Letters Details
| Date from letter: | 1950.07.26 Filing Element: 1950.07.26 ID: 7103 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| URN: | https://repo.schoenberg.at/urn:nbn:at:at-asc-B071033 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| First Line: | May I, at first express my great joy about your le | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Language: | E, English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Version: | Final version | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Text: | 49 July 26, 1950 Mr. Walter Hinrichsen President Peters Corporation 1209 Carnegie Hall 881 Seventh Avenue New York 19, N.Y. Dear Mr. Hinrichsen: May I, at first express my great joy about your letter from July 18, 1950. You cannot imagine how pleasant it is to me to meet here in America a publisher who is so different from all I had the experience here: a publisher who is a friend of the composer, who likes his music and his theories and constantly follows his development. In other words, not a publisher who considers publishing serious music and "prestige music"--as he calls it, but I should not forget Carl Engel who was different. I will send you in a few days a copy of the Fansay for Violin. May I tell you that I consider making of it a version for orchestra as soon as I have time. I would like to learn whether you would be ready also to publishe this. Now let me at first tell you that I agree with the way you propose refunding me. I accept your proposition with pleasure that I am always paid a royalty for every 1,000 copies and I appreciate it very much that you consider paying this royalty to me before the copies are sold, at once after the new edition has been printed. It is a pity that I have this opportunity to be in such good standing with you only when the time where I produced very much is a little in the past. But still I would like to mention which of my works are available for publication. I have recently written two little choruses, one of them--I don't know whether you would like to have it--is with Hebrew text. But I think I could also make a version in which the English or German text is underlined. It is the 130th Psalm. The other is a small song for chorus in four voices (the psalm is for six voices) and its text is a poem by Dagobert D. Ruens who is the president of Philosophical Library. Besides, I have not yet published my book Structural Functions of the Harmony, whose German title probably will be: Die Formbildenden Tendenzen der Harmonie. [I] regret very much that I did not know you would be interested in such a thing, otherwise I would have offered it to you immediately. But now I am in negotiations with Philosophical Library, who on their part negotiate with an English firm who wants to publish an English version of it for England. Still there remains the German edition, but I have to mention that I am not in the position to make the translation myself. I wonder, in case I can cancel these negotiations, whether you would be interested to see the work and could you publish it? It consists of about 100 typewritten pages of text and a little over 100 pages of musical examples. I think it deals with quite new subjects and solutions to things which have up to now never been considered, and I think it will be a great help for teaching this cultural background-knowledge which at present is so little known. You know perhaps also that I have many years ago started a textbook on composition, and that I for years always intend finishing it. The same is true with the book on counterpoint--or rather it should consist of three volumes. I have written the first volume, perhaps 3/4 of its size and I have made all the examples of it, and if I find the time, I could probably finish it within two or three months. But maybe I consider writing first the third volume of this whole work. This would then be: Counterpoint after 1750[?] in the 19th and 20th Centuries, especially in respect to Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn and Brahms. This is a subject which has not yet been treated by anyone else, as much as I know, and I think I can contribute something new to musical theory. I am looking forward to your reaction to all these subjects and I hope I can send you in a few days a copy of the Fantasy which will be returned to me very soon. I am with many cordial greetings, Sincerely yours, R.H. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||