So, Yvonne Loriod, Ginette Martenot and myself will all three arrive in Boston on 24 November. I will have all the orchestral parts for Turangalîla with me. (You already have the score.) It will be necessary to start the rehearsals on my arrival, owing to the extreme difficulty of the work. Yvonne Loriod knows Turangalîla completely by heart. She can thus assist you rehearsing with certain musicians separately. I can do the same (especially with the percussion which is substantial and very difficult). Finally, I am completely at your disposal – as is Yvonne Loriod – to rehearse the work with you at the piano and to demonstrate some of the rhythmic features, tempos, etc. I will attend all the rehearsals and will do everything in my power to be useful to you (balance of timbres, nuances, etc.).
These concerts will be the greatest joy of my career. See you soon! Believe always in my total admiration, my gratitude, and my friendship.
Olivier Messiaen170
294. George Abbott to Leonard Bernstein
630 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
25 November 1949
Dear Lennie,
Just after you left, Bob Fryer171 came into my office inquiring if I would be interested in doing a musical comedy version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. As soon as I had a chance to think it over, I was most enthusiastic. It seemed positively inspirational. I am now entering into contracts to do same, and this is to find out if you can take a minute out of your busy life to consider whether you would like to go in on it.
I am going to write the book with Betty Smith.172 And I am going to try to get your old friend, Jerry Robbins, to do the dance, and beyond that, there are no thoughts at the present moment.
It will be a love story of the married couple rather than a tragic matter, and quite gay, albeit poignant, I hope.
I talked to your secretary today. She told me that you were conducting this afternoon, so I knew I could not reach you by phone.
I thought maybe if you were interested in this we could get Betty and Adolph to do the lyrics.
Let me hear from you as soon as you can tear yourself away from all those woodwinds.173
Love,
George
1 The German word for an orchestral score.
2 George Abbott (1887–1995), American theater director, producer, and writer, who also had a successful career in Hollywood. By the time he collaborated with Bernstein, Robbins, Comden, and Green – all making their Broadway debuts – in On the Town in 1944, Abbott had already had decades of experience: first as an actor (his debut was as Second Yeoman in the 1915 revival of Gilbert and Sullivan's Yeomen of the Guard), then as a writer, producer, and director. His earlier Broadway musicals included On Your Toes (1936; book), The Boys from Syracuse (1938; book, producer, and director), and Pal Joey (1940; producer and director).
3 Self-Analysis by Karen Horney, first published in 1942.
4 Kiss and Tell was a 1945 comedy starring Shirley Temple as the American teenager Corliss Archer. It was based on the Broadway play of the same name (both were written by F. Hugh Herbert, 1897–1958). The stage play had been produced and directed by George Abbott: it opened at the Biltmore Theatre on 17 March 1943 and ran for a total of 956 performances, closing on 23 June 1945.
5 The show became Billion Dollar Baby. Bernstein wasn't able to write the score, so Comden and Green turned to Morton Gould. The choreography was by Jerome Robbins, Oliver Smith designed the sets, and Max Goberman was the musical director – all of them later involved in West Side Story – and George Abbott directed. It ran for 220 performances, from 21 December 1945 to 29 June 1946.
6 Izso G. Glickstein (1891–1947) was the Russian-born cantor at Temple Mishkan Tefila, where Bernstein had his formative musical experiences. He described Glickstein as “a fabulous cantor who was a great musician and a beautiful man, very tall, very majestic […] and he had a tenor voice of such sweetness and such richness” (Burton 1994, p. 8). Glickstein was indeed an outstanding cantor, as can be heard on his recordings of “Baroish Hashonu” and “Yaale tachnunenu miarev,” made for Victor in 1925 (Victor 68710).
7 Dated “7–5–1945,” so possibly 5 July 1945.
8 Bernstein must have sent Glickstein the arrangement of “Lamentation” for voice and piano or organ version (adapted by F. Campbell-Watson), published by Harms in 1945.
9 A restaurant that was a favorite with the On the Town company.
10 Francis A. Coleman, “Composer Teams with Choreographer,” Dance Magazine (May 1945), pp. 12–13.
11 Bye Bye Jackie, subtitled a “ballet play,” was written by Robbins in 1944 and was proposed to several composers including Aaron Copland (see Pollack 1999, p. 486) and Paul Bowles, as well as Bernstein (Burton 1994, p. 140). In an interview by Anna Kisselgoff for The New York Times (29 May 1994), Robbins recalled the project, intended as a way of explaining the background of one of the sailors in Fancy Free: “It was about Jackie, a boy living in Brooklyn, who's getting letters from his brother in some foreign place … The kids on the block begin horsing around, and Jackie can't take it. He sees that everyone in the background he's caught in is going off. So he enlists in the Navy, and his girlfriend says, Bye-bye, Jackie. It was a mood piece that went in and out of reality.” Robbins explained that the work was never choreographed because Bernstein didn't want to write the score. Their next collaboration was Facsimile, in 1946.
12 Robbins' irritation is understandable. Coleman's interview with Bernstein includes the following remarks: “For some time, Leonard Bernstein has considered the composition of a trilogy of ballets to be built around Fancy Free. Mr. Bernstein explains that the trilogy would consist of three one-act ballets with a connecting link in the story which would enable them to be presented as a complete evening's entertainment. The opening work, to be called Bye, Bye Jackie, is to furnish a picture of adolescence, in a Brooklyn setting, of tender and emotional quality. Fancy Free would become ‘something akin to the scherzo movement of a symphony’, and carry the story of the ballet through its middle section. Following it, the third work, yet to be planned, is to furnish the fitting climax to this vignette of American life.”
13 Bette Davis (1908–89), American actress, and an idol of Bernstein's. As her delightful letters demonstrate, their admiration was mutual.
14 Irving Rapper (1898–1999), British-born film director. He was friend of Bernstein's and director of several of Bette Davis' most important films, including Now Voyager (1942), The Corn is Green (1945), and Deception (1946).
15 Nadezhda von Meck (1831–94), Tchaikovsky's great patron who stipulated that they should never meet. Coincidentally, one of the reasons Bernstein visited Hollywood in the summer of 1945, en route to San Francisco, was to discuss a possible role in a film to be directed by Irving Rapper: a biopic in which Bernstein would play Tchaikovsky opposite Greta Garbo as Madame von Meck (see Burton 1994, p. 142).
16 Bette Davis received the signed photograph she had requested and sent a telegram on 14 August 1945: “Please forgive delay in acknowledging photograph. Madame von Meck is very grateful and loves it. Bette.”
17 Evidently, Bette Davis wasn't a fan of Joseph Szigeti, who appeared with Bernstein at a Summer Promenade concert of the San Francisco Symphony on 1 July 1945. Szigeti played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and the program also included a suite from Fancy Free and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.
18 Though the letter is undated, the first paragraph refers to Deception (1946). Rapper directed this film noir with a cast led by Bette Davis, Paul Henried, and Claude Rains. It tells the tempestuous story of Christine (Davis) and her stormy relationship with a composer (Rains) and a cellist (Henried). Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote the Cello Concerto by “Hollenius” performed at the film's climax.
19 This letter was written the day after the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and two days before the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August.
20 The famous lesbian novel by Radclyffe Hall, first published in 1928, which had been the subject of an obscenity trial in England and legal
challenges in the United States.
21 Marketa Morris (1889–1965) was a psychoanalyst, known to Bernstein and his closest friends as the “Frau”. A brief article announcing her death appeared in The New York Times on 26 May 1965: “Milwaukee, May 25. Mrs. Marketa Theiner Morris, a psychoanalyst who practiced in New York from 1942 to 1958, died here Sunday at the age of 76. She was the wife of Prof. Rudolph E. Morris of Marquette University. Mrs. Morris, who taught child psychology to teachers in Prague from 1936 to 1938, practiced here for six years until her retirement in 1964.” The letters from Marketa Morris to Bernstein provide some insights into Bernstein's innermost thoughts from the psychoanalyst he consulted most regularly in the 1940s, including comments on his dreams and on his sexuality. It is apparent from the letters that while Morris saw Bernstein on a number of occasions, she was frustrated by his schedule, which made it impossible for him to see her on a regular basis.
22 There is no year on this letter, but it can be securely dated 1945: not only did Bernstein spend some time in Hollywood that year, but on 15 August 1945, a few days before it was written, the Japanese surrender ended the Second World War in the Pacific, the “Peace” to which Morris refers.
23 i.e. Freedom Morning, composed in 1943.
24 Copland's father, Harris Copland, died in 1945 (see Pollack 1999, p. 15).
25 Mildred Spiegel's pet-name for Bernstein.
26 Renée Longy Miquelle.
27 Bartók died in New York on 26 September 1945.
28 The opening concert of the New York City Symphony season. In The New York Times (9 October 1945), Olin Downes waxed enthusiastic: “Leonard Bernstein, with an orchestra materially improved over that of last season, conducted a concert of exceptional brilliancy last night.” The Shostakovich was a highlight: “For vividness, conviction, imagination we do not expect soon to hear this performance surpassed.” Downes also enjoyed the high spirits of what Copland called “American Brahms”: it was “a reading of high excellence. We believe Mr. Bernstein is now in a good place, with an orchestra of young musicians like himself to work with, and a repertory to mature in. Here is a conductor.”
29 Rosalyn Tureck (1913–2003), American harpsichordist and pianist noted for her Bach playing, though she made her Carnegie Hall debut playing the Theremin.
30 Harl McDonald (1899–1955), general manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra (1939–55) as well as a teacher at the University of Pennsylvania and a composer.
31 Billion Dollar Baby opened on 21 December 1945.
32 Morton Gould (1913–96), American composer and conductor. Bernstein never had a high opinion of his music.
33 The Mozart symphony that Bernstein conducted on this occasion was No. 39 in E flat major K543, a work he performed many times subsequently, and recorded with the New York Philharmonic (1961) and Vienna Philharmonic (1981). Olin Downes reviewing the concert in The New York Times (6 November 1945) had some of the same criticisms of this early performance as Longy. He commented that it was played with “vigor and clarity” but that Bernstein “was inclined to drive rather than release song from the instruments.” Paul Bowles in the New York Herald Tribune was more enthusiastic: “The high point of sonority in last night's concert came with the Mozart Symphony. Here the orchestra showed that it was no longer ‘good, considering’, but good, period. The audience responded with rounds of applause.”
34 Copland's nickname for his car.
35 Possibly a reference to one of Erich Leinsdorf's concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra on 11 and 13 October 1945, which included Appalachian Spring.
36 At the end of November 1945, the Harvard Music Department put on four days of concerts to celebrate the centenary of Fauré's birth. On 25 November, Copland wrote an article in The New York Times previewing what he described as “a shrine for Fauré devotees.”
37 Copland was working on his Third Symphony.
38 Seymour Meyerson was a close friend of Bernstein and of David Oppenheim, but otherwise he remains a mystery. He is not the same Seymour Meyerson who served in the Army Signals Corps, became a scientist specializing in mass spectrometry (and also co-authored a booklet called Folk Dancing for Fun, which helped pay his way through university). I am most grateful to this Seymour Meyerson for taking the time to explain that he wasn't the one who knew Bernstein.
39 An abbreviation for “post exchange,” a type of store operated at US Army bases, which in turn generates income to support recreation, sports, and entertainment.
40 It was an unusual program, including Beethoven's Op. 131 String Quartet arranged by Mitropoulos for string orchestra, Ravel's Shéhérazade (with Jennie Tourel as the soloist) and Alborada del gracioso.
41 Walter Hendl was Rodzinski's 28-year-old assistant at the New York Philharmonic. When Rodzinski was taken ill, Hendl took the concert on 8 December (the Overture and Scherzo from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream, Schubert's “Great” C major Symphony, and Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto) at very short notice. On 9 December 1945, The New York Times reported that Hendl's debut “offered a striking parallel to that of Leonard Bernstein, who first attracted wide attention, when at the last moment he was called upon to conduct the Philharmonic.”
42 The Hotel Vanderbilt in San Francisco was used by the Army's Officer Pay Section, where Oppenheim was working.
43 It's unclear what Bernstein means by “so N”.
44 Clarinet.
45 On 21 January, Bernstein conducted the City Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, Strauss' Don Juan, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, and Three Variations from Fancy Free.
46 Carlos Moseley (1914–2012) was to have a long association with Bernstein. In 1941, Moseley was the soloist in Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Bernstein conducting, at Tanglewood. In 1946 he was working at the State Department, promoting American music abroad, the subject of this letter. In 1955 he joined the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, first as press officer, then associate manager in 1959 (in time for the orchestra's tour to Russia), managing director from 1961 to 1970, president from 1970 to 1978, and finally chairman.
47 Paul Feigay (1918–83), American theater and television producer. Feigay's first Broadway credit was as co-producer with Oliver Smith of On the Town, and his subsequent career included producing the television series Omnibus with Bernstein in the 1950s. On the Town ended its successful Broadway run on 2 February 1946, and the arrival of the tour in Chicago (including Nancy Walker and Adolph Green in the cast) was greeted enthusiastically by Claudia Cassidy in the Chicago Daily Tribune in her review published on 2 April. Feigay's letter is an interesting snapshot of the vicissitudes of producing a Broadway show, even one as ostensibly successful as On the Town.
48 David Glazer (1913–2001) had given the first performance of the Clarinet Sonata with Bernstein on 21 April 1942. From 1951 until his retirement he played in the New York Woodwind Quintet.
49 Bernstein's optimism is heartening, but the situation in Czechoslovakia was volatile, and deteriorated sharply over the next two years. On 26 May 1946, two weeks after Bernstein wrote this letter, the first Czech post-war general election had a voter turnout of 93.9%. The result was a victory for the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Edvard Beneš continued as president, and Jan Masaryk, son of the founding father of Czechoslovakia, continued as foreign minister. The Communist Klement Gottwald became prime minister. The Communists controlled only a minority of ministries, but these included some of the most important, notably Information, Finance, and the Interior (including control of the police). Through their position of power in these ministries, the Communists were able to establish a solid base from which to launch the Soviet-backed coup in February 1948, beginning four decades of Communist rule that ended with the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
50 The famous actress Helen Hayes (1900–93), who was married to Charles MacArthur. Something of a legend in the American theater, she is one of a select group to have won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy, and a Tony. She had two Broadway
theaters named after her. In 1955 the former Fulton Theatre was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre; after that was demolished in 1982, the nearby Little Theatre was renamed in her honor.
51 Laszlo Halasz (1905–2001) was the first Music Director of New York City Opera, from 1943 to 1951. He then became Recording Director for Remington Records, as well as a conducting teacher at the Peabody Conservatory and Eastman School of Music.
52 i.e. Madama Butterfly.
53 The recording session on 1 July 1946 was for Ravel's G major Piano Concerto, in Bernstein's dual capacity as soloist and conductor, made with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
54 Felicia was appearing at the Bass Rocks Summer Theatre in Gloucester, MA.
55 Britten's Rape of Lucretia was first performed at Glyndebourne on 12 July 1946.
56 Presumably Bernstein means Dennis Brain, principal horn of the Philharmonia Orchestra.
57 The ink has become progressively fainter on the page and here Bernstein refills his pen.
58 The song “Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)” by Billy Rose and Con Conrad.
59 Bernstein first met Felicia Montealegre Cohn (1922–78) in February 1946, at a party given by Claudio Arrau after he had played the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto with Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony. Felicia was not only a beautiful and gifted actress, but had been a piano pupil of Arrau's. During the autumn of 1946 she and Bernstein saw each other regularly and grew increasingly close. Bernstein took Felicia with him to Hollywood in December, and it was there that their engagement was celebrated by a party. Leonard Lyons reported in his “Times Square Tattle” (The New York Times, 8 January 1947): “This is how Leonard Bernstein's engagement to Felicia Montealegre, the Chilean actress, was announced: Lester Cowan, producer of The Beckoning Fair One in which Bernstein will costar, conduct and compose the musical score, gave a hoe-down for them at his ranch. Sinatra sang, Gene Kelly danced and John Garfield donned boxing gloves. Then came a song written by Ann Ronell, author of ‘Willow Weep for Me’, ‘Big Bad Wolf’, etc. The tune was a blending of Haydn's ‘Surprise’ Symphony, Mendelssohn's Wedding March and Bernstein's Fancy Free, On the Town and Jeremiah. The lyrics ended with the announcement: ‘This party has been staged, Because they got engaged. Len & Felicia, Are now officia–lly Two.’ ” In the summer of 1947, Felicia spent time with the Bernstein clan at Tanglewood, and Humphrey Burton wrote of the tensions: “Felicia came to Tanglewood for two long spells that summer […] Life was not easy for her despite her official status as Leonard's fiancée. There was rivalry with Shirley, ostensibly about such mundane matters as who should sit next to Leonard at meals. Helen Coates was also fighting to maintain her old position. Felicia said later that her self-confidence was undermined as Leonard constantly found fault with her” (Burton 1994, p. 166). By September 1947, the couple had decided to call off the engagement and the Journal-American on 11 September reported that “Leonard Bernstein's matrimonial plans have been cancelled.” Four years later, on 12 August 1951, the Associated Press announced the couple's second engagement, made by Mrs. Serge Koussevitzky at a supper for the faculty of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, where Bernstein had been teaching and conducting during the summer. This time, the engagement was followed by their marriage a month later, on 9 September 1951.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 36