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About ten years ago down at Black Mountain College
during a summer session, I arranged an
amateur festival of the works of Erik Satie.
There were altogether twenty-five concerts,
most of them about thirty minutes long. A few
were longer. For each one I prepared a talk
about the music which was to be heard.
This was necessary because most of the people
there had a German point of view and the music I
was presenting was French. Satie had
little fondness for German music. He told
Debussy, for instance, that what was needed
was a music without any sauerkraut in it,
and he remarked that the reason Beethoven was so
well known was that he had a good publicity
manager. So after about ten of the
concerts and talks, I gave a good-sized
talk about music in which I denounced
Beethoven. A few days later, Patsy
Lynch (now Patsy Davenport) knocked on my door
and said, “I think I understand
what you said about Beethoven and I think I
agree. But I have a very serious question to
ask you: How do you feel about Bach?”
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