The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  138 “Baby Steinway” is the piano Renée Longy Miquelle had loaned Bernstein on which he composed the Jeremiah Symphony. See note 45 to Letter 115.

  139 Alexei Haieff (1914–94), American composer.

  140 Charles Mills (1914–82), American composer who played in jazz bands from the age of 17. He was commissioned by Mitropoulos to compose a work for the New York Philharmonic in 1951. His output includes six symphonies, and some of his compositions involve jazz groups.

  141 Bernstein did get the commission, and the result was Fancy Free.

  142 During the “Petrillo Ban” of 1942–4, even a small company such as Hargail Records had to obtain a release from James Petrillo of the Associated Federation of Musicians before a recording could be issued.

  143 The identity of the “Frau” was shrouded in mystery until the emergence of this letter in 2013. For Marketa Morris’ letters to Bernstein, see Letters 197, 256, 260, and 261.

  144 i.e. the Clarinet Sonata.

  145 Jerome Robbins (1918–98), American dancer, choreographer, and director. A temperamental and intensely demanding genius, he was without doubt the person who forged the most productive creative relationship with Bernstein: their first collaboration was the ballet Fancy Free, followed by On the Town, Facsimile, West Side Story, and Dybbuk.

  146 Bernstein is discussing the earliest stages of his work on Fancy Free. Progress on the score is documented in several further letters. See Letters 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, and 172.

  147 I am most grateful to Sophie Redfern for establishing the chronology of the undated letters from Bernstein to Robbins about Fancy Free. She has kindly provided the following information: the contract for the ballet (mentioned in Letter 165) is dated 17 November 1943; the “song” described in Letter 165 was the precursor to the “radio” mentioned in Letter 166, as can be seen in Bernstein's sketches for the ballet.

  148 Shirley Gabis Perle wrote about this letter on 26 January 2013 (by email): “I remember writing that letter (what nerve), but who knew, as his father famously said, that he would become Leonard Bernstein. His response came on a post card that I didn't save – he was very annoyed by my criticism. […] I don't suppose I could have written it if it were not for the depth of the connection between us – a connection that remained throughout our lives. I subsequently played the Philadelphia premiere of the Sonata with Stanley Drucker – to make restitution? The piece, after all, does have Lenny's vitality and charm – I was obviously a stickler for profundity in my youth.”

  149 Copland was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in 1944.

  150 A week before Copland sent this letter, Fancy Free had its triumphant first performance on 18 April 1944, by Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House, conducted by Bernstein. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo season at City Center in April 1944 included Copland's Rodeo. As for the two ballets being “hopelessly married,” they were often mentioned together in press reports.

  151 Copland's “new one” was his “Ballet for Martha,” the work that became Appalachian Spring. The sketches are dated “June 1943–June 1944, Hollywood, New York, Cambridge.” It was first performed on 30 October 1944.

  152 This concert took place on 25 April 1944. The program included works by Walter Piston (Violin Sonata and Piano Trio) and Copland (Piano Sonata played by the composer, Violin Sonata, and Danzón cubano played by Copland and Irving Fine).

  153 Joseph Szigeti (1892–1973), Hungarian violinist, pioneer of twentieth-century repertoire, and a friend of Bela Bartók: Szigeti is dedicatee of the First Rhapsody and the Contrasts (with Benny Goodman).

  154 4 July 1944, Bernstein's Ravinia debut. Reviewing the concert in the Chicago Daily Tribune (5 July 1944), Claudia Cassidy commented that Szigeti “had an off night, almost as if gremlins rode malevolently on his usually silken bow,” but that “the eye and ear inevitably gravitated to the slight young figure on the podium […] A fascinating fellow, this Bernstein, dynamic, emotional, yet under complete control.”

  155 8 July 1944. Szigeti was evidently back on good form. Though Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Daily Tribune (9 July 1944) noted that the Bartók suffered from “obvious skimpiness of rehearsal,” she praised Szigeti's Mozart: “played with his usual patrician serenity and with a special grace and verve for the Rondo, and the orchestra had a touch of the Mozart fire that warms rather than consumes. Mr. Bernstein conducted quietly and carefully, getting his effects more simply than before, but with no less ardor. He has what it takes to learn as he goes along.”

  156 Probably Reuben's restaurant and deli at 6 East 58th Street in New York.

  157 Written on a royalty statement for sales from January to May 1944 of the Hargail Records discs (set MW-501) of Bernstein's Clarinet Sonata. A total of 457 copies sold in that period, with a royalty of 4¢ per set, making a total of $18.28. An annotation by Helen Coates at the top of the page reads: “Thanks for statement. Send royalty to D[avid] Opp[enheim], P.F.C. 12208749, 413th Infantry, Camp Carson, Colo[rado], U.S. Army.” Sales of this recording seem to have been livelier than those of the sheet music: a royalty statement from M. Witmark for the three months ending 25 November 1944 lists sales of a mere nine copies of the Clarinet Sonata.

  158 Koussevitzky's own Concerto for Double Bass, Op. 3.

  159 Lukas Foss appeared with Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic's Lewisohn Stadium concerts on 14 July 1944, conducting Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, with Bernstein as the soloist – probably the first of their many appearances together in New York.

  160 Herschel and Janice Levit (and their daughter Lois) became friends of Bernstein while he was studying at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia – they were introduced in 1940 by Renée Longy Miquelle. The Levits lived near Bernstein's student rooms and he became a regular visitor (often calling round to take a bath). It was in the Levits’ apartment on South 22nd Street that Bernstein finished his piano arrangement of El Salón México. Humphrey Burton reports that Bernstein said their upright piano was “just right,” “like a Mexican bar room piano” (Burton 1994, p. 84).

  161 A reference to the Lenni Lenape tribe of American Indians who lived along the banks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.

  162 The address (noted in pencil by Bernstein on the first page of this letter) was 628 Stetson Rd, Elkins Park, PA, and it is indeed “modern” – in fact it's a magnificent house designed in 1940 by Louis Kahn for his friend Jesse Oser.

  163 The sketch enclosed with this letter is inscribed “A happy birthday and many more glorious years for Serge Alexandrovich: with love, Lenushka, N.Y.C, July 26, 1944.” It is an early version of what became, with very small modifications, the start of the Age of Anxiety Symphony. The tempo marking is Andante contemplativo (changed to Lento moderato in the Symphony), otherwise the music is largely the same apart from minor changes; no instrumentation is given – in the Symphony it is played by two clarinets. It is interesting to find this idea so fully formed in Bernstein's mind as early as 1944: W. H. Auden's poem The Age of Anxiety – the inspiration for the work as a whole – was not published until July 1947, three years after this sketch. The eventual work was not only first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Koussevitzky (on 8 April 1949), but dedicated “To Serge Koussevitzky, in tribute”.

  164 In the end, the concert, given on 24 and 25 November 1944, consisted of just two works: Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with Jesús María Sanromá as the soloist, and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.

  165 See Letter 178.

  166 Ramin served as a Corporal (20120408) in the 84th Infantry Division. From the end of August 1944, the 84th started to arrive at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, in preparation for departure to Europe. The Division sailed on 20 September 1944 and arrived in England for training on 1 October, landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy a month later, before taking part in the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge). Sidney N. Ramin of Roxbury, Mass., is listed in the Roster of Officers and Enlisted Men, 84th Infantry Division, E
uropean Theatre of Operations – World War II (Viking Press, 1946). During his time in the Army (in which Ramin was in Special Services), he also found time to arrange the music and conduct the orchestra in a revue called It's All Yours, performed at the Stadt Theater in Heidelberg and in Paris (personal communication from Sid Ramin).

  167 Two of the Seven Anniversaries.

  168 When Bernstein wrote this letter he was hard at work with On the Town, but the need to do something about the “Aaron Copland side” of his life and career was ever-present.

  169 An indication of the growing importance of Helen Coates in managing Bernstein's domestic affairs, as well as the difficulties of finding an apartment in New York City.

  170 The first performance of Appalachian Spring took place in the Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress on Monday, 30 October 1944.

  171 On the Town opened at Broadway's Adelphi Theatre on 28 December 1944.

  172 This was one of the earliest contacts between Bernstein and his Detroit friends Philip and Barbara Marcuse. In the 1950s, the Marcuses provided a kind of model of stability for the newly married Bernsteins, and offered them warmth, advice, and support.

  173 Probably a broadcast of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, which Bernstein conducted in Detroit during the 1944–5 season.

  174 On the Town.

  175 This recalls a much earlier Bernstein letter to Oppenheim (see Letter 122).

  176 Oppenheim and Judy Holliday were married in 1948.

  177 Artur Rodzinski.

  3

  Conquering Europe and Israel

  1945–9

  The post-war years saw Bernstein's conducting career flourish, not only in the United States but also as the first American-born conductor to develop an extremely successful career in Europe. His letters home from London, Prague, Paris, and elsewhere are fascinating evocations of great cities recovering from war. These were also the years during which Bernstein composed some of his most serious orchestral scores: Facsimile – a ballet with Jerome Robbins – and The Age of Anxiety Symphony, composed for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. Despite the encouragement of George Abbott and Betty Comden, Bernstein did not immediately follow up the Broadway success of On the Town. Koussevitzky, an inspiration as well as a mentor, gave Bernstein regular opportunities to work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but their master–pupil relationship was not without its difficulties, as the tense exchange of letters in December 1946 reveals: Koussevitzky objected strongly to Bernstein's proposal to program his own music in concerts with the orchestra, and Bernstein's only option was capitulation, in order to restore amicable relations. The Koussevitzky connection was not only important personally but also professionally. The Age of Anxiety was commissioned by Koussevitzky, who conducted its first performance on 8 April 1949. But it was Bernstein who gave the first American performance of Britten's Peter Grimes on 6 August 1946, and on 2 December 1949 the world premiere of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie (a work to which he never returned after the first three performances) – both of which were commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in memory of Natalie Koussevitzky. Bernstein also conducted the first European performance of Copland's Third Symphony, another Koussevitzky Foundation commission, in Prague on 25 May 1947. In other words, Bernstein's reputation for playing large-scale works that were recently composed was nurtured to a significant extent on repertoire that Koussevitzky had commissioned.

  In February 1946, at a party given by the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, Bernstein met Felicia Montealegre. In the course of the year they grew ever closer – a relationship Bernstein chronicled in his letters to Helen Coates – and at the end of December the couple were engaged in Hollywood. Though the engagement was broken off in September the following year, they were eventually married four years later, in September 1951 – a union that both parties entered into in the full knowledge of its potential difficulties, the most significant being Bernstein's sexuality. Something of his turmoil about this is revealed in letters from Marketa Morris (the “Frau”), whom he consulted from the early 1940s onwards, and Renée Nell, another psychoanalyst Bernstein consulted in the later 1940s.

  Bernstein's visits to Israel were to become a central part of his career, and they did much to define his Jewish identity. His letters from 1948 to his mother and sister, to Koussevitzky, and to Copland reveal something of the profound impact the country and its people had on Bernstein, the warmth and passion of his commitment to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the joy he drew from the experience of working with these musicians. For Bernstein, conducting always had to be “fun” – in other words a genuinely rewarding experience – if it was to be worth doing at all, especially when he could never find enough time for composition. In the Israel Philharmonic he found an orchestra with which he was usually at his happiest, even when – as on his 1948 visit – he was confronted with an astonishingly punishing schedule, and concerts that were often interrupted by bombing raids; he was there, after all, during the Arab–Israeli war. On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion had declared the establishment of a Jewish state to be called the State of Israel. War broke out the next day, and was at its height when Bernstein arrived to work with an orchestra that was not only a cultural symbol, but a potent national one as well.

  186. Leonard Bernstein to Renée Longy Miquelle

  40 West 55th Street, New York, NY

  3 January 1945

  Dear Renée,

  How sweet of you to remember, and send me the Michelangelo. I adore it. I hope it was you, because it contained no card, no greeting of any sort, and I am at a loss as to what occasion it represents. New Years? Christmas? Some obscure but meaningful anniversary? The opening of the show? Paul Bowles' birthday?

  Well, the show [On the Town] has opened and is a phenomenal hit, in spite of all. The reviews are fantastic raves, especially the Times and PM, and the Hollywood Reporter, which called it the greatest musical ever produced! It's thrilling, and I would be a rich man, except that whatever money I get goes back to Uncle Samovitch for taxes. But it's nice to feel that you've earned a stupendous sum, even if you hold it only for a week.

  Now I am bleary with a throat infection, and a general let-down collapse, and struggling to get back into my beard (long-hair) and study Brahms' First for Pittsburgh next week. It will be fun to be back there, and this time with a whole program including Fancy Free, the Ravel Concerto, Euryanthe and Brahms' First. I stretch long and loud, yawn, smile, toss my mangy curls, and close with love, to get back to the Partitur.1 Let me hear how everything goes with you. When do you come around again?

  Love, and thanks again.

  Lenny

  Spookietchka

  187. George Abbott2 to Leonard Bernstein

  The Town House, Los Angeles, CA

  20 February 1945

  Dear Lennie,

  According to the calendar you must now be back in New York where I shall not arrive for another five weeks, by which time you will probably be waving your baton in some distant city.

  I hope soon, however, that we shall all find ourselves together again discussing life and integration.

  I'll postpone that for the moment and take up the subject of opera. I have constituted myself an authority on the subject because I don't like opera; also I have seen very few operas. I find myself moved by the sheer beauty of the sound that assails me, and occasionally by the visual effect, but never by the story. I cannot get from it the feeling of being carried away (to quote from a recent musical comedy hit). Plays, movies, symphonies, novels seem to me to be artistic wholes. Operas seem magnificent anachronisms. So, when I talk of opera, in re [my] interest, I am talking about a new form which does not now exist: I am talking about something which I expect you to create. It will have integration all right, but it will be unhampered by tradition, it will use picture techniques, top dancing or any other feature that adds up to excitement – and it will ruthlessly eliminate the ridiculous.

  As far as On The
Town is concerned, please don't let yourself be distressed by minor criticism from some of your pals. It is a wonderful score – a bit too profligate perhaps, too many fresh melodies thrown in where developments of existing ones would have done. That, however, was not your fault – except as you share the responsibility for an original structure that wasn't very practical – but the result of changes done in a hurry. The final result may not have accorded with the ideal upon which it was based, but it is good. And, what is more, you should feel proud that you have proved yourself so adaptable. Had you been the inflexible type, you could have gummed the whole works. In my opinion you should congratulate yourself that you have had the experience and learned so much of practical theatre matters without going through a disaster to pay for it.

  I read Self-Analysis3 on the train. I gave myself the works. But I'm afraid my subconscious is an almost empty cellar. The book more reposes in the hands of one whose subconscious is boiling away. […] We were on the train coming out and there's a fellow who not only needs it, but who knows he needs it. We deduced that he hated his mother – we also staged King Lear – it was quite a pleasant trip.

  Kiss & Tell4 is going to be a good picture. Everything is going substantially as I would have it.

  The only flaw in my California life is that I have strained a muscle in my side and have to give up tennis for a few days. Since tennis is practically the rock upon which my local life is founded, I am very sulky about the matter.