Composers and codes

Always supposing that we survive a rather nasty storm and get safely down from our Alp, there waiting at the bottom to greet us (with his one movement Symphony No. 4) will be Robert Schumann.

There are composers who seem to take a delight in hiding encrypted messages in their music; names, for instance – Bach, using German notation can be rendered as:

and the – again German – musical initials of the composer Dmitri Shostakovitch (which he used very frequently) are:

or, in the (admittedly unlikely) event of a composer wishing to immortalise a vegetable, there’s always:

Schumann – like Berg – was a chronic encrypter, and there a few finer examples of this than his fourth symphony.

For more information visit the fascinating essay(s) by Eric Sams at:
http://www.ericsams.org/sams_schumann1_eng.htm

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