Letters as a source of history

My father sent me an envelope full of letters that I wrote to him during my time in Schladming (1980 and 1981). I was in my very early twenties, very forthcoming, on my own in Europe with my first job, and very full of myself. I read them through, put them in order, and put them back in the envelope. I put the envelope in a drawer. I'm not interested in reading them again, but they might interest a grandchild some day.

Or not. My handwriting is the same (how I wish that the Geha fountain pen I used exclusively at that time still worked), but I do not feel much kinship with the person who wrote those letters. A lot of growing can happen in forty years. To anyone reading this post who knew me at the time, I sincerely apologize for the many stupid things I must have said and done during my young years that I didn't write about in my letters home.

This letter incident mixes nicely in my mind with a little bit of interaction I had with an unidentified-here-but-otherwise highly-regarded musicologist (I'm not saying how long ago) concerning a well-known composer of the vast pre-internet past. This musicologist believes that a sometimes-identifying characteristic about this composer that some think of as culturally important is not really important, because sources (like letters) do not say anything about the connection this composer has to a particular cultural institution. I pointed out (in person--not in writing) two instances that point to what could be an important connection for this composer and her/his family to the (unnamed in this post) cultural institution. The musicologist had never thought about either item. If they did, it would challenge their whole thesis, and nullify the direction and focus of their scholarship.

If the only thing that survived after my demise was this packet of letters I wrote to my father forty years ago, nobody would know much about the adult person that I have become. This blog, a public record of my comings and goings, interests and projects, and bits of reflection on parts of my past that I choose to share, will, hopefully, give my grandchildren a better picture of the kind of life I built for myself as an adult. There was a lot I didn't write about (see the last sentence of the first paragraph) in my young adulthood that I would rather not remember. And if I didn't commit those events to paper with my Geha pen, nobody would know about events and associations in my past that might be significant enough to me not to be able to forget, and important enough for me to keep to myself so that they are never revealed. Please don't ask. I won't tell.

If I lived during a time when it was extremely dangerous to practice or be associated in any way with a particular religion, like Judaism, I would probably not write letters about it. I would confine my interactions concerning that matter to conversations with people who would also feel the need to keep their association with Judaism undocumented. Consider the conversos who practiced Judaism during the Spanish Inquisition. I would probably be very careful about my written communication if I were a non-communist in Soviet Russia.

I have thought often of under-documented relationships of the past, particularly the musical ones. I imagine that Mozart and Haydn spent a lot of undocumented time together in Vienna. I imagine that Schubert and Beethoven had an undocumented private friendship as well. There were also a great many interactions that these four composers had with other friends, musical and otherwise, and zillions of things we will never know about them. So much of music history seems to be stitched together from this (personal) letter here, that program there, somebody writing about meeting someone somewhere, and the occasional photograph or portrait.

[Consider Ethel Smyth's account of meeting Augusta Holmes when she showed up unannounced at her home. Smyth described Holmes as a "hag." Smyth didn't know that Holmes was very sick with cancer at the time. Smyth expected a woman of glamour and found a human being who was suffering from a very human disease. Smyth's impression is one that endured for a long time. Now that we are able to hear and see some of Holmes's music and know more about her life from other sources, we have the ability to make our own impressions.] 

 I believe it is what people who write music, make visual artwork, and write poetry, prose, and scripts (plays and movies) put in their work is what matters most. Letters can be fun (sometimes), but I think that a body of music is the best window into the mind of a composer. Actually, when all is said, done, practiced, rehearsed, and played, it is the only thing that matters.