Letters of composers : an anthology, 1603-1945 / compiled and edited by Gertrude Norman and Miriam Lubell Shrifte.

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

393

text excerpt

Here is the program of our last concert. I hope you will agree with the way your work was placed between the Stravinsky suite and H.P.[Ballet by Chávez]. The performance was accurate and “simple”; we had 10 rehearsals and it was worked out with the utmost of interest and energy; the orchestra men were at first sceptical but by the third rehearsal or so they had a more genuine and growing interest. / I was amazed to see this, as it seldom happens with your works and mine. This last concert was the best of the entire season; it was warm and enthusiastic. It is impossible to tell you in a few words how much I enjoy the Little Symphony. I have already begun to write an essay on it which I intend to send to Minna Lederman for Modern Music. / The dialectic of this music, that is to say, its movement, the way each and every note comes out from the other as the only natural and logically possible one, is simply unprecedented in the whole history of music. The work as a whole, I mean to say in its entirety, is an organism, a body in which every piece works by itself 100% but whose mutual selection is such, that no one part could possibly work and exist without the other. There has been much talk about music in which everything is essential, nothing superfluous, but, as far as I know, the talk about such music exists, yes, but not the music itself. The Little Symphony is the first realization of this I know of, and yet the human content, the inner expression is purely emotional. It is precisely that tremendous human impulse which made possible such realization. / What I understand by “modern music” or “contemporary music” is merely our music; all the res belongs to historical periods, no matter how close or dear these historical periods may be to us…Let me tell you what I thought when I got the Little Symphony- well, here is the real thing, here, is our music, here is my music, the music of my time, of my taste, of my culture, here it is, a simple and natural fact to myself, as everything belonging to oneself is simple and natural.

excerpt from 'Letters of composers : an anthology, 1603-1945 / compiled and edited by Gertrude Norman and Miriam Lubell Shrifte.' pp. 393 (387 words)

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1424774829310