1999
1999 210 10 february 1999 George, dear Friend, The faint dull thud that shook some of the windowpanes in your house on this past Monday (the 8th), which you might have(?) noticed and located as to source coming from a distant northern locus … well … it possibly was caused by the millstone that fell of[f] my back as I wrote the final note in the full score of Millennial Mall (Lady Diotima’s Walk). It was in the late afternoon and Bea just came into my workroom. I asked her to fetch the camera and snap a picture, or two, of the ‘event’ that came considerably earlier than I hoped for it even in my more optimistic days … But here it was as the ‘end-play’ of an accelerating progress; as if ‘stuff’ penned beforehand would have dictated the still ‘outstanding,’ i.e., missing , notes. By that time the pattern was familiar and expected: I had to ‘operate’ on what I thought was the final version of the short score … Hell, it was! To the end I kept on inventing the stuff as a consequence of yet earlier changes … But by that time the sleepwalking instinct took over and the ‘thing’ just appeared to propel itself forward … I’m convinced you must be chuckling now … telling me with a smile: “Friend, what else is new?” End of this euphoric account … Thanks, for bearing with me … Oh yes … the ‘vital figures’ are: 1250 bars, 240 pages of full score for 1 solo soprano, full choir, chamber choir (6 solo voices) and orchestra (2, 2, 2, 2; 2, 2, 2; 2 perc., keyboard, harp and strings (6, 4, 3, 3, 2). Prospects for performance? Nothing definite yet, but some ‘nibbles’ from Toronto (as usual from the CBC, plus, a fine chorus also in Toronto). The decisive factor will be the approval of a production budget of at least $60,000| 353 plus ca. $20,000 for the copyists. This is big bucks up here right now. The arts being the bottom item on the totem pole of priorities for our present money-crazed, dumbed-down (as to the humanities) government … But then this comes close to the theme of Millennial Mall, and why I was egged on to write it in the first place. [ … ] Istvan 211 2 march 1999 My dear Isty, It’s been an up-and-down time & finally I’m able to scratch off a few lines. A more fulsome epistle is waiting to come forth. Lots to talk about. But principally for now, bravo & endless congrats on tenacity, purpose, strength of mind & will to bring your Millennial Walk to a conclusion. I hope “they” come up with the money for materials & production. That’s the least they can do for an old general like you! Gene & I took in—it’s the only way I can put it—Moses und Aron of Schoenberg. Saw/heard at the Met[ropolitan] in N[ew] Y[ork]. Orchestra exemplary; Moses chanted remarkably, Aron sang convincingly, the chorus qua chorus was really fantastic. But I felt immediately the great & terrible irony: a work composed 1930–32 by a nominal Lutheran who reconverts 1933 to Judaism in the language (German) of the monsters who set about destroying all the Jews (not to mention others) they can, said work performed to great acclaim (at least in N[ew] Y[ork]) long after the horrors of the Holocaust & sung in the very German of Hitler & his version of ”Murder Inc.” Frankly, it makes me shudder. I am proofreading my old/new Sonata Seria for solo piano, 1948 resurrected & revised 1998. Tying up some loose ends. 3 Elegiac Pieces for piano next.1 After that, don’t know (the don’t know signifies powerful degrees of uncertainty @ 1) whether to take up a new big project; 2) if so, which of 2? That’s more or less what the next letter’s about. [ … ] George 212 19 march 1999 Dear George, dear Friend, [ … ] Now with the new work (M[illennial] M[all] (L[ady] D[iotima]’s W[alk]) complete I’m looking after a backlog of this and that, to make Part IV: Politics, Religion, and Society (1986–2000) 354 | [18.222.22.244] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 09:58 GMT) some order on an imaginary ‘desk.’ I need some emptiness, figuratively, in order to feel the next response to an ‘emptiness,’ not to dramatize it with words like: “horror vacui” … There is no “horror vacui,” since memory rushes...
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