source file: m1447.txt
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 08:17:43 -0700

Subject: weird stories

From: Aline Surman <stick@uswest.net>

Here's a good one, from the Sunday June 14 issue of the Rocky Mt. 
News. This is reported by Marc Shulgold ( a very good friend of 
microtonal music in Denver, by the way)..."A former Nazi propagandist 
named Hans Scherbius says important wartime data collected by German 
spies was transmitted through the 12 tone music of New Viennese School 
composers." and ""These pieces were nothing more than cipher for encoding 
messages,"" Scherbius claimed, referring to the thorny music of Anton 
Webern, Alban Berg, and Arnold Schoenberg." Supposedly, for example, 
Webern's Opus 30 Variations for Orchestra contain "a mathematical grid  
that deciphered into German a comparison between the neutron release 
cross sections of uranium isotopes 235 and 238..." Sounds out there, but 
local composer Donald Keats goes on to point out that "Berg did encrypt 
secret thoughts to his mistress." So...Hstick