Please accept our sincere apology for our apparent negligence in acknowledging and answering your letter of February 12. ² Mr. Arnold Shoenberg [sic] spoke highly of your ability and asked us to give serious consideration to your application.

The reason we have delayed our answer is because we have received a large number of applications, and naturally, we want to give consideration to each one. It is very unlikely that any man will be chosen without a personal interview. The expense of coming to St. Louis from San Francisco would be quite an item to you, and we would hesitate to ask you to do this unless we felt reasonably sure of a good possibility of your getting the position. We can not give this assurance to you, because we have received applications from a number of well-qualified people, many of them being much nearer to St. Louis. This places us in the position of being able to ask several of these men to come here for an interview without obligation on our part. Under the circumstances, we are quite sure that you would not want to risk the expense of making a trip here.

St. Louis is typically an American city, and we do not believe the average European artist would be able to adapt himself to our people in a short time. We doubt seriously if you have been in this country long enough to thoroughly understand our young people. If our students were older, we can well understand that you would have a great deal to give to them because of your association with Brahms, Busoni, and other masters.

We are returning herewith the reproduced copy of the letter from Busoni, and also the letter from Mr. Schoenberg.

Should your travels bring you near to St. Louis, we would deem it an honor to have a visit from you.

res-vt

P.S. Under separate cover, we are sending to you a copy of our current catalog.
R. E. S.

© Translation

Please accept our sincere apology for our apparent negligence in acknowledging and answering your letter of February 12. ² Mr. Arnold Shoenberg [sic] spoke highly of your ability and asked us to give serious consideration to your application.

The reason we have delayed our answer is because we have received a large number of applications, and naturally, we want to give consideration to each one. It is very unlikely that any man will be chosen without a personal interview. The expense of coming to St. Louis from San Francisco would be quite an item to you, and we would hesitate to ask you to do this unless we felt reasonably sure of a good possibility of your getting the position. We can not give this assurance to you, because we have received applications from a number of well-qualified people, many of them being much nearer to St. Louis. This places us in the position of being able to ask several of these men to come here for an interview without obligation on our part. Under the circumstances, we are quite sure that you would not want to risk the expense of making a trip here.

St. Louis is typically an American city, and we do not believe the average European artist would be able to adapt himself to our people in a short time. We doubt seriously if you have been in this country long enough to thoroughly understand our young people. If our students were older, we can well understand that you would have a great deal to give to them because of your association with Brahms, Busoni, and other masters.

We are returning herewith the reproduced copy of the letter from Busoni, and also the letter from Mr. Schoenberg.

Should your travels bring you near to St. Louis, we would deem it an honor to have a visit from you.

res-vt

P.S. Under separate cover, we are sending to you a copy of our current catalog.
R. E. S.

© Translation