Frankfurt, 28 December 1935.
My dear Helene,
until the very last second, I was unable to believe that the unthinkable had happened1 – still telegraphed Křenek after reading the newspaper announcement, hoping that it was a mistake. Now his response has dashed all my hopes.
I cannot find many words. This last blow has struck me so hard that my only wish is that I might soon join my beloved friend, to whom I owe my most precious moments as an artist and as a person. No longer permitted to revolve around him, my existence lies meaningless before me. I am with you in all my thoughts. There is no consolation, but if it means something to you that there is someone who shares your thoughts and feelings in every layer of his person, through and through, then let me tell you this much.
In everlasting friendship
Your Teddie Wiesengrund.
Original: manuscript.
1 Alban Berg had died on 24 December 1935.
Frankfurt a. M.-Oberrad
Seeheimer Strasse 19
16.4.1936.
My dear Helene,
if I have been silent for so long, then only for the reason that I did not wish to come to you before proving my right to speak as a friend. The death of a beloved person – and whom might I so call if not him – fills us with a sense of guilt; all the unfulfilled possibilities, all the missed chances, and even the smallest fault one might charge oneself with come between our memory of the departed and ourselves – and it often seemed to me as if I had murdered him, simply because I might not have been there at the moment when I could have helped him. Already brought down so far by Agathe’s death,1 I do not know how I should have survived his death at all if I had not had the chance to stand by him one last time in the only way that I am able: through the presentation and theoretical interpretation of his work. You can hardly imagine how grateful I am to Reich for asking me to co-operate with him on the monograph,2 which I immediately did with the greatest fervour; every minute that I could steal from my big book3 was devoted to the monograph, and so my part is already finished, six weeks before the agreed deadline. I need hardly tell you that this work belongs to you as much as Alban: please accept today, as a sign of this, the original manuscript of my part. Seven of the analyses and the notes for all of them were written by hand first; only the last, of the orchestral pieces (which seem to me in many respects his greatest work and which I therefore wanted to benefit from my accumulated experience of the others), was typed straight away; this is how I have collected them for you. I would only like to add that the analyses, in the state in which you are here receiving them, cannot be considered final drafts; while typing out the fair copy, I revised all of them thoroughly (also the last one) and changed many details. The copies I have sent to Reich and Krenek are fit for printing; I shall take out repetitions and suchlike when I check the proofs. But I have given you the original copy because I believe that its immediacy – for these pages speak in person to him, whose student I have been once again these last three months – could perhaps mean something to you that the more definitive form could not so readily.
Today I now also have the courage to speak to you of something else, something that does relate to the analyses, but at the same time concerns you in the most private fashion. I am referring to the events in connection with the Lyric Suite.4 The essence of my analysis – which was written for an English publishing opportunity but ultimately not used there5 – was still known to him and met with his approval, expressly in the manner in which I touched on the poetic accusation (it was precisely because of this difficulty that I had previously avoided writing about the Suite). I therefore consider it best to publish this reference to the poetic accusation in precisely the state in which he was familiar with it, and hope that it might also meet with your approval.
Indeed, this is now above all else your business. I knew of the H. F. matter from the first day on, and was – in a most unsuccessful way, I should add – his confidant and, if you wish, his accomplice. I had given him my most solemn oath never to speak to anyone about it, and remained true to this promise until the moment when I found out through Reich that you already knew. Now there would no longer be any justification for remaining silent – at the very least for his sake. The first thing I could think of after hearing the news of his death was: what should happen if Helene finds letters. But at that time I still believed (always thinking that I was the only one who knew about the events of 1926 [recte: 1925]) that I was bound to my oath of silence. What I then did seemed the only possible course of action. I am speaking of the long essay for ‘23’.6 It is written for you alone – and is entirely ambiguous, calculated in advance in case you should hear about the H. F. business; and how very much the idea of such ambiguity is in his spirit! Everything in it: the passage about incurable loneliness, about real existence as material for the aesthetic, about cunning, loyalty, disloyalty – all this was intended not only to present his being, but also to explain, in anticipation, his behaviour to you; please do not consider it immodest of me to request that you read it again with this in mind. I know that some people took exception to the ‘indiscretion’ of the essay. In your case, such a misunderstanding is out of the question; but everything in that essay that sounded more private than I would risk elsewhere, and more aloof than I would have loved – all this came only from thinking of you, and from my wish to help you and Alban after his death.
What is most important to me, however, and my reason for speaking of the matter at all, is this: the various private motives underlying that essay do not serve your consolation, but are rather, I am entirely convinced, true. You may consider my position at that time to have been questionable, and I do not wish to defend it; I think there is nothing that I would not have been prepared to do for him. But even then, at the age of 22, one thing was clear to me: that the H. F. business was not paramount for him; that she was not in a position to challenge his relationship with you; and that it was far more a case of his loving H. F. in order to write the Lyric Suite than of his writing the Lyric Suite out of love. This admittedly touches on a secret that is perhaps harder to bear than any ‘infidelity’, namely that the artist in Alban’s sense (and I know I am his kindred spirit in this) simply cannot live an immediate life: but from the first moment, this secret made the experience seem different to me than how it appeared to him. Do not think that I am adopting the position that ‘Goethe was wrong about this’ – except in the sense that Goethe (Tasso, whom I speak of in the analysis of the Suite) can only be wrong as an empirical existence. It is clear from his own words and actions that this is not merely impertinent conjecture on my part (he knew from the first day that he could never leave you for H. F., and, I am sure, was in essence glad that she also never considered it on account of the children). When I think back to these events today, it almost seems to me as if his innermost motive was fear: the fear of a person who spent his entire life-force on the objectification of squandering his life – which is, after all, only there to be squandered by the likes of us. It is entirely in keeping with this that H. F. was a romantic error – she is a bourgeoise through and through, who was once touched by the chance to be different, yet without being herself able to fulfil it. And he was, besides everything else, a thousand times too astute not to see that she was not his equal, as clearly as he saw that you were his equal – an equality that manifested itself in the two of you like the mythological model of the Heavenly Couple. I never spoke openly to him about it, but the meaning of his later silence regarding H. F. seems clear enough. Nothing would be more wrong – let me say it again, in all profound seriousness – than to think that the somewhat dramaturgical relationship with H. F. could even have approached the sphere in which you and Alban belonged together. You are as much aware of this as I am; but perhaps there is some sense in uttering it this once so clearly and seriously as to remove all shadow of doubt.
Here I also have something concrete in mind: the fate of the Lyric Suite score. You are being urged, supposedly in accordance with Alban’s wishes, to give it to H. F. I would advise you most urgently, with all my knowledge and all my conscience, not to do so. For all sorts of reasons. I shall name only two. Firstly, Alban had asked myself and Kolisch repeatedly and with great urgency to arrange a sale of the manuscript. Would this be conceivable if he had intended for H. F. to receive it at some point? Does this not, on the contrary, show his desire to rid himself of the only real tie to her – the score? Would surrendering the score then not go directly against his innermost intentions? But furthermore: for you, the most musical of women, the score is of inestimable vitality. For H. F., it would be a museum piece and a fetish; not only can she not read a bar of it, she probably cannot even understand it. I do not wish to prevent you from sacrificing the score: but from sacrificing it wrongly. It belongs in your hands, under your gaze that brings it to life; it is too precious to satisfy the narcissism of a woman merely bored to death. Forgive me for speaking bluntly; but relinquishing it would immortalize his relationship with H. F. in a way that seems to me, as his friend and yours, an injustice towards him and towards you. The obvious and unprecedentedly barefaced manner in which attempts are being made to snatch the manuscript from you is a further reason not to have anything to do with it.
I have much to ask and much to say: above all concerning the completion of Lulu and your future. I shall spare you all that today, but would ask that you write to me as soon as you are able; from the end of next week I shall be in Oxford, 47 Banbury Road. I am glad that you are travelling to Barcelona to hear the Violin Concerto;7 I hope to attend the performance in London,8 and shall write to you immediately thereupon. One final thought: would it not be possible for us to see each other in the summer? Please let me know of your arrangements, I shall do the same.
Fare thee well, Helene. Ever and wholly yours
Teddie.
Original: typescript with Adorno’s signature.
1 Adorno’s aunt Agathe Calvelli-Adorno had died on 26 June 1935.
2 Willi Reich, Alban Berg: mit Bergs eigenen Schriften und Beiträgen von Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno und Ernst Krenek, Vienna, Leipzig and Zurich, 1937. English translation: T. W. Adorno: Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link.
3 See letter no. 128 and note 6 there.
4 Adorno later described these – in the penultimate version of his recollections of Berg, which he decreed should not be published during his own lifetime or those of any persons directly involved – as follows:
Berg had numerous affairs, which never went well, however; the unhappy end was part of the composition, so to speak, and one had the feeling that these liaisons were a part of his productive apparatus from the start, that they were – entirely in keeping with Austrian humour – desperate, but not serious. At the time of my studies with him, he was involved with Hanna [Fuchs-Robettin], Werfel’s sister; in this context he used me as a postillon d’amour, taking my frequent visits to Prague to see my friend Hermann Grab as a pretext; I played my part clumsily, never spoke to Hanna alone, while the entire business was arranged so conspicuously that her husband became suspicious. The affair was hopeless from the start; on the one hand, it was burdened with an incredible pathos, while on the other hand, Berg was no more willing to leave his wife than Hanna was to leave her husband and two children. He conducted the affair with infinite secrecy: officially to prevent his wife from finding out, but in truth probably because he loved secrets in their own right; he gave me all manner of functions within this system of secrets; from the very first day he had told me the whole story. The dedication he wrote in my score of the three Wozzeck fragments, ‘the fragments of your Alban Berg’, referred to the fact that he considered himself broken apart by the constraint of self-denial; but I think he had rather less difficulty recovering from the matter than it seemed to me at the time. The Lyric Suite, a work of programme music based on an unknown programme, turned the whole story into music through countless allusions, though without allowing any of these allusions – which also included the dedication to Zemlinsky and the citation from his Lyric Symphony – to impair the work’s quality in the least; on the contrary, this highly seductive work drew its élan precisely from that source. I shall note only one of the allusions: in the second movement, the first theme represents Hanna, the second her husband, the third – composed of two contrasting elements – the two children. The characteristically repeated note C corresponds, according to the old solfège system, to a double Do, and the older Fuchs child was called Dodo. Any hermeneutician who took on the Lyric Suite would have enough work for a lifetime. The Allegro Misterioso is a play with the initials AB and HF. The analogous aspects of Leverkühn’s music, which generally has more in common with Berg than Schönberg, are modelled on these games. They also border on his taste for numerology and astrology. As he knew my opinion of such things, however, he almost never spoke openly of them to me. If Helene is now holding séances to contact his spirit, he would presumably not have denied the undertaking his consent. (GS 18, p. 490f.)
5 See letter no. 135 and note 1 there.
6 The first version of Adorno’s recollections of Alban Berg appeared under the title ‘Erinnerung an den Lebenden’ (Recollections of the Living) in the Vienna music journal 23 of 1 February 1936. Adorno revised and extended the text in 1955 to form the version cited above, which openly presents the poetic accusation. Adorno produced a third version, in which all private elements were removed, for his Berg monograph of 1968 (see GS 13, pp. 335–67. English translation: T. W. Adorno: Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link).
7 The Violin Concerto was premiered by Louis Krasner and Hermann Scherchen, in the presence of Helene Berg, on 19 April 1936 at the ISCM festival in Barcelona.
8 Adorno attended Berg’s memorial concert on 1 May 1936 at the BBC, where Krasner and Webern performed the Violin Concerto; see Adorno’s report in GS 20.2, p. 802f.
Oxford 47
Banbury Road
21 November 1936.
My dear Helene,
a thousand thanks for your letter, which was a source of great joy and comfort to me. I was already worried that my manuscript had been lost, and though objectively it would hardly have been a loss, as Dr. Reich is after all in possession of the final version (which has been improved in countless details), it goes without saying that these thoughts belong to you in the state in which they first came into being, namely in the first manuscript, and it would therefore have pained me if I had been prevented from giving you this sign of loyal attachment and devoted friendship as I had planned. I therefore had the postal service research the matter,1 and find the signature of the housekeeper – how this word alone conjures up the time in Vienna, the happiest of my life!!2 As far as the subject matter is concerned, you are perhaps better off reading the analyses in the final version, which should be in print now. It not only reads better, but is also, I hope, a marked improvement on the first. The first is really intended more as a symbol than something of functional value. Without these analyses – and without the months of immersion in his work that they required – I would not have been able to cope with his death. So I even owe it to him that I survived him. –
Concerning the analysis of the Lyric Suite: I would not like to change anything, for a very simple reason that you will no doubt also find entirely convincing. The analysis of the Lyric Suite is the only one that he lived to read (it was originally intended for the London radio broadcast). And he not only approved of it, but in fact particularly appreciated the reference to its ‘poetic’ content.3 This is entirely clear from a letter he wrote to me, which is currently in Reich’s possession.*4 What is more, the analysis contains nothing ‘personal’. On the contrary: I think that I have sufficiently objectified these aspects through the term ‘latent opera’ that nobody will look for private motives. – As far as the assessment of the experiences with H. F. and all related matters is concerned, I am – as you know – entirely in agreement with you.
I must still apologize for not responding to the letter and the card you sent me this summer. The reason is quite simply that they arrived here only after I had left Oxford, and were not forwarded to me. When I returned, it was of course much too late. – But it would have come to nothing even if I had received them in time, as the Austrian who had initiated the matter left me completely in the lurch, despite all his grand words and his Lords. Please forgive me: I truly made every effort. Are you considering renting out the Waldhaus again in the summer? Please let me know. It will be much easier to arrange things in the longer term.
* But you will surely agree with me that we should not remove the one passage in the book that he specifically expressed his agreement with. Any misunderstanding is out of the question.
The book I am currently writing is seemingly of a rather specific nature, on phenomenology; but it in fact pursues very fundamental philosophical aims.
I should be glad to hear from you soon; but if you do not care to write, then none could understand this better than I.
Yours
in old loyalty and warmth
Teddie Wiesengrund
Original: typescript with Adorno’s signature.
1 Adorno’s letter had only reached Helene Berg in autumn 1936, as she writes to Adorno on 5 November: ‘Dear Teddy, your retrieved letter of the 16.4. (!) only reached me very recently. The housekeeper received the delivery during my absence from Vienna, and – as incredible as it sounds – had forgotten it! It only came to light through the inquiries of Dr. Reich and the postal service.’
2 Translator’s note: the original word is Hausbesorgerin, a specifically Austrian term.
3 Translator’s note: the original term dichterisch, as opposed to poetisch, refers not to poetic and aesthetic matters in general, but specifically to poetry and writing.
4 The reference is to Berg’s letter of 2 November 1935 (no. 136), which Adorno had lent to Reich.
| Theodor W. Adorno | |
| Frankfurt a. M. | |
| Liebigstrasse 19, III, c/o Irmer | 23 November 1949 |
| Germany, American zone |
Dear Helene,
having returned to Europe a few weeks ago, I feel a profound need to rekindle our contact, which has been so long and so tragically interrupted. It has never been clearer to me than it has been in recent times how strongly I am bound to Alban and you – the two of you and the world that I associate with fundamental happiness are one and the same to me, and I want you to know that I feel as close to you today as otherwise only in Hietzing or Hütteldorf. And it would mean so very much to me to know how you are – how you survived the unspeakable. I would also like to hear about Smaragda1 and your brother,2 and would be deeply grateful if you could write to me soon.
As for myself, I shall tell you today only that I survived the end of the world reasonably well, thanks to the Institut für Sozialforschung and my friend Horkheimer, who had me come over in good time. I expect you know that I am married to Gretel Karplus. My parents also managed to escape a few months before the war started; my father died 3 years ago in New York following a stroke, my mother is still living there as an 84-year-old. We emigrated to California in 1941, and worked intensely and undisturbed in Los Angeles – I also composed a considerable amount. At the moment I am here, standing in for Horkheimer as professor for social philosophy during the winter semester.
Today, I am now also writing to you for a particular reason, one that seems to me the most important for both of us: the orchestration of the missing parts of Lulu. I know that Schönberg refused to do it. Webern was also against it when I last saw him in England (probably 1936); and I have been told that you are not generally in favour of the plan.
If I now strive to change your mind with all due seriousness and responsibility, you must believe that I am guided by nothing other than concern for the work and for Alban’s intentions. I myself, to clarify the matter well in advance, neither wish nor am able to take on the task.
As far as Schönberg’s rejection3 is concerned, first of all, I am convinced that his motives – despite the one serious argument he advances – are not of the purest sort. We often spoke of his jealousy, you, Alban and I; I had occasion to observe it in its basest manifestations, and I have no reservations about claiming that the thought of cutting off Alban’s deciding work from posterity through his refusal is a tempting one to him. And in conversation with Webern, I also encountered a form of coldness that was able only with some effort to mask itself as respect before the fate one must accept. He said, with his air of native cunning, that a work such as Schubert’s B minor Symphony is also incomplete, yet lives. But this is a sophistic analogy. There is a fundamental difference between a symphonic work and an opera. Anyone with even the slightest understanding of theatre, which is by its very nature dependent on an audience, knows that an unfinished opera, outside of memorial or festival performances, could not live.
God knows that I honour the idea of the fragment, but in an art form whose aesthetic substance cannot be separated from a certain drastic materiality, a fragmentary reproduction would be an impossibility, even if it survived the worldly demands of the theatrical world. And I would stake my life on the fact that Alban would have approved of my intention. No one who knew his quick-witted, ingenious concern for the practicability of everything he wrote – the counterpart to his unconditional and uncompromising imagination – could doubt that he would have considered an unperformable opera an absurdity, and looked upon his work, as one with unfinished orchestration, as lost. I believe that a respect for this element of his persona focused on realization demands for Lulu to be completed, without allowing any of all this to lead one astray. I do not have the words to express how serious I am about this.
There can be no issue of desecration, as the original short score exists – as far as I know, it has even been duplicated4 –, so the slightest infidelity would be avenged by history. And if Webern claimed in the end that the composition was not really complete, but in some sections only sketched in the principal parts, then I refuse to believe this before I have seen, nay: studied it with my own eyes. Berg told me unequivocally of the composition’s completion; in a letter to me, he wrote that the big scene at Casti-Piani had turned out ‘quite especially well’5 (which would be inconceivable in the case of an unrealized sketch) – and above all: twelve-tone composition does not allow such a generalized sketching with missing subsidiary parts etc. One should not believe anything to the contrary.
Now, I am all too aware of the incredible difficulty, arduousness and responsibility of such a task. No one person can carry it out. The orchestration of Lulu is only possible collectively. And this is precisely what I have in mind.
My Paris friend René Leibowitz, whose name you are familiar with, is not only a musician of the very highest order, not only versed in the style in a way that is without equal today; not only bound to the cause by the most passionate love. He has also gathered together a group of musicians fanatically devoted to Alban, who, with him, would solve the matter together. I asked him straight out in Paris a few weeks ago, and he confirmed it. It would be particularly important to draw on the co-operation of one of his students, Duhamel (the son of the poet), who knows every note by Alban and would devote years of his life to the matter. I therefore wish to recommend, in the most convincing manner available to me, that you entrust Leibowitz and his group with the task.
It could finally be argued that there is plenty of time yet for such a matter, and that one could see to it one day, much, much later, when Alban has ‘become entirely historical’ (itself a ghastly notion). I also consider this argument false. There is never enough time for the things that matter. The world we live in has taken on the tempo of catastrophe; it would be naïve to simply trust its course – it can all fall to ruin. And, to speak of more concrete matters: the tradition of our music lies in the hands of very few people, among whom Leibowitz is the most important. If it is interrupted, the instrumentation of Lulu will no longer be possible, as no one will understand the sense and language of such an instrumentation any more. But if those few people still directly familiar with it succeed in completing the instrumentation, then this can itself save the tradition.6 The extreme importance of which calls for no further words.
It would probably be best for you to contact René Leibowitz directly. His address is: 17 Quai Voltaire, Paris. Should you for some reason be unwilling to do so, however, then I would naturally be prepared to ask him officially myself, with your consent.
And: please write to me soon, and at length.
Yours
In old loyalty and devotion
Teddie
Original: typescript with Adorno’s signature.
1 Alban Berg’s sister Smaragda Eger-Berg (1886–1954).
2 Franz Josef Nahowski had died in 1942.
3 See Lulu/Alban Berg: Texte, Materialen, Kommentare, ed. Attila Csampai and Dietmar Holland, Reinbek, 1985, pp. 244–8.
4 The reference is presumably to the photocopy of the short score owned by Universal Edition; further copies of this photocopy, which seems to have been made shortly after Berg’s death, are unknown.
5 See Berg’s letter of 18 November 1933 (no. 120), which Adorno is citing from; the work’s completion, however, is not confirmed there, but suggested in letter no. 127: ‘1. I have not yet finished orchestrating “Lulu”’, and perhaps stated clearly in the lost part of letter no. 129.
6 It was not René Leibowitz, who died in 1972, but Friedrich Cerha who reconstructed Act III (see Friedrich Cerha, Arbeitsbericht zur Herstellung des 3. Akts der Oper ‘Lulu’ von Alban Berg, Vienna, 1979); it was in this version that the work was first performed at the Paris Opera on 24 February 1979.