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arXiv · 2509.17950

Dorabella Cipher as Musical Inspiration

Bradley Hauer·Colin Choi·Abram Hindle·Scott Smallwood·Grzegorz Kondrak
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Abstract

The Dorabella cipher is an encrypted note written by English composer Edward Elgar, which has defied decipherment attempts for more than a century. While most proposed solutions are English texts, we investigate the hypothesis that Dorabella represents enciphered music. We weigh the evidence for and against the hypothesis, devise a simplified music notation, and attempt to reconstruct a melody from the cipher. Our tools are n-gram models of music which we validate on existing music corpora enciphered using monoalphabetic substitution. By applying our methods to Dorabella, we produce a decipherment with musical qualities, which is then transformed via artful composition into a listenable melody. Far from arguing that the end result represents the only true solution, we instead frame the process of decipherment as part of the composition process.

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Bradley Hauer, Colin Choi, Abram Hindle, Scott Smallwood, Grzegorz Kondrak. 2025-09-22. Dorabella Cipher as Musical Inspiration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17950

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