65 WNYC is a public radio station in New York City, on air since 1924.
66 Bernstein originally conceived a group of six pieces, but by the time of publication by Witmark in 1944, he had added “Dedication to Aaron Copland” to make Seven Anniversaries.
67 The North Star was based on a story by Lillian Hellman, with a screenplay by her. It was made by Samuel Goldwyn at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help boost support for America's alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany. The “North Star” of the title is a farming collective in Ukraine, a community whose life is shattered by a brutal Nazi occupation.
68 P.M. was a short-lived left-leaning newspaper published in New York between 1940 and 1948.
69 The NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski gave a broadcast performance of Stravinsky's Symphony in C on 21 February 1943. Bernstein's reply ended with a plea for Copland to put in a word for him, and his reaction to Stravinsky's symphony: “Can anything be done about me? Do they need Sonata-players in Hollywood? I heard Igor's symphony too. What a fine first mov't! A little long, but so good. Main criticism: sounds too much like Harold Shapero. I just live for the moment when you pin that medal on me. I love you. L.”
70 The card depicts three “Skyscrapers of New York City” (the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center – where the Advanced Music Corporation had its address – and the Chrysler Building).
71 A recording of the radio broadcast given by Oppenheim and Bernstein on 21 February.
72 Bernard Rogers (1893–1968) was a composition pupil of Nadia Boulanger and Ernest Bloch. He taught at the Eastman School during Oppenheim's time as a student there.
73 Artur Rodzinski (1892–1958), Polish conductor who was appointed Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, 1943–7. Bernstein became the orchestra's Assistant Conductor in September 1943 (see Letter 152).
74 Shadow of a Doubt was directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay co-written by Thornton Wilder. It was released in January 1943.
75 Serenade by James M. Cain. A few years later, Bernstein contemplated a musical setting of this novel. See Letters 262–265.
76 Collectively these pieces – the Six Anniversaries and “Dedication to Aaron Copland” – became the Seven Anniversaries, published in 1944.
77 This short piece was subsequently orchestrated as “Variation 2 (Waltz)” in Fancy Free (1944); the ballet is dedicated to Adolph Green. I am grateful to Sophie Redfern for helping to clarify this, and for showing me the relevant pages in the sketches for Fancy Free. These include sketch pages for clarinet and piano headed “Extension by Leonard Bernstein” (in Green's hand) “of a theme by Adolph Green” (in Bernstein's hand).
78 The cellist Jesse Ehrlich was one of Bernstein's friends from Harvard (he played the cello in the orchestra for The Birds), and he was a roommate at Tanglewood in 1940.
79 Copland wrote about Harris in Our New Music (1941).
80 According to Paul Bowles’ review published on 15 March 1943 in the New York Herald Tribune, the League of Composers Concert at New York Public Library on 14 March included the Pastoral for viola and piano by Elliott Carter, a String Quartet by Vincent Persichetti, songs by Beatrice Laufer, Lukas Foss’ Duo for cello and piano, a group of songs by Van Vactor, Wilde, Bacon, Bricker, and John Cage, and Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata.
81 Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), German composer and violist. He emigrated to the United Status in 1940, returning to Europe in 1953.
82 Lady in the Dark ran on Broadway in 1941–2, and returned there in February 1943 with Gertrude Lawrence reprising her starring role as Liza Elliott.
83 Copland's Lincoln Portrait.
84 I Hate Music! A Cycle of 5 Kid Songs.
85 Probably a reference to Caspar Hauser (1812–33), the mysterious German youth of reputedly noble origin who inspired a poem by Verlaine and is mentioned by Herman Melville in Billy Budd and by Hans Christian Andersen in Beauty of Form and Beauty of Mind, as well as being the subject of Jakob Wassermann's 1908 novel Caspar Hauser oder Die Trägheit des Herzens.
86 Paul Bowles wrote in his review that the Clarinet Sonata “had something which is at a premium in contemporary music: meaty, logical harmony. It was also alive, tough, and integrated. The idiom was a happy combination of elements from both east and west of the Rhine, but only indirectly from that far away. There were stronger hints of what goes on north and south of the Rio Grande, these perhaps more directly via Copland. Through most of this (the andante seemed less real) ran a quite personal element: a tender, sharp, singing quality which would appear to be Mr. Bernstein's most effective means of making himself articulate. The work was expertly performed by David Oppenheim, with the composer at the piano.”
87 André Kostelanetz (1901–80), the Russian-born American conductor who had commissioned Copland's Lincoln Portrait and had exclusive performance rights at the time.
88 George Antheil (1900–59), American composer whose career began in Europe as an experimental composer of works inspired by technology (Airplane Sonata, Ballet méchanique). In Paris he met the likes of Erik Satie, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Virgil Thomson, and Ernest Hemingway. He went to Hollywood in 1936 and subsequently worked regularly as a film composer while continuing to write concert works.
89 Bernstein's New York conducting debut took place the day after he wrote this letter. On 30 March 1943 he conducted the premiere of Paul Bowles’ one-act zarzuela The Wind Remains (after Lorca) at the Museum of Modern Art. The choreography was by Merce Cunningham, and the sets were designed by Oliver Smith. At the same event he conducted Homenaje a Federico García Lorca (1936) by Silvestre Revueltas.
90 Frederick Fennell (1914–2004), American conductor who studied with Koussevitzky at Tanglewood in 1942 when he was a classmate of Bernstein, Lukas Foss, and Walter Hendl. Fennell later made numerous recordings for Mercury with the Eastman Wind Ensemble.
91 The “Third Serenade” was presented by the Museum of Modern Art; it was one of five “Serenades of rare music ancient and modern on alternate Tuesday evenings beginning March 2, 1943,” so-called because they were modeled on the concerts given by La Sérénade in Paris before the outbreak of the Second World War, which had been organized by the Marquise Yvonne de Casa Fuerte, co-organizer of the Museum of Modern Art “Serenades” with Virgil Thomson.
92 Herbert Stothart (1885–1949), American composer and arranger who spent the last 20 years of his life working for MGM. His credits included A Night at the Opera for the Marx Brothers, The Wizard of Oz for which his background score won an Oscar, and Mrs. Miniver, which Bowles himself described in an article for Modern Music (November–December 1942) as “the regular, overstuffed, plush tonality of Hollywood.”
93 This is less surprising given that Virgil Thomson was one of the organizers of the concert. But he did single out Bernstein for praise, describing his conducting as “superb and musicianly.”
94 Constance Askew (1895–1984) was a generous patron of artists, writers, and musicians, including Virgil Thomson. She was married to the art dealer Kirk Askew. John Houseman described her as “a New England woman of means, of broad cultural experience and striking beauty.” The arresting portrait of her by Pavel Tchelitchew (1938) now hangs in the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT.
95 George Chavchavadze (1904–62), Russian pianist.
96 Rhoda Saletan.
97 The songs were published by Witmark.
98 This is the address on the headed paper, but by the time he wrote this letter Bernstein was living at 15 West 52nd Street.
99 Will Geer (1902–78), American actor and activist. Following his university studies in Botany, Geer began his acting career in the late 1920s. In 1934, he joined the Communist Party and toured government work camps with Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives as well as working as a classical actor. He appeared regularly as a member of The Group Theatre at its summer home in Pine Brook Country Club, Nichols, CT. Blacklisted in the 1950s for his refusal to testify before the House Un-America
n Activities Committee, he renewed his interest in botany, setting up the Theatrum Botanicum, an outdoor theater for blacklisted actors with a garden in which every plant mentioned by Shakespeare was grown. Geer later achieved fame as Grandpa Zebulon Walton in The Waltons. At his deathbed, Geer's family sang Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land and recited poetry by Robert Frost. His ashes were buried in his own Shakespeare Garden.
100 Koussevitzky performed Copland's Lincoln Portrait several times in March and April 1943 in Boston and New York. At Carnegie Hall on 3 April it appeared on the same program as Schuman's A Free Song and Barber's Essay for Orchestra No. 1 (“Billy & Barber”), with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the second half.
101 Edys Merrill.
102 The Wind Remains.
103 The pianist Jesús María Sanromá (1902–84).
104 See note 87 to Letter 134.
105 Probably the two-volume edition of Havelock Ellis’ Studies in the Psychology of Sex published by Random House in 1940.
106 Bernstein often spelt it “Rohrschach”; Oppenheim's “Rorschach” is correct.
107 Name blacked out.
108 On 18 May 1943, Bernstein took part in an evening presented by The Little Red Schoolhouse (a fund-raiser to buy scientific equipment for the progressive school in Greenwich Village) at Town Hall, with Virgil Thomson as master of ceremonies and Bernstein as commentator and pianist, to “illustrate the influence of folk music and jazz on the contemporary composer.” Bernstein illustrated his points by playing his piano transcription of Copland's El Salón México. The event was reviewed by Paul Bowles in the New York Herald Tribune on 19 May 1943.
109 Copland's nickname for his car.
110 In Letter 140, Copland called it a “two volume affair”.
111 The Blue Angel was a nightclub founded by Herbert Jacoby. An article in Time magazine from 26 April 1943 – just a couple of weeks before Bernstein wrote this letter to Renée Longy – evokes Claude Alphand's singing at the club:
The De Gaullist movement has found its loveliest voice. She sang last week at a new Manhattan cabaret, the Blue Angel, opened by balding, long-nosed, toothy Herbert Jacoby, ex-secretary to France's imprisoned ex-Premier Leon Blum. Chic as a Paris bandbox, its jet-black walls garnished with white lilies and orchids, the Blue Angel gave off more than a suggestion of the smarter mortuaries. But it ceased to be funereal when a swarm of De Gaullist refugees and friends produced an opening-night crush of such confusion that New York Daily News Columnist Danton Walker, for one of the few times in his professional life, was presented with his own check.
Many of the throng went especially to hear Claude Alphand sing. She is a beautiful, blonde, rather waxwork-like Frenchwoman who accompanies her balladry on the guitar. Rated by many as the best French chanteuse since Yvette Guilbert and Lucienne Boyer, she sings with a feline throatiness and great stylistic elegance. Her favorite song is: Prenez le temps d'aimer […] – Alphand's delivery of such sentiments makes her worth $750 a week to the Blue Angel's Jacoby.
Mme. Alphand has only recently turned professional. Before the war she was prominent in Paris society; she is the wife of Hervé Alphand, former Treasury attaché of the Vichy Government in Washington. Her father, Robert Raynaud, founded La Dépêche Marocaine, the first French daily newspaper in Morocco. When the Alphands arrived in the US three years ago, Hervé Alphand said: “In France now there are only two things to do: to work and to be silent. I have come here to work and to be silent.” But he did not stay silent long. Less than a year after his arrival, he announced his disagreement with Vichy policy, resigned, went to England where he joined the De Gaullist fighting forces.
Mme. Alphand had to find a way to earn her living. Her friends had long admired her repertory of some 200 salty popular songs. Helped by a group of them (Lady Mendl, Henry Bernstein, Elsa Maxwell), she began appearing at a French hangout called Le Petit Palais. Among Manhattan's Francophile intelligentsia, her nostalgic music was sensational. Manhattan's Liberty Music Shop issued an album of Alphand recordings, quickly sold 1,000 copies.
Today, though Manhattan's swankest pub-crawlers flock to hear her, Mme. Alphand is already tired of professional life. Says she, with a Gallic shrug: “If I am not to sing, then I must sew, I must make hats or something.” But she admits that she is not doing badly in the new world, says: “Heaven was very charming to me.”
112 Three popular French chansons.
113 A French folk song.
114 Bernstein's original French text is included out of interest. The following is an English translation:
Everything is so French these days. I've just read Gide in French. I go to play every Sunday evening at The Blue Angel, a new club of a Parisian sort (like the old Ox on the Roof, or the Blue Ribbon); the clique of the Serenade Concerts (your friend the Marquise, etc.); my world seems these days to be completely French. So what to do about it? Nothing but to write a word to the first Frenchwoman among all Frenchwomen. D'you think I'm drunk? It's not drunkenness at all – it's friendship.
The immediate cause of this letter is Mme Claude Alphand, the extraordinary singer at The Blue Angel. Each time she sings “Les Moules marinières” or “La Belle Journée” or “Tu m'as voulu, tu m'as eu,” I am forcefully reminded of “Mon Mari est bien malade.”
What are you doing these days? Not still the assembly line, I hope! In any case, I will be in Boston next week and I insist on seeing you again. Our old friend, the Institute of Modern Art (damn!) has invited me to play up there on Thursday evening. Well, it's a few dollars and a trip to Boston paid for! But what an existence! On the Tuesday, I've a very important lecture-recital at Town Hall; and on the Wednesday, a lecture at the Art Alliance in Philly!!!! And Thursday it's Boston! I'll keep all the news for your ears, not your eyes. …
Lenny.
And look who has won the Paderewski Prize! Gardner Read! Frightful.
115 Koussevitzky's letter to The New York Times published on 16 May 1943 was headed “Justice to Composers,” and was a plea to support creative musicians: “What is being done for the composer of our day? […] It is time to wake up to our responsibility toward the composer and to repay the debt long standing that we owe him. […] We musicians must be first to stand by the composer because we owe him most. We have ripened to this consciousness. Therefore I say the time is ripe to act.” He goes on to propose the setting up of a fund to support the work of composers, initially by a donation of $1 from each professional performing musician in the country. This would, he argues, “go a long way toward establishing a composers’ fund. A far-reaching and wise plan must be worked out for a proper distribution of the fund […] For that purpose an organizing committee must be formed without delay. Whatever action we take now will lay the groundwork for the impelling and just cause of the composer. Embracing that cause, we shall ascend to new heights, we shall gain in confidence, in self-esteem and in fortitude.”
116 Billy the Kid.
117 Hindemith's.
118 This became Appalachian Spring.
119 Stokowski conducted the America premiere of Copland's notoriously difficult Short Symphony with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on 9 January 1944 (though according to Copland himself it was an “extremely inadequate reading”).
120 James Petrillo (1892–1984), the powerful leader of the American Federation of Musicians. In July 1942, Petrillo imposed a ban on American musicians making commercial recordings for major American companies because of a dispute over royalty payments. The union settled with Decca and Capitol in October 1943, and with RCA and Columbia in November 1944. During the strike, Petrillo had to authorize the release of new recordings.
121 An autograph sketch and a fair copy of The Nicest Time of Year (both with a slightly different title, “The Nicest Time of Day”) are in the Leonard Bernstein Collection. The tune was used for “Lucky To Be Me” (“What a day, Fortune smiled and came my way,” etc.) in On the Town. But, as indicated in this letter, it was composed as a single song a year before
Bernstein started working on the show. My thanks to Sophie Redfern for drawing my attention to this manuscript.
122 The envelope is addressed to “Pvt. David Oppenheim, A.S.N. 12208749, 1633rd S.V., Brk. 130, Co. A, Camp Grant, Illinois.”
123 Gail Kubik (1914–84), American composer who studied at Harvard with Walter Piston and with Nadia Boulanger. During the Second World War he was Music Director of the Motion Picture Bureau of the Office of War Information.
124 Fritz Reiner (1888–1963), Hungarian-born conductor, and Bernstein's teacher at the Curtis Institute. One of the most inspiring (and feared) conductors working in America, Reiner was Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1938–48), conducted regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, and became Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1953.
125 Bernstein's appointment as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
126 Duffy's Tavern was a popular radio comedy show that ran from 1941 to 1951 and often featured guest stars.
127 Ernst Lubitsch.
128 Possibly a name invented by Adolph Green for this list.
129 William Perlberg.
130 William LeBaron, the producer who went on to make Greenwich Village.
131 The eventual star of Greenwich Village was Carmen Miranda. Adolph Green, Betty Comden, Judy Holliday, and Alvin Hammer all appeared in the film.
132 The Top of the Mark cocktail lounge at the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
133 The North Star.
134 Brennan plays the part of the pig-farmer Karp in the film.
135 Elizabeth Reitell, Adolph Green's first wife.
136 See note 77 to Letter 132.
137 Randall Thompson (1899–1984), American composer. He taught Bernstein orchestration at the Curtis Institute. Thompson's Second Symphony was one of the works Bernstein conducted during his first year at Tanglewood (1940), and he remained extremely fond of the piece, playing it in 1959 and 1968 in New York Philharmonic concerts, and recording it for Columbia Records in 1968. An undated note in Bernstein's hand (a draft reply to the Thompson scholar Byron McGilvray) reads as follows: “Randall was a real friend, right from the beginning. At Curtis we shared the joys of both orchestration (which I studied with him) and the London Times crossword puzzle, of which we were both secret fans. Beyond this, we shared a common conviction that Curtis should be reconceived, & turned from a conservatory-factory into a real place of learning. (We were both academically orientated, as Harvard men should be.) Randall did not exactly succeed in this, and we both left together (as we had entered together), he as dismissed director, and I with my diploma.”
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 24