Pièce 43 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

2 items: letter with envelope, with MS copy of an extract.

2 St Margaret's Road, Edinburgh. - Is glad Trevelyan agrees with his idea about the mist effect in Act III [of "The Bride of Dionysus": see 7/42]. Is getting on well, and has produced 'four big sheets', or forty-three pages of the old score, since he sent the wire to Trevelyan; he began in the examination room, 'racing the Mus Bac candidate at paper-spoiling'. He is also happy with the rest of the finished material: it is not the case that for him revision is 'an endless process, changing with [his] point of view'. Believes that when the job is finished, they will both feel he has 'not been unreasonably long over it'; in any case, it is 'the largest musical design that has ever been carried out with a fastidious sense of musical form and dramatic fitness'. Art and politics will not be 'exclusively governed by cads and invalids for ever' so it will not be so old-fashioned 'when the next half-dozen revolutions in art have become classical reality'. Odd to think he was afraid the opera would have 'dried up' in two and a half years away from it. Has been as tough a job for him as the "Ring" was for Wagner.

Has been working on 'the strong-winged foam-wanderers' chorus and has given it a new end; Vaughan Williams had criticised it 'in his vague puzzle-headed way' but neither of them could then see what the matter was; Tovey is now much happier with it. Discusses other changes he has made, including the removal of the effect used to represent Theseus' disappearance and the echoes of it; the double bass pizzicato he had had was 'curious confirmation' of his theory that plagiarism 'consists of echoing what you don't know properly' and is 'the exact opposite of the effects of scholarship upon art'; it came from [Richard] Strauss who uses the technique in "The Salad & the Electrocution" ["Salome" and "Elektra"] but always properly connected to something beyond the orchestra. Has got rid of it, not because he does not like Strauss - will happily reuse it elsewhere - as he has something else. Gives musical notation in his discussion of the 'hope only thy death's pain' figure. Proof of 'the finality of the big sheets' in Raabe's copy. Notes that in a work of this size 'most of what people say a priori about one's development of style is bosh' - compares Wagner - and decries the pressure on young artists 'to strike out new paths' which prevents them from producing work larger than 'watch-pocket size'. Will now move on to the Nereids. A pencil postscript on the first page that Grettie has 'been overdoing it' and ordered to take a rest, but she will be able to come with Tovey. They go to Oxford on 5 April. There are also pen and pencil postscripts by Tovey noting further progress on the opera on the back of the envelope.