Henry Kissinger, Mozart and Second Drafts
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Benjamin Ivry May 28, 2010
In a memoir of his late parents Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley, “Losing Mum and Pup,” newly out in paperback from Twelve Publishers, Christopher Buckley quotes from the funeral oration given by Henry Kissinger at his father’s 2008 service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In it, Kissinger states that the elder Buckley “wrote as Mozart composed, by inspiration; he never needed a second draft.”
The sheer notion of juxtaposing W. F. Buckley and Mozart is an unintentional example of the “laugh-out-loud humor” promised by one back cover blurb for “Losing Mum and Pup.” But Kissinger, like Buckley fils, takes his oration entirely seriously, even posting it on his personal website. The notion of composing “by inspiration; he never needed a second draft” may apply to Buckley, a lifelong deadline journalist and author of trashy spy novels, but has nothing whatsoever to do with Mozart.
As the eminent Cornell University musicologist Neal Zaslaw points out in “Mozart as a Working Stiff,” an essay reprinted in “On Mozart” (Cambridge University Press), “we know that Mozart sketched,” laboring over different drafts of some compositions over a period of years. Some Mozart manuscripts “show second thoughts and hesitation,” Zaslaw emphasizes, citing Mozart’s 24th Piano Concerto in C Minor, K. 491.
Maybe Kissinger was simply confusing Mozart with left wing gay Jewish poet Allen Ginsberg, who loudly proclaimed “First thought, best thought,” although understandably, Kissinger might not have wished to link Buckley and Ginsberg at St. Patrick’s, and decided to drag in Mozart instead.
Kissinger (born Heinz Kissinger to a Bavarian Jewish family in 1923) has many enemies, notably Christopher Hitchens, who for over a decade has made a plausible case in articles, a documentary film, and a new memoir, “Hitch-22,” (also from Twelve Publishers) for regarding Kissinger as a war criminal.
Faulting the politico, who turned 87 on May 27, for misunderstanding Mozart may be like criticizing a death row inmate’s taste in socks, but decisions in the arts can also be directly linked to political actions, as a much-anticipated book to be published in the United States on October 4 by Yale University Press, “Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon” by Erik Levi, details. Even before Professor Levi’s book is available here, Kissinger helpfully shows that Nazis were not the only ones to misappropriate Wolfgang Amadeus for political purposes.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
