Bernstein's descriptions of his concerts reveal some recurring tensions. He often wrote (without irony) of his “triumphs” on the podium, but his phenomenal public success in the United States, in Europe, and in Israel was often tempered by an underlying frustration: after describing yet another acclaimed performance, Bernstein would sometimes declare that he was going to do less and less conducting, in order to devote time to what really mattered to him – composition.
It was conducting that gave him the opportunity to travel extensively, and Bernstein wrote some memorable letters home describing the places he visited. From being a young man who told his Harvard friends that he wasn't sure whether European travel was for him, he became not only a globe-trotting maestro but also an unusually observant traveler, writing about the sights and sounds of Prague, London, and Paris in the years after the Second World War, of months spent in Italy in 1955, of South America, Japan, and – most touching of all, perhaps – the accounts of his long visit to Israel during the 1948 war.
“Every one I love, I love passionately”2
Music was Bernstein's greatest and most constant passion. But his love life was an essential part of his make-up, and his letters allow us to form a fuller picture of an emotional life that was full of twists and turns – neatly summarized by the conducter Marin Alsop in 2010: “Clearly, he was comfortable with being sexual in many different ways and yet he wanted a traditional life, with a wife and children to whom he was devoted. He was a complex, complex man, and complex people have complex personal lives.”3 Intriguing as the letters are from those (usually men) with whom Bernstein had relationships during the 1940s, I have chosen instead to focus on Bernstein's own attitude to his sexuality, and its implications for his career. In correspondence with Copland and David Oppenheim in particular, and in some letters to his sister Shirley and to Diamond, he explores his sexual identity, often revealing a state of confusion and inner conflict. On the one hand, his background inculcated traditional values and relationships – ultimately marriage; on the other, his preferences in the 1940s were usually for men. Once his college studies were over, he began a process of self-exploration with the psychoanalyst he called the “Frau” – Marketa Morris. As we can see from their letters, he shared the same analyst with Oppenheim (with whom Bernstein had a close, surely intimate relationship in the early 1940s; their friendship was lifelong).
It's no surprise that Bernstein remained silent on the subject of his sexuality in letters to Koussevitzky – until, that is, he proudly announced his first engagement to Felicia in December 1946, suggesting a picture of his sexuality that was at best incomplete. Bernstein himself was anxious that his sex life might have a damaging impact on his employment prospects, fearing he could have difficulty finding a job as a conductor if it became known that he was gay.
It's worth pausing for a moment to consider the cultural and social context that gave Bernstein such concern about how others might view his sexuality. Many American psychoanalysts in the 1930s and 1940s considered homosexuality to be a mental illness that could respond to “treatment”. The research by Alfred Kinsey and others published in 1948 as Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (the first “Kinsey Report”) attempted to codify degrees of homosexual, heterosexual, and asexual behavior in men with the “Kinsey Scale”, aiming to demonstrate that men did not fit into neat and exclusive categories.4
There was a predictably violent reaction to Kinsey's findings: among others, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, was quick to denounce the findings in the pages of Reader's Digest: “Man's sense of decency declares what is normal and what is not. Whenever the American people, young or old, come to believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong, normal or abnormal, those who would destroy civilization will applaud a major victory over our way of life.”5 In other words, homosexuality, like communism, was “Un-American”. Two years later, in December 1950, the austerely named Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments issued a report on the “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government,” coming to the hair-raising conclusion that “homosexuals and other sex perverts are not proper persons to be employed in Government for two reasons; first, they are generally unsuitable, and second, they constitute security risks.”6
Bernstein was not, of course, seeking employment in the government, but he craved acceptance. There's little solid evidence to suggest that conductors were not appointed to particular positions because of their homosexuality in the 1940s and 1950s, though Dimitri Mitropoulos apparently believed he had been victimized. But several of the most highly regarded figures in the arts were homosexuals, not least Aaron Copland, who had, by the mid-1940s, become the most popular and distinctive voice in American classical music. Bernstein, however, aspired to be the music director of a major American orchestra and felt– rightly or wrongly – that he needed to demonstrate he was a conventional, traditional family man. Despite Bernstein's frequent protestations that he craved the more private life of a composer (where his sexuality would not have been an issue), he could never let go of conducting as an essential part of his career.
What he didn't need to worry about as much was the possible impact his sexuality might have on his marriage – at least not as far as his chosen partner, Felicia Montealegre, was concerned. She knew what she was committing herself to: just after they married, she wrote: “you are a homosexual and may never change […] I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar (Letter 320).”
After a shaky start (mainly due to Bernstein's initial tendency to regard marriage as a kind of experiment), the relationship of Leonard and Felicia blossomed – particularly after Jamie, the first of their children, was born in 1952. An exceptionally bright child, it's clear from Bernstein's letters home how much he adored her. The same love shines through in Bernstein's comments on all his children (Jamie, Alexander, and Nina); and his absolute devotion to Felicia is apparent in many letters from the early 1950s until the mid-1970s. It was a relationship that had its rocky moments, but only with the crisis of 1976 and their “trial separation” did it threaten to fall apart. At the end of his life, Bernstein joked to Jonathan Cott that “you need love, and that's why I have ten thousand intimate friends which is unfair to them because I can't give any one of them everything”.7 But for a quarter of a century, Felicia was the exception: she was unquestionably the greatest love of his life.
Editorial Method
Original spellings have been preserved (except where stated otherwise), as have ampersands and punctuation in the main texts of letters, though opening salutations have been standardized to be followed by a comma. Names have sometimes been added in square brackets for the sake of clarification. Titles of works that would normally be italicized in a printed text (West Side Story, Fancy Free, The Age of Anxiety) have been italicized. In the original letters they appear in a variety of styles – in double quotation marks, in single quotation marks, underlined, in capital letters, in plain text. For the sake of consistency, I decided to standardize their presentation. Words underlined in letters have been italicized. Dates of letters are presented in a standardized day-month-year format, the form usually preferred by Bernstein himself. Where a date (or part of a date) is uncertain, or speculative, or deduced from the content of a letter, it is given in square brackets. Addresses have been standardized, and for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, those sent from outside the United States include the country. Those sent from within the United States include the standard two-letter state codes (NY, MA, CA, and so on). In rare cases where a word is unreadable, this has been noted in square brackets. Most letters are presented complete, but where cuts have been made, or where only an extract has been included, these are shown by an ellipsis in square brackets, thus: […]. In many cases the letters speak for themselves, but occasionally clarification or further explanation is necessary, and those letters can have quite extensive notes. I have also included short notes about
all the correspondents (at the end of the first letter to or from the person concerned). In the case of a particularly long or complex document such as Bernstein's 1953 affidavit, I thought it useful to include an explanatory note exploring the context in greater detail.
Acknowledgments
My largest debt of gratitude is to Mark Horowitz of the Library of Congress. I am immensely grateful to him for planting the idea for the project in the first place, and for all his subsequent help and advice, his constant support and encouragement, and his friendship. During many visits to the Performing Arts Reading Room of the Library, every single member of the staff I've encountered has been helpful and as done a great deal to make my research easier.
Marie Carter, Vice-President of Licensing and Publishing at the Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc., has been encouraging from the start, and extremely helpful throughout. I am deeply grateful for her patience in answering my numerous queries and the wisdom of her replies, and for allowing me access to newly released correspondence at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mervyn Cooke offered a number of invaluable suggestions after reading an early draft of the text. His wisdom and experience have done much to improve the book.
Sophie Redfern shared the fruits of her own research on Bernstein's early ballets with overwhelming generosity, and also read the text from start to finish with a most careful and discriminating eye. I am enormously grateful to her.
For various acts of kindness – large and small – there are many people I need to thank, including Mark Audus, Peter and Mary Bacon, Stephen Banfield, Adam Binks, Humphrey Burton, Marius Carney, William Crawford, Lauren Doughty, Barry Irving, Libby Jones, Barbara Kelly, John McClure, Dominic McHugh, Richard Marshall, Gary O'Shea, Tom Owen, Robert Pascall, Caroline Rae, Catherine C. Rivers, Reggie and Josephine Simeone, Máire Taylor, John Tyrrell, and, most importantly, my extraordinary wife Jasmine.
The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions, and would be grateful for any corrections, which will be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. For kind permission to quote letters, I thank the following individuals and institutions: The Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc., Ellen Adler, Marin Alsop, the Richard Avedon Foundation, the Britten-Pears Foundation, Humphrey Burton, Victor Cahn, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Christopher Davis (Marc Blitzstein), Sam Elliott (David Diamond) Martin Fischer-Dieskau Cornelia Foss (Lukas Foss), Very Rev. Nicholas Frayling (Walter Hussey), David Grossberg (Alan Jay Lerner), the Barbara Hogensen Agency (Thornton Wilder), Janis Ian, Pat Jaffe (David Oppenheim), Jay Julien (Farley Granger), Caroline Kennedy, Marko Kleiber, Alexandra Laederich (Centre international Nadia et Lili Boulanger), Maureen Lipman, Sandy Matthews (Martha Gellhorn), Michael Merrill (Bette Davis), Laurie Miller, Phyllis Newman (Adolph Green), Tom Oppenheim, Christopher Pennington (Robbins Rights Trust), Shirley Gabis Perle, Eddie Pietzak (Elia Kazan), Menahem Pressler, André Previn, Harold Prince (Saul Chaplin), Sid Ramin, Mary Rodgers, Isabella de Sabata, Gunther Schuller, Anthony and Andrea Schuman, Lady Valerie Solti, Stephen Sondheim, Stockhausen Stiftung für Musik, John Stravinsky, Margaret Styne, the Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; and Stanford University Library.
At Yale University Press, my proposal for this book was taken up with the sort of enthusiasm that would warm any writer's heart. When I first presented the project to Robert Baldock and Malcolm Gerratt, their eagerness did much to spur me on, and Malcolm has calmly nurtured the book throughout. Tami Halliday's eagle-eyed reading during the book's final stages was of the greatest assistance. Candida Brazil has overseen the editing of my unwieldy manuscript with kindness and skill. Steve Kent devised the attractive layout and design of the book. Thanks are also due to Lauren Doughty for compiling the index. The text has been improved beyond recognition by the copy-editing of Richard Mason and the proof-reading of Vanessa Mitchell. All its faults, however, are mine.
Nigel Simeone
Rushden, Northamptonshire
June 2013
1 Other letters from Gellhorn to Bernstein are to be found in Moorehead 2006, pp. 265, 277–9, 280–2, 290, 292–3, 317–18, 323–4, 351–2, 413–14, 438, and 482–3. The letter about Hemingway is not included in Moorehead 2006.
2 Leonard Bernstein to Mark Adams Taylor, quoted in Burton 1994, p. 507.
3 Dougary 2010.
4 Kinsey, Alfred C., Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin (1948): Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.
5 J. Edgar Hoover, contribution to “Must We Change our Sex Standards?”, Reader's Digest, June 1948, p. 6.
6 This report is reprinted in Foster, Thomas A., ed. (2013): Documenting Intimate Matters: Primary Sources for a History of Sexuality in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 144–7. According to an editorial note (p. 144): “More homosexuals than communists were fired from federal jobs in this period [the 1950s].”
7 Cott 2013, p. 77.
1
Early Years
1932–41
Leonard Bernstein was born on 25 August 1918, the first child of Jennie and Samuel Bernstein, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 25 miles north of Boston. He attended the William Lloyd Garrison Elementary School in Roxbury, 35 miles from Lawrence, then, from 1929 to 1935, the prestigious Boston Latin School – founded in 1635. The oldest public school in the United States, its distinguished alumni included five Founding Fathers of the United States (among them Benjamin Franklin), the author Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather. The most famous musician to attend Boston Latin School before Bernstein was Arthur Fiedler (1894–1979), conductor of the Boston Pops for half a century. It was here that Bernstein's interest in languages and literature began to flourish, but what already obsessed him as a teenager was music. His first piano lessons (in 1928) were from Frieda Karp, the daughter of a neighbor, who charged $1 an hour for a lesson. Bernstein remembered her as “unbelievably beautiful and exotic looking,”1 and his musical progress under her tutelage was swift. By 1930, he was taking lessons from Susan Williams at the New England Conservatory of Music, and in 1932 he auditioned with a former pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, Heinrich Gebhard, a distinguished soloist and the most sought-after piano teacher in Boston at the time. Gebhard believed that there was still fundamental technical work to be done, so he suggested Bernstein first take lessons with his assistant, Helen Coates. Bernstein's first communication with Miss Coates – who became his devoted secretary in 1944 until her death in 1989 – is also the earliest letter in this book. She taught him until 1935, when she sent him on to Gebhard, but by then they had become firm and devoted friends. Other friends and contemporaries with whom Bernstein corresponded regularly during his years at Boston Latin School, and later Harvard, included Sid Ramin, Beatrice Gordon, and Mildred Spiegel. Bernstein's letters to Sid Ramin are overflowing with shared enthusiasm for new musical discoveries – and talk of girlfriends – while to Beatrice Gordon he is passionate, self-revealing, and poetic. With very few exceptions, Bernstein's correspondence with Mildred Spiegel (later Mildred Zucker) has not been made public, but as this book goes to press the Library of Congress anticipates adding these letters to its collection shortly. They document an important and lasting friendship. Descriptions of this correspondence can be found in Appendix Two.
Bernstein mentions difficulties with his father in a number of his letters from the 1930s. A one-page essay written by Bernstein on 11 February 1935 entitled “Father's Books” begins: “My father is a very complicated human being. A man of irregular temperament and unusual convictions, he is a rare combination of the shrewd businessman and ardent religionist.” He was also an implacable opponent of Bern
stein's pursuit of a career in music, and relations between father and son were often strained. His mother, by contrast, provided a warm, supportive household in which her son's ambitions flourished.
It was while studying music at Harvard University (1935–9) that Bernstein made some of his most important friendships: three of them in 1937. In January that year, he met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, an encounter that left a deep impression on him. Then, as a music counselor at Camp Onota near Pittsfield, Massachusetts in the summer, Bernstein instantly formed a close bond with Adolph Green, who was to give him some of his first paid work (as pianist for The Revuers, nightclub performers of songs and comedy material, including Betty Comden, Green, and Judy Holliday) and who collaborated with him on two Broadway shows (On The Town and Wonderful Town). Finally, on 14 November, during a chance encounter at a dance recital in New York, Bernstein met Aaron Copland – father figure, confidant, and the closest Bernstein came to having a composition teacher.
Though it was as a pianist that Bernstein first attracted the attention of the local press, he confided to some of his closest friends that his real interest was conducting. In 1936 he wrote to Beatrice Gordon about auditioning to be assistant conductor of Harvard's Pierian Sodality (founded in 1808, and now known as the Harvard–Radcliffe Orchestra); at Camp Onota in 1937 he was photographed for the local paper conducting a group of children. In 1939, during his Senior Year at Harvard, Bernstein appeared for the first time as a composer–-conductor (directing his incidental music for a production of Aristophanes’ The Birds), and he directed Marc Blitzstein's musical The Cradle Will Rock from the piano.
After graduating from Harvard, Bernstein was uncertain about his future. He spent the summer of 1939 looking for a job in New York (sharing an apartment with Adolph Green), and explored the possibility of studying conducting at the Juilliard School (but he had missed the deadline). His only realistic option was to audition for the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia – specifically for the conducting class taught by Fritz Reiner – and he was admitted. From 1939 to 1941, he studied with teachers who were all at the top of their respective fields: conducting with Reiner, the piano with Isabelle Venegerova, orchestration with Randall Thompson, counterpoint with Richard Stöhr, and score-reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 2