Satoshi Akima replies to Bill Strother:

>>Schoenberg is a little like Alma Mahler -- you have to figure out his
>>inner motives before you can trust his remarks.
>
>No, Schoenberg speaks his minds and does so directly and with clarity.
>It is just not like him to mince his words.  It is also unusual for him
>to be so frank in his personal dislike for another person.  Please give
>examples of instances where ulterior motives have to be uncovered before
>understanding him.

I don't know whom you've been reading, but Schoenberg was anything but
straightforward - he was quite often careerist.  The most famous instance
I would say is his treatment of Weill - so friendly to Weill that he
nominated him to the Prussian Academy of Arts.  Friendly until Weill's
success outstripped his own - then Schoenberg excommunicated Weill from
serious discussion of Modern Music.  Not that this is so bad, but he
flattered Stokowski to perform his works and, when that happened, privately
badmouthed the performances.  Schoenberg's memorial tribute to Gershwin -
a composer, incidentally, I like very much - is sufficiently fulsome, but
Schoenberg scholars have combed over it for insincerities.  They wouldn't
have done that if Schoenberg was in the habit of speaking his mind
directly.

>If the suggestion is that he was somehow bitter because Walter did not
>conduct his music or because Walter was critical of Schoenberg's music then
>both Klemperer and Furtwaengler also rejected dodecophany.  Yet Schoenberg
>has only praise for them.

Well, here's a suggestion.  Both Klemperer and Furtwaengler, unlike Walter
(Mahler excepted), still did a lot of modern music.  Perhaps it was a
matter of getting one's foot in the door.

>There seems to be a reluctance to let go of the superficial stereotype
>of Walter as a kind of saintly figure, but this sort of comment made by
>Schoenberg and others who knew the man behind the persona, was by no means
>unsusual.  Even a close friend such as Thomas Mann remarked that Walter
>for example owned a hugh stereo system at home on which he played 'nothing
>except himself'.

No, the comments are different.  In Mann's comment, you see a child's
vanity.  In Schoenberg's, you get something more sinister.  I have no ax to
grind against Schoenberg's music - much of which I like.  However, to call
him an impartial, "I-calls-it-like-I-sees-it" witness simply doesn't jibe
with the Schoenberg I've read about.

Steve Schwartz