Auden, Wystan Hugh: Brief an Henze, Hans Werner. New York, Donnerstag, 9. Dezember 1965
author: Auden, Wystan Hugh
language: en
availability: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Copyright by the Estate of W. H. Auden. By courtesy of the Estate of W. H. Auden. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

77 St Mark's Place
New York City 3
N.Y. New York 1000 3

Dec 9th 1965 (1964)[^1]

[^1: As already observed in other letters, Henze may have later added the date of the letter in parentheses, in pencil, probably for archival purposes. In this case, he accidentally dated this letter to the year 1964 instead of 1965. The dating is ascertained from the content of the letter: Auden actually answers a question Henze had asked in his letter of 5 December 1965. Furthermore, he tells Henze that he made a mistake with his address, which is indeed wrong in the letter of 5 December 1965.]

[An arrow points to the address.] Please correct address in your files. I was lucky to get your letter at all. [In his previous letter, Henze had, in fact, made a mistake in Auden's address.]

Dear Hans:

Many thank for your letter of the 5th . The Theme the Captain is ordered by Pentheus to pursue and kill are all the Bassarides left on Cytheron.[^2] At the beginning of the Scene the Captain tells Pentheus that he had already succeeded in rounding up a handful whom we see, ie, Agave, Tiresias, Slave, her daughter, the Stranger etc.[^3]

[^2: Here, Auden is referring to the beginning of Movement III, Part I of The Bassarids in which Pentheus orders the Captain of the Guard: Take all your men. Pursue Them to Cytheron. Root them out. Kill. Kill. Kill. In particular, Auden answers Henze's question from his previous letter, explaining that the them refers to the Bassarids and not to the Captain's men.]

[^3: Here, Auden refers to a scene in Movement II, in which the Captain of the Guard arrived from Cytheron with some Prisoners: Agave, Autonoe, Tiresias, and a youthful Stranger (i.e. Dionysus), some male Bacchants and a young Woman with her daughter.]

As soon as I receive some of the piano score from you, I will set the wheels in motion about the translation.[^4] This I should do via our agent Curtis-Brown who will know the legal situation better than I.[^5]

[^4: Here, Auden is alluding to the second translation the libretto of The Bassarids into German by Maria Bosse-Sporleder. The libretto was originally to be translated by Helmut Reinold, but his work caused numerous disagreements among the librettists, see for example Auden's letter of 11 December 1964. The piano score Auden was to receive soon is also mentioned by Henze in a letter he wrote to Bosse-Sporleder on 5 December 1965, in which the composer wrote that she would receive the piano score with annotations. Further information lies in Henze's correspondences with Reinold and with Bosse-Sporleder, kept at the Paul Sacher Foundation.]

[^5: The agent would probably have had to deal with the legal situation of cancelling the contract with Reinold and concluding the new contract with Bosse-Sporleder, who had been working on the translation since at least October 1965.]

much love
Wystan