indeed forget.
I set off home to an unknown and apparently uninteresting future. I had no situation and I could not give independent concerts. At home there only awaited me, to my dismay, some students who wanted violin lessons. To be sure, my parents also awaited me and they were rich enough to see that I did not want for anything, and were tactful and kind enough not to press me and ask what was to become of me. But right from the beginning I knew that I should not be able to endure it long.
There is not much for me to say about the ten months that I spent at home. During this time I gave lessons to three students and despite everything was not really unhappy. People lived here also; things also happened here every day, but I only had a feeling of polite indifference toward everything. Nothing touched my heart, nothing swept me along. On the other hand, I secretly experienced strange, entrancing hours with music, when my whole way of life appeared petrified and estranged and only a hunger for music remained that often tormented me unbearably during the violin lessons and certainly made me a bad teacher. But afterwards, when I had fulfilled my obligations, or had evaded my lessons with cunning and excuses, I relapsed into a wonderful dreamlike state in which I built bold sound edifices, erected magnificent castles in the air, raised arches casting long shadows, and created musical patterns as light and delicate as soap bubbles.
While I went about in a state of stupefaction and absorption which drove away my previous companions and worried my parents, the dammed-up spring within me burst open even more forcibly and profusely than it had done the previous year in the mountains. The fruits of seemingly lost years, during which I had worked and dreamed, suddenly ripened and fell softly and gently, one after the other. They were sweet and fragrant; they surrounded me in almost overwhelming abundance and I picked them up with hesitation and mistrust. It began with a song, then a violin fantasia followed, then a string quartet, and when after a few months I had composed some more songs and several symphonic themes, I felt that it was all only the beginning and an attempt. Inwardly, I had visions of a great symphony; in my wildest moments I even thought of an opera. Meanwhile, from time to time I wrote polite letters to conductors and theaters, enclosed copies of testimonials from my teachers and humbly asked to be remembered for the next vacancy for a violinist. There came short, polite replies beginning âDear Sirâ and sometimes there were no replies, and there was no promise of an appointment. Then for a day or two I felt insignificant and retreated into myself, gave conscientious lessons and wrote more polite letters. Yet immediately afterwards I felt that my head was still full of music that I wanted to write down. Hardly had I begun composing again when the letters, theaters, orchestras, conductors and âDear Sirsâ faded out of my thoughts and I found myself fully occupied and contented.
But these are memories that one cannot properly describe, like most recollections. What a person really is and experiences, how he develops and matures, grows feeble and dies, is all indescribable. The lives of ordinary working people can be boring, but the activities and destinies of idlers are interesting. However rich that period remains in my memory, I cannot say anything about it, for I remained apart from ordinary social life. Only once, for moments, did I again come closer to a person whom I will not forget. He was a teacher called Lohe.
One day, late in the autumn, I went for a walk. A modest villa suburb had arisen on the south side of the town. No rich people dwelt in the small, inexpensive houses with their neat gardens, but respectable middle-class families and people who lived on small incomes. A clever young architect had erected a number of attractive houses here which I was interested to see.
It was a
I set off home to an unknown and apparently uninteresting future. I had no situation and I could not give independent concerts. At home there only awaited me, to my dismay, some students who wanted violin lessons. To be sure, my parents also awaited me and they were rich enough to see that I did not want for anything, and were tactful and kind enough not to press me and ask what was to become of me. But right from the beginning I knew that I should not be able to endure it long.
There is not much for me to say about the ten months that I spent at home. During this time I gave lessons to three students and despite everything was not really unhappy. People lived here also; things also happened here every day, but I only had a feeling of polite indifference toward everything. Nothing touched my heart, nothing swept me along. On the other hand, I secretly experienced strange, entrancing hours with music, when my whole way of life appeared petrified and estranged and only a hunger for music remained that often tormented me unbearably during the violin lessons and certainly made me a bad teacher. But afterwards, when I had fulfilled my obligations, or had evaded my lessons with cunning and excuses, I relapsed into a wonderful dreamlike state in which I built bold sound edifices, erected magnificent castles in the air, raised arches casting long shadows, and created musical patterns as light and delicate as soap bubbles.
While I went about in a state of stupefaction and absorption which drove away my previous companions and worried my parents, the dammed-up spring within me burst open even more forcibly and profusely than it had done the previous year in the mountains. The fruits of seemingly lost years, during which I had worked and dreamed, suddenly ripened and fell softly and gently, one after the other. They were sweet and fragrant; they surrounded me in almost overwhelming abundance and I picked them up with hesitation and mistrust. It began with a song, then a violin fantasia followed, then a string quartet, and when after a few months I had composed some more songs and several symphonic themes, I felt that it was all only the beginning and an attempt. Inwardly, I had visions of a great symphony; in my wildest moments I even thought of an opera. Meanwhile, from time to time I wrote polite letters to conductors and theaters, enclosed copies of testimonials from my teachers and humbly asked to be remembered for the next vacancy for a violinist. There came short, polite replies beginning âDear Sirâ and sometimes there were no replies, and there was no promise of an appointment. Then for a day or two I felt insignificant and retreated into myself, gave conscientious lessons and wrote more polite letters. Yet immediately afterwards I felt that my head was still full of music that I wanted to write down. Hardly had I begun composing again when the letters, theaters, orchestras, conductors and âDear Sirsâ faded out of my thoughts and I found myself fully occupied and contented.
But these are memories that one cannot properly describe, like most recollections. What a person really is and experiences, how he develops and matures, grows feeble and dies, is all indescribable. The lives of ordinary working people can be boring, but the activities and destinies of idlers are interesting. However rich that period remains in my memory, I cannot say anything about it, for I remained apart from ordinary social life. Only once, for moments, did I again come closer to a person whom I will not forget. He was a teacher called Lohe.
One day, late in the autumn, I went for a walk. A modest villa suburb had arisen on the south side of the town. No rich people dwelt in the small, inexpensive houses with their neat gardens, but respectable middle-class families and people who lived on small incomes. A clever young architect had erected a number of attractive houses here which I was interested to see.
It was a
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