At eighty-two, Krenek did not really feel like investing time into answering my questions. His reply was friendly but negative: he was too busy with composing, and, at his age, I could not expect him to take time off to contribute to my project. He returned my questionnaire and wrote in hand “sometimes” after the first question, “no” after the second, and the following short comment after the third one: “I attempt not to repeat myself in my compositions. Whether basic traits can nevertheless be identified as being common to them all, constituting a personal style—this is subconscious, just as our handwriting.”

I was cheeky enough to cite the example of a number of composers who had responded favorably to my request, although they were equally busy. Krenek eventually gave in and sent the following rather brief replies (in English). Little did I know then that ten years later I would be promoting his music published with Universal Edition and would have a great deal to do with his devoted widow, Gladys.

I am sorry I failed to draw him out on his widely differing stylistic periods—for instance, whether his decision to convert to dodecaphony had been due in any way to a revelation similar to Lutosławski’s Cage experience.

I.

As to [question] I, I remember only these few cases for consideration: in the second movement of my Piano Sonata, Op. 59 (1928), I tried to apply the same trick that Schubert used in the last movement of his B-Flat Major Trio by transforming the 2/4 of the main theme into the 3/2 of the second without changing the tempo of the quarternotes. I did the same thing by using the tempo of the quarternotes of the March (4/4) in the 3/2 section of the second idea. Incidentally, he did the same thing in one of the late Three Piano Pieces, which I don’t have handy.

Obviously, the whole cycle of the Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen32 is influenced by Schubert, as well as various details of period construction in several works of the period 1925–30.