Kryptónalysis for solo piano
PDF Score and link to mp3 recording: Kryptónalysis for solo piano
Kryptónalysis for solo piano was inspired by the life and accomplishments of the English
mathematician, logician, and cryptanalyst, Alan Turing. Born in London in 1912, he studied at both
Cambridge and Princeton universities. He was already working part-time for the British
Government’s Code and Cypher School before the Second World War broke out.
In 1939, Turing accepted a full-time position at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire – where top
secret work was being conducted to decipher the military codes of Germany and its allies. The main
focus of Turing’s work at Bletchley was in cracking the ‘Enigma’ code. The Enigma was a type of
enciphering machine used by the German armed forces to send messages securely. Although Polish
mathematicians had worked out how to read Enigma messages and had shared this information with
the British, the Germans increased its security at the outbreak of the war by changing the cipher
system daily. This made the task of understanding the code even more difficult.
Turing played a key role in this, inventing – along with fellow code-breaker Gordon Welchman – a
machine known as the Bombe. This device helped to significantly reduce the work of the codebreakers.
From mid-1940, German Air Force signals were being read at Bletchley and the
intelligence gained from them significantly helped the war effort.