IX
Dear Sebastian:
It seems like a dream, your having come and gone. Will you really do The Tale of the Rogue Who Outwitted Three Other Rogues? I wonder.
IтАЩm only just beginning to recognize what a howling success youтАЩve made of things. IтАЩve at last grasped that youтАЩre simply it nowadays. Yes, found your National Opera HouseтБатАФGod knows itтАЩs time we had one. But what do you want with opera? ItтАЩs archaicтБатАФdeadтБатАФridiculous individual love affairsтБатАКтБатАж
Music up to now seems to me like a childтАЩs drawing of a houseтБатАФfour walls, a door, two windows and a chimney pot. There you areтБатАФand what more do you want!
At any rate Feinberg and Prokofiev do more than that.
Do you remember how we used to jeer at the cubists and futurists? At least I did. Now that I come to think of it, I donтАЩt believe you agreed.
And then one dayтБатАФat a cinemaтБатАФI saw a view of a big city from the air. Spires turning over, buildings bendingтБатАФeverything behaving as one simply knew concrete and steel and iron couldnтАЩt behave! And for the first time I got a glimmering of what old Einstein meant when he talked about relativity.
We donтАЩt know anything about the shape of music, We donтАЩt know anything about the shape of anything, for that matterтБатАФbecause thereтАЩs always one side open to space.
Some day youтАЩll know what I meanтБатАФwhat music can meanтБатАФwhat IтАЩve always known it meant.
What a mess that opera of mine was. All opera is a mess. Music was never intended to be representational. To take a story and write descriptive music to it is as wrong as to write a passage of musicтБатАФin the abstract so to speakтБатАФand then find an instrument capable of playing it! When Stravinsky wrote a clarinet passage, you canтАЩt even conceive of it as being played by anything else!
Music should be like mathematicsтБатАФa pure science, untouched by drama, or romanticism, or any emotion other than the pure emotion which is the result of sound divorced from ideas.
IтАЩve always known that in my heart. Music must be Absolute.
Not, of course, that I shall realize my ideal. To create pure sound untouched by ideas is a counsel of perfection.
My music will be the music of machinery. I leave the dressing of it to you. ItтАЩs an age of choreography, and choreography will reach heights we donтАЩt as yet dream of. I can trust you with the visual side of my masterpiece as yet unwrittenтБатАФand which in all probability never will be written.
Music must be four-dimensionalтБатАФtimbre, pitch, relative speed and periodicity.
I donтАЩt think even now we appreciate Sch├╢nberg enough. That clean remorseless logic that is the spirit of today. He and he alone had the courage to disregard traditionтБатАФto get down to bedrock, and discover Truth.
HeтАЩs the one man to my mind who matters. Even his scheme of score writing will have to be adopted universally. ItтАЩs absolutely necessary if scores are going to be intelligible.
The thing I have against him is his scorn of his instruments. HeтАЩs afraid of being a slave to them. He makes them serve him whether they will or no.
IтАЩm going to glorify my instruments. IтАЩm going to give them what they wantтБатАФwhat theyтАЩve always wanted.
Damn it all, Sebastian, what is this strange thing, music? I know less and less.