The Princess

The inventive composer Arnold Schönberg was also an inventive story-teller. One of the stories he liked to tell his children was recorded on tape and is now published for the first time in print.

One of Schoenberg's favourite stories was of the ill-tempered princess and her addle-brained servant Wolf. It goes like this: In the afternoon the princess played tennis with the countess but the match didn't go well. She hurt her knee and is now bruised and in bed. Summoned to fetch a hot-water bottle, Wolf takes forever and when he finally returns there's no bottle because he couldn't decide whether to bring the blue or the brown one. What a nincompoop! To send him to a pharmacy you first have to explain what a pharmacy is. By the time he's finally found one, he can't remember where the princess's wounds are located. And the pharmacist needs to know to provide the right remedy. Will the princess ever be healed? We don't know – but still the story has a wonderful ending.
That Arnold Schönberg was both a great composer and a gifted painter is common knowledge. Here, he presents himself as a narrator with a fine instinct for children's humour – a quality he shares with illustrator and artist Peter Schössow.