May I acknowledge immediately your letter of September tenth received in this morning's mail.

Concerning the forth paragraph of your letter, I shall be glad to send for your approval and signature a contract as soon as we are able to reach a decision by letter to our mutual advantage and satisfaction.

Concerning the fifth paragraph of your letter, I regret that we do not agree on the subject on whose responsibility it is to pay Mr. Richard Hoffmann. As stated in my letter of September seventh to you, I believe that this is a personal matter between yourself and Mr. Hoffmann. He is your able assistant and is being employed by you to do whatever work or revision you feel is necessary in connection with your Opus 16. Our business relationship, as I understand it, is between yourself as the composer and C. F. Peters Corporation as the publishers. I repeat the statement made in my letter to you of September seventh that “I am more than happy to have you participate on a 25-per cent (twenty-five per cent) basis on all royalties collected – with the understanding that I will pay for the printing of the score and for making orchestra material with the revision available on a rental basis.“ You state at the conclusion of your letter of September 10: “Expecting that everything will be alright, we start right now to work.“ If the arrangements outlined in my letter of September 7, and repeated in this letter of today's date, do not meet with your approval, then I can not assume responsibility for your beginning or continuing the work – I have made the maximum offer which I can possibly give to you.

I should also like to repeat one other paragraph from my letter of September seventh: “For one hundred and fifty years, the owners of Peters Edition have lived and worked in harmony with their distinguished composers and editors, and my sincere aim is to continue this policy.“ It is therefore exceedingly unpleasant for me to refer again (and for the last time) to the following subject. In your letter of September 10, you state: “You must not forget that this new version has become necessary through you not taking out a copyright at the time of the first publication. This was certainly not my fault, and this is why it seems to me doubtless that you have to be charged with all expenses resulting from this neglect. Perhaps I should even be allowed to expect a compensation for the losses which I have suffered because of the absence and non-protection of my work.“ In the first place, a copyright was cerntainly taken out at the time of the first publication. It is the subject of the renewal of this copyright which is under discussion and concerning the lack of which you persist in placing the blame entirely on C. F. Peters. As explained in detail in recent correspondence – and judging from your sympathetic reply, I was under your impression that you understood the situation – at the time when an application for the renewal of the copyright on your Opus 16 should have been sent in from C. F. Peters in Leipzig (the firm of C. F. Peters Corporation was not even established until September 1948), you will recall that the United States and Germany were both engaged in World War II. The Register of Copyrights in the United States during that period was prohibited from accepting from “alien countries“ any applications for renewals of copyrights. It was technically impossible for the Leipzig firm of C. F. Peters to request such a renewal of copyright on your Opus 16. During this same period of international conflict, may I again remind you of the fact that both my parents and two of my brothers died as the result of internment in Nazi concentration camps. As for my personal activities at the time, if such an explanation is necessary again, I was serving with the 106th Infantry Division of the American Army, in active combat at the borderline of Germany in 1944/5. I agree with your statement that it was certainly not your fault; on the other hand, you will also agree in fairness that certain inconveniences or “losses“ resulting from a world at war likewise are not our fault. It was not an impossibility for you personally, under the circumstances mentioned above, to write to the Register of Copyrights in Washington, D. C., and request a renewal of the copyright for your Opus 16. This privilege was yours as a resident of the United States during World War II.

For your interest, I am enclosig two articles which appeared yesterday in The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune.