The Enigma Variationals

 After many years of study, Scientists at the Alan Tuning Institute have finally decoded this machine, and we are now ready to show you, or indeed, play to you want it was originally intended for.

Many years ago, Edward Elgar the Elder was strugling to complete his final symphony and turned to his friend Curt Yödel, who was only able to contribute a theory that suggested that some compositions could be finished, but wrong, while others would be perfect, but unfinished. Of course, there was one famous prior, Tomas Albinionini, whose unfinished work, the Adagio Al Fresco was found written in the margins of the remains of the library of Eberbach, possibly scrawled there by the long dead monk, George Borgesi.

Alan Tuning found this keyboard in the belongings of Edward the Elder after his demise, and being familiar with Yödel's Unfinished Therem, devised his own approach to figuring out what El Gar may have been finguring out. His inspiration was that whilst the dominant and tonic notational semantics in use at the time relied on letters (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H and so on), or even entire words ("doh", "ray" etc), these could easily be represented by numbers - for example, 1,2,3, or in the later case 646F68, if you didn't mind risking the wrath of the coven. Given this, one could work through all the combinations and pernotations that could be played on the keyboard, and evaluate whether they sounded plausible - this could be "fed back" to the player, via a small electric shock system, devised to deliver a higher voltage if the sound was sufficiently unpleasant, or a lower voltage, if the direction of travel (gradient) was promising.  This method of learning to play pleasing sequences became known as "voltage scaling" and was in use in the best sanitoria and conservatories such as the Sheboygan until relatively recently, when the Muskatonic link became more popular.

I've transcribed the piece here for the guitar, as it is easy to play than the old Enigma Keyboard, which frankly has atrocious action, and makes too much fret noise too. I've taken the liberty also of transposing it to the Allen Key.

Here is my modest attempt at the piece. I do hope you like the results - I had a super conductor.

You'll note that this is in Sonata form, and features several themes with recapitulations.