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OJ 15/22, [1] - Handwritten letter from Willfort to Schenker, dated April 3, 1931
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Gestern übergab mir Dr Weisse das Kärtchen mit der wundervollen Briefstelle von Mozart, das Sie ihm freundlicher Weise für mich sandten. 2 Erlauben Sie mir, Ihnen dafür von Herzen Dank zu sagen. Bedeu- {2} teten mir die Worte Mozarts schon seit ihrer ersten Kenntnis sehr viel, so gewinnen sie nun, da ich sie aus Ihrer Hand empfange, noch größeren Wert. Es bereitete mir tiefe Freude, diesem Zeichen entnehmen zu dürfen, daß Sie sich meiner erinnern und habe ich auch noch keine Leistung aufzuweisen, die diese Anteilnahme verdiente, so ist sie mir ein Ansporn für die Zukunft, mich ihrer würdig zu zeigen. © Transcription Ian Bent, 2016 |
Yesterday, Dr. Weisse passed on to me the little card containing the wonderful passage from a letter by Mozart that you very kindly sent him for me. 2 Permit me to thank you from the bottom of my heart for it. {2} Albeit Mozart's words already meant a great deal to me since I first came to know them, they take on even greater value now that they come from your hand. It was a great joy to me to be able to infer from this sign that you remember me; and if I have as yet no work to show that merits this interest, then it is an incentive to me for the future to show myself worthy of it. © Translation Ian Bent, 2016 |
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Gestern übergab mir Dr Weisse das Kärtchen mit der wundervollen Briefstelle von Mozart, das Sie ihm freundlicher Weise für mich sandten. 2 Erlauben Sie mir, Ihnen dafür von Herzen Dank zu sagen. Bedeu- {2} teten mir die Worte Mozarts schon seit ihrer ersten Kenntnis sehr viel, so gewinnen sie nun, da ich sie aus Ihrer Hand empfange, noch größeren Wert. Es bereitete mir tiefe Freude, diesem Zeichen entnehmen zu dürfen, daß Sie sich meiner erinnern und habe ich auch noch keine Leistung aufzuweisen, die diese Anteilnahme verdiente, so ist sie mir ein Ansporn für die Zukunft, mich ihrer würdig zu zeigen. © Transcription Ian Bent, 2016 |
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Yesterday, Dr. Weisse passed on to me the little card containing the wonderful passage from a letter by Mozart that you very kindly sent him for me. 2 Permit me to thank you from the bottom of my heart for it. {2} Albeit Mozart's words already meant a great deal to me since I first came to know them, they take on even greater value now that they come from your hand. It was a great joy to me to be able to infer from this sign that you remember me; and if I have as yet no work to show that merits this interest, then it is an incentive to me for the future to show myself worthy of it. © Translation Ian Bent, 2016 |
Footnotes1 Receipt of this letter is recorded in Schenker's diary at OJ 4/4, p. 3603, April 3, 1931: "Von Wilfort (Br.): Dank für die Mozart-Karte." ("From Willfort (letter): thanks for the Mozart card."). 2 Schenker sent copies of what he called a "calling card" (Visitenkarte), which he had had made up by a printer, to several of his colleagues (e.g. Jonas on April 1). No copies seem to have been preserved. It contained a passage from a letter allegedly by Mozart, in which the latter describes the compositional process, saying: "... the thing becomes genuinely almost complete in my mind, no matter how long it is, so that thereafter I perceive it as a whole (übersehe) in my head, in a single glance, just like a beautiful picture or an attractive person, and I hear it in my imagination not successively (as is bound to occur afterwards) but as if all together simultaneously." For this process, the passage uses the word Überhören (hearing as a whole). Schenker is quite open that the authenticity of this letter was called into question as early as the 1850s by Otto Jahn as a forgery by Friedrich Rochlitz. Claiming that this "heavenly message" is genuine, Schenker published it in his "Ein verschollener Brief von Mozart und das Geheimnis seines Schaffens," Der Kunstwart 44 (July 1931), 660‒66, copies of which are preserved in Schenker's papers as OJ 20/10, item 3 and OC 50/12, and a draft in Jeanette's hand as OC 16/8‒26 with heavy annotations by Heinrich. |
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Digital version created: 2016-02-08 |