New Orts #40
October 20 MMXXIV
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
— Kurt Vonnegut, The New Yorker, May 2005
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and the last remaining clouds have faded away.
We sit together, the mountain and I,
until only the mountain remains.
— Li Po (701-762)
Transcription occupies an important place in piano literature; from the proper perspective, every great piano work is a reduction... Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, all thought there was value in transcription.
— from a letter from Ferruccio Busoni to his wife, July 1913
To play these [Schubert-Liszt] transcriptions nowadays is an offense against Schubert and a detriment to the taste of our time.
— from an article by Artur Schnabel in The Musical Courier, April 1928