10 St Andrew's Place

London, NW1

Telephone: Welbeck 1066

21 November 1962

Dear Mr Van Thal,

Many thanks both for your letter and for sending me the
extraordinarily interesting book. As you know, it was not my
own choice that I didn't get it for review, and I rather wish
I had, because the wide range of date and subject have thrown
new light for me on the perennial fascination of E.N.'s mind
and personality: there is somehow more in it to discuss than
in the two "World of Music" volumes (incidentally, I see that
your Bibliography speaks of three, and wonder whether this can
be a slip?). You don't give (do you?) the original source
of the long opening essay, which is particularly revealing.
I was much interested to read the Newman/Shaw controversy at
full length. I had looked up the Elektra row at the time of
the publication of the extra Shaw volume, not long ago; but
had not realised that hostilities were resumed between the
doughty pair a few years later. Indeed the reader, observing
the date of the final salvo (3 Aug 1914), gets the impression
that it took the Kaiser to stop them!

What strikes me forcibly is how often, for all his
clarity and brilliance of mind, he could be resoundingly wrong
even in dealing with "his own" sort of subject, such as Strauss.
His initial reactions to Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra and Ariadne
do indeed make odd reading now - and in the light of his later
comments. Hofmannsthal's *aher* share in the first is "an
exceptionally good opera libretto" in OPERA NIGHTS - which is
a very different thing from *hix N*'s line on your p. 109.
And I can't help feeling that GBS was right to object to the
offensively patronising tone in which N conveyed his dislike
of what we *know* think Strauss's three best operas. It is as
though he had not merely written some poor music, but committed
an offence for which I dare say flogging would have been quite
an appropriate punishment! In short, though I haven't yet had
time to work through the whole book, it interests me everywhere
I have sampled it, but somehow leaves me with a faintly diminished
respect - not indeed for his intellectual powers - but
for his aesthetic judgement and magnanimity of temper.

I look forward to the Gerhardt piece. With many thanks,
Jens, Demain Shaw-Taylor