Elgar's note on Les Préludes, 1886: a reading of his pencilled cipher as a description of the music

At the Crystal Palace Liszt concert of 10 April 1886, Edward Elgar bracketed two music examples in C. A. Barry's programme note on Liszt's Les Préludes, the opening of the storm and the opening of the Allegretto pastorale, and pencilled twenty small marks beside them in his private alphabet. Read in the key of Elgar's own notebook, the marks give six short letter groups. We show that they are abbreviated musical terms, Elgar's own description of the bracketed music: "Fourths, thirds, gebrochen (broken chord). 'Independent'? Sustained harmony, very quiet." A second reading of the fifth group, "storm, very quiet", fits equally well. Each term is set against the full score, and the note states, mark by mark, what the original programme page must show for the reading to stand.