7/7/2023 0 Comments Enigma variations composer![]() Code breakers are still trying to figure it out. The year before he began writing the Enigma Variations, he wrote a coded letter to a friend that's come to be called the Dorabella Cipher. "Do you compose music by working out an elaborate form of symbolism, cryptography, or do you basically write music as a musician?"īut Elgar wasn't just a musician. "My problem with all this is to do with the way the music was composed in the first place," Rushton says. More than that, he doubts Padgett's premise that Elgar reverse-engineered an entire symphonic work to fit a backwards-composite melody while sprinkling dozens of symbols and clues in the music. He doubts a Roman Catholic composer such as Elgar would have embraced a Protestant anthem such as Luther's "A Mighty Fortress" (though Padgett has his own theory to explain that). Padgett recorded an example and uploaded it to YouTube, and presented the theory to Julian Rushton, an Elgar expert and professor emeritus of music at the University of Leeds in England. ![]() Padgett says when you play the hymn with the music, it fits perfectly – you just have to piece together three different versions, written by Luther, Bach and Mendelssohn, and then play it backwards, over Elgar's music. In more than 100 posts on his blog, Padgett has laid out an elaborate theory involving cryptography, Christian symbols and dozens of other hidden clues he believes Elgar embedded in the music, too uncanny to be coincidences. That's when he stumbled upon a church hymn he believes is the answer: Martin Luther's " A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." "You can try and shoehorn it in, but it doesn't work," Padgett says.Ī devout Christian, Padgett says he prayed to God for help solving the puzzle. On his commute to work, Padgett used to listen to a CD of the Enigma Variations and hum tunes – like "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" – to see if they'd fit. I thought this would be an interesting puzzle to try and unravel." At that point I decided, you know, this is one of the great mysteries of classical music. "Kind of like a murder mystery or something. "He made it sound so captivating," Padgett recalls. But he's also a violinist who's played in professional orchestras, which is how he stumbled upon the Enigma Variations - from a conductor who recounted the mystery of the work. One man attending the Elgar Society conference has his own Enigma theory that he will be preaching to his fellow Elgar enthusiasts.īob Padgett of Plano, Texas, is not an academic he used to work in insurance. Members will attend the Madison Symphony Orchestra's performance of the Enigma Variations, accompanied by a multimedia performance with actors telling the story of the composer and the work. The North American branch of the Elgar Society is holding its annual conference in Madison, Wis., March 16 - 19. ![]() None of these theories has ever convinced the majority of music scholars.
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