To Peggy Glanville-Hicks
June 28, 1949 | Paris
Dear Peggy:
Letters today from you, VT, and Cecil Smith, all charming. Virgil’s remark about you demands repetition: Expecting Peggy back today, all thoroughly divorced and just as good as new. And about me: Your trip and adventures are like Little Rollo in the Magic Forest. Isn’t he marvelous? Tonight I go to a party for Paul [Bowles] and so shall have an excellent opportunity to give him the clipping you sent this morning. His piece was played and received well. Bob and Arthur characteristically didn’t invite him to share the applause, and so he (uncharacteristically?) jumped over a red velvet barrier and bowed from the stage (producing a few boos by by-product). We had dinner together one night, and he is charming; but I didn’t like the music and neither did most whom I talked to, but the “public” loved it. Unless Paul changes musically radically, I am no longer interested. Souvtschinsky, e.g., said to me after the concert, thank you, and you are the only one I am thanking. Explanation: Bob and Arthur have gone down hill extraordinarily. They don’t play together anymore, have no range of dynamics, and don’t seem to mean what they play. So that you can’t tell the differen[ce] between Rieti192 and Mozart. And my piece which isn’t supposed to was full of unprepared notes, simple mistakes, generously applied. Curiously, Arthur is more and more a human being, delightful to be with; I like him personally more and more. I read today a beautiful remark by Satie in one of his notebooks at the Conservatoire: Les saints sont des modeles non surpasses. Un homme comme St. Joseph est de beaucoup superieur a Napoleon ler, a Copenic et autres genies. [“A man like St. Joseph is far superior to a Napoleon I, a Copenicus, and other geniuses.”] I’ve found lots of Satie that is nearly unknown; songs mostly, and some of the very early piano pieces published by his father. Maybe I sound terrible, but I’m against the Antheil idea. I’m convinced he is of no importance, and I don’t see why we should revive something that apparently was never of any value. How he hoodwinked so many I don’t know, but Virgil and Maurice193 say it was because you have to know him and how he lives and what he really means, because in his music it never comes through. I’m leading a wild marvelous life practically completely musical, meeting, talking, drinking champagne, eating dinner, concerts, etc. Tomorrow Hugues Cuenod194 sings the Socrate in somebody’s home, and I have to go all dressed up. The same evening Paris hears the Pierrot Lunaire, some for the first time. It turns out Leibowitz is mostly not liked here even by the twelve-toners. And really hated by the others. I’d rather like to come home sooner than November; I’d like to come home in September. And I wish someone could persuade Maro not to come over; I can’t see that it would do anything for her except lower her bank account considerably. Life is expensive and so are concerts, and the public is not prepared for modern music of our kind. Even Bob and Arthur who had planned the whole thing with strategy had to paper their house thoroughly to get an audience. And nobody liked the music. Please tell her, as I did in my letter, to rest and work and be tranquilly American. If she writes and says she will not come, I’ll come back even in August.
To Virgil Thomson
[June 29,] 1949 | Paris
Dear Virgil:
Thank you for the Satie list; I have bought many works for you including a Mercure. I haven’t run across a Piege de Meduse in piano form for you, but I do have the score for instruments for you. And now the Satie works unfold again, since I made a visit to the Society for Authors, Composers, etc.195 and looked at the book in which his works were listed. It contained mention of about 15 that I have never heard of: Intermedes (Ouverture, Musique de Nuit, Chaconne et gigue) which was played over the radio here in 1944; Legende Californienne; Pain benie de la Gaite; Petit Recueil des Fetes; Allons y Chochotte; Diner des Peintres Francais; Illusion; Imperial Oxford; Stand-Wall; Transatlantique, and some others. In the morning I made a copy of a nine-measure piece called Le Prissonier Mausade which I found at the Conservatoire in mss. It seems to be near Socrate and the Nocturnes in technique and feeling. Tomorrow I meet Sauguet,196 and perhaps will see him tonight because Cuenod is going to sing the Socrate in somebody’s home, and Mme. Tezenas is going to take me. Also tonight Leibowitz is giving a concert including the Pierrot Lunaire; so this evening will occupy one way or another everybody. Three important works of Satie still remain utterly hidden: Le Medecin Malgre Lui (the dialogues you often mentioned); La Musique d’Ameublement (which several say never existed, but yesterday at the Conservatoire I saw a notebook for it with all the measures marked out and the instrumentation but no notes); and Paul et Virginie (which is supposed to be in [Jean] Cocteau’s hands; I have written to Cocteau but so far he has not answered).
Naturally very pleased that you are writing a piano sonata and that my portrait is in it.197
I tried several days to compose and couldn’t. When I’m not actually trying I think I have lots of ideas, but when I begin to work, they disappear.
In your letter you say ‘“Send your Aix reports”; should I write several?
I am going to try to get a photograph of the Socrate score; but at present it is in England for performances there. It is quite shocking to realize that there is only one copy in the world and that it might accidentally be destroyed. I shall certainly use that as an argument with Eschig198 to try and get it.
I may write an article about Boulez for Cecil Smith; he liked my Festivals article.
I would like to come home sooner: in September. I am anxious to be working.
To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage
July 8, 1949 | Paris
Today I shall go to see whether I can get a boat to return sooner than Oct. 22. I hope to come back now in late August or early September.
The other day there were marvelous fireworks at Versailles in the Bassin de Neptune. I have never seen such a breathtakingly beautiful display. Maybe when I get back I will be able to describe it. There were even waterfalls of fire while fountains were playing with colored lights thrown on them! And the afternoon before the fireworks spent walking through the gardens (and the fountains were working).
Yesterday had lunch with Henri Michaux,199 one of the important (admired) poets here. He loves the Orient too + music and made the most constructive criticisms of my work I have yet received. We may collaborate together on the opera I have always wanted to write: The Life of Mila Repa, the Tibetan Yogi. I will have lunch with him again next week.
Monday we give a performance in the Vieux Columbier on a program arranged by the French Radio.
This morning I went to hear oriental music again in the Museé Guinet. I found out this afternoon that all the boats are full up in September, and unless there is a cancellation I will have to stay until Oct. 22. Today I got my ticket to go south. I leave here on the 19th in the evening for Toulon. Muriel will pick me up there + take me to
Les Bois Saint Joseph
Carqueiranne Var. (address from 20th to 24th)
Then on the 24th we drive to Aix-en-Provence (you can reach me there Poste Restante) where I stay until the first of August. After that I may go to Switzerland if I can get one of the radios to invite me to play.
Michaux gave me one of his books that has just been translated into English, A Barbarian in Asia (New Directions). You would