Handwritten letter from Schenker to Hertzka (UE), dated October 28, 1911 Sehr geehrter Herr Direktor! Noch ist zwar der Spätherbst nicht da,1 dennoch will ich, als besorgter Autor, dem Sie das Interesse an seinem eigenen Werke doch nicht ....rgen[?] können, die Bitte an Sie richten, wirklich die nötigen Anordnungen zu treffen, damit die Korrekturen zur angekündigten[corr] Zeit ihren Weg zu mir finden.2 Nur bei dieser Gelegenheit will ich endlich dem in Ihren Briefen wiederkehrenden Vorwurf, als hätte ich mein Mspt. „verspätet” abgeliefert,3 dahin begegnen, daß ich mit der Ablieferung im Mai vielmehr eine Mit ausgezeichtneter Hochachtung © In the public domain. |
Handwritten letter from Schenker to Hertzka (UE), dated October 28, 1911 Dear Director, Late autumn is not yet here,1 I admit, but I should like, as the anxious author, in whose work you surely cannot [deny? having] an interest, to ask you to be sure to issue the appropriate orders so that the proofs will reach me at the prescribed time.2 I can no longer restrain myself from challenging the reproach, repeatedly made in your letters, that I delivered my manuscript “late”3 by pointing out that, on the contrary, in submitting it in May I accomplished something the likes of which you could not easily match. Not until the beginning of the season last year did the Association of Viennese Music Critics4 invite me to give the lectures, and only then, at that time, was the topic of the Ninth Symphony chosen and agreed. Only with my unique degree of preparedness5 for such things could I promptly consent to this and hope to deal, so to speak, on the fly with the [work’s] great, sublime material in five lectures. Since the contract between you and me on the same {2} topic6 materialized only soon after that, I of course first had to formulate the latter (since it had had no place in my work plan up to that point). And if, in the course of a season with ten pupils and the near-mortal illness of my almost 80-year-old mother,8 I completed in the space of five months a work of this magnitude and of such exceptional9 quality—its value will be publicly revealed to you once the work has appeared!—then any talk of “delay” is in all truth unfair. On the contrary, I should ask who other than I could complete anything like this achievement? I did not correct your turn of phrase immediately because I did not expect to suffer consequences from it; but since these are now arising, it is my duty, in the interests of truth, to put the matter to rights. With kind regards, © Translation Ian Bent 2006. |
COMMENTARY: FOOTNOTES 1 Reference is to H’s statement in OC 52/492, September 19, 1911: „Die Korrekturen Ihrer IX. Symphonie werden Sie im Spätherbste erhalten.“; S is keeping him to his word. 2 No paragraph-break in original. 3 Most recently, OC 52/492, September 19, 1920: “ Sie wissen ja, dass durch die von Ihnen so verspätet erfolgte Ablieferung des Manuskriptes ....“ 4 Vereinigung der Wiener Musikreferenten [create biogfile and link]. The formal letter of invitation, requesting a “Vortragscyclus über den Bau der IX. Sinfonie von Beethoven,” survives as OJ 14/44, September 30, 1910. Schenker reports this invitation, and the fact that the lectures did not materialize, whereupon UE invited him to turn them into a monograph, in his Beethoven Neunte Sinfonie (Vienna: UE, 1912), Vorrede, [V]; 2nd edition (1969), [V]; trans. John Rothgeb as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3. 5 Paratheit: Latin/French (paratus; parée) portmanteau word: “readiness”. 6 Sujets: French loan word. 7 dahin es: originally “es dahin” but marked for inversion. 8 Julia Schenker, who did not die until late December 1917. 9 exceptionell: French loan word. SUMMARY © Commentary, Footnotes, Summary Ian Bent 2006.
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