The Leonard Bernstein Letters
Page 5
With affection,
D. Mitropoulos
24. Dimitri Mitropoulos to Leonard Bernstein
The Biltmore, at Grand Central Terminal, New York, NY
7 June 1938
Dearest friend,
Thank you! I was so unhappy this last time! But now everything is again all right. I was so stupid to think that you didn't care so much about me. Wasn't I stupid?
Your picture is so good, I like it, God bless you!
You see, my dear boy, sometimes I am so sad, and I need so few, just a little to be happy, and this little sometimes nobody gives me, it seems to avoid me.
Can you imagine for a moment, I thought I lost your love, and then, I was asked me, perhaps I am not right to ask anything, to expect anything, from anybody, that my destiny is to be alone with myself and my art.
But you my dear friend, tell me, it is not so, I am something for you, yes … don't forget me.
Goodbye dear,
Dimitri
25. Leonard Bernstein to Aaron Copland
Eliot E-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
[received 20 October 1938]
Dear Aaron,
It's going to be hard to keep this from being a fan letter. The concert was gorgeous – even the Dvořák.26 I still don't sleep much from the pounding of:
in my head.27 In any event, it's a secure feeling to know we have a master in America. I mean that too (don't pooh-pooh). I sat aghast at the solid sureness of that construction of yours. Timed to perfection. Not an extra beat. Just long enough for its material. Orchestral handling plus. Invention superb. And yet, with all that technique, it was a perfect rollercoaster ride. And it's not the exhaustible kind of cleverness (like Françaix, or his ilk).
I want seriously to have the chance to study with you soon. My heart's in it. Never have I come across anyone capable of such immediate absorption of musical material, possessing at the same time a fine critical sense with the ability to put that criticism into words successfully. This is not rot. The little demonstration you gave with those early things of mine proved it to me conclusively.
Saw the Group Theatre bunch today and they all asked for and about you. [Clifford] Odets,28 true to form, thinks the Salón México “light”, also Mozart except the G minor Symphony. That angers me terrifically. I wish these people could see that a composer is just as serious when he writes a work, even if the piece is not defeatist (that Worker word again) and Weltschmerzy and misanthropic and long. Light piece, indeed. I tremble when I think of producing something like the Salón.
Casting is a wretched business.29 It's slow but sure. And so tiring. (What word from the Marc [Blitzstein]?) But I think we'll have a fine show.
Let me hear soon. As Dame Fortune said to you backstage last Saturday night, “On to bigger & nobler things.”
Always,
Lenny
P.S. I hope you're really haunted by:
Maybe not convincing, but maybe haunting.
26. Aaron Copland to Leonard Bernstein
International Society for Contemporary Music, United States Section, New York, NY
[October or November 1938]
Dear Lenny,
Of course you're crazy! I'm sorry if you felt a “strained feeling” that Saturday. The moral being – you mustn't be so sensitive. I remember Victor [Kraft] was acting strangely and I was embarrassed at not being able to invite you to the ballet30 – but that's nothing to have “omens” about. Anyhow – remember this – I feel much too friendly and sympathetic to you for anything I can possibly imagine making our relations “strained”.
As a peace offering, I'm sending you a copy of the Second Hurricane31 which is just out.
Affectionately,
Aaron
27. Leonard Bernstein to Aaron Copland
Eliot E-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
[received 19 November 1938]
Dear Aaron,
In the midst of ten million other things I'm writing a thesis for honors. I think it's interesting – certainly it is potentially interesting. The subject is Nationalism in American music – presumably a nonentity but on the whole a vital problem. We've talked about it once or twice. You said, “don't worry – just write it – it will come out American.”
The thesis tries to show how the stuff that the old boys turned out (Chadwick, Converse, Shepherd, Gilbert, MacD[owell], Cadman etc.) failed utterly to develop an American style or school or music at all, because their material (Negro, American Indian, etc.) was not common – the old problem of America the melting pot. Having ruthlessly revealed the invalidity of an Indian tune surrounded by Teutonic development, etc., I will try to show that there is something American in the newer music, which relies not on folk material, but on a native spirit (like your music, and maybe Harris’ & Sessions’ – I don't know), or which relies on a new American form, like Blitzstein's. Whether this is tenable or not, it is my thesis and I'm sticking to it.
Now how to go about it? It means going through recent American things, finding those that sound, for some reason, American, and translate that American sound into musical terms. I feel convinced that there is such a thing, or else why is it that the Variations sound fresh and vital and not stale and European and dry?
This is where you can help, if you would. What music of what other composers in America would support my point, and where can I get hold of it? Would the music of Harris? or Ives? or Schuman? or Piston? or [Nicolai] Berezowsky? You see, I know and hear so little American stuff. This is my great opportunity to get to know it well, and find out something about it. I feel more and more that there's something to all this, and that it can be told in terms. I'll be infinitely thankful for any suggestions.
Again, thousands thanks for the Second Hurricane – it's just swell.
Always,
Lenny
28. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman32
Eliot E-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
6 December 1938
It's wonderful, Ken, the way you lack enthusiasm when it's more or less expected of you. Hello. A dull thud – that's the way your letter read. 500th crossing, and all that – trip is really as can be expected.
But it was very good to hear from you, all wrapped up in your mauve-lined Parisian envelope. […]
Everything is almost O.K. You ask after the Advocate33 competition – I won. I am now proud possessor of all manner of records. As for the Birds – I won that too, and am busy as a bee on the composition and orchestration thereof. As for courses, I am fuguing and advance orchestrating and thesising, and another half next half (what am I saying). [Tillman] Merritt hates me, but Mother loves me. [Walter] Piston doubts me, but Copland encourages me. I hate the Harvard Music Department. You can quote that. You can even print it if you want. I hate it because it is stupid & highschoolish and “disciplinary” and prim and foolish and academic and stolid and fussy. I want to go home.34 […]
Toujours –
Bernstein
29. Aaron Copland to Leonard Bernstein
Hotel Empire, Broadway at 63rd Street, New York, NY
7 December 1938
Dear Lenny,
I know I'm late in answering but I've been swamped with things to do and your letter asked so many questions!
Aren't you coming down to N.Y. during Christmas holydays? And since it would be so much better to do this viva voce than by letter, could it wait till then for my grandfatherly advice?
You sound as if you were very much on the right track anyhow both as to ideas and composers’ names. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because a Gilbert used Negro material, there was therefore nothing American about it. There's always the chance it might have an “American” quality despite its material. Also, don't try to prove too much. Composing in this country is still pretty young no matter how you look at it.
Good luck and let's hear if you're coming down.
Consider yourself missed.
A.
> 30. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman
Eliot E-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
17 January 1939
Dear Kenuel,
I had a mad inspiration to write you several days ago when the enclosed suddenly popped up in one of my pockets. But put it off again and again I did, and so it was after all your letter which evoked this little opus. Mad Shirley tells me that our Stark (“Watch that boy”) played the lead in the school production of Tovarich some time ago, and walked off with the public-speaking prize. Are we proud!
Life has been going on, as it has a way of doing. Just a series of minor catastrophes of varying kinds. Most noteworthy: I left a valuable manuscript of Copland's plus another printed piece of his plus a valuable manuscript book of mine plus a valuable fountain pen plus all my thesis notes over which I had theoretically slaved (!) in New York on the train coming back from that City of Sin. The infallible New Haven Railroad is unable to find these things, which means that I must start my thesis all over again at double speed, and type this letter, faut d'un stylo, and be generally upset at having lost Aaron's manuscript for him. He of course took it as only he could take it – with a philosophical phrase. Good old Aaron: if it had been anyone else but he I should long ago have gone into voluntary exile.
Aaron, by the way, could never understand my lack of desire for going abroad. In his day, says he, there was never a composer who would not insist on Paris first. I have always been inclined to pooh-pooh the idea, on the grounds that a composer can go through his “Paris” period here in America as well as abroad. But lately little ideas have been creeping around in the brain. The thought of Paree attracts me mightily these days. And your letter has set me off on another gush. It would be wonderful, I am convinced. Of course, a great deal depends on funds. But there's always the possibility of a fellowship (please Goddy Woddy); and then my father almost bowled me over last night with the statement that he would be responsible for me for one more year after college to the extent of the equivalent of what it takes to keep me in college one year. I may go abroad with it if I choose (sounds impossible to me), or to a music school. I still don't know whether to take him seriously or not. But that added to a fellowship would be simply de trop, as Mary Boland says.
You see, Ken, the sudden surge toward la vie transatlantique is due, I suppose, to an equally sudden horror of what is to come here next year. I planned for a while on a few months in Mexico. It would be swell, but, in the final analysis, pretty unconstructive. I also toyed with the idea of California (I'm still a C———iac35) for a year or so. But I know all the while that I am not yet prepared to settle down somewhere and write music. I still have so much to study. In America there is but one person I am interested in working with after college, and that's Aaron. Now (how mathematical this discussion is) working with Aaron involves being in New York. Maybe it's just that I've recently returned therefrom and had a bellyful, but more and more I do not want to go there – at least not yet. The people of the “artistic world” that I encountered on this last trip revolt me in every way. I have been made sick by the depravity of the Greenwich Villagers, the totally degenerate homosexuals, the equally degenerate heterosexuals, the foolish and destructive attitudes, and the frantic attempts to preserve the atmosphere of postwar bohemianism. Oh, there are some who are all right, of course. They are far and few enough, God knows. And the thing I am really afraid of is that I could so easily fall prey to that sort of thing. You may remember my chief weakness – my love for people. I need them all the time – every moment. It's something that perhaps you cannot understand: but I cannot spend one day alone without becoming utterly depressed. Any people will do. It's a terrible fault. And in New York, the people who would fill that place with me would inevitably be those wretched people who haunt the Village Vanguard by night, and each other's studios by day, and act positively in only one way – as a destructive and retarding force in their societies. This, by the way, is not bitter or dramatic in any way. But it is this great horror of taking my place with these people, and becoming an “artist” that half kills me. There are two rebuttals, of course. One, you should say that I ought to be strong enough to resist all this; but sometimes I am much afraid that it wouldn't take too much effort on my part before I would be like them. I always absorb my surroundings – but to a degree! Second rebuttal: Paris holds the same kind of crowd and the same lack of healthy art. Well that's for you to tell me. I don't know. Let me know the lowdown soon. I am thinking very seriously now of going abroad.
Strange how I miss you. Perhaps I'm not so “universal” or promiscuous as I thought. You were very important to me last year. So steadying for me; and you helped me over many a rough place without perhaps knowing it. No, the afterthought is not after all, “He meant well. Good old Ken.”
The Birds comes along slowly and unsteadily. The whole score is finished but the Finale. The chorus doesn't show up for rehearsals. The orchestra is still being slowly assembled. But it's fun.
The [Harvard] Advocate has a new Board, all Socialites. So the new Music Editor is a Socialite. No more records for little Lenny.
I have already reset the ribbon on this machine twice, which means that this is a very long and probably silly letter, and I ought to stop.
My best to Aunt Mattie, whom etc., and to all the Messings, Truebloods, Bluebloods, Peggrams, etc. that you come across.
Happy skiing.
Always,
Len
[…]
31. Dimitri Mitropoulos to Leonard Bernstein
Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, Minneapolis, MN
18 February 1939
My dearest friend,
At last a letter from you. I was completely despaired and beginning to think that you completely forgot me. For a while I thought it was because I sent you by mistake a letter without signing it, and that you were offended; but fortunately your letter came to prevent my disappointment.
I am very happy to hear that you are working hard, but I am sorry to see that you neglect your piano, which could be a great help to your career.36 I see you too come to the position now to have problems: musical, artistic, social and spiritual – and the worst of all, sexual. Unfortunately I am too far away to help – to give you good advice. But I hope you are a clever boy and that you realize the great responsibility toward yourself, its importance. As far as the conditions of my personal life are concerned, actually, I must tell you that neither my life nor my Weltanschauung has undergone any change; but it has improved, I think, in wisdom and in self-concentration.
May I tell you an agreeable thing. I am invited to conduct the Boston orchestra in the middle of next January for two weeks. I look forward to have some moments again in your inspiring and friendly company.
With my best wishes,
D. Mitropoulos
32. Aaron Copland to Leonard Bernstein
Hotel Empire, Broadway at 63rd Street, New York, NY
[April 1939]
Dear Lenny,
I've been meaning to write and tell you what a swell host you make and how pleasant in retrospect my little “week-end” was, and now it has to be accompanied by this regretful letter from La Holm37 which of course spoils my effect. But don't fret – something must turn up sooner or later.
When I got back here I learned that Quiet City has been cancelled. The Group [Theatre] wasn't satisfied so my career in the theatre has been a flop – obviously. Nothing left to do but write a Piano Sonata.38 Or perhaps something special called “The Beach at Revere” or “The Birches at Sharon”.
Well anyway – I hope something will drive you to N.Y. soon. D[imitri] M[itropoulos]'s Greek concert, or the World's Fair, or my ballet or sumpin!
Best to you,
A
33. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman
Eliot E-51, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
April [1939]
Great & Good Kenneth,
To think!
a) No fellowship
b) No job at Mills College this summer. They're reducing their staff, and cutting out the production end entirely, reserving only [for] educational.
c) I'm dead on my feet. I just handed in the thesis, having stayed up all night, and I'm just beginning to recover. I have [no] control over myself, so excuse typing, et al.
d) No prospects for the summer or next year. Maybe a job with a dancer next year. Maybe a job on Modern Music. Maybe Mexico this summer. Maybe Sharon (God forbid!) Maybe anything. The prospect is lousy. Any suggestions?
e) Everybody's lousy. People are always getting divorces from nice people like An or being impotent with nice girls or flunking exams or vomiting over the European situation. And for God's sake keep out of Greece and concentration camps. Of all times to be where you are!39
f) I never recovered the lost thesis notes. (This is irrelevant.) (But so's Margaret.40 I told [David] Prall41 about that particular fetish and he beamed all over.)
g) The Birds finally comes off next week.42 It should be good.
God, Ken, it's a dull and wretched state I'm in. No practicing, no composing, no plans, no money, no ideas. Static. Tired all over. I'll be all right tomorrow. I've met a wonderful girl. I'm about to have a sex life again. That's encouraging.
Have a swell trip, and be careful. […]
I long for California, and the peaches and ladyfingers and artichokes. I long for so many things. Why can't I stop this silly wailing. Really, I'm just tired.
Again, be careful, stay alive, write. With devotion, affection, greetings, warmth, cordiality, sincerity, verytrulyness, blessings,
Lenny
34. Adolph Green43 to Leonard Bernstein
Hotel Astor, Times Square, New York, NY
[27 May 1939]
Dollink Lennie,