ALS, three pages on two sheets, 6 x 9, Essex House letterhead, May 6, 1933. Significant handwritten letter to NBC music supervisor Walter Koons, responding to the question 'What is music?' In part: "I can’t define music. It needs too much space to begin to know where the defining ought to start. How much space, you may judge by the length of Gurney’s classic The Power of Sound, & by Vernon Lee’s recently published study, & by Sullivan’s chapters in his essay on Beethoven…In a little chapter on the treatment of music in poetry, which appeared in my anthology, Texts & Pretexts, I have collected some interesting evidence on the various ways music affects & is rendered by sensitive artists in another field. All I can say about myself is that, so far as I’m concerned, the chief appeal of music is not sensuous (tho’ of course I am, as everyone is, strongly affected by mere sounds.) I love music because I find in it most perfect expression of the noblest thoughts, feelings, states of mind. Hence my loathing for any music which seems to me in any way base. E.g. I can’t bear large parts of Wagner, because of the fundamental vulgarity & lowness which I feel in it—& this in spite of an immense admiration for the really staggering talents displayed by the music. I am less shocked by vulgarity & baseness in literature or plastic art—tho’ heaven knows they are odious enough there. In music, these things seem somehow a worse betrayal because music seems to me capable of a purer expression of nobility than are the other arts. No more: or I shall never stop." In fine condition.
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