67 In 1940, Mitropoulos conducted The Coliseum at Night by Frederick Woltmann.
68 The actor Wallace Beery (1885–1949).
69 We Who Are Young was released on 19 July 1940. Produced by Seymour Nebenzal, the cast included Lana Turner in one of her first major Hollywood roles.
70 Albert Maltz (1908–85), author and screenwriter, one of the “Hollywood Ten” blacklisted in 1947 for refusing to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee.
71 This telecast was a “special” from NBC's experimental studio, featuring The Revuers. Bernstein was the pianist and Copland turned the pages (see Burton 1994, p. 72). In Lyons’ article, Bernstein is described only as “the accompanist”: “Saturday Night, when The Revuers appeared on NBC's full-hour television program, the unbilled stranger who turned the pages for the accompanist was Aaron Copland, the noted American composer” (New York Post, 25 June 1940).
72 Renée Longy Miquelle (1897–1979), French-born pianist, theorist, and teacher. She moved to the United States when her father, Georges Longy, became principal oboist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her first teaching post was at the Longy School of Music, which her father founded in 1915. Subsequently, she taught at the Curtis Institute (where she was Bernstein's score-reading teacher), then at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, the University of Miami, and the Juilliard School in New York. Her other pupils included the pianist Jacob Lateiner, cellist Leonard Rose, and several members of the New York Philharmonic including flutist Julius Baker and oboist Harold Gomberg.
73 Raphael Silverman, later known as Raphael Hillyer (1914–2010), was a graduate student at Harvard where he often performed with Bernstein. He led the orchestra in the 1939 production of The Birds with Bernstein's incidental music. After a spell in the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a violinist, Hillyer switched to the viola in 1946 and became a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, with which he played for 23 years. He was the dedicatee of Bernstein's Violin Sonata, referred to in this letter.
74 A weekend of the Yaddo Music Festival comprising four concerts of contemporary American music given at the Yaddo artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, NY. The programme for the weekend was printed in The New York Times on 7 September 1940 and listed works by (among others) Paul Bowles, Henry Cowell, Paul Creston, David Diamond, Roy Harris, Mary Howe, Charles Ives, Gail Kubik, Otto Luening, Paul Pisk, and Quincy Porter.
75 Serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951), Russian-born conductor who served as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949. Along with Copland, Koussevitzky was one of Bernstein's most important mentors, initially through conducting classes at Tanglewood, then as an enthusiastic promoter of Bernstein's career as a conductor, pianist, and a composer of “serious” music: he strongly disapproved of Bernstein's activities as a Broadway composer, and this may well be one of the reasons why, after On the Town, Bernstein wrote no Broadway shows until after Koussevitzky's death.
76 Presumably, the “commotion” was Fritz Reiner's furious reaction to Koussevitzky's suggestion that Bernstein should study with him in Boston rather than with Reiner.
77 Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls was published in October 1940. It is likely that Eisner's letter was written shortly before then. The draft mentioned later in Eisner's letter was the Selective Training and Service Act, which came into force on 16 September 1940, the first peacetime conscription in American history.
78 Much of this sentence has been deleted and retyped.
79 Walter Leslie River (1902–81), American novelist and screenwriter.
80 Henry Cowell (1897–1965), American composer and founder of the periodical New Music for which Diamond's piece was being recorded.
81 Bernstein's first solo recording, made for New Music Recordings in January 1941, was of David Diamond's Prelude and Fugue No. 3. The tetchy correspondence about it was symptomatic of many of the letters Bernstein and Diamond exchanged over the next half century.
82 The first performance of the Suite from Billy the Kid was broadcast on Saturday, 9 November 1940, by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under William Steinberg.
83 Harold Shapero (1920–2013), American composer. A near contemporary of Bernstein's at Harvard (Shapero graduated in 1941), he subsequently taught at Brandeis University for 37 years. Bernstein recorded Shapero's Symphony for Classical Orchestra in 1953.
84 Walter Piston (1894–1976), American composer and teacher who taught both Shapero and Bernstein at Harvard.
85 Charles Demuth (1883–1935), American artist whose friends included the poet William Carlos Williams, the artist Marsden Hartley, and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. He bequeathed many of his paintings to Georgia O'Keeffe. A childhood illness left Demuth with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life, and his health was always precarious. According to Robert Hughes: “Demuth was not a flaming queen, in fact he was rather a discreet gay, but if he could not place his deepest sexual predilections in the open, he could still make art from them” (Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, New York: Knopf, 1997, p. 380).
86 Probably a reference to the draft papers drawn up in Washington, D.C. in 1940, which had the numbers 1 to 7,836 printed on them.
87 Shapero is being hard on himself here. The Nine-Minute Overture won the American Prix de Rome in 1941. His success was reported in the Harvard Crimson on 9 June 1941: “Harold S. Shapero '41 of Newton has won the annual Prix de Rome in Music, it was announced yesterday by Howard Barlow, conductor of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. The work, A Nine-Minute Overture, was played during Barlow's regular Sunday afternoon radio program. Instead of the customary privilege of studying at the American Academy in Rome, Shapero will receive $1,000 outright. Recently awarded the Knight Prize for composition by the Music Department, Shapero is the first Harvard undergraduate to win the Prix de Rome. The winning piece is his first attempt at writing for orchestra.”
88 The award of the Prix de Rome and Harvard's George Arthur Knight Prize (for composition) enabled Shapero to study with Nadia Boulanger after graduation.
89 Virgil Thomson (1896–1989) began writing for the New York Herald Tribune in 1940.
90 Robert Weatherly (1921–2005) was a student at Juilliard when Copland sent this letter. He later became principal trumpet of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
91 A quotation from La Bohème.
92 John Lessard (1920–2003), American composer.
93 Mitropoulos made his debut with the New York Philharmonic on Thursday, 19 December 1940.
94 Kiki [Jacqueline] Speyer was the daughter of Louis Speyer, who had played under Pierre Monteux in the premiere of Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps and was the cor anglais player of the Boston Symphony from 1919 until 1965.
95 Possibly Wolfgang Stresemann, then a young conductor.
96 Koussevitzky conducted Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony with the Boston Symphony in Carnegie Hall in November 1940 and again in January 1941. The November concert also included a Haydn symphony.
97 Possibly a reference to the death of Alfred Eisner.
98 Alfred Eisner died on 4 January 1941.
99 Frederick Schlick's Bloodstream ran on Broadway in 1932 for less than a month.
100 Robert Schlick was a gay poet who married the London-born artist and illustrator Pamela Bianco in 1930.
101 Copland's Piano Variations.
102 The two-piano duo Arthur Whittemore and Jack Lowe gave a recital at Town Hall, New York. It was reviewed by Howard Taubman (The New York Times), who mentions that the concert included an unspecified work by Copland.
103 Probably a reference to Shirley Gabis, who was born in 1924.
104 Oliver Smith (1918–94) was a designer and producer whose brilliant sets were an important part almost all Bernstein's theatrical works, including Fancy Free, On The Town, Facsimile, Candide, West Side Story, and Mass. This letter appears to be their earliest contact. The house at 7 Middagh Street, where Smith was living at the time
, was an old brownstone that was home to a remarkable group of creative artists in 1941. It was owned by George Davis, and among the residents were W. H. Auden, Britten (“Brittle”), Peter Pears, Louis MacNeice, Carson McCullers and – shortly after Smith wrote – Paul and Jane Bowles. Britten and Pears stayed for just a few months, finding the atmosphere too Bohemian.
105 A humorous reference to Benjamin Britten.
106 Small wire nails or prickly spikes. Bernstein is referring to a phrase in William Francis Hooker's The Prairie Schooner (1918): “For hours a kindly bullwhacker helped me pluck the sharp and brittle brads from my back.”
107 Benjamin Britten (1913–76), English composer, already established as one of the most brilliant figures in British music by the time he went to the USA in April 1939. It was in America that Britten wrote his first work for the stage, the operetta Paul Bunyan. Bernstein conducted several of his works: the American premiere of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood in 1946; the Spring Symphony (in 1963) and the Sinfonia da Requiem (in 1968) with the New York Philharmonic; and in April 1976, the US premiere of Britten's Suite on English Folk Tunes: A Time there Was with the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein included the Four Sea Interludes in his final concert, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, on 19 August 1990.
108 Paul Bunyan, first performed at Columbia University on 5 May 1941.
109 The world premiere of the Sinfonia da Requiem took place in Carnegie Hall on 29 March 1941, with John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic.
110 Shirley Gabis (b. 1924), American pianist. She became Bernstein's closest friend at the Curtis Institute and the two remained friends until his death. She later became Shirley Rhoads, then Shirley Perle when she married the composer and Berg scholar George Perle. The first of Bernstein's Thirteen Anniversaries, dated July 1981, is entitled “For Shirley Gabis Rhoads Perle (b. April 7, 1924).”
111 William Saputelli (1916–2001) was a friend of Bernstein's at the Curtis Institute. A cellist, he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1952 and remained with it until 1988.
112 Rae was Shirley Gabis’ mother.
113 “Playgoer” in the Harvard Crimson (23 May 1941) reported: “The play is by Aristophanes and three thousand years old, but the production to be offered at Sanders tonight and tomorrow by the Student Union Theatre is as timely as the latest headline, and as diverting as the brightest Broadway revue. Even in dress rehearsal disarray (which is when we caught it) Peace gave every indication of being the most stimulating theatrical event around Cambridge this season. Of course, the plot – the attempt of a group of Athenians to bring Peace back to their city – is a natural for Student Union parallel-parable making, but even the most ardent Bundle for Britain will hardly object to swallowing this socially-significant pill, sugar-coated as it is with distinctively modern music by Leonard Bernstein, clever lyrics by William Abrahams, a colorful abstract set by Howard Turner and John Holabird, and a cast that is not merely capable but alive. And all of these elements have been brought together skillfully and with a refreshing lack of pretension by director Robert Nichols. There are, to be sure, flaws; but what this Student Union Theatre group may lack in slickness, it more than makes up for in spontaneity. These people are obviously having a good time, and their enthusiasm communicates itself to the audience. They are immeasurably helped by the Aristophanic tradition which is one of rowdy fun, rather than self-conscious artiness, and within the limits of the tradition this company is almost wholly successful. The production lasts little over an hour, the admission is sensibly low, and anyone should have fun. For those who don't, there is always the advice of the concluding couplet in the conga finale: ‘If you don't like venery, Get thee to a nennery.’” The music for the Conga was reused by Bernstein in Wonderful Town. Another section, the “Sacrificial March,” became the chase music in On the Town (see Massey 2009, pp. 80 and 81).
2
First Successes:
From Tanglewood to On the Town
1941–4
After receiving his diploma in conducting from the Curtis Institute in May 1941, Bernstein went to Harvard to conduct his incidental music for The Peace before spending the summer at Tanglewood, where his conducting was widely admired, especially a performance of William Schuman's American Festival Overture. Bernstein then fled to Key West at the southern tip of Florida, to escape a complicated romantic entanglement (with Kiki Speyer) and to compose. It was a productive stay: he started the Clarinet Sonata and an unfinished ballet called Conch Town that was to provide a rich harvest of musical ideas for subsequent works, including Fancy Free and West Side Story. After Key West, Bernstein returned to Boston in need of a job. He set up a studio to teach piano and musical analysis in December 1941, but attracted depressingly few pupils. The year 1942 saw some early successes: the first performance of the Clarinet Sonata in April (by David Glazer and Bernstein) and, the following month, Bernstein conducted Copland's Second Hurricane (subtitled a “play-opera for high schools”) in Boston, repeating it a month later. Throughout this time he received constant encouragement from Copland, from Renée Longy Miquelle, and from Betty Comden. To earn a living, Bernstein took a job at a music publisher (part of Warner Bros.), working as an assistant and occasional arranger, often under the name Lenny Amber.
In the summer of 1942, Bernstein met David Oppenheim at Tanglewood. He was a young clarinetist studying at the Eastman School of Music, and the two quickly became very close. The correspondence between them in 1943 is often absorbing, with letters that are by turns passionate, funny, full of career worries (and, in Oppenheim's case, his military service) and musical questions, above all because of Oppenheim's performances of the Clarinet Sonata. Though David Glazer had given the premiere, it was Oppenheim who introduced the work in New York and who made the first recording (both with Bernstein at the piano), and he appears as its dedicatee on the first edition. Oppenheim and Bernstein also shared a fascination with psychoanalysis and the interpretation of dreams – they went to the same therapist (Marketa Morris, “The Frau”) and had similar obsessions. While the correspondence with Copland is warm, funny, and loving, with some entertaining anecdotes from Copland in Hollywood and musical news of the East Coast from Bernstein, it is with Oppenheim that Bernstein shared some of his innermost thoughts.
The year 1943 was a crucial one for every aspect of Bernstein's career: in February he played Copland's Piano Sonata in New York, and in March he made his New York conducting debut (Paul Bowles’ The Wind Remains). Bernstein played his own music too: a performance of the Clarinet Sonata with Oppenheim led quickly to its recording and publication. Adolph Green's long letter to Bernstein in September 1943 paints a funny and richly detailed portrait of Hollywood viewed through the eyes of a native New Yorker who seemingly finds himself in a weird and alien country.
The end of 1943 brought the most spectacular successes: in September he became Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic – his first conducting appointment. Such a junior position usually involves quite menial tasks, but in Bernstein's case good fortune struck two months into the job. On 14 November 1943, Bruno Walter was due to conduct the Sunday Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall, but his sudden indisposition meant that Bernstein had to take over. The result (broadcast nationally on the radio) was a triumph – and a major news story: the front page of the next day's New York Times was dominated by news of the war in Europe and the Pacific, but it also reported Bernstein's debut under the headline: “Young Aide Leads Philharmonic. Steps In When Bruno Walter Is Ill”. Two months later, on 28 January 1944, Bernstein conducted the world premiere of his Jeremiah Symphony No. 1 in Pittsburgh – at the invitation of his old conducting teacher Fritz Reiner.
At the same time Bernstein was hard at work on the ballet Fancy Free. Because Jerome Robbins and Bernstein were both away from New York for weeks on end while the ballet was being written, this is one of the very few Bernstein collaborations where musical matters are discussed in considerable detail by lett
er: those from Robbins to Bernstein have not survived, but the letters from Bernstein to Robbins are a fascinating chronicle of work in progress. On 18 April 1944, Fancy Free triumphed at the Metropolitan Opera House. Bernstein's first collaboration with Robbins was instantly acclaimed – the headline of John Martin's review in the New York Times (19 April) read: “Ballet by Robbins Called Smash Hit”. Of the score, Martin wrote: “The music by Leonard Bernstein utilizes jazz in about the same proportion that Robbins’ choreography does. It is not in the least self-conscious about it, but takes it as it comes. It is a fine score, humorous, inventive and musically interesting. Indeed the whole ballet, performance included, is just exactly ten degrees north of terrific.” Robbins and Bernstein turned at once to their next collaboration – a Broadway show, with Bernstein's old friends Comden and Green brought in to write the book and lyrics. With the support of the vastly experienced George Abbott as director, the result was another huge success: On the Town opened at Broadway's Adelphi Theatre on 28 December 1944 to rave reviews. But Bernstein's brilliant achievement with his first musical brought conflicts too: Koussevitzky was already uneasy about Bernstein's balancing act between conducting and composing, and he lost no time telling his protégé that writing for Broadway was a waste of his talents. The criticism hit home: Bernstein did not write another musical until after Koussevitzky's death in 1951.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 12