Lecture 2

Yesterday I told you that what I am summarizing here has not been prepared. These talks may therefore turn out to be like pieces of a Chinese puzzle. I shall supply the pieces, and you will have to put them together in order to get a picture. I hope they fit.

To continue with my story, I now come back to my birthplace, Lipnik. It had neither a railway station, nor a post office of its own. When asked to give information about my life for books of reference, biographical sketches, or such things, I add to the name Lipnik “Austria.” At some time particularly conscientious people must have been curious to learn to which part of Austria Lipnik belongs. They must have consulted a map of Austria, one which was published before the First World War. There, they could find two Lipniks in the empire, both of which had railway stations and post offices and thus a place in an atlas: one in Czechoslovakia, the other in Carinthia. They preferred, for unknown reasons, the latter. My Lipnik was in the Polish section of northern Austria. She bore hardly any resemblance to her namesake in Carinthia (a southern province of Austria), with her gigantic rocks, glaciers, lakes, and a small alpine population famous for their virtuosity in yodeling. Their neighbors are Yugoslavs and Italians. To see myself more often than not labeled the “Carinthian Pianist” naturally amuses me very much. Well, it is a historic error of little importance. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy was, as you know, a motley array of fourteen nations, of which the majority had, more or less, the position or function of serfs. Some of the Austrian provinces had an almost colonial character. The masters and usufructuaries were in Vienna, Prague, and Budapest.

When I first came to Vienna, it seemed to me an immense place compared with what I had seen before. When I later saw Berlin, London, and New York, Vienna of course seemed almost miniature. In the “Gay Nineties” she was clearly in the eleventh hour of her function as the “Ballroom of Europe,” as she was once so cleverly named. For a time the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was so highly rated that a great foreign statesman said of Vienna, “If she did not exist, one ought to invent her.” She has since died, and her resurrection is, at present, not even dreamed of.

Vienna, around the fin de siècle, had three well-defined categories of citizens. The tenor of social life there was given by the aristocracy, which, centered around its peak, the court, exercised all the high functions connected with a still old-fashioned court, and was generally and gladly accepted as the social prima donna. Second to the court and aristocracy came the church, the army, and the administration. The aristocrats also held the highest offices in these institutions. It was proverbial that these noble bosses (with some exceptions of course) never overworked themselves. Not to work—in a common sense—was a part of noblesse oblige. I think this is quite an important fact. The less time was lost in work, the more was left for the only admissible competition: the desire to surpass each other in fulfilling the tasks of noblesse, based on solidity and refinement. Third came a titled group without century-old pedigrees. They were the lower layer of the aristocracy, composed mostly of men (or their descendants) who were chosen for promotion to noble rank for outstanding achievements in the army or in the administration. Long service—endurance—was counted as one of the achievements. Also a few merchants and bankers were, on occasion, rewarded in this way. In the second half of the nineteenth century even artists, scientists, doctors, educators, and so on were raised to nobility—presumably in the last phase of its fading glory. Then came three layers of bourgeoisie, and toward the bottom the varied groups below the white-collar supremacy. Among them were wine-growers, for example, for very good wine was grown in the close vicinity of Vienna. The wine-keller in the winter, and especially the wine-garden in spring and summer were frequented by everyone. There the social categories mixed and, if sufficiently animated by the young wine, even fraternized for a few hours in the equality of intoxication. These gardens were often in front of the vineyards. The wine was served in carafes, from the cask. Song and women were never missing. It was the most intoxicating trio ensemble—leading to freedom from care.

The lower classes in Vienna were a rather rough crowd, in contrast to the upper ones, who excelled in great charm and elegance. It was, I repeat, the eleventh hour of that culture which begins in the home and probably also ends there. The effort to enjoy these last performances of that culture was quite striking. The upper classes in Vienna seemed to know that they were doomed. It was a last escape into sweet superficiality, into an aesthetically pleasant defeatism. One of the best characterizations of this decadence-conscious Vienna was made by her own people during the First World War. With an inclination to joke about their weaknesses, they parodied a German Army communiqué. The Germans reported: “The situation is serious, but not at all desperate.” The Viennese: “The situation is desperate, but not at all serious.”

Life in such an atmosphere was not enjoyable for everyone. I, for one, did not feel entirely happy there. The spirit of defeatism gradually permeating the air hemmed in creative impulses and the healthy development of higher gifts, both not yet rare among the Viennese. The maxim, “Enjoy as much as possible the mannered elegance, as well as more robust pastimes,” was not conducive to so-called serious ambitions. When my family moved to Vienna because of my assignment to the musical profession, we first lived in a sort of ghetto—a voluntary ghetto, not a compulsory one, as for instance in czarist Russia. Very soon after, we moved to a somewhat less homogeneous quarter. I don’t remember very much about the chosen ghetto: just the street, the synagogue, and the grocer where I often went to get things for my mother. I remember that the herrings always smelled of kerosene, because the two commodities were kept in barrels next to each other. I also remember our family doctor, Doctor Ignatz Kreisler, the father of Fritz Kreisler, the famous violinist. I thus knew Fritz Kreisler, who is several years older than I, from my boyhood on. His father, the doctor, still alive in my memory, was an angelic man with a white beard, one of the kindest I can remember. He was just as kind as my own father was. I told you yesterday that I was spared being exploited as a child prodigy. My parents were not greedy. My father was even afraid of money. I think that he rather disliked the idea of one of his children being a sensation, a money maker. It was my mother who, though not greedy, was yet quite ambitious.

After I had started, on Leschetizky’s advice, my lessons with Madame Essipoff, someone told my mother that I also ought to have instruction in composition. So one day she took me to Mr. Anton Bruckner. I remember exactly the little I saw of his home, also the street and even the number of the house. We went up one flight of stairs, knocked at a door, and heard the sound of slowly approaching slippers. A bald-headed man opened the door, just wide enough for me to peep in. I noticed a dusty hallway with some laurel wreaths piled up, and stacks of music. “What do you want?” he asked. My mother explained, “I want you to give lessons in theory to my son.” He grumbled, “I don’t teach children,” pushed us out and closed the door. This was my only personal acquaintance with Bruckner. Afterwards I saw him only from a greater distance.

Because of this futile interview with Bruckner, Leschetizky had to recommend another teacher in composition and theory for me. He mentioned a much less well-known composer. This new teacher was very pedantic, dry, and uninspiring. I must have shown some resistance, though I was in later years often praised for always having been a “good” boy, patient, and if dissatisfied, chiefly with myself. At any rate, I left this new teacher after a few months of instruction and was taken to the third trainer recommended to us. He was Dr. Mandyczewski. He was at that time a librarian. He too had a beard! Everybody seemed to have one but Bruckner—peasant and monk in one. He was an exception, like a Catholic priest. Dr. Mandyczewski was a great and wonderful man. He was in charge of the archives at the Society of the Friends of Music. It was not a municipal or imperial school, but was subsidized. Mandyczewski was the amanuensis of Brahms, so I was very lucky. I studied with him for years, and he was always very nice to me. I had to go a fairly long way from my family’s apartment to the one room in which he lived. (At that time most musicians lived rather modestly: I also saw Brahms’s rooms—only two rooms, practically no furniture, very different from Mr. Heifetz’s fortress on the hill above Hollywood.) I had to be at Mandyczewski’s at eight o’clock in the morning—he had no time to give me lessons at any other hour, for at 9:15 or so he had to be in the archives. I was then eleven or twelve. He allowed me to accompany him to his archives, and stay there as long as I wished. He never paid much attention to my presence, and I could acquaint myself with all the treasures there in perfect leisure. A few simple rooms—I think not even fireproof—filled with the most precious musical documents, numerous manuscripts of the greatest composers and a great collection of works presenting the history of music. While I was idling in this shrine with awe, Mandyczewski went on with his work.

It was the habit of Brahms every Sunday morning of the spring and autumn season to make an excursion (if the weather permitted) into the lovely hilly woods surrounding Vienna. He was accompanied by a few friends, chiefly musicians. When I was twelve or thirteen, Mandyczewski thought me old enough to join them once in a while. I thus enjoyed the unique privilege of spending several Sundays as a boy with Brahms and his companions. One gathered for these excursions at eight in the morning, at a tram stop opposite the Vienna Opera, took a tram drawn by one horse, drove through suburbs to the terminal, and continued then on foot. On all these occasions Brahms treated me in the same manner: before a meal he would ask me whether I was hungry; after one, whether I had had enough. That was all he ever said to me. Why, after all, should he talk to a child?

I also often saw Brahms indoors. Mandyczewski knew most of those Viennese families to whom good music, in their homes, was an inner necessity. As amanuensis of Brahms, he went where his master went. And as my teacher, he helped me upwards not only by admitting me to these Sunday walks, but also by introducing me to some of the music lovers whose intimacy with Brahms seemed their greatest pride. In one of these families, the family of the attorney-at-law Dr. Aron Hornbostel, a private female choir gathered once or twice a week, conducted by Dr. Mandyczewski and led by the hostess, who in her youth had had a high reputation as a singer. I was asked to accompany this choir, sometimes four-hand with one of the sons of the family, who was approximately my age. He, Erich von Hornbostel, later a well-known music scholar, died much too young some years later in Cambridge. Brahms occasionally came to these meetings. In his last years, he spent much time at the home of a music lover by the name of Conrat. Mr. Conrat had three daughters, near my age. Mandyczewski also introduced me to the Conrats, not only as a young musician, but also as a possible playmate or companion for the girls. Mainly during the winter, the Sunday afternoons at the Conrats’ were devoted to chamber music performances. They had, of course, some music every weekday as well in such a milieu, but Sunday was for all concerned (the head of the family, a merchant, and most of the professionals, or amateurs, who played the chamber music or listened) the time for leisure and pleasure—not to forget the girls who had no school. I was often allowed to participate actively. My never-weakened love of chamber music is certainly rooted in this early chance to hear and to perform it.

Brahms was often present on these occasions. He mostly sat reading in the library, which was several rooms away from the music room. All doors in the flight of rooms used to be wide open, and, if interested, Brahms might have heard the music very well. Whether he did or not I could not tell. Thirty or forty years later I read, to my astonishment, that he had. That moreover he had praised what I did at the piano. This story is still circulated. I do not know its origin, and I wish you to know that it was not I who told it. The reliability of many such stories (not only in my case) is questionable. I myself do not compile or supply them (I never have) for advertising or other purposes. This is for other people to attend to. Asked for it by concert managements, I advise them to gather the desired data from reference books and other sources and to select and present what and as they like. I admit that this procedure involves certain risks. After playing somewhere last year, I found the program in my pocket on my return home. Interested to see whether the annotations in it corresponded to my conception of the works I had performed, I began to read. It did not surprise me that the correspondence was not complete. I had experienced that before. What surprised me was the little sketch of my career. It said, among other things, that Brahms had heard me play at my first recital and had been so impressed that he had become an intimate friend of mine. Perhaps one day I shall read that I played billiards with Mozart.

The Vienna of my boyhood was still divided into two antagonistic musical camps, the Wagnerians and the Brahmsians, who even now are not yet fully reconciled. Wagner was the more popular hero. His work, which consisted chiefly of operas, offered more than mere music can. Opera, as you all know, is visible action clarified by words which (instead of being spoken, as in a play) are sung. Thus the words have not only a purpose but are also music. This music is backed, strengthened, completed, and kept coherent by music without words, the function of which is the evocation of any atmosphere demanded by the story. It seems impossible to say in which of the many elements of an opera the average enthusiast is chiefly participating. It is theater and music, or vice versa, if you like, and thus naturally more attractive to many than music alone. The pantomime, and especially the ballet, with their predominantly physical aspects and the great importance of a technique not too difficult to judge, are, naturally, still more attractive to still more people. Music is movement. One may walk, stride, jump, crawl, hop—in one word, “dance” to any music. Children do, if allowed. The category of “dance music” belongs, admittedly, to the servant type of music. You may, or may not, listen to it, be aware of it as mere noise—or even unaware of that.

Operas are not suited for home consumption. So this home culture was already breached and finished and killed by Wagner, a very great genius. The opera is a public institution. Brahms wrote only “self-contained” music, which included songs and choral works, but none associated with visible action. Most of the works by Brahms are therefore well suited to the home, and he was accordingly the hero of the more exclusive, the more refined and individualized group. Wagner provided the sensations needed by those who desired to escape “simplicity.” His world of gods and legends, of stylized noblesse and stylized meanness, carried them above their drab daily existence. At that time I thought that Brahms and Wagner had not much more in common musically than all musicians have. Today, they appear to me musically almost like brothers. I think Wagner is the greater genius. He tried to solve new problems, to express grandiose visions. Yet Brahms’s untheatrical and less pretentious work is closer to me. What they have in common is romantic pessimism, romantic sensuousness, and sentimentality. Also some similar elements in their procedure in composition. What the essential difference between their works may be is a fascinating question. I can here only indicate in a few words what I think this difference is. Both were dedicated to overcoming pessimism and the disintegrating tendency of the nineteenth century (in Europe); to arriving at positive, transcendental, all-inclusive results—like their “happier” predecessors, living in an age when creative forces were still unified.

Wagner approached the task via symbolism and mysticism, exemplified by conflicts in remote regions. Each of his heroes shuns committing the deed. Even in his only realistic work—Die Meistersinger—Hans Sachs resigns, and Walther von Stolzing changes from troubadour to husband. Wagner’s work is the glorification of renunciation. No growth follows. Music, to be true, can never be descriptive, nor purposive, nor negative; it is a miracle to what degree Wagner has helped the illusion that it can be all that. Brahms, younger by twenty years, was more modest, directed his attention to nature, to the people, to workmanship. With as much ease as care he produced music directly; he needed neither a program nor a Weltanschauung. He was fed by what will always flow. The glow and exuberance of his early works and the marvelous equilibrium of his late ones never want to be more than music. In appearance, his music was often like Wagner’s, in expression too; in intention, hardly ever. As you see, it is quite possible to be aware of, and to appreciate greatness, and yet to like what is not so great much more. There are also other criteria for evaluation and participation than liking.

I was not too attracted to the theater. I went to the opera very often in Vienna. In my childhood I had very little contact with other children. I seldom played children’s games, and I do not remember ever having possessed any toys. Such a child, they say, will soon, much too soon, be an old person. Whether true or not, I think this pessimistic forecast has not worked in my own case. I did not start having real contact with people of my own age before I was thirty. And if, as a youngster, I was attracted to people above my age, now at sixty-three I turn to the youngsters. Unfortunately they are, nowadays, not too keen on associating with older people. I remember the time when young people still wanted to be with older ones. Maybe it is this change of attitude that has driven older people to their frantic efforts to appear much younger than they are.

The weight of everyone’s purchasing power had, as one consequence, the very complex effect (commonly known as “education”) of making babies premature and keeping old people immature, so that from the cradle to the grave they would ask for the same—let me say, candy and rattles. With that I have proved that I do not despise puns. Most musicians are and always have been fond of puns, for instance Brahms in spite of his entirely undeserved reputation of forbidding austerity. One of Dr. Mandyczewski’s functions was to supply Brahms with collections of misprints, jokes, and puns. Every year a Leipzig publisher presented—on subscription—two volumes of flaws of speech and misprints and similar amusing items.

I have here a small list, very incomplete, of things which did not exist, or were just introduced, when I was a boy. This list seems to me very impressive, in spite of its incompleteness.

Electricity—very rare.

Telephone—very rare.

Lifts—hardly.

Gas—even gas was very rare.

Refrigerators—not divined.

Immovable bathtubs—practically unknown.

Central heating—none.

Vacuum cleaners—none.

Safety razors—none.

Aluminum—none.

Canned food—only home-canned, in jars. No tins, except for sardines.

Factory-made bread—just coming.

X-rays—none.

Ready-made clothes—none.

Artificial silk—none.

Paper napkins—none.

Cars—none.

Gramophones—none.

Radios—none.

Typewriters—none.

Underground railways—none.

Department stores—just beginning.

No films,

skyscrapers,

pictures in the press,

airplanes,

submarines.

No athletics—to the extent that they are known now.

No payments by check, etc.

Even some of the diseases didn’t exist (or had different names then). I remember when “influenza” appeared for the first time. It was very exciting—and shockingly severe. Technology and science were not yet as popular and worshipped as they are now. They were not yet the topic of most conversations. Great men in these fields were active but only a few of the “public” knew about and discussed these matters. Unknown were psychoanalysis, the theory of relativity, atom-splitting, and so on. All that might have been in the air already, and perhaps contributing to the Viennese defeatism which I have mentioned several times.

If you were to ask me whether I think that human society, without all these commodities and services, progress and discoveries, was happier at that time than it is now, I would not know the answer. It may well be, I submit, that the more one is inclined, or seduced, to possess, conserve, and enjoy material things, the less one may have to give in the personal exchange of souls, minds, and brains. Man’s toil has been eased by machines. He has, theoretically, more time—free time—than before. The trouble seems to be that he has to devote this free time to what the machines produce. Otherwise the machines might rest. Is it to serve the machines well that he prefers acceleration to leisure, for which he now has time? You see how confused I am by the turbulent relation between man and machines—created by him. Maybe it is their revenge, as our “hard-working employees,” to keep us busy when we are lazy.

Real happiness will perhaps then only be established in human beings when much will be expected from their inner qualities and higher potentialities, and less from their excellence as customers for quantities of entirely unnecessary, undesired things and alleged pleasures—time- and thought-killers. Most pleasures in my youth were still connected with active participation in things. There were not as many theaters as nowadays and neither radios nor gramophones to sit before. One stayed at home and did something. The change, however, was approaching rapidly. I have never forgotten one of my first impressions of it. In the year 1894 I accompanied my mother to the shopping center of Vienna to see—with almost everyone else living in the city, or not too far from it—in a window the first factory-made shoes ever shown in the monarchy. They came from the States. The crowd, to be true, impressed me more than the shoes. They looked just like other shoes, or perhaps not even as fine as those hand-made ones shown in the windows of good shoemakers. The price, to my astonishment, was actually the same for both kinds. Perhaps a year later, I saw the delivery van of a “Bread Factory.” These two words were painted on the van in large letters. That made a much deeper impression—perhaps because I did not see the reason why bread should not be produced in the customary way. I had never heard of anyone experiencing difficulty in getting as much bread as he liked. Maybe in the year 2000 the shoemakers and the bakers will be back. Don’t you think so? I believe it. There will probably be only this solution—and human beings could happily be out of some of their self-imposed troubles.

Living in Vienna at this late hour of home culture were Brahms, Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, and the young Gustav Mahler. It was the last flowering. By the way, Vienna does not quite deserve her reputation as the shrine, the mecca of music. Vienna was simply for 150 years (or not even as long as that) the most attractive market for musical artists. Aristocracy was not yet disturbed, or checked, in its traditional functions. They had security (in contrast to moneymakers) and therefore no difficulty in observing the obligations of noblesse. These included, as you know, the support of art—though not necessarily the understanding or love of it. An obligation to love or to understand is, unfortunately, beyond conventions. Vienna as a city—Prague too, later also Budapest—had for her approximately 150 years of good fortune no serious competition. Within this term fall the three (or so) decades of comparative dullness following the Napoleonic excitements. Paris, London, and the larger cities in Germany were, compared with Vienna, without musical glamour, though certainly not without vitality.

This is not a course in history. My obviously inexact descriptions are meant only to show that it was neither the soil nor the soul of Austria which gave her a temporarily outstanding position in the musical world. It was also no merit, just a lucky constellation. This has, in the meantime, wandered to Berlin, London, New York. It might in the future emerge in quite unexpected places, or, better, be everywhere and permanent. Musicians could then stay where they are, or go anywhere. As it was, a young man like Beethoven had to leave his hometown in order to make a career. Persons recognizing his power, as for instance Count Waldstein, advised him, “You will not spend your life in this horrible provincial place, where you can have no chance. Come to Vienna. There you will also be stimulated by the variety of folklore: Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, Italian, and so on. Even if these people cannot speak each other’s languages, they all understand music.” Yet Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, to name only the giants, were very badly treated in Vienna. They were, so to say, the first freelance composers. Their creations, daring and transcendental, profound and exacting, met the same inimical reaction from the majority of their contemporaries, colleagues as well as patrons, which since music became autonomous seems invariably to be its fate in such cases. The exceptional, in this field, was and is inconvenient. Mozart was buried in a pauper’s grave; Beethoven, though “internationally” acknowledged as the greatest composer, was at times neglected, almost ignored; Schubert, considered a promising talent, died in poverty. Inertia, jealousy, and vested interest continued in this campaign against the superior.

You have certainly all read biographies of these great men. I shall nevertheless give a few more piquant details of musical appreciation in Vienna. Because of a Rossini boom, Beethoven was nearly forgotten. He fell ill and the Royal Philharmonic Society in London had to send him money to buy medicine and pay a doctor. The difficulties involved in arranging for the first performance of the Ninth Symphony were almost insuperable. The first performance of the Missa Solemnis was, I think, given in the year 1824 in St. Petersburg, by the private choir and orchestra of Prince Galitzin, in his house, and only much later in Germany and in Vienna. When Schubert died, all his belongings, including his manuscripts, were taxed by the authorities for, let me say, $25. Nobody, apparently, cared. I heard stories in Vienna (I am sure they are true) that grocers were wrapping up cheese in Schubert manuscripts. That reminds me that the manuscript of Bach’s Six Brandenburg Concertos was sold, from a cart, for a quarter, but that was not in Vienna. In the thirties Robert Schumann went to Vienna to search there for a posthumous great symphony by Schubert. He had heard rumors about its existence. He found it, fortunately. It is the C major Symphony. Well, all that, horrible as it is, might yet please us, who are always criticized for being, in matters of art, so far inferior to the past! Yet we should not think that our undeniable improvement in some respects has made us superior. Our age has created new, probably more serious, conflicts.

To get a good picture of Vienna which, as I told you, administrated the riches made by the toiling of the people in the provinces, which were almost colonies, you should read some of the early nineteenth-century writers, for instance the remarkable poet Grillparzer, contemporary of Schubert and Beethoven. He spoke at the funeral of Beethoven—moving lines, on a very high level. Grillparzer had a position in the civil service in Austria; he was a bureaucrat. The civil servants in Austria seemed to be altogether dissatisfied people, probably because they did not have enough work. It looked as if they were active only in walking to and from the offices, in between just being idle. It was the practice to divide one job among four men, representing the four most influential national groups of the fourteen included in the empire—one Czech, one Pole, one German, and one Hungarian. Thus the amount of complaints and opposition became easily reduced. Of course, there was not enough work for the four. Even in comparatively modern times, typewriters were not permitted in Austrian government offices—the work might have been done too fast. If one intended to open a store one had to get a license. The license was given if evidence of the demand was shown. Who knows whether we shall not be forced one day to return to this patriarchal restriction of competition? The slow decline of Austria probably began around the year 1700, when Prussia entered the race for power. What is called Austria now is just a region, a name, in comparison with what it was. It is not really Austria. Austria was the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. What remained after the First World War was a crippled being which could neither die nor live. What will become of it after the second?

I have tried to communicate some of my recollections of the elegant, charming, luxurious Vienna of my boyhood, of the rather frivolous talkative defeatism and the great musicians living in the midst of this atmosphere of decay. I repeat that I didn’t feel too happy, even as a boy, though I had a very good time. I was extremely lucky not only in having the support of those three families I mentioned earlier (whom I have never seen and who have never heard me) but also because, being a pupil of Leschetizky and Mandyczewski, I became associated with two different musical departments. Through Leschetizky I was connected with the virtuoso tradition and introduced to Anton Rubinstein. Through Mandyczewski I made contact with the Brahms circle.

Anton Rubinstein, whose impressive appearance I remember well, was not as simple as Brahms seemed to be. Rubinstein looked and behaved like an international celebrity, though he was not at all showy. He was sweet to me. In the home of Albert Gutmann, the music seller, publisher, and concert agent, and in Leschetizky’s as well, Rubinstein asked me to sit on his knee while he was playing a game of cards. I heard him play only once, his own compositions. The impression was probably not overwhelming, for it never came back to my memory. I also heard Brahms play, the piano part of his G minor Quartet. This impressed me immensely and is still in my memory. It was, naturally, the great music which held and shook me, but also the creative vitality and wonderful carefreeness with which he played. This to me was the real grand style.

In the year 1893, when I was eleven years old, Brahms’s opus 119 was published: three intermezzi and one rhapsody for piano. Since Leschetizky permitted me to choose the music I would bring to a lesson, I got hold of these brand new Brahms pieces, prepared them, and went to my lesson. They were still wet from the printing press, so to say. Leschetizky was furious with me. I shall never forget this, for it hurt me deeply. He made a parody of the first piece—cheapened and vulgarized it. Then, getting more and more angry, he must have worked himself into the ridiculous delusion that I, a child of eleven, had chosen this music with the malicious intent to criticize, to deride him—him, my revered and feared master. You can imagine how frightened and depressed I must have felt by this outburst. Finally, he told me to go and only after three months was I admitted again. Someone convinced him eventually of the absurdity of his suspicion and the indubitability of my innocence. After that he encouraged me to play as much Brahms as I wanted, and though often rather strict, never again was hard on me. By the way, it might interest you that never did any of my music teachers ask me to pay for my lessons. They all taught me gratis. It was just taken for granted. It was, to my memory, never mentioned.

When I came to Vienna, I had a tutor for general education. I don’t remember him, or what he taught me, or any book I had to learn from. When I was ten, someone advised my mother that I might get into difficulties if I was not sent to an ordinary public school. Intimidated, she put me into a school. I registered at a high school. I passed somehow and was in. I remember only the building and classroom and one of the teachers—even his name. He was a very kind person. I stayed in that school for four or five months. The report I got was not bad. Only in mathematics did I seem to have failed completely. I studied some Latin, much too little to be of any use or value. I was taken out of this school again; it was the first and last I have ever attended. The authorities did not notice my absenteeism and never bothered me. My memories of this experience of normal education are utterly vague, nebulous, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. I had no contact with other boys. I had no friends there because my friends were the Leschetizky pupils, all much older. The only friend my age was another Leschetizky pupil, an extremely charming and talented little girl, who came to America after Hitler marched into Vienna. She was not Jewish, but she could not bear the change. She came here, not in good health, and died in Boston a few years ago. She was a most delicate artist. Her public career was only a local one. Her music was tender, pure, intimate.

My rival at Leschetizky’s was a youth three or four years older than I. To him Leschetizky could have said, “You will never be a musician; you are a pianist.” His name was Mark Hambourg. He really had elemental qualities. His thunderous octaves, incomparable ones, had real fire, were not mechanical. He made a big career, was a very popular virtuoso. He retired many years ago. His style fitted a young man. If, getting older, one remains as one was as a youth, the effect will not be to appear young but out of date—which sounds like a paradox.

Ossip Gabrilovich and Ignaz Friedman were co-students of mine at Leschetizky’s, though they came to him several years later than I. I was also acquainted with Samuel Clemens’s (Mark Twain’s) daughters, Clara and her sister. Clara later married Gabrilovich. I remember very distinctly several tea parties at Mark Twain’s apartment in the Hotel Metropole in Vienna. His appearance was unforgettably striking. I don’t remember that he ever spoke to me.

I began composing at the same time I started playing the piano. My studies with Mandyczewski did not go further than the first elements of counterpoint. I never worked with a teacher on form or orchestration. The only thing which I really have “l(fā)earned” in my life was piano playing. After my one year with Madame Essipoff, I occasionally had instruction from other Leschetizky assistants—five or six of them. They differed in their pianistic methods as much as one can differ, and were also not at all unanimous in their approach to music. Each, of course, called his conception the true Leschetizky method. Several published books on it. If a student were to read all these books he would get a considerable demonstration of confusion. What I have learned from Leschetizky himself, I am unable to say, to estimate, to appreciate. He succeeded in releasing all the vitality and élan and sense of beauty a student had in his nature, and would not tolerate any deviation from or violation of what he felt to be truthfulness of expression. As you see, all this devotion, seriousness, care, and honesty is compatible with the virtuoso type represented by him. Why we, today, have in general a less flattering opinion of the virtuoso is a problem I recommend thinking about, again and again.

Leschetizky’s limitations showed in his comparative indifference to, or even dislike of, the kind of music in which the “personal” becomes just an ingredient of the universal. He had, for instance, not much use, or love, or curiosity, for the second half of Beethoven’s production. The more glory the music itself emanates, the less it leaves for the performer. He seemed to evade such transcendental music by instinct.

During my educational phase in Vienna until 1899, I never heard, in this most musical city on earth, and in the midst of musicians, of the existence of the twenty-eight concertos by Mozart, or Beethoven’s opus 106 or the Diabelli Variations, or Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The G major Concerto by Beethoven was generally labeled, among musicians, as the “l(fā)adies’” concerto. Hardly any of the great pianists ever played it. The C minor was only played in conservatories by the lower grades and the C major Concerto only by the debutantes. The B-flat major Concerto was simply unknown. Many of Schubert’s songs and Verdi’s operas were considered so trivial that anyone who pretended to have an understanding of music would have degraded himself if he had confessed to enthusiasm and respect for them. Schubert’s Impromptus for piano were chiefly the pastime of governesses. Some of his finest songs had been shifted to the suburbs, arranged for male choruses. In guide books you are, of course, not told of these achievements, though I do not think that reference to them would impair tourist traffic.

I bought a little book only a few days ago that fascinated me very much. In this book the author quotes Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Clichés. It is a promising title. You must have noticed that even without having read it, I am not too unfamiliar with clichés.

We, of course, have in the meantime made gigantic progress. The hurdy-gurdy’s repertoire of “classical” bits has reached operettas and films: audible biographies of geniuses, with greater quantities of their creations performed than the barrel organ could manage. And don’t forget the jukeboxes. Sitting in a cafeteria, each table can listen to a different master, all performed simultaneously, and animated folks chatting to the music—a multifold beer garden—indoors—served by machines!

We are open for discussion.