Continuing this story, in the period after the Great War, Margarethe Ungar was part of the artistic/social whirl of life in Vienna-then the music capitol of the entire world! She attended the Opera and the Wiener Philharmoniker often. She met Edouard deReszke, Enrico Caruso, Arturo Toscanini, Bruno Walter and many other great artists. She even got to meet the composer Alban Berg (1885-1935} at a party. She told me this about him, “Alban Berg was such a pleasant man with such a beautiful face but he wrote such horrible music!” I am an admirer of Berg’s music and gave her a skeptical look. She shook her head back and forth philosophically and said “Well, OK, but the libretti (to Wozzeck and Lulu) are just horrendous, simply horrendous!” On December 14th, 1919 Margarethe Hammerschlag married Felix Ungar. For her wedding she received a spectacular gift! Her friend Alma Mahler, widow of the composer, gave her one very large page of sketches ( skizzenblatt ) in ink for the Resurrection Symphony! Fifty years later, Frau Ungar showed me those very same sketches. I remember seeing the words “O Glaube” in bold scratchy black ink. Also, I remember that the manuscript was so large that it stuck out the edges of its frame. It was interesting for me to see that Mahler “sketched” in ink and not pencil. Here is some information about the page of sketches from the Mahler Foundation.
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