November 19, 2023 Mahlon Berv Dear Mahlon Berv, Thank you for your gracious response to Nathaniel's affectionate attempt at artistic matchmaking, but please forgive me, if I write that for my part I'm diffident about how much, if anything, I have to offer you. I have listened with interest to the two compositions of yours to which Nathaniel sent me the URLs. The "Songs of Solomon" I found intuitively very compelling. I am of course familiar with various translations of the underlying Biblical texts. Still I wish I might have understood the words that your music celebrates. Since on the Internet I found references to the mass murders of by the Germans of Jews in Zembin, Belarus, as well as references but without explanation to Zembin Ballet, I shall defer comments on that composition until I am more insightful. I plan to devote an hour each night serially to listen to your other compositions the URLS to which you included in your e-mail. If the URLs to the scores of any of these other compositions were readily accessible to me on the Internet, I would follow these scores while listening to your compositions and persuade myself that my understanding was thereby enhanced. Please ignore Nathaniel's reference to me as a "marvelous writer". I confess that for the past 78 years, writing has been an important part of my existence. Early on, I assumed that the value, if any, of my writing would be revealed by the comments of readers and critics; but knowledgeable potential publishers knew that there would be no profits; publication was delayed for years until made feasible by "print-on-demand", and then there were no readers. The publishers had been correct after all! By 2015, I had written only one poem. Then my wife died. We had been married for 63 years. I consoled myself with the composition of 78 sonnets in German in which I recapitulated our lives together. Once having started to write poems, it seems I couldn't stop. I wrote 163 more sonnets on the diverse topics that preoccupied me from day to day. Then three years ago, I wrote a cycle of 52 sonnets "Sonetten an Chronos", in deliberate parody of Rilke's Sonette an Orpheus. in addition 9 sonnets under the caption "Wahnsinnsgeschichte" (Tales of Insanity) and finally, just 2 months ago, another parody of Rilke's Sonetten, a cycle of 58 sonnets styled "Sonnette an Hermes." All my poems are in German. In addition, I have written librettos for two operas. The first, three years ago, has the title "Krötenrettung" (Toad Rescue). It is a social satire expanding on the program of the German environmentalist non-profit BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland – BUND e.V.) to save from being crushed by automobiles, toads crossing busy highways on their way to their spawning grounds, a philamphibian effort which is frustrated by a rich and cruel toad-hating landowner named "Lump" (German for Rascal, rhymes with Trump) who builds a fence to thwart the toads and whose blockage of the toad migration route precipitates civil war, termination of which requires the intervention of no less than the Muses, the goddess Dike and the god Apollo. They make peace by rearranging human life as perpetual theater. The libretto is written in German and is about fifty pages in length. The second libretto is one which I wrote just a few weeks ago, at Nathaniel's suggestion, is in fact an envelope for a production of the opera Il Secreto by Antonio Cartellieri (first and ?last performed in 1805) The manuscript score were denied us by one William Lobkowitz, the descendant of Prince Franz Joseph Lobkowitz a patron of Beethoven's as well as Cartellieri. We are presently negotiating with the Biblioteca Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, Italy, which also has the manuscripts and which has promised us electronic copies. My envelope libretto, in German, is a satire on the possessiveness of the ancient libretto's present owner. Cartellieri's libretto is in Italian. If our very tentative enterprise were successful, we would have a bilingual opera. The musical challenge would be the integration of the styles of Cartellieri, Mozart and Salieri with a modern idiom. It seems presumptuous, and I apologize for the assumption implicit in my detailed exposition, that you should have any interest at all in putting any of my texts to music. But Nathaniel has written the prescription and I must comply with it. I confess, music is the only religion to which I adhere, and where I have failed so abjectly in repeated efforts to play any musical instrument, I take refuge in the music of language. Since I have no inkling of your acquaintance, if any with German, I ask, is it not preposterous that I should entertain the possibility that you might consider putting any of my poetry to music? When I listen to Mozart's melodious interpretations of Figaro, Don Giovanni or Cosi fan tutte, I ask myself, did Lorenzo da Ponte and Mozart converse in Italian? Did da Ponte recite to Mozart, Dove sono i bei momenti to tell him how it should sound before Mozart put the text to music? I have in fact on my website http://ernstjmeyer.ddns.net at 8. Vorgelesene Gedichte (poems read aloud) coarse and careless sound recordings of 221 of my sonetts. I have not (yet) made sound recordings of the two libretti that I have written. My website ernstjmeyer.ddns.net, as you can see, is an improvised do-it-yourself project. I consider it a workshop with many incomplete and unedited items. The following are relevant to this letter: http://ernstjmeyer.ddns.net 3. Krötenrettung- Numerierte Fassung 12. August 2020 4. Gedichte odt 5. Aus der Umnachtung 6. Sonette an Hermes 7. Il_Secreto 8. Vorgelesene Gedichte I have not found it necessary to use Certificates or any other protective software on my website, and I suggest that you ignore any hazard warnings your browser might issue to you. (The hazards I present lie elsewhere.) I am prepared to provide you with texts in any digital format congenial to you. Finally, permit me to say concerning this unduly lengthy letter, please feel no obligation to answer in detail; in fact, please feel no obligation to answer at all. Sincerely, Jochen Meyer 174 School St Belmont MA 02478 617-548-5768