Terry Teachout reports a dream in which Gustav Mahler listens to his piano-playing "with a look of extreme displeasure." I'm reminded of Benjamin Britten's dream of a huge, hunchbacked Stravinsky, pointing to a passage in the Cello Symphony and saying, “How dare you write that bar?” I recently had a dream in which I met Bartok. He was a very sweet, humble man. For some reason he was sitting in a row of desks with other people in a classroom setting, and when he put up his hand to talk about some mundane unmusical matter I suddenly realized, "Oh my God, it's Bartok." Afterward, I introduced myself. He was surprised and pleased that someone knew his music. He politely listened as I explained the structure of my book to him. His only reaction was, "Yes, I always wondered about Schoenberg."
