This was all commonplace and banal to a painter or musician, and yet the languages of the world seemed like little heaps of blue and red and yellow powder which had never been used—but if a book just used them so that the English spoke English & the Italians Italian that would be as stupid as saying use yellow for the sun because the sun is yellow. It seemed to me reading Schoenberg that what the writers of the future would do was not necessarily say: I am writing about an Armenian grandfather Czech grandmother a young biker from Kansas (of Czech & Armenian descent), Armenian Czech English OK. Gradually they would approach the level of the other branches of the arts which are so much further developed. Perhaps a writer would think of the monosyllables and lack of grammatical inflection in Chinese, and of how this would sound next to lovely long Finnish words all double letters & long vowels in 14 cases or lovely Hungarian all prefixes suffixes, & having first thought of that would then think of some story about Hungarians or Finns with Chinese.
An idea has only to be something you have not thought of before to take over the mind, and all afternoon I kept hearing in my mind snatches of books which might exist in three or four hundred years. There was one with the characters Hakkinen, Hintikka and Yu, set provisionally in Helsinki—against a background of snow with a mass of black firs, a black sky & brilliant stars a narrative or perhaps dialogue with nominative genitive partitive essive inessive adessive illative ablative allative & translative, people would come on saying Hyvää päivää for good day there might be a traffic accident so that the word tieliikenneonnettomuus could make an appearance, and then in the mind of Yu Chinese characters, as it might be Black Fir White Snow, this was absolutely ravishing.
I had not really wanted to go to the party, and now in this distracted state I wanted to go less than ever—but I thought it would be rude not to go when the invitation was such a favour, so I thought I could just go for 10 minutes and then leave.
I went to the party. As so often it was much easier to come with the plan of leaving after 10 minutes than to leave after 10 minutes, for instead of making a polite excuse to leave after 10 minutes I found myself describing now to this person now that the brilliant Theory of Harmony. Who publish it, they would say, Faber, I would say and they would say Oh. Some people did not seem interested and I naturally dropped the subject but others did and I did not and I ended up staying three hours.
Schoenberg would say: This scale is not the last word, the ultimate goal of music, but rather a provisional stopping place. The overtone series, which led the ear to it, still contains many problems that will have to be faced. And if for the time being we still manage to escape those problems, it is due to little else than a compromise between the natural intervals and our inability to use them—that compromise which we call the tempered system, which amounts to an indefinitely extended truce
& in my mind I would hear languages related like a circle of fifths, I would see languages with shades of each other, like the colours of Cézanne which often have a green with some red a red with some green, in my mind I saw a glowing still life as if a picture of English with French words French with English words German with French words & English words Japanese with French English & German words—I was just about to leave when I met a man who seemed to know quite a lot about Schoenberg. He had lost his last job through a merger and now the writing was on the wall so he was rather distracted but still he started telling me about the opera Moses and Aaron.
He said Of course you know what it’s about
& I said Well presumably
& he said No musically, musically it’s about, & he paused, & he said in this opera Moses spoke directly to God and he did not sing his part was in Sprechgesang it was speech, harsh speech over music and the Children of Israel could not understand; he had to communicate through Aaron, who was an operatic tenor, it was a beautiful lyric role but of course it’s Aaron who proposes the Golden Calf, he doesn’t himself understand—
I said what a marvellous idea for an opera the plots were usually so farfetched and contrived
& he said he rather liked that but yes it was a marvellous idea, and he began to tell me in a low-key English way a terrible story about the opera which he described as one of the great lost works of the 20th century. Schoenberg had composed most of the first two acts between 1930 and 1932; then the Nazis had come into power and he had had to leave in 1933 and it had been rather disruptive. He went to America and kept applying for grants to work on it but the foundations did not care for the atonal music. So he had to support his family by teaching, and he went back to composing tonal pieces in support of his grant applications so that his time when he was not teaching was taken up with the tonal compositions. Eighteen years later he had still not composed the music for Act Three of Moses and Aaron. As death drew near he said that perhaps the words could be spoken.
He said: Of course he could be quite a difficult character
& he suddenly said—Will you excuse me? I really must catch Peter before he goes.
He walked off and it was only after he had gone that I realised I had not asked the crucial question, which is Do we ever hear God?
I hesitated and then hesitantly followed but he was already saying Peter!
& Peter said Giles! Good to see you! How are you keeping?
& Giles said Exciting times.
So it was not a good time to intrude. I mingled casually with a nearby group.
Peter said something and Giles said something and Peter said something and Giles said Good Lord No not at all in fact if anything and they talked for quite a long time. They talked for half an hour or so and suddenly they paused, and Peter said Well this is hardly and Giles said Quite, and they paused again and without another word left the room.
I had meant to leave after 10 minutes; it was high time to leave. But now there was more noise by the door and Liberace appeared smiling and kissing women on the cheek and apologising to people for being so late. Several people in my group seemed to know him and tried to catch his eye, and I hastily murmured something about a drink and slipped away. I was nervous of heading for the door, because I was afraid someone might introduce me to Liberace as a special favour, but it seemed safe enough to stand by the buffet. Phrases from Schoenberg kept coming back. At this time I had never heard any of his music but the book on harmony seemed a real work of genius.
I stood by the buffet eating cheese sticks, looking up from time to time at the door—but though Liberace moved gradually into the room he was still between me and the door. So I stood thinking about this brilliant book, I thought, I must buy a piano, & after a while who should come up but Liberace.