The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico

  9 October 1944

  Dear Dawg,

  You're in the delightful position of getting a letter from me without having to answer it, because I'm coming home before you can safely get one here. I have just two more weeks in Tepoztlan (till the 23rd), then to Mexico City for two days, and then I fly to Washington (the 25th). Martha Graham is supposedly doing a ballet of mine that week-end.170 No one has seen any public announcement of the event – nor have I – but [Harold] Spivacke keeps writing it will take place, so I go on faith. I ought to be back in my hole on 63rd St by Oct. 30th or Nov. 1st. Then we can turn on the “AC side of your life”, whatever that is.

  In retrospect the summer seems frightfully short. I never got settled until August, and didn't get a piano until the middle of the month. Also, I've been alone a lot of the time. V[ictor] has been away a good deal, doing odd jobs or seeing odd females up in Mexico DF. I find I don't particularly thrive on solitude. So, altho the setting was perfect, inspiration has been spurty. I guess I'd better come home.

  Sometimes Mexico seems too much to bear. In Sept. the rain got out of hand, and it poured like hell for three weeks. Then we had a small cyclone that sounded very big in our valley. Then suddenly the water works of the town, being all above ground, goes kaput. Then comes the news of a minor rebellion two miles away and the government sends troops. Then the cook announces the horrifying news that eggs have just gone up to 4 cents apiece. Then suddenly the sun comes out, there's water in the excusado, the troops go away, the eggs go down to 3½ cents and Mexico seems like heaven on earth. It's a peculiar country.

  I'm tickled pink that the show isn't going to come off until Christmas.171 That means I can hang around the theatre during rehearsal period, than which I adore nothing better – as you know. I hope you found a perfect place to live in, but not in the Far East 50s. (Too far away.)

  Till velly soon.

  Love,

  A

  183. Leonard Bernstein to Philip Marcuse172

  40 West 55th Street, New York, NY

  25 October 1944

  Dear Phil,

  Thanks very much for your recent letter, and for the Shostakovich173 records. The latter arrived yesterday, but I have not yet had the chance to hear them yet. I'm curious to hear how it all sounds, even to the thumping of my irrepressible foot. Who knows, hearing this thumping on the record may cure me of that bad habit. Anyway, it will be good for me to hear just how it sounds to the radio audience. […]

  The show174 goes into rehearsal in early November, and I'm working night and day to have the score ready by then.

  Please give my thanks to the person who made the recording, and, again, my thanks to you for sending them to me.

  Sincerely yours,

  Lenny Bernstein

  184. Philip Marcuse to Leonard Bernstein

  Stockwell & Marcuse Advertising, 2026 National Bank Building, Detroit, MI

  26 December 1944

  Dear Leonard,

  Here's hoping that On the Town will be a tremendous success. I read Variety’s preliminary review of it, and I gather that it was damned good even though the reviewer didn't know how to say it.

  Although we haven't communicated for a couple of months, I have been following your progress and enjoying your radio appearances. We saw Fancy Free two weeks ago and found it truly terrific. So did everyone else.

  We look forward to seeing you in New York three weeks hence, and once again, our best wishes for your newest musical triumph.

  Sincerely,

  Phil Marcuse

  185. David Oppenheim to Leonard Bernstein

  Germany

  27 December 1944

  Are You Happy???

  Do You Stay Awake Nights??

  Would your autobiography be entitled: “My Life as a Mole” or – “Digging my way thru Europe”??

  Do you fall flat on your face when someone whistles […] Have a crush on screaming music? Burpgunitis etc. etc.??

  Try Bernstein's Little Battle Pills – Delicious to chew slowly.

  Nibble your neurosis away!!!175

  N.B. For adventurers only – my ass!!

  I've been watching N[ew] Y[ork]er and no On The Town yet. […] Do I get score & book over here? And are you gonna write?

  A letter I wrote to you to California came back – you had moved and not left a forwarding address.

  Now – what are you doing – how is Marketa [Morris]? Adolph [Green], Judy [Holliday], Betty [Comden] – I'd sure like to have Judy here to line my foxhole.176 She is 20th Century Foxing?? I saw a bad picture of her in a movie magazine some time ago.

  Will you conduct the N.Y. orch this year? Or is Art177 still mad?

  Love,

  Dave

  1 Robert Gundersen (1895–1941).

  2 Gaston Dufresne taught solfège and played double bass in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Presumably Bernstein was hoping to find work for Renée Longy Miquelle at Tanglewood.

  3 Mary Louise Curtis Bok, founder of the Curtis Institute.

  4 Miquelle's son.

  5 Probably Alvin Ross, an artist friend.

  6 The composer himself was among those “knocked for a bingo.” Schuman wrote in his diary: “A most remarkable performance – Bernstein should develop into the first sensational American conductor. He has everything. Koussevitzky so excited by Bernstein performance – he walked up to the stage & kissed us both in public!” (Swayne 2011, p. 120).

  7 Bernstein conducted The Rio Grande at Tanglewood on 15 August 1941.

  8 The soloist in the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 was Carlos Moseley, later the Managing Director of the New York Philharmonic.

  9 Probably the family of Ben Quashen who studied with Hindemith at Tanglewood.

  10 Samuel Barber (1910–81), American composer. Bernstein was never particularly enthusiastic about Barber's music, nor did they get on in later life. Bernstein recorded the Violin Concerto (with Isaac Stern) and the Adagio for Strings. A performance of the Second Essay from 1959 was published on CD in Bernstein Live (New York Philharmonic NYP2003).

  11 The United Service Organization, which provided (and still provides) entertainment for United States troops.

  12 The National Youth Administration (NYA) was originally set up under the New Deal as part of the WPA. It organized educational and cultural opportunities for Americans between the ages of 16 and 25, including the establishment of orchestras for young musicians.

  13 Judith Tuvim was the real name of Judy Holliday.

  14 The National Youth Administration. See note to Letter 95.

  15 Horatio Alger (1832–99) was the author of numerous rags-to-riches tales for children. He travelled to California to gather material for his stories.

  16 Presumably the music for songs by The Revuers referred to in Letter 96.

  17 In some of Bernstein's letters to Copland, names were blanked out at a later date.

  18 Mitropoulos conducted the world premiere of Copland's Statements with the New York Philharmonic on 7 January 1942.

  19 Presumably the fortified Belém Tower.

  20 Bernstein opened a studio for teaching the piano and musical analysis at 295 Huntington Avenue, Boston, in December 1941.

  21 Judy Holliday (1921–65), American actress. Born Judy Tuvim, she was a member of The Revuers. She later married David Oppenheim. One of her greatest Broadway successes was her Tony-winning performance as Ella in Bells are Ringing, written by Comden and Green with music by Jule Styne and choreography by Jerome Robbins.

  22 Lizzie (Elizabeth) Reitell (1921–2001) was Adolph Green's first wife. She later had an affair with Dylan Thomas in the last months of his life.

  23 They married in 1941, but as Bernstein gloomily predicted, it didn't last.

  24 Probably a reference to Artur Rodzinski, who was Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1933 to 1943, when he moved to the New York Philharmonic.

  25 A reference to Conch Town, which Bernstein almost
completed in a version for two pianos and percussion, but never finished. He later harvested it for several works including Fancy Free (the “Danzón”) and West Side Story (“America”).

  26 The first performance of Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata was given at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston on 21 April 1942 by David Glazer, with Bernstein at the piano, in a concert promoted by Young American Musicians. A lukewarm review by Winthrop P. Tryon in the next day's Christian Science Monitor described it as “well-constructed in general, and in particular, too, as far as the mere music went. Whether it was inevitably an ensemble composition for wind and keyboard instruments might be questioned. Both the clarinet and the piano have plenty of business allotted to them, and both chime together all right, if for its own sake chiming counts greatly. But the problem of treatment of two qualities of sound seemed more or less ignored. The music turned out to be abstract in a way not usually intended in studies of the sort. But, for all anybody knows, that may be one of the very purposes of Young American Musicians, to get things free of the old tracks.”

  27 Probably Jean Middleton, who was a pianist and a composition pupil of Arthur Berger's, and one of Bernstein's longer romantic relationships during the 1940s.

  28 On 24 May 1942, The New York Times published a letter signed by 11 composers (Aaron Copland, Arthur Berger, Edward T. Cone, Henry Cowell, David Diamond, Anis Fuleihan, Alexei Haieff, Frederick Jacobi, J. B. Middleton, Harold Morris, and William Schuman) who had been performed in a concert of works chosen by members of the Music Critics Circle. The letter was a furious protest against Olin Downes’ scathing review of this event. A short extract gives a flavor of the composers’ mood: “Mr. Downes does not hesitate to lambaste savagely and hold up to ridicule ten of the twelve works carefully selected in the first place by their original performers, and chosen in the second place for rehearing by his own fellow-critics. This leaves Mr. Downes in a position of lonely grandeur from which he can survey the stupidity of every one concerned but himself. Perhaps we American composers are as puerile-minded as Mr. Downes gloatingly proclaims, but we are not so half-witted as to be led into a discussion of the merits of our compositions with the pontifically minded Mr. Downes. Others may do so if they care to. We shall continue to write our compositions, they will continue to be played, and Mr. Downes will, no doubt, continue to survey the field from his isolated post.”

  29 After conducting a successful performance of The Second Hurricane under the auspices of the Institute of Modern Art in Boston on 21 May 1942 (attended by Copland), Bernstein conducted a second performance on 5 June at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, MA.

  30 Downes’ response to the protest letter by Copland and others appeared in The New York Times on 7 June 1942, under the title “Critic's Duty. Further Examination of Reaction to Circle Concerts of American Works.” Downes wrote a lengthy and exhaustively argued defense of his position.

  31 Fritz Reiner.

  32 A Yiddish word (sometimes spelt “tsuris”) for trouble or difficulty.

  33 Marion Bauer was a leading figure in the League of Composers.

  34 Albert Sirmay. See note to Letter 395.

  35 “The Frau” was Bernstein's nickname for his psychoanalyst, Marketa Morris.

  36 Victor Kraft, “the most important romantic relationship of [Copland's] life” (Pollack 1999, p. 239).

  37 Walter Hendl (1917–2007), American conductor who studied at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, and at Tanglewood with Koussevitzky (when he met Bernstein). He was Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra 1949–58 and in 1958 became Associate Conductor to Fritz Reiner at the Chicago Symphony. From 1964 to 1972 he was Director of the Eastman School of Music.

  38 David Oppenheim (1922–2007), American clarinetist, record producer, television producer, and academic administrator. Oppenheim and Bernstein were extremely close friends in the 1940s, and remained on very affectionate terms for the rest of Bernstein's life. They first met at Tanglewood in 1942. Oppenheim appears as the dedicatee on the 1943 publication of Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata and he made the first recording of the work with Bernstein in 1943 for Hargail Records. In 1948 he married Judy Holliday, who had worked with Bernstein as a fellow member of The Revuers (Oppenheim and Holliday divorced in 1957). He was hired by Goddard Lieberson to work for Columbia Masterworks and served as director of the label from 1950 to 1959, producing recordings by artists such as Bruno Walter and George Szell, before moving to television, first at PBS and then at CBS as a producer of arts documentaries, several of which involved Bernstein, the most famous of which was probably Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution in which Bernstein discussed the Beatles, the Monkees, Bob Dylan, and Janis Ian whose “Society's Child” became a hit after being featured in the broadcast (see Letters 527 and 533). In 1969, Oppenheim began the last and most successful part of his career when he became Dean of the School of Arts at New York University. According to his obituary in The New York Times (3 December 2007), he “transformed NYU's arts programs into a major institution” and among his enduring achievements was to secure a huge donation from the Tisch brothers that enabled NYU to build its Tisch School of Arts. He retired from the University in 1991.

  39 With this pithy, three-word postcard, written in pencil, Bernstein re-established contact with David Oppenheim, a few weeks after meeting him for the first time at Tanglewood.

  40 From the mention of the Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess (13 September–2 October) it is possible to date this letter. Bernstein's reference to Diamond's “terrific talent” was probably the result of seeing some orchestral works, including the First Symphony that Diamond recalled Bernstein playing from the full score; it had been given its premiere by Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic on 21 December 1941.

  41 Paul du Pont was the costume designer for the 1942 revival of Porgy and Bess.

  42 According to John Dunning (Dunning 1998, pp. 430–1), The Man Behind the Gun was a war drama series broadcast from 7 October 1942 until 4 March 1944. The show's regular music staff included Bernard Herrmann and Nathan Van Cleave, and the writers included the young Arthur Laurents. David Diamond's incidental music for the program was apparently first used on 14 October 1942 (the show's second episode) conducted by Herrmann (see Kimberling 1987, p. 127).

  43 The Riobamba Club, at 151 East 57th Street, opened on 10 December 1942, a glittering social event reported at length in the New York Evening Post the following day. This makes no mention of Bernstein's contribution, but the singer Jane Froman topped the bill and may well have introduced Bernstein's “Riobamba” on this occasion.

  44 The most lasting success this tune had was as the “Danzón” in Fancy Free.

  45 The reason for the “gift” was that Miquelle had lent Bernstein the Steinway on which he composed Jeremiah. A month later – as a sign of how grateful he was to her, and of how much he valued their friendship – Bernstein gave Miquelle the complete autograph short score of Jeremiah (inscribed on the first page “To Renée with love & gratitude, Lenny, Jan. 5 1943”). This was returned to Bernstein after Miquelle's death in 1979. In a note to Helen Coates concerning the manuscript, Bernstein wrote: “HC – This is very precious – the entire symphony in final sketch! I had no idea where it was all these years, but of course I had given it to Renée in thanks for her having loaned me her Steinway on which the symphony was composed (52nd St.). I am so happy to have it back.”

  46 Danzón cubano.

  47 The fire at Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub on 28 November 1942, which killed almost 500 people.

  48 In other words, the date for Oppenheim to join the army.

  49 “Jack” is mentioned in several of the Bernstein–Oppenheim letters. He is probably the composer Jacob (Jack) Avshalomoff (1919–2013), who studied with Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School and was a classmate of Oppenheim's.

  50 The “Calamus poems” are a group of poems in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass that celebrate “the manly love of comrades.” They are Whitman's clearest
published declaration of his ideas about homosexual love.

  51 Related, too, to Arnold Park, Rochester, where Oppenheim lived until December 1942.

  52 Almost certainly a reference to Oppenheim's help with copying sections of Bernstein's Jeremiah Symphony, and specifically the end of the Scherzo (“Profanation”).

  53 Karen Horney (1885–1952), German psychoanalyst who settled in the United States. Her book The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937) was a bestseller.

  54 Praying (from Yiddish).

  55 A reference to Howard Hanson, Director of the Eastman School.

  56 Allen McHose (1902–86) was chair of the Theory Department at the Eastman School.

  57 Edys Merrill, with whom Bernstein shared an apartment. She was the dedicatee of I Hate Music! 5 Kid Songs, and she had inspired the title: when Bernstein's playing became too much for her, she would go round the apartment singing “I hate music! But I like to sing – La dee da da dee.”

  58 Though Oppenheim wrote this theme out in 6/8 and C major, it is in 3/4 and A major, and comes from the first movement of Mendelssohn's D minor Piano Trio.

  59 The Office of Price Administration, a regulatory authority that could control prices and ration scarce supplies. The OPA banned “non-essential driving” in 1943 to save gasoline.

  60 WXQR is a classical radio station in New York City, on air since 1939.

  61 The basement café of the 44th Street Theatre, demolished in 1945 (the last show to run there was On the Town).

  62 “Lenny-Penny” or “Lennypenny”, a nickname Copland occasionally used in letters to Bernstein (see, for example, Letter 75).

  63 Copland was in Hollywood to write the score for The North Star. The cast included Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Erich von Stroheim, Farley Granger, and Walter Brennan, and it was directed by William Wyler. Copland's extensive score includes songs with lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

  64 The Town Hall Music Forum in New York devoted to Copland took place on 17 February 1943. Bernstein played Copland's Piano Sonata, and Daniel Saidenberg conducted Music for the Theatre and the first performance of Music for the Movies.