A Life in Letters
NEWLIN, DIKA
ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin A Life in Letters In several respects the English edition of the Arnold Schoenberg Letters, already hailed by Igor Stravinsky as "one of the few great books by...
...Is it possible for a Kandinsky to be of more or less one mind with others instead of with me...
...But 'thou shaft have one God' . . . " His continuing demand for unconditional submission in all matters was rarely to be fulfilled—indeed, those who fulfilled it were, in too many cases, to become nobodies, what we called in my student days with him "composers of intermissions...
...I could not—I would have liked to...
...Here he was honored, but not always in the way that he would have preferred...
...We sense the irony in his statement: ". . . here I am universally esteemed as one of the most important composers: alongside Stravinsky, Tansman, Sessions, Sibelius, Gershwin, Copland, etc., . . . etc., . . . etc., . . . . And so I can safely count on my 70th birthday turning out just as I have prophesied...
...As a rule teachers are absolutely incapable of doing this, because they do not even see where the problem lies, and the result is composers who can think only in terms of a single instrument...
...It seems to me: Kandinsky cannot possibly have even such a thing as geometry in common with them...
...The volume has been ably translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser...
...If you do not see your way to using them, then I must regard you as remaining on the further bank...
...The book begins with letters written in 1910, for it is from this time onward that Schoenberg kept copies of his letters...
...Is it a thought at all that one can have in common with these people...
...In a long and embittered letter of May 4, 1923, he exclaims: "Must not a Kandinsky have an inkling of what really happened when I had to break off my firs* working summer for 5 years, leave the place I had sought out for peace to work in, and afterwards couldn't regain the peace of mind to work at all...
...Kandinsky had asked him to help with the intellectual development at the Bauhaus in Weimar, but Schoenberg did not like the idea, for he had heard rumors of anti- Semitic tendencies in the group...
...Why is an Aryan judged by Goethe, Schopenhauer and so forth...
...The post-retirement years brought Schoenberg some financial problems...
...There was stimulating work, not unrelieved by play (tennis, Schoenberg's beloved sport of the California years, is often mentioned in these Berlin letters...
...True, the first part of Die Jakobsleiter was completed by Winfried Zillig and performed in Vienna on June 16, 1961 (it has not yet been heard in this country...
...Schoenberg had been made to feel unwelcome in Mattsee, near Salzburg, where he had planned to spend his vacation.] Because the Germans will not put up with Jews...
...Retribution was swift in following...
...In 1933 came Schoenberg's enforced " In 1933 came Schoenberg's enforced move to America...
...Perhaps Schoenberg's heroic life —and these living documents of it —might best be summed up in these words from his 1947 message of thanks to the National Institute of Arts and Letters: "Personally I had the feeling as if I had fallen into an ocean of boiling water, and not knowing how to swim or to get out in another manner, I tried with my legs and arms as best I could...
...Fifteen letters written in English are included here, and there are also four highly significant letters from Schoenberg to Mahler which first appeared in Alma Mahler's Gustav Mahler: Erinnerungen und Brief...
...ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin A Life in Letters In several respects the English edition of the Arnold Schoenberg Letters, already hailed by Igor Stravinsky as "one of the few great books by composers" upon its appearance last year in London and now published in America (St...
...At 36, he was already the composer of works of distinction and the teacher of outstanding pupils, but was hard put to make a living in his native Vienna...
...That is not his position, or he does not stand where I stand...
...This black sheep of the Schoenberg flock one day gossiped indiscreetly to Alexander Zemlinsky concerning his repudiation of certain of the master's ideas...
...This "privilege" was granted to our petitioner— little enough for a man of Schoenberg's talents...
...That I never gave up...
...But the state he was in when he came to me was such that his imagination could not work on anything but Lieder...
...But we must regret the unfinished state of Schoenberg's greatest stage work, Moses und Aron, and of the cycle of Modern Psalms...
...The credit must be given to my opponents...
...and poor health prevented the completion of many works...
...This seemed the peak of his career up to that point...
...Thus was Eisler exiled to his dream paradise of "the people's music...
...I did not know what saved me...
...But is it possible for him to have a single thought in common with HUMAN BEINGS who are capable of disturbing the peace in which I want to work...
...How well Schoenberg succeeded in "removing this defect," anyone who listens attentively to the orchestration of Wozzeck can testify...
...when you call this an achievement, so—forgive me—I do not understand of what it might consist...
...I could only be sorry for such a person, but I couldn't be angry with him...
...Indeed, he taxed Kandinsky with such thinking...
...See the letter in which he asks for permission to teach at the Imperial-Royal Academy of Music as a "lecturer," i.e., one allowed to give courses at the institution but not considered a part of the regular staff and receiving no regular salary, but only the fees of his students...
...Robert Schumann is a typical example...
...One slip might lead to banishment from the inner circle...
...He concerned himself deeply, too, with the problems raised by his Jewishness...
...In 1925 Schoenberg moved to Berlin as director of a master class in musical composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts...
...Why don't people say the Jews are like Mahler, Altenberg, Schoenberg and so forth...
...Of Schoenberg as a teacher at this period, we get a good idea from his comments on the young Berg: ". . . an extraordinarily gifted composer...
...He was absolutely incapable of writing an instrumental movement or inventing an instrumental theme...
...You can hardly imagine the lengths I went to in order to remove this defect in his talent...
...Later, he complained to Kokoschka: "My adherents . . . all rank Hindemith, Stravinsky and Bartok if not above me at least as on a par with me...
...one short leg, a clumsy hand, etc...
...Unfortunately, ill health necessitated a winter's move to Barcelona...
...Martin's, 309 pp., $8.75), offers the reader even more than the original 1958 German edition— edited, like the present volume, by Erwin Stein...
...They were the ones who really helped me...
...I removed this defect and am convinced that in time Berg will actually become very good at instrumentation...
...I am proud to receive this award under the assumption that I have achieved something "Please do not call it false modesty to say: "Maybe something has been achieved but it was not I who deserves the credit for that...
...In this period, we notice Schoenberg's evergreater demands for absolute loyalty to his person and to his work on the part of his associates...
...And: can it be right...
...Schoenberg's plea is as pertinent today as in 1923: "Why do people say that the Jews are like what their black-marketeers are like...
...Typical is the case of Hanns Eisler (whose later American career's unsavory episodes are well remembered...
...After World War I, Schoenberg, settled in Modling near Vienna, was busy with organizing his Society for Private Performances in Vienna, and was thinking out the preliminary stages of his method of composition with 12 tones...
...Views differing from my own," Schoenberg wrote to Eisler on March 12, 1926, "are something I should never resent, as little as I resent anyone's having any other disability...
...Even the piano accompaniments to them were song-like in style...
...I have built you several bridges, at least footbridges...
...Do people also say that the Aryans are like their worst elements...
...why I was not drowned or cooked alive . . . "I have perhaps only one merit: I never gave up...
Vol. 48 • May 1965 • No. 10
