Variations on an Enigma

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Elgar the jester

Although the inaccurate, crusty-old-colonel image of Elgar bequeathed by posterity has been largely replaced by a more nuanced picture of a troubled soul - torn between the contradictory claims of pragmatic and ideal, despair and hope - a rather neglected aspect of this complex character is that of a fun-loving jester, with a lively sense of affectionate mischief and child-like curiosity. His letters, and the reminiscences of early biographers and friends, detail hilarious 'japes' and inventive pursuits - a world full of jokes, puzzles and cartoons, peppered with puns galore. In her published memoir, Dora Powell, Dorabella of the Variations, describes many occasions where she and her companions were clutching at the furniture, barely able to stand as they sobbed with laughter at Edward's antics.

The almost sacred status that Elgar's Enigma Variations have come to assume in Britain's musical canon has made later generations downplay the light-hearted playfulness surrounding its conception. And although the idea of a mysterious, unsolved Enigma continues to exercise a powerful grip on the public imagination, there are those who still prefer to think of Elgar's 'hidden theme' in terms of a more dignified concept such as 'friendship' or Elgar himself, or a broader influence such as Bach. These may be perfectly valid reflections of the work's context and influences, but the evidence pointing to an 'unheard' melody is compelling.

Mischievous counterpoint

In October 1900, not long after the Enigma Variations were first performed, The Musical Times published the first full-length interview with the composer. Its editor, F. G. Edwards, wrote "Mr Elgar tells us that the heading Enigma is justified by the fact that it is possible to add another phrase, which is quite familiar, above the original theme that he has written. What that theme is no one knows except the composer. Thereby hangs the Enigma." The same article reproduces a brief fragment of the distinctive five-four movement from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 to which Elgar has mischievously inserted the notes of God Save the Queen as a counterpoint, stretched here and there to make it fit. For a jobbing organist-musician with a sense of fun such conceits are second nature. Here was Elgar in his element.

He thought that Dora Powell "of all people" should have guessed the answer. In a letter to The Times (15th June 1942) she wrote "Elgar plainly told me while the work was being written that there was another, unheard, melody. Furthermore, he twitted me on more than one occasion about my failure to find it." We know that Elgar also stuck numbered bits of paper on a piano keyboard in an audacious attempt to persuade his architect friend, Troyte Griffifths, to play the enigma melody. Though the unmusical Troyte evidently remained none the wiser!

Claims and refutations

Some well-known suggestions for the hidden melody, including Rule Britannia and a theme from Mozart's Prague Symphony, rather miss the point in that they echo the characteristic staircase contours of the original Enigma melody rather than provide a complementary counterpoint. The first few notes of the Variations theme, on which these suggestions are based, form a common musical motif that appears, for example, in many Mozart and Beethoven Piano Sonatas, any of which might have a greater claim as a possible influence, but certainly not as the unheard melody itself.

The most well-known candidate melody that reasonably fits the brief is Auld Lang Syne, suggested by Dora's husband, Richard Powell. This forms an awkward but mostly tolerable counterpoint to Elgar's original theme, but was, along with God Save the Queen, specifically ruled out by Elgar himself. None of countless other suggestions has received general acceptance. Whatever the solution may turn out to be it must be very well-known, have some particular association with Dora, and probably be quite brief - a mere "phrase", in F. G. Edwards's words - something simple enough for Elgar to assimilate and improvise around at the keyboard, as accounts of the work's origin attest.

The dark saying

Many have been puzzled by the cryptic phrase that Elgar used before the work's first performance that refers to the Enigma's "dark saying", but this is easily explained. Although it has provoked wild speculation about "dark" secrets or sensitive matters best kept hidden, the term "dark saying" was simply an old fashioned synonym for riddle or parable. It appears a number of times in the Authorised (King James) Version of the Bible, for example in Proverbs 1:6: "the words of the wise, and their dark sayings", where it is a standard translation of the Vulgate Latin word Enigma. Both versions were familiar to Elgar who may have had in mind the words of Psalm 49:4 where music is the medium for the riddle: "I will incline my ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying upon the harp." In the Vulgate: "inclino ad parabubulum aurem meum aperium in cithera enigma". It is typical of the sort of affectation of language that Elgar was wont to use.

Morse Code

The fact that the evidence pointing to a hidden counter melody is so strong, and that Elgar initially improvised his prototype variations, effectively rules out ciphered text as a means of generating Elgar's theme, an approach favoured by some. Nevertheless, the melody itself is distinctly odd. In particular its rhythmic organisation, highlighted in Elgar's own notes on the theme, does suggest that a measure of formal structuring followed once Elgar sat down to knock his initial extemporised thoughts into shape. A rhythmic cell of two quavers, two crotchets, followed by its reflection - two crotchets, two quavers - is repeated three times, resulting in a nested, palindromic symmetry of which Webern or Messiaen might have been proud.

Interpreting these rhythms as Morse Code provides an explanation for this distinctive arrangement. Two dots followed by two dashes spells out I M, which reversed becomes M I. This invites the interpretation "I am, am I?" It is consistent with later statements from Elgar and those who knew him, that it expressed the "loneliness of the artist" at a time when Elgar had been deeply scarred by some sort of crushing humiliation, and matches the context where it would subsequently be used as an autobiographical reference in Elgar's Music Makers.

In a letter to Dora a year or two later Elgar quotes the three-note 'twiddle' motif from her own variation along with his own signature motif:

Whether you are as nice as

or only as unideal as

Interpreted as Morse Code, with which Dora was familiar, the 'twiddle' motifs become S and S. Hence Elgar's missive might be decoded to read, "Whether you are as nice as Sugar and Spice or only as unideal as I am."

Playing the game

The Variations represent Elgar's bold response to his critics, achieved with the support of his faithful friends. So what of its triumphant final movement? At the start, as the music builds up it features a repeated rhythmic cell equivalent to dot-dot-dash, Morse Code for U. It is as if Elgar is pointedly exorcising his initial introspection, turning outward to shake a defiant fist at his detractors - Hey You, and You, and You and You and You! Combined with its mirror, dash-dot-dot - Morse Code for D - these conflated versions of the original I-M pattern seize the limelight. They are the same letters that Elgar uses as fake initials (E.D.U.) to head up this final variation, reflecting the pet name (Edoo) used for him by his wife Alice. Her loving support is acknowledged later in the Finale when the music of her variation returns this time introduced by a repeated Morse Code A motif (dot-dash) beating in the bass like a heartbeat.

Elgar threw himself heart and soul into this work, whose perfect miniatures encompass a full gamut of emotions: delicate, aggressive, tender, foreboding ... leavened throughout with sensitive humour and gentle mockery, all underpinned with a satisfying sense of goodwill. The strictures of Elgar's self-defined game helped him to access hitherto undiscovered depths of expressive originality. It uniquely encapsulates not only his own complex, contradictory character, but also something of the best traditions of British eccentricity. The work succeeds not in-spite-of the whimsical artifice surrounding its inception, but rather because of it.

©Kevin Jones 2007

Kevin Jones researches and writes about historical and contemporary links between music and science, with a special interest in music and codes. He won the THES/OUP Science Writing Prize in 1999. He is also a composer and was Professor of Music at Kingston University until 2007.

More about the Enigma Variations

Edward Elgar pages on the Radio 3 website

A Hidden World of Musical Codes

Can you crack Elgar's 'Dorabella Code'?