page_title: Musical cryptogram
section_title: Summary of signature motifs
hierarchical_section_title: Musical cryptogram / Summary of signature motifs
caption_attribution_description: English: The first 4 bars of Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn (1909), by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). B♮ A D D G = H A Y D N.
context_page_description: A musical cryptogram is a cryptogrammatic sequence of musical notes, a sequence 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 ciphered versions of their own or their friends' names as themes or motifs in their compositions. Much rarer is the use of music notation to encode messages for reasons of espionage or personal security called steganography.
  Because of the multitudinous ways in which notes and letters can be related, detecting hidden ciphers and proving accurate decipherment is difficult.
context_section_description: The following list includes only motifs which are known to have been used in published works.
  A, B, E, B, A
  for Aubrey Brain, used in Gordon Jacob's Sextet for Piano and Winds, which was inscribed "In memoriam Aubrey Brain"
  A, B♭, B♮, F (= A, B, H, F)
  for Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin (A. B. and H. F.), used in Berg's Lyric Suite
  A, B♭, E, G, G (= A, B, E, G, G)
  for Meta Abegg, the fictional inspiration for Robert Schumann's Abegg Variations, op. 1
  A, D, A, A, F (= A, L, A, I, N)
  for Jehan Alain, used by Maurice Duruflé in his Prélude et Fuge sur le nom d'Alain (op. 7) and derived on the French system but leaving H = B-natural and starting the second line with 'I'
  A, D, E♭, C, B, F, E (= A, D, S, C, H, F, E)
  for Alfred Schnittke and Vladimir Feltzmann, used by Alfred Schnittke in his Sonata No. 1
  A, E♭, C, B♮ (= A, S, C, H) and A♭, C, B♮ (= As, C, H)
  used in Schumann's Carnaval, Op. 9. He was romantically involved with Ernestine von Fricken, who came from the town of Aš, in German "Asch". Every piece in the whole cycle is based on one or other of these motifs. The letters are also the note names from 'Schumann' and he added the motif E♭, C, B, A (= S, C, H, A) so that three are displayed in breves in the section 'Sphinxes'.  It has been noted that ASCH and SCHA also appear in the title of Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Op. 26.
  [A], E♭, C, B♮, B♭, E(♮), G (= [A], S, C, H, B, E, G)
  for Arnold Schoenberg  (A. Schönberg), set 6-Z44
  B♭, A, B, E♭ (= B, r, A, H, m, Es)
  for Brahms, used by Alfred Schnittke in his Quasi Una Sonata along with the B-A-C-H motif and other quotations, and allusions
  B♭, A, C, B♮ (= B, A, C, H)
  for Johann Sebastian Bach
  B, A, D, D, G (= H, A, Y, D, N)
  for Joseph Haydn, used by Maurice Ravel in his Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn and by other contributors to the S.I.M. commemoration and derived on the French system
  B, A, F (= B, La, F)
  for Mitrofan Belyayev, used by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, Anatoly Lyadov and Alexander Glazunov in a string quartet
  B♭, D, G♯, A, C, F (= B, Re, Gis, La, Do, Fa)
  from the Russian phrase берегись Лядова (beregis' Lyadova, beware of Lyadov), used by Nikolay Myaskovsky in his String Quartet No. 3
  B, E, B, A or B, A, B, E
  for Béla Bartók (Béla Bartók, the latter motif recognizing the Hungarian practice of placing the family name before the personal name)
  C, A, G, E
  for John Cage, used by Pauline Oliveros and, in the composition CAGE DEAD, by Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra
  C, F, E, B, A, C, H
  for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach with the initials of his name - Carl Philipp (Filippo) Emanuel Bach -. The motif is based on the German musical nomenclature, however the initials of the composer’s name appear partially in German and in Italian version, instead of Philipp as Filippo. The C. F. E. BACH motif appears in an unpublished Fughetta in F major of C. Ph. E. Bach, found in the Brussels Conservatorium.
  D, A, C, H, S
  for Josef Dachs. He was a piano teacher at the Vienna conservatory. Hans Rott was probably one of his students at the conservatory when he composed his Dachs-Studie for string orchestra.
  D, E♭, C, B (= D, S, C, H)
  for Dmitri Shostakovich (D. Schostakowitsch)
  E♭, A, C, B, E, D (= Es, A, C, H, E, Re)
  for Paul Sacher, known as the Sacher hexachord
  E, A, E, D, A (= E, La, Mi, Re, A)
  for Elmira Nazirova, pupil of Dmitri Shostakovich, used in his Symphony No. 10
  E♭, C, B♮, A (= S, C, H, A)
  for Schumann, used in Carnaval, it is a re-ordering of that piece's A-S-C-H motif
  F, A, E and F, A, F
  for Frei aber einsam and Frei aber froh, "free but lonely" and "free but happy" in German; the former, his friend Joseph Joachim's motto (F-A-E Sonata), described as "more romantic" than the latter, a "gender-separatist" motto of Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3
  F, E♭, C, B (= F, S, C, H)
  for Franz Schubert (F. Schubert)
  G, A, B, D, B, E, E, F, A, G, D, E (= G, A, B, Re, H, E, Le - F, A, Ug, Re, E)
  for Gabriel Fauré, used by contributors to Henri Prunières' Fauré celebration in the October 1922 issue of La revue musicale  (F, A, G, D had also been used 20 yea
caption: Haydn, Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn by Ravel About this soundPlay (help·info)
exif: {}