Arnold Schoenberg Letters

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

45

text excerpt

Having meanwhile been in London and Prague, I have only today found time to tell you how much pleasure your Leipzig performance of my chamber symphony gave me. Above all because it constituted a démenti of the remark about myself attributed to you and circulated by loutish newspaper-scribblers in order to damage me. In calmer moments I myself always knew that there could not have been anything more behind it than, at the most, one of those momentary outbursts so frequent with all those of us who have a temperament and which none of us would care to be called to account for in their totality. As I have said, I am very glad that such wretched mischief-makers can no longer take your name in vain./ But then too I was particularly delighted when at the final rehearsal I realised that you had applied yourself to my music with great devotion and warm interest. I gathered this with pleasure from the fact that in this complicated contrapuntal texture, which reveals its meaning only to people of insight, all the important main parts and also the secondary parts were clearly and meaningfully brought out. I have furthermore to thank you for the fact that despite all the demands upon your time you undertook a task that is often hard for much younger musicians, even those who are close to me: I mean taking the trouble to get to know this score.

Having meanwhile been in London and Prague, I have only today found time to tell you how much pleasure your Leipzig performance of my chamber symphony gave me. Above all because it constituted a démenti of the remark about myself attributed to you and circulated by loutish newspaper-scribblers in order to damage me. In calmer moments I myself always knew that there could not have been anything more behind it than, at the most, one of those momentary outbursts so frequent with all those of us who have a temperament and which none of us would care to be called to account for in their totality. As I have said, I am very glad that such wretched mischief-makers can no longer take your name in vain./ But then too I was particularly delighted when at the final rehearsal I realised that you had applied yourself to my music with great devotion and warm interest. I gathered this with pleasure from the fact that in this complicated contrapuntal texture, which reveals its meaning only to people of insight, all the important main parts and also the secondary parts were clearly and meaningfully brought out. I have furthermore to thank you for the fact that despite all the demands upon your time you undertook a task that is often hard for much younger musicians, even those who are close to me: I mean taking the trouble to get to know this score.

excerpt from 'Arnold Schoenberg Letters' pp. 45 (241 words)

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