The insights of the written
word when given to its reader are limitless.
Recently I have been reading Gena Branscombe’s letters to her publisher,
Arthur P. Schmidt of Boston. Her letters
begin in early January 1911 and continue through December 1951. The correspondence is abundant covering what
works will be published, royalties, what concerts she was performing and the
singers who were performing her songs.
She included personal matters of what her children were doing, their
shenanigans and the advice her husband gave her.
Then one particular letter caught
my attention with Miss Branscombe’s philosophical and heartfelt admiration of a
composer. Her writing style is in the
moment of what goes through her mind.
She uses dashes as a way of pausing to think of what she will express
next.
In her letter to Schmidt dated
June 26, 1915, she writes,
“The work of Wagner is to me
so transcendental - that I personally
feel that he – as a man – would only be carrying out a sacred trust when he
demanded – if he ever did – that the world – for whom he wrote should give him
a living. I couldn’t find it in my heart
to criticize him for anything – the scales are so mightily over balanced in the
world’s debt to him. It sounds very
wonderful to me that you have a letter actually written by him in the
flesh. I have such reverence for
Wagner and Beethoven as revealers of God through the medium which means most to
me – that I feel as though I could hardly have born it to have known them in
the flesh - and lived. That sounds young
– perhaps – but it’s most true.”
Arthur Schmidt had a Richard
Wagner letter thirty years after the composer’s death. Did someone give it to him, did he know
someone connected to the Wagner family or did he purchase it? We will never know yet he obviously shared
that information with Gena. She then
waxes poetic about her admiration for both Wagner and Beethoven.
Another letter written, February
7, 1916, caught me by surprise when she says,
“My Wagner’s letter hangs
right by my piano – and I find it very much of a friend. Have you the slightest idea to whom it was
written? Julien says he only lived at “4
Rue Uralign” a short time – so it must have been written to someone he really
liked or he wouldn’t have taken the trouble so soon after his arrival in
Paris. Julien never mentions Mathilde
Wesendonck – does he – and quite minimizes the friction between Wagner and Mrs.
Wagner. It is to me – an interesting history
– most illuminating in just the ways that some of the other histories are not
so helpful. It was more than good of you
to let me have it – ………” (For
clarification – Julien is Julien Tiersot, a French musicologist, who
wrote about Wagner.)
Gena had in her possession a
Richard Wagner letter gifted to her by Schmidt.
Was it his Wagner letter mentioned in her 1915 letter or another he
managed to purchase? What happened to
the Wagner letter, I do not know. She
may have kept it for a short while and returned it.
Possessing a hand written letter
of Richard Wagner today would be any serious musician's most treasured
item. You would hold this giant of a
composer in your hand with his spirit emanating off the page. The power of the written word in an actual
letter is something e-mail does not have the ability to convey.
