Sir, – It is no surprise that Gustav Mahler was unable to read the music of his fellow-Viennese composer, Arnold Schoenberg, as Michael Dervan (Arets & Ideas, May 4th) recounts. Schoenberg, himself, struggled with his own scores.
He documented in his 1912 Berlin Diary that after a performance of Pierrot lunaire, the clarinetist confessed that he played the Mondfleck poem on the A clarinet instead of the B-flat.
Decades later, Schoenberg still felt shame that he hadn’t noticed the prank. – Yours, etc,
JOHN DOHERTY
Vienna.
