.

The frequencies of the key signatures for the seven movements encoded in Elgar’s 1911 program note are cryptographically significant. Two are in G minor (I, IV), three are in G major (VIII, XIII, XIV), one is in C minor (V), and one is in C major (VI). When converted into their corresponding letters of the alphabet using a number-to-letter key, those frequencies produce the plaintext letters A, A, B, and C. These letters are an anagram of “ABAC.” Significantly, the Enigma Theme has an ABAC structure. “ABAC” is also a phonetic spelling of aback, a term that Merriam-Webster defines as “backward” and “by surprise.” These definitions aptly characterize Elgar’s retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg over the Enigma Theme because the hidden melody plays backward.

The opening two sentences of Elgar's 1911 program note are seasoned with coded references to Elgar’s initials, forename, and abbreviations of psalm. But which chapter could those psalmic abbreviations be referencing? A word count of these opening two sentences unveils the answer. The first and second sentences have precisely 46 words excluding the ampersands which are symbols. The word sum of 46 is noteworthy because Luther was inspired to compose Ein feste Burg by Psalm 46. The numbers four and six are further suggested in the opening sentence by the clause circumscribed by commas. The first half of that phrase consists of six words (“commenced in a spirit of humour”) and is separated by an ampersand from another four words (“continued in deep seriousness”). The numbers four and six suggest 46. Coded references to psalm and the number 46 are collectively referred to as the 1911 Program Note First and Second Sentences Psalm “46” cipher.

The Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) named Psalm 46 “Luther’s Psalm” because it was the poetic catalyst for Ein feste Burg. Carlyle translated Ein feste Burg into English in 1831, giving it the title A Safe Stronghold. The expression “and sign” provides the formative initials (A and S) for that English translation. Consequently, two “and signs” in the opening two sentences of Elgar’s 1911 program note furnish sufficient initials to replicate the acrostic anagram “ASS”. According to A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant published in Great Britain in 1889, the colloquial meaning of ampersand is “the seat or hinder part” because that symbol is placed “. . . at the bottom of the alphabet . . .” The ampersand ranks last as the 27th letter as shown from a children’s primer from the 19th century:

In this demotic context, the noun seat means “buttocks” and the adjective hinder denotes being “situated behind or in the rear.” A synonym for both seat and hinder is ass, a term that provides the sequential initials of A Safe Stronghold. This cryptogram is called Elgar’s 1911 Program Note Ampersand “ASS” cipher. Consistent with that determination, the third through sixth words (be understood that these) in the second sentence generate the acrostic butt. In addition, the sixth word in the third sentence is but, a homonym of butt.

Carlyle’s 1831 translation of Ein feste Burg has the title A Safe Stronghold which may be distilled down to the acronym “A. S. S.” In a letter to Jaeger dated 24 October 1898, Elgar employs the term ass to describe his friends’ imagined attempts at composing the Variations. “Ass” is a clever wordplay on the covert Theme’s English initials, one that surfaces in a letter written three days after Elgar first played the Enigma Theme at the piano for his wife Alice. Another English translation of Ein feste Burg is A Stronghold Sure which shares the same initials as A Safe Stronghold. Novello published Bach’s Lutheran Cantata Ein feste Burg in 1876 under the title A Stronghold Sure. The phrase “attempts a solution” from the second sentence of Elgar’s 1911 program note clusters the letters required to formulate the absent theme’s initials. The irony is that the hidden melody’s initials are interwoven within the very phrase that dwells on a singular solution.

In his 1911 program note, Elgar enciphers the initials of friends depicted in variations I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XIV. Consistent with this pattern, he encodes the English initials of various translations of Ein feste Burg. The 22nd and 23rd words in the second sentence (Enigma, for) present a cluster of letters that are an anagram of “AMF”, the initials of A Mighty Fortress. That is the English title of the familiar translation completed in 1853 by Hedge. The first three words of the third sentence (The sketches are) present a reverse acrostic of the acronym for A Strong Tower, another English translation of Ein feste Burg by William M. Bunting (1805–1866). These two translations complement the encoding of the acronym “ASS” in the second sentence, the initials of both A Safe Stronghold and A Stronghold Sure.

There is ample reason to associate Martin Luther with such a vulgar term as ass. The foul-mouthed theologian employed scatology in his writings to shock his opponents into reconsidering their sympathetic views on the Roman Catholic Church. It was a crude yet effective technique. Danielle Mead Skjelver of the University of Maryland explores Luther’s “scatological vulgarity” in her essay German Hercules: The Impact of Scatology on the Image of Martin Luther as a Man, 1483-1546. Luther’s flare for hurling verbal invectives is the basis for the website “Lutheran Insulter” which generates a litany of insults at the press of a button. Like Luther, Tony Robbins is a business strategist and author who laces his motivational speeches with profanity to jolt listeners into taking unprecedented actions. Robbins is arguably a “personal Reformer” who specializes in transforming people’s lives from the inside out. Like Luther, his verbal assaults are crudely effective.

In his 1526 pamphlet “Against the Papacy at Rome”, Luther repeatedly invokes the word “ass” to provoke and excoriate his Roman Catholic adversary in an imagined dialogue:

Paul: Be quiet you heretic! Whatever issues from our mouth must be obeyed.

Luther: Which mouth do you mean? The one the farts come from? You can have that one. Or the mouth the wine of Corsica flows into? Let a dog shit in that one. 

Paul: You shameless Luther, you mustn’t talk that way to the Pope.

Luther: Shame on yourself, you blasphemous scoundrel . . . You are a crude ass, you pope-ass, and you will always be an ass.

Would Elgar ever read such an expletive-laden screed against the Roman Catholic Church, the foundational faith of his childhood? Not only would he read such an offensive tract, he would buy it for his private collection of antique books. In a letter to Francess Colvin, Elgar acknowledged acquiring a “lovely old” book titled “Tracts Against Popery”. He may have been referring to “Several Tracts Against Popery”, a volume published in 1715 that refers to the work of Dr. Martin Luther.

When Elgar was appointed artistic director of the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society in late 1897, he selected the chorus “Wach Auf!” by Richard Wagner as the Society’s signature song. Elgar conductor the Society’s first concert in May 1898 which was favorably reviewed in the Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. “Wach Auf!” is a Lutheran anthem with lyrics drawn from the opening seven lines of The Wittenberg Nightengale, a 700-line long poem by the famous German Meistersinger Hans Sachs published in 1523. He gives an allegorical defense of the German Reformation, portraying Luther as a “blissful Nightingale” whose singing draws people to the truth of God's word. According to Sachs’ poetic account, Luther is indeed a “fowl” mouthed Reformer. Elgar’s selection of a chorus that extols Luther as the Society’s motto is elegantly compatible with his choice of the Lutheran hymn Ein feste Burg as the covert Theme of the Enigma Variations. The letterhead for the Society depicts a singing nightingale perched above “SOCIETY” heralding the arrival of dawn. Elgar’s warbling nightingale is none other than Martin Luther, a composer renowned for his hymns.

Worcestershire Philharmonic Society Letterhead

A more nuanced cipher extracted from Elgar’s 1911 program note is rooted in its opening sentence, “This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends.” The first sentence has eighteen words, one ampersand, two commas, and one period for a total of 102 characters excluding spaces. A sentence structure analysis identified the following formational elements. The first two words (This work) comprise the subject. A comma after the subject precedes the first verb (commenced) and its modifying prepositional phrase (in a spirit of humour) for a total of six more words. An ampersand (&) serves as a coordinating conjunction that is followed by a second verb (continued) and prepositional phrase (in deep seriousness) for four additional words cordoned off by a second comma. The sentence ends with a third verb (contains), the object (sketches), and a third prepositional phrase (of the composer’s friends) for a total of six more words. All three verbs begin with “co”—commenced, continued, and contains.

Discrete word totals from these structural elements in the first sentence are two, five, and six. Word clusters of two and five occur once, and groupings of six words appear twice. The emergence of two six-word phrases is interesting because the product of six multiplied by itself is 36, the opus number of the Enigma Variations. Two sixes are also relatable to a six-by-six checkerboard key for a musical Polybius cipher in the opening six bars of the Enigma Theme. That Polybius key has 36 cells, a sum equal to the opus number. The discrete word sums of two, five, and six are easily converted into their corresponding letters of the English alphabet using a basic number-to-letter key. When translated into letters using that method, they generate the plaintext B, E, and F. Those three letters are an anagram of “EFB”, the initials of Ein feste Burg. This cryptogram is labeled the 1911 Program Note First Sentence Structure “EFB” cipher and is summarized in the table below.

The clause segregated by commas in the opening sentence (commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness) is an important part of the sentence structure cipher that encodes the initials “EFB” of the secret melody. A comma is the same glyph as a single quotation mark. Elgar uses quotations in the score of the Enigma Variations to underscore certain cryptograms, most notably the Mendelssohn fragments in Variation XIII and the Tasso paraphrase at the end of the original Finale. Similarly, the text enveloped by commas in the first sentence of Elgar’s 1911 program note signals another cryptogram. The sequence of initials obtained from those ten words bookended by commas is “CIASOHCIDS”. When arranged in alphabetical order, those letters break down as one A, two Cs, one D, one H, two Is, one O, and two Ss. These ten initials may be reorganized to construct acrostic anagrams that disclose information about the secret friend and covert Theme. This cryptogram is called the 1911 Program Note First Sentence Commas Anagrams cipher.

The first significant anagram obtained from the initials “CIASOHCIDS” is “CODA SIC IHS”. Coda is defined by Merriam-Webster in two ways. The first is as “a concluding musical section that is formally distinct from the main structure.” It may also refer to “a concluding part of a literary or dramatic work.” The word coda is Italian for “tail.” Remarkably, the term coda is pronounced “kōdə” with its first three letters (cod) sounding exactly like code. The plural version of coda is code. Consistent with the partial decryption coda, the Enigma Variations ends with a rousing coda in Variation XIV. This insight triggered a search for the term sic at the tail end of the Enigma Variations.

Sic is the first word from the Latin phrase “sic erat scriptum” which means “thus was it written.” It is standard practice to add the abbreviation “sic” to a quotation to show that it was transcribed exactly as the original with known grammatical or factual errors. At the end of the original Finale to the Enigma Variations, Elgar cites a six-word Italian paraphrase (“Bramo assai, poco spero, nulla chieggio”) from the epic Christian poem Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso. It is classified as a paraphrase because the original quotation is personalized from the third to first person. To the right of the quotation Elgar wrote “(sic, 1595) [Tasso]” to identify its source. Elgar attached sic to his quotation because he recognized Jerusalem Delivered was published before 1595, the year of Tasso’s death. Relying on this analysis, the acrostic anagrams coda and sic are conjoined after the final coda of the Enigma Variations where Elgar wrote sic.

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

Elgar’s encoding of coda with sic calls for a reconsideration of the coda from Jerusalem Delivered. Tasso’s epic is a mythologized account of the First Crusade when a Christian army liberated Jerusalem from pagan occupation. The final scene unfolds after the conquest in Canto XX stanza CLXIV where the valiant Christian knight Godfrey of Bouillon sheds his armor and enters the Holy Sepulchre of Christ to worship and fulfill a sacred vow. It is noteworthy that the final stanza bears the Roman numerals “XIV”, the same used for the title of Elgar’s musical self-portrait. The closing scene of Jerusalem Delivered takes place in the tomb of Jesus, a place that relates to the final piece of the acrostic anagram (IHS). Merriam-Webster defines IHS as “a Christian symbol and monogram for Jesus.” The secret friend depicted in Variation XIII is the Lord and Savior of Elgar’s Roman Catholic faith. The Latin pronunciation of sic sounds like “seek”. For this reason, “SIC IHS” may be decoded a second way as “Seek Jesus.” The full acrostic anagram “CODA SIC IHS” is neatly bound together by the original coda to the Enigma Variations followed by the Tasso paraphrase.

The attribution “(sic, 1595) [Tasso]” is intriguing for three reasons. The first is that the first letters of sic (S) and Tasso (T) generate an acrostic anagram of the initials for “Turin Shroud.” The brackets that enclose the name Tasso intimate the long rectangular shape of that sacred burial cloth. The second is that those same initials correspond to those for “A Tower”, the first two words in eight different English translations of Ein feste Burg compiled in 1917 by Bernhard Pick of Concordia Seminary. He tabulated 52 English titles from a total of 77 translations that share some overlapping phrases.

The initials “ST” provide two of the three initials for A Strong Tower, an English translation of Ein feste Burg by Bunting. The first letters of sic and Tasso provide the initials S and T. The absent initial A is obtained by applying a number-to-letter key to the first numeral in the year 1595. It is remarkable that the letter sequence “ass” occurs both in the paraphrase (assai) and the poet’s name (Tasso). Based on this assessment, Elgar incorporated the English initials of the covert Theme within both the Tasso paraphrase and attribution. This is consistent with diverse coded references to the German initials (EFB) on the title page where Elgar abbreviated February as “FEb”.

A second anagram obtained from the initials “CIASOHCIDS” is “HID ASS C DIO”. The first word hid is the past tense of hide, a verb that Merriam-Webster defines as “to put out of sight,” “to conceal,” and “to keep secret.” Those definitions conform with Elgar’s stratagem to hide the covert Theme using a contrapuntal smokescreen in the guise of the Enigma Theme. The initials “ASS” duplicate those for two English translations of Ein feste Burg as A Stronghold Sure and A Safe Stronghold. That latter is a translation by Carlyle published in 1831. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow met Carlyle in 1835 and admired his scholarship on German history and culture. Elgar drew inspiration from the prose and poetry of Longfellow for such works as Rondel, Spanish Serenade, The Black Knight, The Saga of King Olaf, and The Apostles. The first half of the anagram (HID ASS) may be decoded as “Hid A Safe Stronghold” or “Hid A Stronghold Sure”, solutions that convey how Elgar concealed Ein feste Burg. Three days after he began sketching the Enigma Variations, Elgar penned a letter to August Jaeger in which he used the plural form of “ass” to describe his friends’ imagined attempts at composing. The word “ass” is a cheeky wordplay on two sets of English initials for the covert Theme.

The first part of the program anagram employs two three-letter terms, the verb “hid” and a set of English initials (A. S. S.) for the covert Theme. This use of initials is consistent with the majority of the titles from the Enigma Variations which consist of initials. Like the first half, the second half of the acrostic anagram (C DIO) also uses two terms. The letter “C” is a homonym of see. “DIO” is the Italian translation of God. It was observed earlier that the Church of Gran Madre di Dio (Mother of God) in Turin is reputedly constructed on a temple of Isis. The partial anagram “C DIO” may be read phonetically as “See God”, a solution that resonates with the Christian tenet that Jesus is the incarnation of God. This solution intersects with another cipher in Variation XIII that encodes “TURIN S(hroud)”, a sacred burial cloth that preserves a faint picture of the crucified body of Christ In recognition that C is the initial for Christ in English and Italian (Cristo), “C DIO” may also be interpolated as “Christ God”. This second reading is supported by the realization that the initials of the covert Theme also appear in the same decryption as “ASS”. The encoding of the initials for Christ (C) and the hidden melody (ASS) present a double entendre as Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem riding on a donkey’s colt. A synonym for donkey is ass obtained from the Latin designation Equus asinus.

Two ampersands in the first two sentences are associated with word ciphers that encode Elgar’s initials (EE) and pet name (EDU) as well as the English initials for the covert Theme (ASS). Similarly, there are two quotations in the third and fourth sentences that also harbor ciphers. The first term in single quotations is portraits followed by a comma. The first and last letters of portraits are p and s, a standard abbreviation of psalm. These letters are adjacent to single quotation marks. The second quotation is the three-word phrase piece of music, an acrostic of pom which is slang for a British person. The three-word phrase “piece of music” consists of twelve letters. The covert Theme’s title Ein feste Burg also consists of three words with a total of twelve letters. The phrase “piece of music” furnishes the glyphs for “Efb” using the m from music rotated 90 degrees, f from of, and the p from piece flipped upside down. Similarly, the word friends that concludes the first sentence contains the glyphs needed to generate “efb” (friends). The words “idea founded” from the third sentence also furnish those same glyphs in close proximity.

The alliterative expression “to two” in the third sentence of Elgar’s 1911 program note is an adroit wordplay that places a subtle emphasis on the number two. This insight is driven by the recognition that “to” is a homonym of “two.” It was further noted that only certain words appear two times. One of those words is “to.” Out of 97 words and two “and” symbols, only thirteen words and one ampersand appear exactly twice. Just as there are fourteen variations given Roman numerals (I–XIV), there are likewise fourteen duplicate terms as shown below in yellow highlights:

This work, commenced in a spirit of humour & continued in deep seriousness, contains sketches of the composer’s friends. It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme & each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called. The sketches are not ‘portraits’, but each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people. This is the basis of the composition; but the work may be listened to as a ‘piece of music’ apart from any extraneous consideration.

Precisely seven duplicate terms populate each of the four sentences in Elgar’s 1911 program note. Such a uniform distribution reeks of design and intentionality. This pattern of duplicate words should cause one to think twice. In explanatory notes for the Aeolian Company’s pianola rolls of the Enigma Variations released in 1929, Elgar offered the following cryptic comment, “The drop of a seventh in the Theme (bars 3 and 4) should be observed.” The identification of seven duplicate terms in all four sentences of Elgar’s 1911 program note correlates to his emphasis on the descending seventh in the Theme.

Fourteen repeated words and symbols in Elgar’s 1911 program note are summarized in alphabetical order as &, be, but, contains, each, in, is, may, sketches, some, theme, this, to, and work. Words appearing twice within the same sentence are in, theme, and some. This combination suggests rearranging those three duplicates into the phrase “in some theme”. Building on that precedent, duplicate terms were rearranged to generate the anagrammatic sentence, “This work contains sketches to some theme but each is maybe in &.” The words may and be are conjoined as maybe, a synonym of perhaps and possibly. Their consolidation is suggested by the consistent appearance of those terms as “may be” in the second and fourth sentences. The Cambridge Dictionary explains that “maybe” and “may be” are used to express probability:

We use maybe and may be to talk about possibility. They are often confused because we use them both when we think that something is possible but we are not certain.

Elgar used the phrase “is perhaps” when describing the cryptic Spanish dedication to his Violin Concerto in a letter written on October 9, 1910. The dual-word anagram sentence cipher from the 1911 program note generates an enigmatic statement that indicates the secret of Elgar's absent theme resides in the ampersand. This cryptogram is called the 1911 Program Note Duplicate Terms Anagram Sentence cipher

To get to the bottom of Elgar’s melodic mystery, it is necessary to connect the ampersand to the absent principal Theme. The ampersand was slang for “bottom” and “buttocks” when Elgar composed the Enigma Variations in 1898-99. One of the repeated words in the dual words anagram is but, a homonym of butt derived from the Old English word buttuc meaning “end” or “end piece.” Remarkably, the expression “to two” in Elgar’s 1911 program note sounds exactly like the French word tutu, a stylistic dress worn by ballerinas. The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explains that tutu “. . . gets its name from the French nursery.” It offers the following account of its semantic origin, “In French tutu is a child’s alteration of cucu, an informal term for the bottom, from cul ‘buttocks’.” Just as a ballerina dons a tutu to artfully hide her rear end, Elgar expertly camouflages tutu with the expression “to two” to figuratively dance around the covert Theme’s English initials that spell ass.

The crossed lowercase epsilon reproduces the rounded capital cursive E used by Elgar in correspondence to denote himself. When the ampersand is understood through that interpretive lens, the duplicate words anagram may be reread as “This work contains sketches to some theme but each is maybe in E.” Such a statement embodies Elgar as the unifying theme to a diverse series of variations composed as sketches of his friends. Indeed, Elgar is at the center of his melodic mystery because he conceived it. The concluding phrase “in E” is conspicuous as its letters are an anagram of Ein, the first word in the covert Theme’s title. Elgar employs the same tactic at the outset of Variation IX (Nimrod) where he indicates the tuning of the timpani beginning with “in E . . .” Remarkably, this timpani tuning cryptogram at Rehearsal 33 encodes the initials and first word of Ein feste Burg.

Elgar would seal envelopes with red wax imprinted with a large E when mailing musical scores to his publishers. In this manner, he identified his completed scores with his initial E. He describes this practice in a March 1897 letter to Miss Dora Penny using a revealing respelling of easily:

    By the way I have taken to ‘die-sinking’ as a recreation: hence on the back of this is my parcel-post seal: I have to register all my MSS & they will not give a receipt unless they are sealed: so I put this on that works may be Esily distinguished.

Similar to how he sealed his musical scores with a waxen imprint of his initial, Elgar sealed the dual words sentence anagram cipher in his 1911 program note with an E thinly disguised as an ampersand.

The architect and artist Troyte Griffith is the friend depicted in Variation VII. Troyte recalled the following conversation at Marl Bank where Elgar resided from December 1929 until his death in February 1934:

He or I suggested that the Enigma might be a veiled dancer. But when I said that she would unveil at the end and the orchestra would play the theme, he shook his head.

Elgar preferred to keep both his dancer and principal Theme veiled in secrecy. By concealing the principal Theme, Elgar hid the innermost part of his artistic persona non grata.

A study of fourteen duplicate words and symbols from Elgar’s 1911 program note uncovered an illuminating cryptogram obtained from an anagrammatic sentence. This discovery triggered a reassessment of words possessing two Es that suggest a coded version of Elgar’s initials. This search identified fourteen words with two lowercase es. Those words in order of appearance are commenced, deep, seriousness, sketches, these, personages, reflect, theme, theme, sketches, people, listened, piece, and extraneous. The terms sketches and theme each appear twice. Two occurrences of theme aptly convey how Elgar merged two different themes to construct the contrapuntal foundation of the Enigma Variations. The sum of fourteen words with two es is conspicuous because there are also fourteen duplicate words in Elgar’s 1911 program note and fourteen variations numbered I through XIV. Such symmetry is difficult to pass off as fortuitous.

A pattern of two es suggests concentrating on two letters from each word. But which letters should be selected? The most obvious choices would be the first and last letters. One reason for this hunch is that a title for Jesus is “the first and the last.” The first letters of words having two es are “cdsstprttsplpe” in order of appearance. In alphabetical order they appear as “cdelppprsssttt.” These initials may be rearranged into the acrostic anagram “PP T LC REST SDT SP”. The anagram is shown in capital letters to distinguish it from the original lowercase series. This cryptogram is called the 1911 Program Note Duplex-E Words Acrostic Anagram Cipher.

“PP” stands for pianissimo, a musical dynamic that appears in measures 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, and 18 of the Enigma Theme in full score. “PP” also furnishes the initials of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who unjustly sentenced Jesus to death on the cross. The letter “T” originally appears in lowercase (t) and resembles a Latin Roman cross. “LC” is the initials for Lux Christi (Light of Christ), the title of Elgar’s first sacred oratorio premiered in 1896 and revised in 1899. The oratorio recounts how Jesus miraculously restored sight to a beggar born blind as recorded in the Gospel of John. “LC” is also the initials for Lord Christ.

The term “rest” is a musical term that refers to the absence of sound for a specified amount of time. The Enigma Theme is punctuated by quarter note rests on the downbeats of measures 1 through 6, and 11 through 16. The English equivalent of a quarter note is a crotchet. The term “rest” is also used as part of the Christian epitaph “Rest in peace.” “SDT” is the Italian acronym for “Sindone di Torino” which translates as the “Turin Shroud.” This acronym is consistent with the 1911 concert program published in Italian. The image on the Turin Shroud shows the body of Jesus in repose and at rest. “SP” is the initials of Secondo Pia, the Italian photographer who produced the first photographs of the Turin Shroud. The acrostic anagram “PP T LC REST SDT SP” may be read as “Pontius Pilate, Cross, Lux Christi (or Lord Christ), Sindone di Torino (Turin Shroud), and Second Pia.” Such a combination of solutions is mutually consistent and interrelated.

Almost the entire acrostic angaram is linked to Rome, and by extension, Italy where the 1911 Turin International Exposition transpired. “Lux Christi” is Latin, the official language of Rome and the traditional liturgical language of the Roman Catholic Church. “Sindone di Torino” is in Italian, the lingua franca of Italy. Secondo Pia is the name of the Italian photographer who famously discovered in May 1898 that the faint image on the Turin Shroud is a photographic negative that produces a positive image on a photographic plate. Pontius Pilate served as the fifth Roman governor of the Roman province of Judea. He ordered that the Latin phrase “IESVS NAZARENVS REX IVDÆORVM” (Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews) be posted at the crucifixion of Jesus. A Latin inscription from his governorship survives on the Pilate stone discovered in 1961. The glyph “t” resembles a Latin cross used by the Romans to torture and execute condemned criminals.

The decryption of the 1911 Program Note Duplex-E Words Acrostic Anagram Cipher reveals it is framed in three languages: English, Italian, and Latin. The spelling of “three” exhibits a lowercase version of Elgar’s initials. Those are the same three languages Elgar employed in his draft of the 1911 program note. English, Latin, and Italian generate the acrostic “ELI”, an Aramaic word uttered by Jesus from the cross when he recited the opening line of Psalm 22. Elgar cites the first verse of Psalm 22 in Part V of The Apostles. As shown previously, Elgar encodes “ELI” with his unconventional organ label at the beginning of the Enigma Theme and with performance directions at Rehearsal 52 in Variation XII.

The last letters of fourteen duplex-e words are “dpssesteesedes” in order of appearance. When rearranged alphabetically, those initials become “ddeeeeepssssst.” That outcome is an elongated phonetic realization of deeps followed by a t, a glyph that resembles a cross. Such an alphabetical reading is consistent with Elgar’s sketch of Jesus in Variation XIII using a sonic portrayal of a calm sea for at least three reasons. The first is the proverb “Still waters run deep” (Stille Wasser sind tief) associates calm with depth. Elgar uses the word deep in the first sentence of his second program note. The second is how Jesus likened his death and resurrection to the Sign of Jonah when that Old Testament prophet spent three days and nights interred in the belly of a whale, a creature that inhabits the depths of the sea. The third is that the cross represents Christ, a symbol that appears in the title “XIII” as a saltire cross accompanied by three Is that represent the three nails at his crucifixion. The symbolism of a cross and three nails is part of the Jesuit emblem whose motto Elgar inscribed on the title page of The Dream of Gerontius.

The final letters “ddeeeeepssssst” may be reorganized to generate the telestich anagram “EE SETS PS DEEDS.” This cryptogram is called the 1911 Program Note Duplex-E Words Telestich Anagram Cipher. This English language anagram is displayed in capital letters to distinguish it from the original lowercase plaintext. The first part “EE” is Elgar’s initials, a recurring feature of various cryptograms from the Enigma Variations. Consistent with that pattern, this particular cryptogram is constructed from words that possess precisely two es. Elgar’s initials are followed by “SETS”, the third person singular present tense of the verb set. “PS” is the standard abbreviation of Psalm. The conjugation of “sets” in the singular corresponds perfectly with the singular abbreviation of Psalm. Based on this analysis, the first part of the decryption reads, “Edward Elgar sets Psalm.”

The Cambridge Dictionary defines the expression “set something to music” as “to write or provide music for a poem, story, or other words so that it can be performed.” The expression “set to music” was already in common usage before Elgar’s birth as shown by the book Select portions of Psalms and Hymns set to music published in London in 1810. The Enigma Variations consists of varied contrapuntal settings of Ein feste Burg by Martin Luther, a hymn that cites the poetry of Psalm 46. The final part of the decryption is “DEEDS,” the plural form of deed. Merriam-Webster defines deed as “an illustrious act,” “feat,” or “exploit.” The Enigma Variations consist of a set of elaborate contrapuntal exploits that satisfy the definition of deeds. The noun deeds The telestich anagram “EE SETS PS DEEDS” may therefore be decrypted as the statement “Edward Elgar sets Psalm-deeds” with a hyphen compounding “Psalm” with “deeds.” In January 1894 Elgar composed a solo song with lyrics from a “Rondel” by Froissart based on a translation by Longfellow. The lyrics include the word deeds.

Summation

Elgar’s extant notebooks and known ciphers establish his bone fides in cryptography. The Liszt Fragment and Dorabella ciphers are superb illustrations of his expertise in that specialized field. He took great satisfaction in his ability to create and solve cryptograms, bragging in his 1905 biography that he cracked a presumably insoluble Nihilist cipher by John Holt Schooling. Elgar’s 1899 program note for the premiere of the Enigma Variations hints at the existence of ciphers in that pioneering symphonic work. Careful research and analysis over the past fourteen years detected and decrypted over 100 cryptograms whose solutions identify the covert Theme, the Enigma’s “dark saying” and the secret friend sketched in Variation XIII.

A sampling of cryptograms from the Enigma Variations uncovered a pattern of similar encipherment techniques and decryptions. For a performance of the Enigma Variations at the Turin International Exposition in October 1911, Elgar penciled a second program note that advised the Variations “. . . commenced in a spirit of humour . . .” This remark seemingly conflicts with the somber opening of the Enigma Theme in G minor. In measures 6 and 16, notes in the melody line spell “GAG”, a word defined as “a laugh-provoking remark or act,” a “prank” or “trick.” The second iteration of “GAG” in bar 16 is preceded by the notes E, F, and B-flat. Those note letters are an anagram of “EFB”, the initials of Ein feste Burg. Adjacent note letters in bar 16 spell out “EFB GAG”, a solution that points to Luther’s famous hymn as Elgar’s melodic jape. As an observant Roman Catholic when he conceived the Enigma Variations, Elgar’s decision to covertly cite a renowned Protestant anthem is an unexpected yet humorous prank. A major advantage of Elgar’s cryptogram is that it is embedded within the score to ensure its survival and eventual discovery.

In a letter to C. A. Barry, Elgar gives a brief introduction to the Enigma Variations that is cited in the original 1899 program note. Although the work is dedicated to his friends, Elgar only volunteers the name of the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck and two of his French plays, L’Intruse and Les sept Princesses. This anomalous section of Elgar’s commentary cordoned off by em dashes is an expertly crafted cryptogram. The two em dashes encipher Elgar’s initials as an acrostic and Maeterinck’s as a telestich. Elgar’s initials are also suggested by the first and last words which both contain two es. The discrete initials of Elgar’s seven-word phrase about Maeterlinck generate a reverse spelling of psalm: Maeterlinck’s ‘L’Intruse’ and ‘Les sept Princesses’. This coded reference to “psalm” is important as Ein feste Burg was inspired by Psalm 46. That chapter is implicated by 46 characters in that seven-word phrase. Elgar’s 1899 program note is written in English, references the Belgian playwright Maeterlinck, and mentions the French titles of two plays. The first letters of those three nationalities (Belgian, English, and French) are an acrostic anagram of “EFB”, the initials of the covert Theme.

The 1899 Program Note “Psalm 46” and “EFB” ciphers are corroborated by cryptograms in the Enigma Theme’s first bar. Seven discrete performance directions in the first bar produce the acrostic anagram “EE’s Psalm” using exactly 46 characters. “EE” is Elgar’s initials, expanding the decryption to “Edward Elgar’s Psalm”. The number of characters used in its construction points to Psalm 46, the chapter named “Luther’s Psalm” by Carlyle. The Enigma Theme is written in the keys of G minor and G major. The accidentals for those parallel modes are B-flat, E-flat, and F. The letters of those accidentals are an anagram of “EFB”, the initials of Ein feste Burg. It is remarkable that the keys of the Enigma Theme “unlock” Elgar’s contrapuntal safe to unveil the correct melodic solution.

A meticulous analysis of Elgar’s second program note dating from October 1911 determined that it is permeated with ciphers. These cryptograms encode references to the covert Theme, its biblical origin, and the names of seven friends sketched in the Enigma Variations, most preeminently the secret dedicatee of Variation XIII. The cover page of Elgar’s 1911 program note is labeled “Note on Variations Op. 36” followed below by the city name “Torino”. The words in this label yield the acrostic “Novo” (Note on Variations Op. 36), the Latin verb to “make new” or “renew.” Elgar’s new program note about the Enigma Variations is consistent with that decryption. He was familiar with Latin as he studied that language at three Roman Catholic schools and regularly attended Latin mass. The definition of novo is associated with the secret friend portrayed in Variation XIII because Jesus declares in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I am making all things new.” The initial of “Torino” is the Tau cross, a Christogram known as the crux commissa and the St. Anthony cross. The acrostic “Novo T” is laden with deep theological significance.

The 1911 program note is framed in three languages: Italian, English, and Latin. Those three languages are an acrostic anagram of “Eli”, the first and second words in Psalm 22:1 recited by Jesus in his fourth saying from the cross.  Elgar employs the same trilingual encipherment technique with the “Organo” label on the autograph score of the Enigma Variations as well as the performance directions at Rehearsal 54 in Variation XII. These decryptions are not idle speculation as Elgar wrote the first verse of Psalm 22 “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” over the orchestral introduction to Part V of The Apostles, a work premiered in October 1903.

Three items are crossed out on Elgar’s draft of the 1911 program note: “provides” in line 9, “should” in line 20, and “Ɇ” in line 21. The initials of the two strikethrough words are an acrostic of “ps”, an abbreviation of psalm. One vertical line and two horizontal lines suggest the ritual sign of the cross used by many Christian denominations. The E with the vertical strikeout is a transparent representation of Elgar crossing himself. The application of a number-to-letter key for a 24-character alphabet converts the line numbers 9, 20, and 21 into the plaintext I/J, U/V, and W. These letters are an anagram of “I VUW J” which may be decoded as the statement “I view Jesus”. This is a contextually appropriate solution because Elgar wrote his 1911 program note in Turin, a city famed as the repository of the Turin Shroud. That sacred burial cloth is put on public display and viewed by the faithful as an icon of the crucified Christ.

In his 1911 program note, Elgar encodes references to friends depicted in variations I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XIV. His selection of these particular movements is not haphazard. Converting their Roman numerals into their corresponding letters of the alphabet generates A, D, E, F, H, M, and N. These plaintext letters may be rearranged into the anagram “HEND AMF.” The verb hend means “to seize” or “take hold of.” “AMF” is the acronym of A Mighty Fortress, Hedge’s familiar English translation of Ein feste Burg. The decryption “HEND AMF” may therefore be read as the directive “Seize A Mighty Fortress” as the melodic solution to the Enigma Variations. The verb hend ends with end, providing a subtle clue about Elgar’s retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg above the Enigma Theme that begins with its ending phrase.

Seven movements encoded in Elgar’s 1911 program note are framed in the keys of G minor (I, IV), C minor (V), C major (VI), and G major (VIII, XIII and XIV). The discrete letters of those keys (G and C) furnish the initials of Gesù Cristo, the Italian translation of Jesus Christ. This set of Italian initials is consistent with the Italian context of Elgar’s program note for a concert at the Turin International Exposition. One movement is in C major, another is in C minor, two are in G minor, and three are in G major. Those frequencies generate the plaintext anagram “ABAC” based on a standard number-to-letter key. Remarkably, the Enigma Theme has an ABAC structure. “ABAC” is also a phonetic rendering of aback, an adverb that means “backward” and “by surprise.” Both definitions aptly characterize Elgar’s surprising retrograde mapping of Ein feste Burg “through and over” the Enigma Theme.

Three words in three consecutive sentences from the 1911 program note remain unchanged in its Italian translation: humour, Enigma, and idea. Three words in three sentences present an encrypted version of Elgar’s initials because “33” is the mirror image of two capital cursive Es. In addition, this three-word group has one uppercase E and a second lowercase e in this word group that intimates another coded version of those same initials. Various cryptograms in the Enigma Variations are initialed in some way by the composer. The consolidation of those three words into “humourEnigmaidea” generates the cogent declaration “Hum our Enigma idea.” This cryptogram is called the 1911 Program Note Three Bilingual Words Sentence Cipher. The same three words generate the anagram “Ed A hum our Enigma I.” This statement may be decoded as “Ed [&] Alice hum our Enigma [Variation] I.” Elgar’s homecoming whistle is a recurring motif in Alice’s movement, aptly symbolizing their musical and contrapuntal union as a married couple. This cryptogram is labeled the 1911 Program Note Bilingual Words Anagram Cipher.

One of the most conspicuous sets of cryptograms revolves around two ampersands positioned in the opening two sentences of Elgar’s 1911 program note. When written in its archaic form as crossed lowercase epsilons, these two ampersands generate a coded form of Elgar’s initials. The term “ampersand” is a corruption of the phrase “and per se and.” The Latin expression “per se'” is an acrostic of “ps”, a standard abbreviation of psalm. The opening two sentences tagged with ampersands consist of 46 words, a sum that pinpoints Psalm 46.

During the 1890s, the ampersand was slang for ass because it was positioned at the “bottom” of the 27-character alphabet. The word ass gives in order the initials of two different English translations of Ein feste Burg as A Safe Stronghold and A Stronghold Sure. In a letter to Jaeger, Elgar used “ass” to describe his friends’ imagined attempts at composing their respective variations. Similarly, Luther used ass in his pamphlets and books to excoriate his opponents. The letter sequence “ass” appears twice in Elgar’s Tasso paraphrase at the end of the original Finale. The first time is in the second word of the paraphrase (assai), and the second in the poet’s name (Tasso). Adjacent letters in the phrase “attempts a solution” from Elgar’s 1911 program note suggest an anagram of ass.

The initials of Elgar and six of his friends from the Enigma Variations are embedded within words and phrases from his 1911 program note. These coded references refer to friends sketched in movements I, IV, V, VI, VIII, XIII, and XVI. Variation I (C. A. E.) is dedicated to Elgar’s wife, Caroline Alice Elgar. Her initials are given as a reverse acrostic from the closing words of sentence four, “any extraneous consideration.” The phrase “work may be” in sentence four is an acrostic of the initials for William Meath Baker, the friend depicted in Variation IV (W. M. B.). His sister Mary Frances Baker was lifelong friends with Elgar’s wife and became the stepmother of Dora Penny when she married the Reverend Alfred Penny.

Variation V is dedicated to Richard Penrose Arnold, an amateur pianist and avid golfer who accompanied Elgar on many rounds at the local golf links. Arnold’s initials are enciphered as an anagram in the fourth sentence by the word “apart”. The term “par” refers to the number of strokes assigned to a given golf hole. The last letter t is a homonym of tee, a small peg used to prop up a golf ball. Scoring the required number of strokes for a specific hole is called “a par”, an expression intimated by the a before par in “apart”. As a regular attendee of tea parties hosted for the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society, Arnold entertained guests with convivial conversations and witty remarks. In recognition of Arnold’s regular attendance at these parties, the word “apart” may also be read phonetically as “a party.”

Successive letters from contiguous words spell out other terms in Elgar’s 1911 program note. Based on that encoding technique, the first sentence spells two words: Dina and soft. The Latin meaning of dina is “godlike” and “divine,” adjectives that describe the secret dedicatee of Variation XIII. The Hebrew name Dina means “judgment” and “vindication.” The Enigma Variations vindicated Elgar’s efforts to become an internationally recognized composer. Like Dina, Elgar uses the Hebrew name Ysobel as the title of Variation VI. The word soft is the literal translation of piano, the Italian dynamic assigned to the first bar of the Enigma Theme.

The second sentence has consecutive letters in adjacent words that spell five words: Tor, torre, ton, theo, and soth. A tor is “a high rocky hill” and is a fitting description of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. The Italian word torre means tower, a word that appears in eighteen English translations of Ein feste Burg, most conspicuously A Strong Tower. The term ton refers to what is fashionable in upper-class English Society. The Latin prefix theo means “god” or “diety”, something analogous to the Latin adjective dina in the opening sentence. The word soth is Middle English for “truth” and “justice”, definitions related to “vindication” and “judgment” associated with the Hebrew name Dina. These similar meanings help corroborate and validate these decryptions from different sentences.

The third sentence has consecutive letters in neighboring words that spell seven words: Teach, tide, sad, deaf, son, ein, and tot. The verb teach is relatable to Elgar’s profession as an instrumental teacher before rising to fame as a composer. Jesus also taught publicly and instructed his disciples. The noun tide is associated with Variation XIII where Elgar depicts the gentle undulations of ocean tides. The adjective sad is the translation of the Italian performance direction mesto that only appears in bar 16 of the Enigma Theme. The audience is deaf to the foundational theme of the Enigma Variations that remains unheard. The noun son is used in various titles for Jesus such as the “Son of God” and “Son of Man.” The German term ein is the first word in the covert Theme’s title. The noun tot is a synonym for babe. Jesus entered this world as an infant or tot. The word tot is also a homonym of taught, the past tense of teach.

There is a total of nineteen words encoded by letter sequences from adjacent words. That sum corresponds to the nineteen measures that comprise the Enigma Theme. The Italian word torre (tower) encoded in the second sentence is followed by f, the performance direction meaning forte (strong). The German word ein is enciphered in the third sentence. These terms offer a bilingual version of “A strong tower” as “Ein torre forte.” The phrase “a strong tower” appears in numerous English translations of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

The fourth sentence has successive letters in adjacent words that spell five words: Isis, soft, butt, capa, and many. A coded reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis is linked to the founding myth of Turin, the construction of its Church of Gran Madre di Dio on a temple devoted to Isis, the Museo Egizio, and Jaeger’s nickname for Elgar as a “Sphynx.” The adjective soft is reprised from the first sentence. The word butt is a synonym for ass, a word that gives the initials of two English translations of Ein feste Burg as A Safe Stronghold and A Stronghold Sure. The Italian word capa means head, chief or principal. The hidden melody with the English initials “A. S. S.” (butt) is also the head (capa) or principal Theme of the Enigma Variations. The word many appears in Elgar’s dedication to his overture Cockaigne which begins with the identical language used for his dedication of the Enigma Variations.

Variation VI is dedicated to Isabel Fitton whose initials are given as an acrostic in the third sentence by the phrase “idea founded”. The first word (This) harbors an anagram of “IHS”, a Christogram that represents the first three letters of the Greek name for Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ). Christ in the secret friend memorialized in Variation XIII. The words “from any extraneous” near the end of the fourth sentence encode the acrostic “FAE”, the acronym for Joachim’s German romantic motto “Frei aber einsam.” That same acronym is encoded by the key letters of the Mendelssohn fragments in Variation XIII. Variation XIV is Elgar’s musical self-portrait, and his pet name “Edu” is provided as an anagram by the last three letters of “continued” in the first sentence. The placement of “This” at the beginning of the first and last sentences alludes to the title “the first and the last” that Jesus applies to himself in Revelation 22:13.

The initials of Elgar’s friends encoded in his 1911 program note are accompanied by other sets of initials for the covert Theme. A structural analysis of the first sentence from Elgar’s 1911 program note uncovered another cipher that encodes the initials of Ein feste Burg. This sentence structure cipher relies on the number of words in each component to pinpoint letters in the English alphabet using a basic number-to-letter key. The first sentence breaks down into parts consisting of two, five, and six words. The application of a number-to-letter key to those word sums yields B, E, and F. The letters “BEF” generate a reverse spelling of “FEB”, an abbreviation of February Elgar penned on the first and last pages of the autograph score of the Enigma Variations. “FEB” is an anagram of “EFB”, the initials of the hidden melody.

The ampersands in Elgar’s 1911 program note are integral to cryptograms that encode his initials (EE), an abbreviation of Psalm (ps), and the English initials (A. S. S.) of the secret melody’s title. The ampersand in the first sentence is placed amid a ten-word section segregated by commas. The first comma precedes six words separated by the ampersand followed by four words ending with a comma. The sums four and six allude to chapter 46 of the Psalms which inspired Luther to compose Ein feste Burg. These notable features suggest this section enclosed by commas is a cipher. The acronym “CIASOHCIDS” obtained from those ten words generates the acrostic anagram “CODA SIC IHS”. This decryption is supported by the recognition that Elgar wrote sic after the final coda on the last page of the autograph score. The Christogram “IHS” represents the name of Jesus, the secret dedicatee of Variation XIII.

A second anagram obtained from the acronym“CIASOHCIDS” is “HID ASS C DIO”. The first half (HID ASS) may be read as the verb hid followed by the English initials of the covert Theme (A Safe Stronghold or A Stronghold Sure). That partial decryption is a fitting description of how Elgar hid the secret melody of the Enigma Variations. The remaining half (C DIO) may be read phonetically as the verb see followed by the Italian word for God (Dio). An Italian decryption is consistent with the Italian translation of Elgar’s second program note. C is also the initial for Christ. The acrostic anagram “C DIO” decoded as “See God” is consistent with the May 1898 discovery during an International Exposition in Turin that photographic negatives taken of the Turin Shroud produce a positive lifelike image of Jesus.

Elgar’s alliterative expression “to two” at the end of the third sentence places a subtle emphasis on the number two. An analysis of word frequencies in his 1911 program note identified fourteen discrete words and ampersands that are repeated twice. More significantly, these duplicates are dispersed uniformly in groups of seven in each of the four sentences. These fifteen items may be rearranged as a word anagram to generate the sentence, “This work contains sketches to some theme but each is maybe in &.” In the 1890s, an ampersand was slang for ass, a word that conveys the sequential initials of two English titles of Ein feste Burg. When written as a crossed lowercase epsilon, the ampersand replicates the capital cursive E-glyph favored by Elgar to signify himself in correspondence. Consequently, the dual-word sentence anagram may be read as referring to both the covert Theme and Elgar himself. This secondary reading is “This work contains sketches to some theme but each is maybe in E.” The ending phrase “in E” is an anagram of Ein, the first word in the secret melody’s title. Elgars uses the same enciphering technique at Rehearsal 33 for the tuning of the timpani in Variation IX (Nimrod).

Cryptograms obtained from Elgar’s use of duplicate words and symbols triggered an assessment of words with two es, a coded form of his initials. Fourteen words possess two es, a sum that parallels fourteen variations assigned Roman numerals. These fourteen words generate the acrostic anagram “PP T LC REST SDT SP.” This acrostic anagram breaks down into the following decryptions. “PP” denotes pianissimo, a dynamic that appears in eight different bars of the Enigma Theme. “PP” is also the initials for Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced Jesus to death despite publicly declaring his innocence. The letter t yields a Tau cross in its capitalized form and the Latin cross in the lowercase. “LC” is the acronym for Lux Christi, Elgar’s first sacred oratorio. The next anagram is a correct spelling of rest, a musical term that signifies the absence of sound for a defined period of time. The Enigma Theme is punctuated by quarter rests on the downbeats of bars 1 through 4 and 11 through 16. The word rest is also the first word in the epitaph “Rest in peace.” “SDT” are the initials for “Sindone di Torino”, the Italian translation of Turin Shroud. The initials “SP” are for Secondo Pia, the first official photographer of the Turin Shroud. These decryptions are mutually consistent and interrelated with solutions in English, Latin, and Italian. Those three languages yield the acrostic anagram “ELI”, an Aramaic word from Psalm 22 that Jesus cried out in his fourth saying from the cross.

Fourteen words with two es each also yield the telestich anagram “EE SETS PS DEEDS.” This entirely English anagram opens with Elgar’s initials (EE) followed by the verb sets and the standard abbreviation for Psalm. The conjugation of sets harmonizes with the abbreviation of Psalm in the singular. The solution “Edward Elgar sets Psalm” is drawn from the common expression to “set something to music.” The anagram ends with deeds, a word that refers to illustrious acts or exploits. The telestich anagram “EE SETS PS DEEDS” may be read completely as the “Edward Elgar sets Psalm-deeds.” The final word deeds harbors coded iterations of Elgar’s initials and forename. The decryption “Edward Elgar sets Psalm-deeds” is an apt description of how the Enigma Variations is founded on a secret melody inspired by a psalm. Each movement is a musical accomplishment predicated on a covert hymn inspired by a psalm. As a breakout work that launched Elgar’s international career as a major composer, the Enigma Variations satisfies the definition of deeds as a series of elaborate contrapuntal settings of Ein feste Burg by Martin Luther.

Some will doubtless demur that such an intricate array of cryptograms in Elgar’s second program note must be the byproduct of unbridled speculation, a frenzied imagination, or confirmation bias. A logical rebuttal to those objections is to candidly accept Elgar’s obsession with cryptography and recognize how he embedded several cryptograms in his first program note. These unavoidable facts establish a credible precedent for these novel cryptographic discoveries. Unlike his first program note, Elgar had over twelve years to devise his second coded missive, enjoying ample time and opportunity to construct a matrix of cryptograms. It would be far more shocking if he abandoned his idiosyncratic impulse and produced a cipherless note rather than one saturated with cryptograms. 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