The secret love life of composer Egon Wellesz
Daily Comfort ZoneSothebys are selling a trove of 1,500 love letters between the Vienna-born Oxford composer and musicologist Egon Wellesz (1885–1974) and the poet Elizabeth Mackenzie (1921–2021), Vice-Principal of Lady Margaret Hall.
Wellesz lived in ‘a very long and happy marriage’ with the art historian Emilia (“Emmy”) Franciska Stross. Mackenzie shared her life with the medievalist Patricia Kean.
Wellesz, who knew Mahler, was an early associate of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.
The sale closes on December 12.
Details here.
Patricia Kean, not Keen. Not to be confused with the other Oxford medievalist Maurice Keen, not Kean.
Wellesz’s work is criminally underrated.
Very interesting, about the weeding-out of middle parts in Mahler’s later scores. Hence the timbres of, for instance, Das Lied von der Erde. He did not like the lush sound of Wagner. Or, wanted to distinguish himself.
Please let us know how much these letters fetch at auction. Would they do as well as letters from, say, Alma Mahler, Edward and Wallis or even Taylor Swift? I doubt it somehow…