Police officer claims to have cracked Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ code
WHEN Sir Edward Elgar wrote the Enigma Variations 120 years ago, he set one of the most enduring and baffling puzzles that has confounded mathematical and musical minds alike.
In a series of clues, he revealed that hidden in the manuscript and descriptions of the 14 variations were a “dark saying” and “larger theme”.
A police inspector with an MA in crime patterns claims that he has cracked the code after years of research.
Mark Pitt, 45, has analysed the initials of names and nicknames of those Elgar dedicated his “themes” to, as well as the composer’s obsession with John Holt Schooling, a cryptographer whose apparently unsolvable cipher he cracked.
In the 1899
Enigma Variations poser wrote: “The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed … further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played.”
Elgar loved codes and ciphers. He solved a cipher set by Schooling published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1896, despite the statistician insisting it would be unbreakable.
In 1897, Elgar sent Dora Penny, a vicar’s daughter to whom he dedicated one of the “Enigma” themes, the socalled Dorabella Cipher, a puzzle containing rows of E-shaped symbols. She published them in 1937, admitting she had failed to decode it despite sharing Elgar’s fascination with such puzzles.
Three years ago, Mr Pitt, a member of Cleveland Police’s specialist operations unit, declared he had cracked that code using a revolving cipher and a musical cipher Schooling had published in his article. The inspector claims he also cracked the Liszt Fragment Cipher, another puzzle by Elgar.
And, just as Mr Pitt believes Schooling’s systems solved the Dorabella and Liszt ciphers, he insists they hold the key to the Enigma Variations.
“Elgar was proud to have solved Schooling’s cipher,” he said. “I believe he used Schooling’s ciphers when constructing the secrets in the Enigma Variations. Comments by Elgar hint that Schooling’s work is the solution.”
When Penny asked Elgar the solution to the puzzle, he replied: “I thought you, of all people, would guess it,” a reference, Mr Pitt believes, to their shared passion for ciphers. Elgar also said that to crack the Enigma, “the drop of a seventh in the theme should be observed”, a nod to how a revolving alphabet dial Schooling had used needed to be turned back seven notches to unlock the Dorabella and Liszt ciphers.
Mr Pitt is convinced Elgar’s decision to leave out certain names and use nicknames for others who he dedicated themes to was because the Schooling system in the “Engima” excluded certain letters.
“For the ninth and most famous variation, Elgar used the nickname ‘Nimrod’ for Augustus Jaeger, Elgar’s friend. However, in the Schooling alphabet matrix there is no J, so he had to use another name for him,” Mr Pitt said.
Consequently, he claims in his research paper that the “dark saying” refers to the solution Elgar himself found in Schooling’s final cipher challenge – “He who fears is half dead” – a poignant saying for a composer embarking on his most demanding work after suffering a crisis in confidence.
He added that Elgar chose “Prudentia” as the “larger theme” because Schooling used it as a password to a cipher in his 1896 magazine article, and also because it is one of four Catholic Cardinal virtues associated with wisdom. Mr Pitt claims both Penny and Elgar were devout Catholics.
Stuart Freed, the vice-chairman of the Elgar Society, described the research as “interesting”.