it is due in 22 hours from now

B U L L S E S S I O N I N T H E R O C K I E S

SCENE 1.WHY BEETHOVENP

(Somewhere in New Mexico. Three of us are motoring at ridic‑ ulousspeed to a destination, asyet unknown, in the Mad Moun‑ tains, Picasso Pass, or what you will. r o m a n BROTHER, sixteen, a licensedpilot and the world’sauthority onnuclear physics, is at thewheel, intent onovertaking every car onthe road.e r c POE’I‘, on my left, is taut with terror and, I feel, is praying continuously for an immediate arrival, anywhere. He must live at least long enough to finish hiscurrent volume. LP. is a poet’spoet from Bri~ tain and one of those incrediblepeople who are constantly soin‑ volved in politics, love, music and working ideals that, despite their established success, they often find themselves embarrassed in the presenceof alaundry bill.When L P . speaks, heis oracular; whenheissilent,heisevenmoreso.)

LOP. (Withacertainfrozenevenness): My dearY.B.,I suspect youhave forgotten the fact that our tyreburst yesterday was caused by just suchdrivingasyou are nowguiltyof.

Y.B. Don’tendyour sentencewithapreposition.

(ButY.B. is impressedenoughto reducespeedconsider‑ ably‐ though gradually enough to preclude the suspi‑ cionthat hehas yieldedapoint. Few can impresshard‑ boiled Y.B.; but even he is not immune to the oracle.

21

22 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Someminutespassin relievedsilence;and,with the ten‑ sion gone, L.P. may now revert to the basic matter of antrip«talk: thescenery.) L.P.

ThesehillsarepureBeethoven. (There is an uneventful lapse of five minutes, during which L.P. meditates blissfully on his happy metaphor; Y.B. smarts under the speed restriction,and I brood on the literary mind which is habitually forced to attach music to hills, the sea, or will-o’-the-wisps.) L.P.

PureBeethoven. LB.

(Ceasing to brood): I had every intention of letting your remark passfor innocent,but since you insist on it, I haveabarbedques‑ tion to put.Withsomany thousands of hills in the world‐ at least a hundred per famous composer‐why does every hill remind everywriter of Ludwigvan Beethoven?

L.P. Fancythat‐ andI thought I was flattering you by makingamusi‑ cal metaphor. Besides, I happen to find it true. These mountains have a quality of majesty and craggy exaltation that suggest Beethovento me.

L.B. Whichsymphony?

L.P. Very funny indeed. You mean to say that you see norelation be‑ tweenthis landscapeandBeethoven'smusic?

L.B. Certainly‐and Bach's,and Stravinsky's, and Sibelius', and Wag‑ ner’s-andRad's.Sowhy Beethoven?

L.P. AsthecaterpillarsaidtoAlice,“Whynot?”

The Joy of Music 23

L B . I’mbeing serious, L. P., and you're not. Ever since I can recall, the first association that springs to anyone’s mind when serious music is mentioned is “Beethoven.” When I must give a concert to open a season an all-Beethoven program is usually requested. When you walk into a concert hall bearing the names of the greats in‑ scribed around it on a frieze, there he sits, front and center, the first, the largest, the most immediately visible, and usually gold‑ plated. When a festival of orchestral music is contemplated the bets are ten to one it will t u r n out to be a Beethoven festival. What is the latest chic among young neo-classic composers? Neo-Bee‑ thovenl What is the meat-and-potatoes of every piano recital? A Beethoven sonata. Or of every quartet program? Opus one hun‑ dred et cetera. What did we play in our symphony concerts when we wanted to honor the fallen in war? The Eroica. What did we play on V Day? The Fifth. What is every United Nations concert? The Ninth. What is every Ph. D. oral exam in music schools? Play all the themes you can from the nine symphonies of Beethoven! Beethovenl Ludwig v‑

L P . What's the matter, don't you like him?

L.B. Like him? I'm all for him! In fact, I’m rather a n u t on the subject, which is probably why I caught up your remark so violently. I adore Beethoven. But I want to understand this unwritten pro‑ scription of everyone else from the top r o w. I'm n o t complaining. I’d just like to know why n o t Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schu‑

' m a n n ‐

Y B . Anybody want apiece of gum?

L.P. Well, I suppose it’s because Beethoven‐or rather there must be a certain t r a ‐ That is, if one thinks through the whole‑

L.B. That’s just what I mean: there’s no answer.

24 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

L.P. Well, dammit, man, it’s because he’s the best, that’s all! Let’s just say it out, unashamed: Beethoven is the greatest composer who ever lived!

L.B. (Who agrees, but has a Talmudic background): Dank: dir dds? May I challenge you to a blow-by-blow substantiation of this bravestatement?

L.P. Withpleasure.How?

LOB. Let’s take the elements of music one by one‐melody, harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, orchestration‐ and see how our friend measures up on each count. Do you think it an unfair method?

LIP. Not at all. Let’s see, melody . . . Melody!Lord,what melody! The slow movement of the Seventh!Singing its heart out ‑

L.B. Its monotone heart, you mean. The main argument of this “tune,” if you will recall, isgluedhelplesslyto E-natural.

L.P. Well, but that is intentional‐meant to produce a certain static, somber,marchlike‑

L B . Granted. Then it is not particularly distinguished for melody.

L.P. I was fatedtopickapoor example.Howabout the first movement?

LOB. Just try whistlingit. L.P.makesavaliant attempt. Stops. Pause.

L.B. (Brightly):Shallwemoveontoharmony?

TheJoy of Music 25

L P. deamnut,l’llseetlfisthroughyetlThe...the. ..I’vegotitl The slow movement of the A-nu’nor quartet! The holiness of it, the thankfulness of the convalescent, the purity of incredibly sus‑ tainedslowmotion,the‑

L 3 . Themelody?

L.P. Oh, the melody, the melody! What is melody, anyway? Does it haveto be a beer-halltune to deserve that name? Any succession of notes‐Y.B., you’re speeding again!‐ is amelody, isn’t it?

L B . Technically,yes. Butweare speakingof the relativemeritsof one melodyversus another.Andin thecaseofBeethoven‑

L.P. (Somewhat desperately): There’s always that glorious tune in the finaleoftheNinth:Dee-da-da‑

L B . Now even you must admit that one is beer hall par excellence, don’tyouthink?

L.P. (With a sigh): Cedunt Heloetii. We move on to harmony. Of course you must understandthat I'mnot amusician,sodon’t pull out the technicalstops onme.

L.B. Notatall,LyricOne.I needonlymakereferencetothethreeorfour most common chords in Western music. I am sure you are famil‑ iarwiththem.

L.P. Youmean(sings)

“Nowthedayis o-ver, Nightisdrawingnigh; Shadowsoftheeeee-v’ning‐"

26 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

L.B. Exactly.Nowwhat can you find in Beethoventhat isharmonically muchmoreadventurousthan what youhavejust sung?

L.P. You’re not serious, L.B.You couldn’t mean that! Why, Beethoven the radical,thearch-revolutionary,Napoleon,allthat‑

L.B. And yet the pages of the FifthSymphony stream on with the old three chords chasing each other about until you wonder what more he can possibly wring from them. Tonic, dominant, tonic, subdominant,dominant‑

L.P. Butwhat apunchthey pack!

L.B. That’s another matter. We were speaking of harmonic interest, weren’t we?

L.P. I admit I wouldn’t advance harmony asBeethoven’s strong point. But we were coming to rhythm. Now there you certainly can’t deny the vigor, the intensity,the pulsation,the drive‑

L B . You back down too easily on his harmony. The man had a fas‑ cinating way with a chord, to say the least: the weird spacings, the violently sudden modulations, the unexpected turn of har‑ monic events, the unheard-ofdissonances‑

L.P. Whose side are you on, anyway? I thought you had said the har‑ monywas dull?

L‘B. Never dull‐only limited,and therefore less interesting than har‑ mony which followed his period. And asto rhythm‐certame he was a rhythmic composer; so is Stravinsky. So were Bizet and

Joy of Music 27

‘u I repeat‐why Beethoven? Are his rhythms more intri‑ ; than the others? Did heintroduce any new ones? Doesn’t

Aget stuck on a pattern for pages, like Schubert, hammering it your insides?Again I ask,why does his name, 10, leadall the? .

, L P. 3 m afraidyou’rebeggingthe question. Nobodyhas proposedthat _ w .. en leads all the rest solely because of his rhythm, or his r_..y, orhisharmony.It’sthecombination‑

L B . 5The combination of undistinguished elements? That hardly adds gQ to the gold-platedbustweworship in theconservatory concert h l l lAndthecounterpoint‑

‘ Y.B‑ Gum,anyone?

LB. ‐ is generally of the schoolboy variety. He spent his whole life trying to write a really good fugue. And the orchestration is at times downright bad, especially in the later period when he was deaf. Unimportant trumpet parts stickingout of the orchestra like sore thumbs, horns bumbling along on endlessly repeated notes, drowned-outwoodwinds,murderouslycruelwritingfor thehuman voice.Andthere youhaveit.

LIP. (Indespair): Y.B., I wish I didn’t haveto constantly keep remind‑ ingyou aboutdrivingsanelyl

YB. Youhavejust splitaninfinitive.(Butheslowsdown)

L.P. (Almost in a rage‐a lyrical one, of course): Somehow or other I feelI ought to makeaspeech. My idolhasbeendesecratedbefore my eyes.And by one whose tools arenotes,while mine are words ‐ words! There he lies,abedraggled,deaf syphilitic; besmirched

28 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

by the vain tongue of pseudocriticism; no attention paid to his obvious genius, his miraculous outpourings, his pure revelation, hisvisionof glory,brotherhood,divinity!There helies,amediocre melodist,ahomely harmonist,aniterant riveter of arhythmist,an ordinary orchestrator, acommonplace contrapuntistl This from a musician,one who professesto liftback thehidefrom the anatom‑ icalsecrets of these mightyworks‐ one whose life isadevotion to themusicalmystery!It isallimpossible,utterly,utterly impossible! (There is a pause, partly self~indulgent, partly a silence befitting theclimaxofaheart-giventribute.)

L.B. You are right, L.P. It is truly impossible. But it is only through this kind of analysis that we can arrive at the truth. You see, I have agreed with you from the beginning,but I have beenthink‑ ingaloudwith you. I amnodifferent from the others who worship that name, those sonatas and quartets, that gold bust. But I sud‑ denly sensedthe blindnessof that worship when you brought it to bear onthese hills.And in challenging you, I was challenging my‑ self to produce Exhibit A‐ the evidence. And now, if you’re re‑ covered, I am sure you can name the musical element we have omittedin our blow-by-blow survey.

L.P. (Sobernow,butwithaslight hangover):Melody,harm‐of course. Form. How stupid of meto let you omit it from the list. Form‑ the very essence of Beethoven, the life of those magnificent open‑ ingallegros,those perfectscherzos, those cumulative‑

L.B. Careful.You’re ignitingagain. No,that’s not quite what I meanby form. Let me put it this way. Many, many composers have been able to write heavenly tunes and respectable fugues. Some com‑ posers can orchestrate the C-major scale so that it sounds like a masterpiece, or fool with notes so that a harmonic novelty is achieved. But this is all mere dust‐ nothing compared to the magic ingredient sought by them all: the inexplicable ability to

hyofMusic 29

,. . what the next note hasto be. Beethoven had this gift in a , -- that leaves them all panting in the rear guard. When he I didi t ‐asin the FuneralMarchof the Eroica‐heproduced entity that always seems to meto havebeenpreviously written

I Heaven, and then merely dictated to him. Not that the dicta‑ , ~. was easily achieved. We know withwhat agonies hepaidfor ‘f ‘- . ' .g to the divine orders. But the reward is great. There is a I ' space carved out in the cosmos into which this movement »- fits,predeterminedandperfect.

L P. ~you’reigniting.

, L.B. l" ,.. to everything but his own voice): Form is only an empty word, a shell, without this gift of inevitability; a composer can write astringofperfectlymoldedsonata-allege movements,with everyruleobeyed,andstillsufferfrombadform.Beethovenbroke I the rules, and turned out pieces of breath-taking rightness.

Bightness‐that’s the word! When you get the feeling that what‑ ' ever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in that context, then chances are Lyou’re listening to Beethoven. Melodies, fugues, rhythms‐leave . them to the Chaikovskys and Hindemiths and Ravels. Our boy has the realgoods, the stuff from Heaven,the power to make you feel at the finish: Somethingis right in the world. There is some‑ thingthatchecksthroughout,thatfollowsitsownlawconsistently: somethingwecantrust, that willnever letusdown.

L.P. (Quietly).Butthat isalmostadefinitionofGod.

L.B.

I meant it to be.

30 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

SCENE 11.WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MEANING? (Later that day. The evening has begunto take holdof the “Bee‑ thooenesque” hills,mollifying them, planing them down to some‑ thing more Chopinesque. Dusky rose-violet numbsthe senses: we begin to hear the call of the tourist cabin, over the hum of the motor, to respond to the lure of the motel mattress. One yawn begetsanother,and there is presently a three-part moaning.)

L.P. (Singingthrough hisyawns):

“Now theday isover, Night isdrawingnigh; Shadows of the eev-ning. . .”

Y.B. (Wipingaway atear): Anybody want apieceofgum?

L.B. You know, I think I will, thanks. I talked myself dry in our last conversation. Cum,L.P.?

L.P. Thank y0u, no. I don’t chew. Besides, I didn’t get the opportunity to talk myselfdry.

(The efiect of this blow is mitigated by the appearance on the roadside of the sign: “Transients,” standing gray and inhospitable in thetwilight.)

L.P. Darewe investigate this twinkling hostel? Surround the groaning meadboard?Baskin the glow of agenialhost?

LIB. You are getting tired. Maybe we’d better. Y.B., the honor falls to you. Descendandsee if it isn’t too haunted.

Y.B. (Bitterly):Glad you trust my judgment. (Stopsthe car and goes)

qf Music 31

L B . : I feel asif I’dreally done afull day's work.

L.P. did labor valiantly. That was a nasty piece of dissembling.

melodist,indeedl LB.

t I’mnotmuchondialectics;butstrongfeelings haveaway facing the mind into curious channels. As a matter of fact, I

't quite finished with you yet. Your innocent remark was adouble-edgedsword,youknow.

L.P. Lord,what was it I said,anyway?

LOB. [Stretching it out cruelly): “These-hills-are-pure-Beethoven.” Re‑ 'Ilember?

L P. All too well. But I had thought, nay hoped, that we had kicked tthat one around until lost. What juice do you find left in this deathlessphrase?

L.B. Only this. It always seems strange to amusicianwhen the literary mind begins associating music with all kinds of extra-musical

. phenomena, like hills and sprites and silver turnips. Funny, I haven't worried about these things since schooldays, when we battled out the singleness of artistic media in the aesthetics class‑ room;butyourwordshaverevivedsomeoldghosts.

L P. Youmeantheghostsofrepresentationalism,abstraction,andsoon?

LB. The same. Back at HarvardI had aremarkable roommate named Eisnerwho was wellonhisway to becomingasuper-Hemingway. He had an unusual love for music, promiscuous and passionate, and I had a similarly constituted love for words. This led to a

32 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

constructive relationship, as you can imagine, which taught us botha lot of half-truths. He died of cancer, dammit, shortly after graduation.

L.P. I’mawfully sorry, but what does all this have to do with hills?

L.B. Patience. Eisner and I used to have bull sessions almost nightly‑ thundering arguments that raged till dawn andmadememiss my ' counterpoint class. Like all bull sessions, these never ended in resolution; but your remark today made merealize how deeply I hadabsorbed‑

Y.B. (Returningto car): Wow!

L.P. Youmean . . .

Y.B. Very haunted. (He starts up the motor) Are you two at it again? (Lurch)Youknow it's very hardto see the roadatthis time of day (second gear), entre chien et loup, asthey say at my high school (third), and your chatter doeSn’t help my concentration at all. (Roaringspeed)

(Thereisastrickensilence,duringwhich one canalmost hearYB. repentingin hissoul. The tension grows,andbursts)

Y.B. (Scowling): What were you talking about, anyway?

L.P. Damned if I know. Your dear brother was approaching some monumental height, as yet unnamed. He was telling of having absorbedsomethingor other‑

LOB. (Diving in): Bull sessions! Thanks for the cue to re-enter. Well, naturally Eisner and I talked mostly sex and literature. But we

ofMusic 33

» always arrived sooner or later at the altar of music, and I A- »'. t e d by his approach to i t . Being a musician, and never ._thought of being anything else, I had my own relation to » quite unconsciously an abstract o n e‐ and I was amazed - that another kind of relation could exist.

YB. , sophomore.

- L B . _ wait until you’re one. But it was through Eisner that I first ‘ , . - . . how different and foreign a writer’s approach to music > be. You see, it would never occur to me to think of hills and ' .. . en in the same breath. Music, of all the arts, stands in a

region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without H u g .

. Y B . ' r: I would challenge that sophomorisml

L J ’ . -- chauffeur! Of all the idiocies‑

L.B. , : nout any meaning, that is, except its own, a meaning in '_»' v: terms, not in terms of words, which inhabit an altogether

a l t mental climate.

LDP. we embarking on a study of the meaning of meaning?

_,_\' YB‑ I sure hope not.

L . P. :Maybe we are. Let’s see: what does a group of words mean, after ‘7all? For example, “She tilted her head and offered him her lips in - ‘ . . u d e r. . . ” . Y 3 . A noble phrase.

34 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

L.P. A knockout. But what does it mean? It means an action, a real action. And it entails a reaction, a very real one. Something in your actual physical being responds to these dozen delicious words. And something in your physicalbeingresponds to a musi‑ calphraseaswell‐ let's say the welling‐up phrases in the Liebes‑ tod. Now what responds to one is the same element that responds to the other, isn’t it? Ergo, the meanings‐of both‐ insofar as meaning is what you, the perceiver, have after you perceive‐ the meaningsofbothare identical!Q.E.D.

L.B. Bravo,BishopBerkeley!Just like old academic times. I feel almost youngagain. Only I must object to your collegiate sophistry. In the first place, your logic is askew; you are confusing meaning with physical reaction which produces afalse syllogism.

L.P. Oh,come off it.

L.B. No,really, I mean it. If I react similarly to two different stimuli, then my two reactions are the same; but that doesn’t mean that both stimuli possess the same meaning. .If a person catches cold 1)from rainy weather and 2)from cats, those facts certainly don’t establishanysimilarityofmeaningbetweenrainandcats,dothey?

L.P. No, if we can head off a joke from Y.B. about raining cats and dogs. But this isn'ta question of logic at all. Emotionsdon’t follow mathematicalpatterns.

LOB. I’msorry,butweren’t you the first to cry Q.E.D.?

L.P. Very well, forgive me. But let's talk more simply. You will admit that there is adefinite relation between the meanings of a sunset and of aChopinprelude,betweenthe Mona Lisa and the Book of Ruth,between‑

Joy of Music 35

L B . ..'. . yes, in acomprehensive criticalsense. But that is not to

7 that they meanthe samething. . L.P. . V course it is to say fast that! Take the sunset and the prelude, example. We can break their meanings down into certain ab‑

terms, like wlm, spaciousness, sostenuto, gentle motion, , ,, imperceptible changes of color, and soon. All these terms

toboth,don't they? LIB.

j .. the preludedoesn’t meancalm,color andthe rest. It suggests :rA. perhaps.What it meansispurelymusical. ,; L.P. ’. . - whatdoesthatmean?

LB. ,If it couldbetold in words, thenwhy would Chopinhavefoundit , ”cessary to tell i t through notes in the first place? Of course, I ._' owldtry to articulate themusicalmeaningof apreludein words, ,‘llut what a bore it would be! Let me show you, if you have the ‘ strength: a prolonged upbeat in the middle register (like the A‑ : string of the cello), yearning upwards in an octave stretch, its meaningsuddenly clarifiedby the entrance of the accompaniment

, which is a series of repeated insistent E‐minor triads that pulse _ under the sustainedchromatic longingof the melodic line(which - vacillates tearquy between B and C), while a tenor voice in the I accompaniment adds to the general sense of languishing dolor throughsuspensionandappogiatura‑

L.P. ‘Thanks,they cry, ’tisthrilling! Take,0 takethis shilling! Letushavenomore!”

L.B. See? I toldyouit wouldbeabore.Andthat may giveyouperhaps a fraction of the meaning of some three bars. That, asI said, is

36 LEONARD nmsrem

just the point about music. It stands in a special lonely region, unlit‑

Y.B.

Hey,look!KozyKabins!

(The scene changes to the stoop of Kozy Kabin No. 8. It has be‑ come surprisingly cool,andweare sittingwith blanketsaroundas, three phony Indians, having that interminable last cigarette. We are on our fourth, at least; and the discussion of the meaning of meaningisraging.)

L.P. ‐- or else why do so many composers give their pieces titles? If you are right,thenit is impossiblefor apieceof music to have any significance of a non-musical kind. Well and good. But then we will have to cut out of the history of music Berlioz, Strauss, Schoenberg,Hindemith‑

L B . Mahler,Copland,Monteverdi‑

L.P. (Triumphantly):And Bemsteinl

LOB. Ouch! Now just give me a minute to dig back into my semester of aesthetics.

L.P. I ampositivelyglowing.Wearewaitingpatiently.HaveaChester field.

L.B. _ - for time): AsI see it, you want to know how I canfollow , an abstract line in my theoretical view of music, and yet

W. pieces with names and philosophical implications and the . Isthat it? '

L.P. fairly well put. It’s not that you are soall-fired abstract‑ youflatter yourself! It just seems suspicious that you insist on

. -»amentalpurity about music,but don’t give ahoot for purity ‘ you write it. Intellectual snobbery, I call it. Of the lowest

Y.B.

LUPI ~~now I will give you alectureabout music. And maybe I can ‘ what you may have wanted to say, but in intelligible prose,

' t- without varsity veneer. L.B.

L.P. , 'ell,then. I think you want to get across that notes are opaque, ,' v. words are transparent, isn’t that it? In other words, that when :3~. readanewspaperyouarenotawareof the actualwordsthem‑ ‘ r esasan artistic medium; that the headline “Maniac Slays Six ' was” conveys a concept,butdoes not linger in the consciousness

-anyparticularvalue,amI right? L B .

Yes,sir. L.P.

_'- But that when these same words are in the hands of an artist, a ~poet, they can acquire a value of their own, over and above the 5 mental image they convey; that words like “star,” “would” and . “steadfast” in thehandsofKeatsbecomememorablefor their own ' sake aswell asfor the sake of the ideathey represent, andthat in

38 LEONARD BERNSTEIN

so becoming they become less transparent, more opaque, more likenotes,whichexist basically for their own sake andnot for any representational idea behindthem. Are you with me?

L.B. Yes, sir.

L.P. That carried to the extreme, words thus handled can become al‑ most completely abstract, as in the hands of a Certmde Stein. Whether this extreme has any literaryvalue isbesidethe point; the relevant fact is that words have their original function in represen‑ tation, and are transparent; and notes have their original function in abstraction,andare opaque. And that, further, just aswords can move in from that original function toward a middle ground of quasi-abstraction, asin Joyce, somusical notes can move in from their native habitat to the middle ground of conceptual meaning, asin program music, musical drama, background music, and the like.Doyoufollow?

L.B. Yes, sir,but‐‑

L.P. Letmefinishat leastthis one sally.Sothere is,after all,acommon meeting ground for the writer and the musician, and neither one has cause or the right to glue himself fanatically to a snobbish purity-notion. And if we add to all this the Cod-given human capacity for association, there is no reasonto carp at the spectacle of asimple Lyric Poet indulging himself alittle sentimentally in ametaphorof hillsandBeethoven.I grant you that the peroration of Sibelius’ FifthSymphony, in the most scientific sense, is only a particular succession of chords, scored in acertain sonorous way, producingthe effect of a‐ well, of a peroration. But I have every right in the world to see amagnificent sunriSe asI listen to these trumpets lighting up the sky with their orange streams of sound, and sowould you if you would relax for a minute and forget your bookishnotions.Dixi.

. ofMusic 39

- L.B. _' bly agree with everything you say, andwould gladly call it I_ut, and a cold one at that, except that I would like to make ' suggestion. Perhaps our differences arise from the fact that 'lnusician hears so much more in the music that he finds it _ unnecessary to bring associations into the picture at all. and I, in our artistic disguises, do, asyou say, come from op‑ ‘ t - sides of the tracks, and can approach each other, meeting, ... speak, at thetracks themselves. But we always carry with us '_heavy atavism of our origins, sothat there is always the track

separating us. We can never think identically about either - . or music. These things are sosubtle anyway that they can I. u»:blybemadeinfinitelyclearer in onehappylineof poetry or ' incommunicable flash of insight than in hours of shivering in »desert air. But I amgratefulfor your lecture.

L.P. .., ,you are aconsiderably chastenedyoungman,andalongway _. m.thehecklerof two hoursago. I congratulateyou. ' LOB. 1ndI you. I can’tfindasinglechink in your disquisition.Although llnething tells methat if it weren't sopolite, and I weren’t so cold‑ '- YB. _(Grindywakingup):To bed,tobed;there's aknockingatmyhead. . L.P. 3 I'll stay out a while longer with these incredible stars. Look at f them, look at them! Aren’t they pure Buxtehudel

(SUMMER 1948)