December 7, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

This, I hope, will reach you before you set out for California.  Thank you for your letter. I much approve your comments about surgery.  Never forget: De nobis fabula narratur, and apply your insight so to speak reflexively. I have long since concluded that life in a nursing home is not worth living. I keep telling Margaret: The time to die is now! while a modicum of mental and physical energy remains. In this regard also, mine is a voice in the wilderness.

About Nathaniel's winter concert and the accompanying lecture, I don't know the dates, I don't know the program, except that it focusses on the Eroica. I know only that when Nathaniel was here for Thanksgiving, he told me preparations were going well.  Last week in New Haven, he commented that perhaps I should receive explicit credit for some of the ideas he will articulate.  I disagreed. Nathaniel is much concerned that what he presents should be his own.  Again I disagree. Repetition, assimilation, noble plagiarism is the very soul of intellect. "Die hoechste Wirkung des Geistes ist den Geist hervorzurufen," (The ultimate effect of mind is the evocation of mind.) I remember vividly Professor Jaeger's display of erudition, when he would cite to seminar members the antecedents, the precedents of Aristotle's concepts, quoting the passages from which Aristotle was cribbing. Isn't language itself the ultimate mimicry of sound, of meaning and of thought?

Like yourself, I have reservations about the presumption to speak about music. To my ears, music speaks for itself. Interestingly, Nathaniel himself commented last year, that orchestra members become annoyed with his spoken introductions to their performances.  I, however, am very careful not to be critical of him, if only because he attaches such value to my opinions, or so he says.  Instead, I try to understand his motivation. I think it is at least two-fold:

1. Quite realistically he understands that few members of his audiences have anything but a shallow understanding of music.  For many "listeners", such as Margrit - I can't forget that she died just two years ago on the 22nd of this month - the concert performance - like the religious service - is often little more than a social occasion for greeting old - and making new friends.  Nathaniel believes that as he talks about the composition, about its composer, about the historical circumstances of its genesis, he prepares the soil in which the musical notes themselves, like seeds, may germinate and become roots of a more genuine understanding.

2. Nathaniel understands that conducting is a species of acting, that the conductor, whatever the genesis of his passion, unavoidably becomes a showman, that some portion of the concert audiences comes to see the conductor act as much, if not more, than to hear the music.  Although we don't talk about it, Nathaniel knows that he has a charismatic personality. The lecture(s) he plans are an experiment both in education and in "public relations" of the most sophisticated sort, an experiment in acting. We don't know how his audience will respond. As for the length of the "lectures", I wouldn't be surprised if some hearers found them too short rather than too long. But we shall see, and I shall report to you.

Have a happy and rewarding trip!

Jochen

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