page 5 note 1. It is certainly this sentence which has given rise to misunderstandings. In the booklet that accompanies the Columbia records of Webern's complete works (conducted by Robert Craft) I read: ‘Dallapiccola has described his own rather clandestine visit to Webern in Vienna in 1943 (sic) as a turning-point in his life’. No objection to the ending; but there was nothing either ‘clandestine’ or even ‘rather clandestine’ about my meeting with Webern. On that occasion at least, I risked nothing. In Europe, police checks, single, double or triple were (alas!) more than normal. One cannot, of course, expect this fact to be known in the U.S.A.

page 5 note 2. My opinion of Weill is somewhat different from Webern's. In my diary of 21 March 1936, published under the title ‘Meeting with Gustav Mahler’, I wrote: ‘I see at last, and with the utmost clarity, that the admirable third movement of Mahler's First Symphony is where part of the world of Alban Berg develops from, and that it contains, in embryo, the ‘ribald’ side of Kurt Weill.’

page 6 note 1. What in 1942 seemed to me incomprehensible is now clear to all who are familiar with Webern's work. With no difficulty we can see how much he owed to tradition, to the Ländler: and if we listen ‘transparently’ to the beginning of the Symphony op.21, it will not be too hard to perceive that despite all the differences it can be considered as a last glance back at the beginning of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

page 6 note 2. Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno, ‘Anton Webern: Zur Aufführung der Fünf Orchesterstücke in Zurich’ (Musikblűtter des Anbruch, VIII/6, pp 280–272).

page 7 note 1. Gertrude Hall's translation (NewYork, 1910) gives ‘The old gallic love of a joke is not dead’, while H. D. Norman's (New York, 1921) has ‘The old French gaiety is not quite dead’ (Ed.).