Musical cryptogram

A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical symbols which can be taken to refer to an extra-musical text by some 'logical' relationship, usually between note names and letters. The most common and best known examples result from composers using musically translated versions of their own or their friends' names (or initials) as themes or motifs in their compositions, with an early and commonly known example being the BACH sequence used by the composer. These are not really rigorous cipher algorithms in the formal sense, but more like musical monograms or labels using initials. The methods used historically by composers were either too incomplete (i.e., did not include all of the letters of the alphabet) or too simplistic to meaningfully encrypt long text messages. There is a separate history of music ciphers utilizing music notation to encode messages for reasons of espionage or personal security that involved encryption and/or steganography. Because of the multitudinous ways in which various musical notes and textual letters and other elements can be related, or not, detecting hidden ciphers in music and proving accurate decipherment can be difficult.

History From the initial assignment by Western music theorists of letter names to notes in the 9th century it became possible to reverse the procedure and assign notes to the letters of names. However, this does not seem to have become a widely recognized technique until the Romantic period. From the mid-19th century it has become quite common. Sporadic earlier encipherments used solmization syllables.

Systems

Syllables to solmization names It is believed that this method was first used by Josquin des Prez in his Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie. It was named Soggetto cavato by the later theorist Zarlino. Under this scheme the vowel sounds in the text are matched to the vowel sounds of the solmization syllables of Guido of Arezzo (where 'ut' is the root, which we now call 'do'). Thus the Latin name of the dedicatee 'Hercules Dux Ferrarie' (Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara) becomes re-ut-re-ut-re-fa-mi-re, which translates as D-C-D-C-D-F-E-D in modern notation with C as 'ut'. This is used as the cantus firmus of the mass setting. Josquin's method was imitated by several of his contemporaries and successors, including Adrian Willaert and Costanzo Festa.

Letters to note names Since the note names only cover letters A to G (reflecting the octave repetition of these names), the problem arises as to how to cipher the rest of the alphabet. Historically there have been two main solutions, which may be labelled for convenience the 'German' and the 'French' methods.

German Because the development of note names took place within the framework of modes, in the German-speaking world B♭ was named 'B' and B♮ was named 'H'. The most common musical cryptogram is the B-A-C-H motif, which was used by Johann Sebastian Bach himself, by his contemporaries and by many later composers. Other note names were derived by sound, for example E♭, 'Es' in German, could represent 'S' and A♭ the digraph 'As'. Composers less fortunate than Bach usually seem to have chosen to ignore non-musical letters in generating their motifs. For example, Robert Schumann, an inveterate user of cryptograms, has just S-C-H-A (E♭, C, B♮, A) to represent himself in Carnaval. Sometimes phonetic substitution could be used, Schumann representing Bezeth by B-E-S-E-D-H. Johannes Brahms used B-A-H-S (B♭, A, B♮, E♭) for his surname in the A♭ minor organ fugue, and the mixed language Gis-E-La (G♯, E, A) for Gisela von Arnim, among many examples.

French The 'French' method of generating cryptograms arose late in the 19th century and was more akin to normal encipherment. The most popular version involved writing out the letters H–N, O–U and V–Z in lines under the original diatonic notes A–G, as follows:

so that A, H, O, and V are enciphered by note 'A', B, I, P and W by 'B' (flat or natural) and so on. This scheme was used by Jules Écorcheville, editor of the journal S.I.M., to solicit centenary commemorations of Joseph Haydn in 1909, except that he diverted the 'H' to B♮, presumably to avoid too many repeated notes. Writing to Gabriel Fauré about the invitation, Camille Saint-Saëns said he was writing to Écorcheville asking him to prove that Y and N could signify D and G as "it would be annoying to get mixed up in a farcical business which would make us a laughing stock in the German musical world." The many-to-one mapping of this method makes it more difficult to extract possible motifs from the musical score than the one-to-one correspondence (apart from 'As') of the German system.

20th century A French tradition of celebratory uses developed from the Haydn centenary, with tributes to Gabriel Fauré by Maurice Ravel, Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin and others in 1922 (added to in 1949 by Arnold Bax), and to Albert Roussel by Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud and others (using various ciphering schemes) in 1929. Honegger's system involved placing the letters after 'H' under sharpened and flattened notes, an example of how chromatic cryptograms could be more easily accommodated in 20th-century music. Olivier Messiaen developed his own full cipher, involving pitches and note lengths, for his organ work Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité (1969). Dmitri Shostakovich used the German scheme for his personal motto D-Es-C-H (D, E♭, C, B♮), representing D.SCH, which appears in many of his works. Elliott Carter featured both a cryptogram for the last name "Boulez" in his piece Réflexions (2004) and a sonic symbol of the first name "Pierre". Cryptograms were less common in England, but Edward Elgar, who was also interested in general cryptography and puzzles, wrote an early Allegretto for his pupils the Gedge sisters using G-E-D-G-E; his Enigma Variations involves extensive use of abbreviations (friends' initials) and cryptograms and potentially even a broader enigma to be 'solved'. Andersen Viana Brazilian multiartist has used the BbACB (Bach) cryptogram in his symphonic poem "Coeviaca: the messenger of fire".

21st century English musician Jonathan Spybey uses Greek Bible characters when composing works under the artist name 'John Three Sixteen'. The first piece published was 'For God So Loved The World' based on the Greek text for John 3:16. Later work also uses Biblica's NIV Audio Bible alongside the Greek originated music.

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