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Eric Sams
Selected
letters
to Maurice Brown
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6.
8th
November 1968
Dear Mr. Brown,
Well; thank you kindly for your nice letter. I've also had a
very affable foreword contributed by Gerald Moore. There’s nothing
like getting the approval of two world champions in the same week for
putting a chap in a relaxed frame of mind.
Clearly I mustn't overdo it, though; I must have been pretty
relaxed to make that confidently wrong observation about Wanderers
Nachtlied. I expect I got the wrong one; it’s enough to make one
go hot with shame. Many thanks for rescuing me. The Op. 96
coincidence is interesting; I can't hear any real musical
resemblance, though, - but that wouldn’t gave surprised me,
considering that I heard what seemed to be clear affinity between the
Appassionata and Belsatzar before noticing that each
was an Op 57. I dare say this might have been deliberate, like
holding the number 6 so that his Op. could have the same number as
the Clara piece it quotes as motto-theme. And then there’s the Clara
Y theme linking Opp. 6, 12, 24 & 48. It’s rather a pity he stopped
short at op. 96, but I expect he was growing out of it by then; or
else reserving the magic numbers for the really spellbinding ideas,
such as Clara X in the D minor, Op. 120. I expect you're right about
Loewe too (again I can blame Schumann's mind for some at least of my
aberrations, for I’m sure it was one of his splendidly innocent puns
in a review which put that form into my head); and this shall duly be
altered also. (How should. I acknowledge the Schubert point? I'm
afraid I've already sent back the foreword, preface etc, to enable a
start to be made.) Among other encouraging things is your point that
you like the idea of someone else having some acquaintance with the
songs one loves; I know that feeling – one seems less lonely.
It's for that reason among many others that I’m looking forward
so eagerly to your own writing about Schubert songs, etc, and
particularly his motivic writing, which is becoming something of an
obsession with me. There are exciting flashes about this in your
Essays and BBC monograph, but not really enough to satisfy the
devotee. I expect I'll be tackling Schubert one day, if I'm spared,
but the task seems no dauntingly mountainous - didn't you once say to
me, rather memorably, that you felt that even compiling a list
of the songs one had the feeling it would never end? I think. I'd
better have a go at Brahms and perhaps Fauré first. But I don’t seem
to find (yet) many motifs in either - do you? The ideal chap from
both points of view would be Duparc - perhaps a quick dash at him
would be the appropriate neat step, as we bureaucrats say. On
Schubert, I've been meaning to tell you that I'm supposed to be doing
a script for the interpretation series on Die Schöne Müllerin
- my own suggestion, which I'm now rather regretting, because
everyone seems to sing them in the same way, which will mean a
programme rather barren of comparisons. I'm trying to think, though,
whether this is right; I mean that although Sonnleitner was no doubt
right in suggesting that the dramatic approach was in general
undesirable, yet in D.S.M there is all the time an indefinable sort
of Mühlbach-undercurrent of drama, almost of opera - after all, it
has vivid and believable characters, motives and plot, which is (some
say) more than can be asserted with any confidence of the actual
Schubert operas themselves. And I'm sure from the form that Müller
imagined his verses quasi-dramatically; and I have a vague impression
that Schubert did too, and that the style is what Empson would call a
Version of Pastoral. After all, he didn't have to write like that,
did he, in 1823? It was perhaps a deliberate hoice of (?reversion to)
the pastoral-diatonic style? This sometimes leads people to believe
that the cycle isn't really at the level of Winterreise,
whereas sometimes I sometimes wonder whether the two can't after all
be mentioned in the same breath. And were any of the D.S.M songs
really
written
in striped pyjamas? (a detail borrowed from the television triptych -
which I found rather disappointing, though still better of course
than almost any other programmes).
A propos, I seem to he meditating on Beethoven’s syphilis,
because of Ernest Newman’s The Unconscious Beethoven which I'm
reviewing for the MT (which reminds me that I was pleased with
your piece on Loewe — as you say, it's nice to know that one's tastes
are shared, and I'm very fond of some of those songs – with perhaps a
special penchant lately for Des Glockentürmers Töchterlein,
which no one seems to know or care about greatly). I must say that
Newman' mind strikes me as hopelessly muddled; and he seems to have
no idea of the kind of intellectual performance expected from someone
intent en proving a thesis. Having made a few vague assertions he
suddenly begins the next chapter with “The fact of Beethoven's malady
seems then to be beyond dispute”. “With one bound, Jack was free”, as
they used to say in Boy's Own Paper. He’d surely never have got away
nowadays with such undemanding stuff as that?
I trust your own work on Beethoven is going well and enjoyably.
If I can be of any service to you (hot that I know much about the
songs, but I’ve pickled up a bit here and there in the course of
Schumann pursuits etc) you have only to let me know.
And if you had a moment to spare to tell me how much Wagner one can
hear in Wolf, and conversely, and with what significance, I shall be
very greatly obliged! This has come up because Faber are reprinting a
book of mine on Wolf, and I'm casting about for some new material;
and I'm conscious of having said nothing on Wagner (because, I claim, it
wasn't relevant to the purpose at the time, but no doubt the real
reason was just ignorance, and not solely in the Johnsonian sense
either). The odd thing is that I can't find any Wolf to speak of in
Wagner at all until I play the piano scores and then I seem to hear a Wolfian inflection or two. Perhaps one should put down Klindworth as
among Wolf's influences?
I was very interested in the Schubert theme X. For some terrible
months I could hear music only in relation to whether it contained
that theme or not! I found that Schubert doesn't use it thematically
as much as Mozart or Haydn; Beethoven hardly at all. Of course, I can
hear nothing else in Schumann; but I shall have to try to cure myself
of that. But I was able to persuade Roger Fiske of the reality of
Clara theme Y — partly admittedly because he'd already identified it
for himself, and for some curious reason it's always much easier to
believe in one's own discoveries than in other people's — but partly
just by directing his attention to the opening bars of the
Fantaisiestücke Op. 12 beginning with Nos. 3 & 4, preceding, with
those in mind, to No. 5, and thence to No. 7; and then contemplating,
Buddhist-fashion, the middle sections of the others; and eventually a
pattern begins to emerge.
I didn’t know the Lawrencian pronouncement on Du bist wie
eine Blume. I agree with you that es ist wie eine bloomer. I
think I agree with you too about Ophelia's pregnancy; I doubt if one
ought to make too much play with the long purples. But dare I differ
from both you and Bob in venturing to compare the question of how
many children Lady Macbeth had with how many Ophelia didn't? I rather
tend to doubt whether verbal constructions can be pregnant in any
other than a very metaphorical sense. How can a literary matter be a
literal mater?
Yes, I confess I recall that cheeky piece about your line on
Trouts (I expect I tried to work in your angle too, Lord help me)
What I meant was that it like Ophelia is in my mind an abstraction,
like the Platonic ideal of Trout, let us say the Ur-Forelle or
Rainbow Trout, who swam ere rivers were begun; and some mystic
compulsion impels me to chant despite Hoorickx, - nevertheless not
six trouts, but One Trout.
Sorry to have rattled on so; it's the euphoria.
with renewed thanks
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