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MOSAIC
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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In March of 1965 I received from thezyxwvu Kenyon Review a copy of Arnold Schoenberg Letters, selected and edited by Erwin Stein, translated from the original German by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (St. Martin's Press, New York). I was informed that a book review by me would be welcome but that whether or not I wrote it I might keep the book. In May I visited Jasper Johns at Edisto Beach, spending much of my time writing the basis for the following text. I related all parts of the book (each letter, the jacket, the biographical notes, the table of contents, the several indexes) to the number 64, so that I could, by tossing coins following the 1-Ching method of obtaining oracles, know which part of the book I was to discuss and how many words I was to use for that purpose. Previously, in order to write an article, I had been using the materials of Cartridge Music (see the note preceding Rhythm, Etc.). This had produced texts which included spaces without words. The need for a text without such spaces had first arisen when I confronted the canvases of Jasper Johns which were completely painted; this need arose again as I read and reread the Schoenberg Letters, a book which is closely compacted in every sense. The editors of the Kenyon Review published my text in the Summer 1965 issue, but with certain modifications which brought the review "more nearly into typographic conformity with the others." Then, for the present circumstance, I removed those statements which dealt with other parts of the book than the letters themselves, and wrote (October 1966) new ones to take their places. MOSAIC Schoenberg's words are those italicized. Quotations are remarks I recall he made when I was studying analysis and counterpoint with him. zyxw He became a Jew loyal to Jews. /zyxwvut don't know whether such attempts to make things easier don't merely increase the difficulties. Berg, Schoenberg, Webern. Another punctuation clarifies the matter: Berg-Schoenberg; Webern. Now seriously . . . / . . . (. . . have only contempt for anyone who finds the slightest fault with anything I publish. One God. The questions he asked his pupils had answers he already knew. 43 Answers his pupils gave didn't tally with his. Schoenberg needed to be sure of himself, so that, when leading others, he might be ahead. "You'll devote your life to music?" He thought of letters as improvisations. They were not compositions. Though he complained of the time his letters consumed, when he waszyxw forced to rest he wrote them. We're chucking this idea too (even though Schoenberg had it): that music enables one to live in a dream world removed from the situation one is actually in (and so the eyes of the music lovers, closed or reading scores—fortunate for them they're not crossing city streets). I explained to Stravinsky that studying with Schoenberg I had become a partisan: pro-Schoenberg, pro-chromaticism. Stravinsky: But I write chromatic music; my objection to Schoenberg's music: it isn't modern (it's like Brahms). Schoenberg pointed out others' mistakes; aware of his own, he corrected them. Criticism is unnecessary. / disagree with almost everything. Books he remembered were written by opponents. Musical conventions, complexity, yes—but let no objects and settings for operas puzzle his audiences. . . . it is much more interesting to have one's portrait done by or to own a painting by a musician of my reputation than to be painted by some mere practitioner of painting whose name will be forgotten in 20 years, whereas even now (he was thirty-five) my name belongs to history. Our values. Composition using twelve tones was in the Viennese air. Hauer and Schoenberg both picked it up. But differently. Simultaneously? / empower you to publish this letter . . .; but if. . . so, . .. in its entirety; not excerpted. What with his wretched financial situation, asthma, antiSemitic attacks from political quarters, lack of public recognition, etc., one's led (if not to agree) to listen when he says: This earth is a vale of tears and not a place of entertainment. Experiencing music not composers' names: at the Private Concerts Schoenberg organized, members listened, not told what they were hearing or who'd composed it. Believing that truth existed, he was interested in knowing what it was. Analyzing a single measure of Beethoven, Schoenberg became a magician (not rabbits out of a hat, but one musical idea after another: revelation). Arnold Schoenberg...