The fondness Paul Cadmus felt for for his friend Webster Aitkin, the concert pianist, is evident in his letters.  Cadmus often discusses mutual friends, painting and music, and expresses his admiration of Aitkin's musicianship.  In a 1947 letter Cadmus muses, "I keep wishing: if only I were rich!  Not for the money; just so that I could commission you to do K. 503 and a Weber concerto--it mightn't be good, but I would like to hear it--for an invited audience:  yours & mine."  

Aside from how he felt about Weber's concertos, Cadmus  certainly had confidence in Aitkin's pianistic skills (developed through study  at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and with Emil van Sauer and Artur Schnable in Vienna) and an appreciation for piano literature. As he asks Aitkin in one letter, "So are you breaking, or by this time have broken the back of Eliot's sonata:  How pleased I am; it implies a back and a bone to break.  How rare!  In these days when the anatomy of the worm is body enough for most composers."

Postcard to Webster Aitkin from Paul Cadmus, August 19, 1946  8.6 x 13.5 cm.  Paul Cadmus letters to Webster Aitkin, 1945-1979,  Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Postcard to Webster Aitkin from Paul Cadmus, December 2, 1951  10.5 x 15 cm.  Paul Cadmus letters to Webster Aitkin, 1945-1979,  Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

In 1951, Cadmus spent the winter in Florence, Italy where spent time at the keyboard himself:  "J. also has a studio that's too cold to use--huge, with a huge grand piano on which we play d'Anglebert and Scarlatti.  I bought all 500 pieces of the latter.  There are really about 10 multiplied by 50. . . Have you for your clavichord, tried Azzolino della Ciaja?  He'is [sic] J's great discovery:  very bizarre and wonderful, I think. . ."

One of the most interesting documents in this collection is a letter which Cadmus wrote to Aitkin on a program for a recital given by the French pianist Alfred Cortot.  Cortot's story is a tragic one.  After participating in Nazi-sponsored concerts during World War II, he went from being a well respected musician who concertized frequently as a solo artist--and as part of a trio formed with the violinist Jacques Thibaud and the cellist Pablo Casals--to being forbidden to perform in France for one year after the war.  Though some argued that Cortot agreed to cooperate in order to help people from the inside, his choice to perform in these concerts caused irrevocable damage to his career, and his rejection by the public had negative effects on his health as well.  A critic, reporting on a 1948 concert Cortot gave at the Edinburg Festival to honor a recital Frédéric Chopin had given 100 years before, commented:
        It was in 1938 that I last saw Cortot, and what a shock it was to see him now--ten years later.  His face 
           is--quite literally--a mask of tragedy.  A weary gesture of the hand was the only acknowledgement he
           gave the tumultuous applause that greeted his appearance and as he began to play it seemed to me
           that two ghosts were present in Usher Hall--Chopin's and the ghost of the Cortot that once was.  His
           interpretation was, as ever, incomparable, but his technique seems to have gone to pieces.  He
           played like an old, old man.  It was so sad. 

Click here to see a transcript of the program 

Recital Program, Alfred Cortot, piano, January 6, 1951 containing letter
from Paul Cadmus to Webster Aitkin.  13.8 x 22 cm.  Paul Cadmus
letters to Webster Aitkin, 1945-1979, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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