{"id":15527,"date":"2024-12-02T15:34:33","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T15:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/?p=15527"},"modified":"2024-12-02T15:38:42","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T15:38:42","slug":"sothebys-sells-composers-love-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/2024\/12\/02\/sothebys-sells-composers-love-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Sotheby\u2019s Sells Composer\u2019s Love Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15528\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15528\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15528\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz-.jpg\" alt=\"Egon Wellesz\" width=\"1200\" height=\"628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz-.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz--300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz--1024x536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz--768x402.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15528\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Egon Wellesz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sotheby\u2019s London has announced the sale of love letters between the composer Egon Wellesz and the poet Elizabeth MacKenzie. The collection unearths new details in the lives of both artists.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s happening:<\/strong> The art and luxury auctioneering house Sotheby\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sothebys.com\/buy\/40de489d-86c1-49dd-b7a2-46b90da71ed7\/lots\/0491b9e4-1e5f-46ba-b042-1d7573f3058e\">announced the sale<\/a> of correspondences between composer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.egonwellesz.at\/e_wellesz_biographie.htm\">Egon Wellesz <\/a>(1885-1974) and poet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lmh.ox.ac.uk\/news\/memory-elizabeth-mackenzie-5-january-1921-19-july-2021\">Elizabeth MacKenzie<\/a> (1921-2021) from between 1943-1971. The collection includes over 1000 autographed letters as well as facsimiles of concert programs and Wellesz\u2019s compositions, discussions of Wellesz\u2019s opera Incognita (for which MacKenzie wrote the libretto), autographed first editions of Hugo von Hofmannsthal\u2019s Der Thor und der Tod (1902) and the libretto of Die Frau ohne Schatten (1911), and a signed photograph of Oskar Kokoschka\u2019s 1911 portrait of Wellesz.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In case you haven\u2019t heard\u2026:<\/strong> Egon Wellesz was an important composer during the Second Viennese School period. He studied with Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna and emigrated to England following the Nazi invasion in 1938, establishing himself in Oxford. There he met Elizabeth MacKenzie, a poet and scholar of English Literature at Oxford University.<\/p>\n<p>While the romantic connection between Wellesz and MacKenzie displayed in these letters is undeniable, the two maintained other relationships. Wellesz was married to the Viennese art historian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.proquest.com\/openview\/480dc3aaba39a2875bb68c47d5c8b89d\/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&amp;cbl=646362\">Emmy Stross<\/a> (1889-1987), with whom he had children and maintained a happy relationship. MacKenzie lived with the medievalist Patricia Kean, to whom Wellesz often sent his love when signing off his letters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sotheby\u2019s London has announced the sale of love letters between the composer Egon Wellesz and the poet Elizabeth MacKenzie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":15528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[360,193,3],"tags":[489],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2024\/12\/Egon-Wellesz-.jpg","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15533,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15527\/revisions\/15533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15527"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}