Henze | Sacher

The correspondence between Paul Sacher and Hans Werner Henze comprises 357 postal documents, of which 179 were written by Sacher and 178 by Henze, with secretaries and other people also occasionally writing on their behalf. The postal documents span the years 1952 to 1998. Additionally there 9 documents preserved. The correspondence language is German, the only exception being a few telegrams written in Italian.

Both parts of the correspondence are preserved at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Henze’s letters in the Paul Sacher Collection and Sacher’s letters in the Hans Werner Henze Collection.

Paul Sacher

From the beginning of his correspondence with Henze, Paul Sacher used his own stationery , which was designed by Jan Tschichold, who also worked for the Basel Music Academy (see Jan Tschichold’s estate in the German National Library DBSM.StSlg.NL.Tschichold ). The carbon copies were made on a thin yellow paper.

The typewriter Sacher and his secretaries used did not have a “1” for a long time, which is why this was replaced by an “l”. As a rule, double spaces were inserted after sentence-ending characters such as periods, question marks and exclamation marks. As was customary in Switzerland, no “ß” was used.

On typewritten letters, and therefore also on carbon copies, the address to which the letter was sent is always noted at the bottom of the page.

Only Sacher’s very “private” letters are handwritten. They were written with a fountain pen in his rather large and characteristic but legible handwriting. Sacher always used an “&” for “and”. The ink used is blue with a clear hint of purple.

Hans Werner Henze

The evolution of Henze’s handwriting can be easily traced over the long period covered by the correspondence. As described in the introductions to other sets of his correspondence, this includes the progression from a normal cursive script to often unconnected letters (that look like block letters) and wide spacing between the words that characterized his later hand writing. In the early years, Henze used a capital “I” as a “J” (incidentally, he also did this in his typewritten letters), the “I” later becoming a Roman “1”. He also went from using standard upper/lower case letters to a uniform lower case, in which only the salutations and names were capitalized. In his late years (1990s), Henze returned to normal spelling and grammar rules.

In the beginning, Henze often wrote with a fountain pen, later also using a ballpoint pen and then for many years a felt-tip pen, often a so-called fineliner. But at the end of March 1997 he lamented:

When Henze himself used the typewriter in the early years, there are quite a lot of corrections (typewritten or handwritten) and usually no spaces after punctuation marks.

Henze did not use personal stationery until 1962, after he had taken up permanent residence in Castelgandolfo. In Marino, the address printed on the paper changed over the years, but the mostly thin, light-blue colored paper remained constant. However, Henze also owned a different light-colored paper (both papers in at least two sizes), as well as simple and folded cards with his address print on them. Henze occasionally wrote crosswise on his stationary (see the material description), resulting in unusually long lines of text.

Henze as Conductor

Henze as composer