XVI
(To Boston)
Vienna, 1883.
DEAR H.:
With mortification I thank you at last for so many kind and good news. You really have deserved that one should settle down comfortably to write a comfortable reply- but I beg you once for all to remember that with me the moment is still to come when I shall write the first letter with pleasure.
Moreover, it is most aggravating to write to one who has left us so completely and whom we could make such excellent good use of here!
I dare say it’s useless to ask you if you would at all entertain the idea of taking the position at Breslau which Scholz (Henschel’s footnote. Bernhard Scholz, composer, director of the Hoch’sche Conservatory of Music at Frankfort-on-the-Main, then conductor of the Symphony concerts at Breslau.) resigns this winter?
For your friendly pressure regarding a manuscript work for performance I must thank you. But it would be the first time I had allowed a MS. to go out of my hands. A new piece of mine I like to hear several times (in MS.). If then it appears to me – so accidentally – worthy of being printed, it cannot, for any length of time, escape that operation. otherwise I do not give it into other hands. (Henschel’s footnote. I was however, later on, successful in procuring from Brahms the MS. of his Concerto for Violin and Violoncello (Op. 102) for first performance in England.)
But we can and shall make provision that you have such novelties over there sooner than other people. Could you make use of a choral work? In that case Simrock just now would have a rather pretty little one which you might secure! (Henschel’s footnote. That “pretty little one” was no less important and serious a work than the “Gesang der Parzen” (Song of the Fates), Op. 89.)
Now, please give my greetings to yours and – ours; I mean our colleagues. Greet them from my heart and let me have the pleasure of being allowed to keep in contact with them, though it be only by means of programmes and newspapers.
I quite see that I am not worthy of frequent news by letter! But you don’t know my grateful disposition!
Again and beforehand many thanks.
Heartily yours,
Notes
Theory of Music 