138. 4 August 2000 [ES] (Musicology; Schubert)

previously unpublished; © the estate of eric sams and beatrice cazac (Mrs. Mathew’s letters)

Dear Hayat,

   many thanks for the note and enclosure. Sorry, but I'm out of step with Pesic - not because I dissent from what he says, but because I can't really quite understand it. I suppose I belong to the English soft musicology school, which deals (as best it can) with the adventures of the soul among masterpieces; Pesic however is plainly a member of the hard musicological fraternity which comments on perceived fact. No doubt I ought to prefer the latter; but usually it defeats my understanding. Not that we're unfamiliar with Mein Traum (which as I'm sure you recall was treated as central by our Schubertian friend Christopher - who also incidentally traced the present ownership of the actual document), and everyone knows Hugh Macdonald's MT piece. I've even talked to Maynard Solomon, who thinks that Schubert was homosexual, a topic much debated hereabouts. But (forgive me) a piece that leads up to the supposedly powerful pronouncement that "Schubert's dream doubles the reality of wandering, even as it intensifies the miracle of return" cannot really, in my view, be founded on fact. I read this piece as soft musicology masquerading as hard.

   Love as ever,

   Yours Eric