Foreword to Midway in My Song

Here are excerpts from the Foreword to Lotte Lehmann's autobiography, Midway in My Song, published in 1938.

“Perhaps it is too early to write my memoirs....before one is ready to forsake the “well-trod stage”...I have tried to relate my life from the cool heights of objectivity. But I must confess that there are many things that I have put away in the storehouse of my thoughts because I feel that they are meant only for me...Only poetry could be the right expression for them....This book represents to me a restful pause for breath---looking back into the valley. I want to go on. Ahead of me I know lies still a goodly climb. I am now so much one with my art that I could not imagine my life without it. I shall continue to work for music even if time forces me to retire....I am too serious a servant of my art not to step back happily and willingly, when that time comes. [Lehmann’s emphasis] Even then there will be much for me to do...I can think of no better profession than teaching. [She ends the foreword writing...] [this book]...was not meant to be a document of vanity; it was meant to be a greeting to those who will come and be victorious.”

At the end of the autobiography, written when she still had many years left on the opera, concert and recording arenas, she wrote:

“...I am far from putting finis to this book...I still see heights before me...I have so much to say to the world---so much to give...Songs keep pouring in as if from inexhaustible springs.To master them, to give my soul to them---what finer task is there in life?”