card and you are too good to me. I cannot describe how much I feel towards you of warmth and love. I can feel myself losing all definition in sentimentality.
I have since writing to you before heard from Adolph and am in touch with him. I will be with him again as soon as he is settled.
I have a job now in scientific research which gives me $25.00 a week and takes my afternoons.18 It is very interesting work. I enjoy it. I have my horn lessons to pay for and a horn to buy.
I will also have a little money to begin operations and I shall begin more immediately the work for the Society.19 I am anxious to see Schönberg and get what cooperation he will give. Pro Musica is giving his III Quartett (Abas Quartett).20 Oh, Henry, my intentions are the best. I use all the time, there never is enough. I accomplish very little.
I will send you exercises soon and also will send you my subscription to the music and records.
I want to be married soon. I don’t know why I tell you but it’s very important to me.
To Pauline Schindler
February 22, 1935 | Los Angeles
Dearest Pauline:
STRAVINSKI! … The evening was pure joy—and I think that this music is natural. There are no “ideas” in it. It is, you know it, pagan, physical. It is seeing life close and loving it so. There are no whirring magical mystifications. It is all clear and precisely a dance. It is not “frozen architecture.”
I heard one person say afterward: “Henceforth I shall not take music seriously but shall enjoy it twice as much.” I was furious and turned to him and said, Take it twice as seriously and enjoy it four times as much!
Throughout the “Eight Pieces” the audience had an ostinato of ecstatic laughter. And irrepressible applause, which was not in the least unacceptable.
I spoke with Kurt Reher afterwards, a fine cellist in the orchestra. He brought me back to the “Germans.” He said, It’s nothing but The Firebird. That is real.
The Firebird, yes, and I had forgotten that it existed. It is the beautiful born from the evil. It is as though one decided to have wings and fly, and nothing else had power but that. Infernal demands are nothing to deter.
This is now music which we have and which is accepted, which does not provoke anger, hysteria or any vulgar objection. And it is a static music which is itself and which does not prophecy or go forward in an adventure. It is not a speculation. It is the worship of the Golden Calf. Moses and God are far away. And we say yes to cutting them off!
I love you. Oh that I were with you.
To Adolph Weiss
[March 30, 1935?] | Location not indicated
Dear Mr. Weiss:
You are probably now not touring any longer. Do you have definite plans for the future? I want very much to fit into them, if I may.
It seems to me like a maelstrom, here in Los Angeles. I am kept very busy, so that there is no rest. I have work for you to see. And I am anxious to go forward. The horn I love. I enjoy studying with Mr. Hoss very much. I fear that I am very slow but I am sure that he is teaching me excellently. It is the flexibility of the instrument that pleases me most.
Schoenberg is giving a class in analysis, the fee for which is quite small; and since I have a job now in scientific research for a company my father has started, I am able to attend this class. We are analyzing the 4th Symphony of Brahms, the Art of the Fugue, some of the Well-Tempered Clavichord, and the III String Quartet of Schoenberg. Although I am not really prepared for this class, I manage to keep my ears open and absorb what I can. There are about 40 people in the class, mostly teachers of music.
A great deal of Schoenberg’s music has recently been played: the Verklaerte Nacht, the III String Quartet (several times) and songs from the Book of the Hanging Gardens, also op. II. A large reception was given him by the Mailamm Society,21 a Jewish organization, last night. And it was a very sincere ovation. He gave a racial talk. He is beginning to be very much loved. His conducting, however, was mercilessly criticized. People found his tempos dull and uninteresting.
I would be able to send you some money now, since I have a job. I don’t know how long I will have it. But whatever I have is yours.
Henry has asked me to arrange a concert for him here of Japanese Shakuhachi playing by a friend of his, K. Tamada;22 I am doing this.
I feel isolated and cut-off, not having heard from you. I want very much to be with you again.
Please give my best regards to Mrs. Weiss. How is everyone? And believe me always,
Your devoted pupil
To Adolph Weiss
[May 1935] | Location not indicated
My dear Mr. Weiss:
Perhaps you are wondering why I have not answered your letter. I have certainly wanted to. But, following the suggestion you gave in your letter immediately before, I did my best to get “closer” to Schoenberg. He had, in between your two letters, asked me to come and see him. After making an appointment with him, I decided, since you considered it best, to ask him point blank if I might in my way continue my studies with him. He asked me many questions,—about my work with you and before studying with you. My answers showed him how very little I know,—particularly with regard to the literature of string quartets, symphonies, etc. He finally decided, however, to accept me in a class in counterpoint which had already started, suggesting that, with the aid of a George Tremblay,23 who is studying composition with him, I might “make up” what I had missed. He felt that what I already know of harmony, through you, would be sufficient for the time being. His last words on this first occasion were: Now you must think of nothing but music: and must work from six to eight hours a day.
The result is that I work all the time. I am proud to say that I am already doing work which surpasses that of the two other pupils. This is merely because I examine the possibilities as completely as I can. It is amazing what can be done with a single cantus firmus. When I write harmony exercises again, they will, I hope, be much better than before. We have had, so far, four lessons with Schoenberg: 3-part counterpoint, first species, second species (a) with one moving voice and (b) with two moving voices, and third species (syncopation—which, by the way, is fourth species in most textbooks) with one voice only in syncopes. And with Tremblay I have completed the five species of 2-part writing, and am now working on mixed species.
Xenia is staying until the end of this month (May) in Alaska; it is her father’s wish. He is quite elderly and does not expect to see her again.24
Mother tells me that the secret of her vitality is in not drinking and not smoking. The funny thing is that she does drink. I am the one who has decided not to drink. I decided that I am “drunk” all of the time, and that to add to it is not intelligent. Of course, since making this decision I drank a glass of beer, because I was thirsty, a second glass of beer, because I was eating some corned beef and cabbage and knew that beer would be just the thing. Another time I drank some blackberry wine because it tastes so good.
But Mother’s vitality
