The Harmony of the Soul: Sigfrid Karg-Elert's Letters "To His Australian Friends"

Book excerpt: Sigfrid Karg-Elert was an important composer in the first decades of the 20th century. He was however largely ignored as a composer in his native Germany until the 1960s, but it was the English-speaking world which 'discovered' him in the early 1900s and realised that he was one of the most important organ-composers of his era. Arthur Nickson was a leading Australian-born musician, initially trained in Melbourne, and later in London. This book contains the letters from a bilateral correspondence, which started cautiously, formally, in 1913; it was interrupted by the Great War but recommenced in 1923. Nickson shared these letters with few others. Many had no idea of their content until the collection was published for the first time, solely in an English translation, in 1996. This is now the second edition of that same work, in which some translations are revised, more extensive annotations provided, and the entire original German text reproduced.