Paul Driver

In my review of Stephen Walsh’s Stravinsky biography the bald statement that Stravinsky and Schoenberg never met is an unfortunate accident (LRB, 8 February). I was well aware they met at a rehearsal of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire in 1912. The intention was to say that they never met during their sojourn in Hollywood.

Paul Driver writes: In my copy of Paul Horgan’s Encounters with Stravinsky the appendix citing this letter has been omitted as part of an abridgement by the author for the British edition (Bodley Head, 1972). The comments in the letter don’t entirely match Horgan’s evocation of Stravinsky’s speech throughout the book, but I would agree that Stravinsky’s conversational English was pungent.