Item 32 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

2 items: manuscript letter with typescript copy

Hotel Bristol, Wien. Glad to hear better news from Trevelyan, and hopes progress will be more rapid now. Should be back by the 5th. The two concerts Casals organised on 17 February and 2 March has rescued him from 'the dumper into which the musical parochialism of that pokey little provincial town London was plunging [him]'. Has also been able to do much work on Ariadne ["The Bride of Dionysus"] during the train journey, and hopes to get to 'the threshold of the finale' on his return journey. Mentions a few small alterations to the text which he would like to make. Is surprised by how much change there has been to the music since his initial stages: even 'Ariadne's despair is very importantly different' and she is not 'perfectly furious'. Hopes Dionysus is good; it makes Tovey 'howl like anything to work at his discourses'.. Saw a goof version of "Meistersinger [von Nurnberg]" here: comments on its length out of 'professional interest' to himself and Trevelyan. Vienna would definitely be the place for Ariadne, and the chorus quite good enough. Also saw a performance of Goethe's Faust Part I yesterday: compares his effectiveness with Gounod and Berlioz, and discusses generally, the ways in which things on stage 'can be infinitely more moving without music'. Talks about Goethe's stagecraft, having just read 'a very jolly book about Shakespeare written with a strong American accent'. Discusses Mozart's "Idomeneo". His belief that 'perfection of form', though desirable and attainable (as by Bach, Palestrina, Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms) is 'never historically or aesthetically prior to rhetorical fitness'.