These letters from the poet and mystic Rainer Maria Rilke to a nineteen-year-old cadet and aspiring poet have inspired millions of readers since they were first published in English in 1934. The first and most popular translator of this work was Mary Dows Herter Norton—a polymath extraordinaire who played a crucial role in elevating Rilke’s global reputation. The Norton Centenary Edition commemorates this extraordinary woman, known as “Polly” to friends and colleagues, and celebrates the 100th anniversary of the publishing company she co-founded. With a foreword by Damion Searls and an afterword by Norton’s current president, Julia Reidhead, this handsome new edition brings Rilke’s enduring wisdom about life, love and art to a new generation.

Drawn by some sympathetic not in one of his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young would-be poet, on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world.

Accompanying the letters is a chronicle of Rilke's life showing what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote these letters.

For the rapidly growing thousands (both amateur and professional) who find the deepest satisfaction of life in playing chamber music, this is the only practical and authoritative guide. Beginning with such elementary problems as who should sit where, what kind of music stands to use, etc., it goes on to such puzzlers as just how loud forte is, how fast an allegro, how and when an inner voice takes over the lead, and similar problems in the works of composers from Haydn to the moderns. Every musical point is illustrated with specific examples, and there are 132 musical quotations in full score. The idea for writing this book was evolved while Ms. Norton was training with Louis Svecenski of the Kneisel Quartet, and the manuscript was carefully gone over and heartily endorsed by Franz Kneisel, leader of the Quartet which set the highest standards of this art in the United States. The dedication of the book to members of the Quartet, three of whom had been the author's teachers, was inevitable. An earlier version of the manuscript was brought out by Carl Fischer in 1925; the present revised version was prepared in 1961-2.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

1927. Translation by M.D. Herter Norton and Alice Kortschak. Contents: How to Approach the History of Music; Early Characteristics-The Greeks; Gregorian Music-First to Tenth Centuries; Polyphony, a New Art-Tenth to Fourteenth Centuries; The Netherlands; Polyphonic and Harmonic Music-Sixteenth Century; Instrumental Harmony; The Italians-Opera and Oratorio-Seventeenth Century; Bach and Handel; The Successors of Bach and Handel; Haydn; Gluck; Mozart; Beethoven; Early Romanticism-Weber and Schubert; National Romanticism in Concert and Opera; Wagner, Verdi, Bizet; Late Romanticism in Concert and Opera; and Modern Trends.

1927. Translation by M.D. Herter Norton and Alice Kortschak. Contents: How to Approach the History of Music; Early Characteristics-The Greeks; Gregorian Music-First to Tenth Centuries; Polyphony, a New Art-Tenth to Fourteenth Centuries; The Netherlands; Polyphonic and Harmonic Music-Sixteenth Century; Instrumental Harmony; The Italians-Opera and Oratorio-Seventeenth Century; Bach and Handel; The Successors of Bach and Handel; Haydn; Gluck; Mozart; Beethoven; Early Romanticism-Weber and Schubert; National Romanticism in Concert and Opera; Wagner, Verdi, Bizet; Late Romanticism in Concert and Opera; and Modern Trends.

1927. Translation by M.D. Herter Norton and Alice Kortschak. Contents: How to Approach the History of Music; Early Characteristics-The Greeks; Gregorian Music-First to Tenth Centuries; Polyphony, a New Art-Tenth to Fourteenth Centuries; The Netherlands; Polyphonic and Harmonic Music-Sixteenth Century; Instrumental Harmony; The Italians-Opera and Oratorio-Seventeenth Century; Bach and Handel; The Successors of Bach and Handel; Haydn; Gluck; Mozart; Beethoven; Early Romanticism-Weber and Schubert; National Romanticism in Concert and Opera; Wagner, Verdi, Bizet; Late Romanticism in Concert and Opera; and Modern Trends.

These two essays were written by Professor Blume for the monumental encyclopedia of which he was the editor, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. In the first study he examines the concept of the term 'Renaissance, ' summing up the views of art historians and others; the Renaissance attitude toward music: the treatment of the Renaissance as a period in music history: the various national styles and the types of composition in that period (this section constitutes about half of the essay); and finally the accomplishments of the Renaissance in music.

Translation by M. D. Herter Norton

These translations were the first to open Rilke's work to the English-speaking world in accurate, sensitive, modern versions free from both embroidery and slavish adherence to rhyme.

The poems appear in German and English on facing pages.