The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  Have a great Buffalo, love to Fossies, & come soon. I miss you!

  Love,

  L

  I read a bad Kerr notice of Mendy's148 play in the Trib. Are they all bad? Give him & Susan my love. And the kiddies: kiss them. And write me. And make the kiddies write me – xxx

  523. Leonard Bernstein to Sam and Jennie Bernstein

  Hotel Bristol, Vienna, Austria

  19 March 1966

  Dear Folks,

  At last I have a minute to write you. I am enjoying Vienna enormously – as much as a Jew can. There are so many sad memories here; one deals with so many ex-Nazis (and maybe still Nazis); and you never know if the public that is screaming bravo for you might contain someone who 25 years ago might have shot me dead. But it's better to forgive, and if possible, forget. The city is so beautiful, and so full of tradition. Everyone here lives for music, especially opera, and I seem to be the new hero. What they call the “Bernstein wave” that has swept Vienna has produced some strange results; all of a sudden it's fashionable to be Jewish.

  But I work very hard, practicing & studying, recording (20 sessions!) and rehearsing. So far everything has gone brilliantly, but I'm tired – too many parties, also. Don't be upset by that bronchitis story: I had it for only two days. And I really feel very well.

  This morning I went to Shul, imagine, with Regina Resnick [Resnik]. The old, famous Wiener Schul, restored as it used to be, on Judengasse (what a name for a street!). But it was warm and heartening. I ran into a Bar Mitzvah and a Rosh Chodesh, got a Misheberach & held the Torah for Rosh Chodesh, got a plug from the Rabbi & even attended the Kiddush afterwards. Very sweet. And tell Prof. Braslavsky that I met his old friend Rothenberg, who sends his greetings. They all remember him here.

  Now I have a TV interview, a cocktail at Princess Hohenlohe, and then a dinner party with the recording people from London. So I'm off – and I send you much love. Soon you should receive some chocolates from Demel – the best on earth. Be well & take care of yourselves.

  Your Wiener Schnitzel,

  Lenny.

  Shabbos, 19 March '66 after Havdala[h]

  Jennie: Every morning I eat Vienna rolls – what you always used to call Vianna rolls. Remember?

  524. Victor de Sabata149 to Leonard Bernstein

  Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy

  28 June 1966

  Dear Leonard,

  In my purest and deeply felt joy I read this very morning that at last you plan to write an opera. Very seldom in my life I felt so thrilled and impatient! I wish to have your new score near my heart as soon as possibly! I am sure this will enable me to plunge into real music, a thing that – let us be sincere! – I am vainly longing for since centuries. Useless to tell you how often I think of you and your incandescent musical vitality. To know that a Bernstein does exist helps a lot. Ciao!

  Tuo affezionatissimo,

  Victor de Sabata

  525. Robert Russell Bennett150 to Leonard Bernstein

  150 East 50th Street, New York, NY

  26 November 1966

  Caro Maestro,

  There is no reason why my opinion should be of especial value to you, but I can't resist sending you this note to voice my enthusiastic approval of your decision to give full time to music composition.

  My opinion is not without substance because I once, when we were both much younger, tuned into a broadcast and hear a Sonata for clarinet and piano written by you, and as I turned away from the loudspeaker I said to Louise, “This is one of our big composers.” As years have gone by I felt a certain reluctance to see you pursuing the conducting, and even the composing of Broadway music, as being a waste of that precious commodity, time, when so much is needed for the full realization I had in mind. I never saw Gustav Mahler conduct. If he was as great as I have been told, he is just about the one exception that proves the rule as far as I am concerned.

  I leave you to comb through the history of our profound composers and see how they fared at strictly commercial roundelays. Of course, someone will answer this remark by bringing up that innocent era of Mozart and Haydn when “popular music” was the reaction of a whole era to the deep expression of Bach, for instance. Be that as it may, you have at least one enthusiastic vote for your career as a real composer.

  All the best as always,

  Russell

  526. Georg Solti151 to Leonard Bernstein

  17 Woronzow Road, London, England

  19 May 1967

  Dear Mr. Bernstein,

  I hope that you will not regard this letter as interference, but I felt that I had to write to you about Mr. Wobisch.

  I first heard from John Culshaw152 about the reports in the Vienna Press concerning you and Wobisch. Two days later Wobisch telephoned me about another matter, at the end of the conversation he told me more about the reports and how very distressed he was about them. Afterwards, I felt that without wanting to interfere in a matter which does not concern me at all, I had to write to you for purely human reasons.

  As another Jewish conductor, I understand your feelings surely better than anyone else. If somebody, after the Nazi horrors, does not want to work with a German or Austrian orchestra, as is the case with several Jewish artists, I understand only too well. I have been through great soul searching in the past about this, and several times have been on the verge of breaking contact with them. But finally I always had the conviction that one must forgive the past and try to work to help and educate the younger generation in these orchestras.

  I am aware of Wobisch's political past, as surely you were before you went to Vienna. However, working with him and knowing him for the past ten years, I have come to the conviction that despite everything he is probably one of the few trustworthy members of that orchestra.

  Wobisch worked very hard to bring you to Vienna and to prepare your appearances and successes there; I even heard from Mr. Rosengarten of Decca that Wobisch went as far as threatening to change the orchestra's contract from Decca to Deutsche Grammophon unless they were released to make Rosenkavalier with you. As you will know by now this involved the postponement of my own recording of the opera with the orchestra, which should be enough indication of my real neutrality in this issue.

  If Wobisch should have to resign as a result of this controversy with you, I am convinced that not only would this be bad for the orchestra, but that both you and I might well find any replacement totally unacceptable for political and human reasons.

  I hope that these few lines may have helped in some way.

  With kindest regards,

  Yours sincerely,

  Georg Solti

  527. Janis Ian153 to Leonard Bernstein

  7 June 1967, “Evening tide”

  Hello sir,

  Excuse the formality of the address, but if you remember everyone was bopping about calling you “Lenny”, and since I felt rather strange doing that we decided on sir.

  I would have written sooner but … Well, no excuses. I didn't really have much to say except thank you, and I'd said that. But now I want to tell you what's happened.

  If you didn't see, the biggest rock station in California wrote out a public apology for their recent timidity, and thanked you for showing the way. More stations on the West Coast went on “Society's Child”, and now it's number one in California. I'm waiting for it to hit the top 20, so NY stations will be forced to play it. Except the station manager of WMCA or WABC said he'd never play it because he wanted to keep his children's ears free from the “objectionable” lyrics.

  Anyway, this is just to say that you're lovely and thanks again for everything.

  Janis Ian (me)

  P.S. Is it okay if when a reporter asks what I think of you I just say that you're gorgeous and charming?

  528. Leonard Bernstein to Lukas Foss

  Casa Malone, Orbetello, Grosseto, Italy

  8 August 1967

  Poor, dear, blessed Luky-Puky!

  A grief ago! I pray that period has l
engthened to a vague unpleasantness ago. When I read the accounts in the paper I was sure something like what you described had happened: I wanted to rush home and set things right. But I can't rush anywhere: the dolce far niente has taken over. I do nothing. No note written, no score studied, no idea thought out. I'm a fish, living with other fish underwater in my glorious diving gear. I have a rubber motorboat and a divine Maserati (my first & last pure playboy object); my summer romance & constant companion is Alexander; I read the mail & some newspapers; I fret from afar over race riots, Vietnam, tax hikes, bad N.Y. weather, increasing horror in the world from Cairo to Memphis, Tenn. I fret over Myrow's Salome libretto (lousy, pompous, meaningless, imitative in the worst way, and corruptive of youth). I fret over your neoclassicism & Philharmonic tragedy154 (Oh, well; it gave Brigitta a chance for a big triumph, no?)

  I don't sleep (it is now 4.30 a.m.). My back has been in agony for a month. Felicia can't take the sun. But the water and sky & air are divine, as is the weather and this house-&-garden; and you have a birthday in a week. Bless you. Time … I am tortured by the passing of time, to the point where I can hardly enjoy the passing of these beautiful days. Each day is a horror because it leads me one day closer to the end of summer; & the guilt of not working is intolerable. But my brain & creative innerds are dormant, or dead. Why? I shriek inside. For what, for whom? Shall I leave music & enter politics? My tune of the summer, obsessive, is the Beatles'

  Will you still need me

  Will you still feed me

  When I'm sixty-four?

  At least it's gay and simple and no trouble.

  John Gruen155 sits with me for hours, a tape-recorder between us, and I talk, talk, talk. I have been photographed to a crisp. Israel was astonishing and semi-sad and like a religious experience. The concerts there were my last conscious acts.

  I have a gnawing feeling that David O[ppenheim] is still miffed at me. Ask him. I miss him a lot; if he can, would he write?

  Rio → Warsaw → Buffalo! Only Luky could concoct that itinerary. But at least have fun, feel like Marco Polo, adventurize!

  I long to see you in September. I rejoice in your “fan letter” and in the good news of the Phorion tape. I pray for you to write beautiful music. I love you.

  L

  Hugs to Corny & Chris-Andrew and L-Baby and the Opps. And the Rivers and rest. How did Phorion phare in Chicago? Phabulously, I hope.

  Write again before you leave.

  529. Leonard Bernstein to Stephen Sondheim

  Casa Malone, Orbetello, Grosseto, Italy

  19 August 1967

  Dear SS,

  The appearance on my desk, faute de mieux, of a pack of Winstons brings you instantly and clearly into the room. Besides I can't sleep o' nights, nor have I been able to for over a month. And these guilty sleepless hours, drugged yet jumpy, are my only epistolary moments. Reading H. P. Lovecraft this evening has also brought you to mind, as has Nina's incessant playing of the WSS album. In, out, let's get cracking. Neutral territory. One-handed catch. Then the Princes appeared for dinner, reporting you depressed at Merrick's failure to announce your work among his plans, or, indeed, to come up with a theatre. And beside these, I just happen to think of you often, apropos a thousand trivia, all warmly nostalgic.

  A strange summer. Glorious weather, sea, boats, diving gear, skis, sun and air – all the goodies. But a fearsome back (how's your back, Lenny? And now I'm to be 49) prevents aquatic fun, and nameless anxieties (is that the word?) forbid work. Not a note, scores unstudied, books unread. Thoughts and ideas are absent, except for such stuff as Improvised, eh? Garbled and poor! Felicia sleeps badly too: only the children prosper. I teach Alexander Hebrew – my one real activity. I shudder at the heaps of unanswered mail. I itch.

  There's my report. What's yours?

  You should have come to this Eden-on-the-Sea; we could have moaned together.

  If you see or talk to Jerry, please tell him I'm simply too guilty to write him, owing to the absence of a single idea. Total non-energy.

  I hope your musical is ship-shape.156 I read that Lion in Winter is to be cinematized. I hope you are loving somebody, regularly and in bed. I hope the soul-brothers haven't reached Turtle Bay yet. I hope the world can survive its awful weight a bit longer. I hope –

  I send you wee-hour love and personalized sentiments. Be dour if you must, but be happy.

  Lenny

  530. Joe Roddy to Leonard Bernstein

  25 October 1967

  Dear Leonard,

  Because you have one of the last grasps left of the human comedy, I am counting on you to see me into, and then out the other side, of this absurd fix I am in. For all the Mahler I never knew before, for Ives, for much Haydn, for an overwhelming Missa Solemnis, for the world's first Falstaff, for the Chichester Psalms, for Candide, for – well, Christ, for ninety percent of the music that matters to me nowadays, I am in debt to you. Clinking oceans of gold pieces would not repay all. So really, it cannot matter, can it?, that there is an ice cream stand at Expo 67 on which there is writ in chocolate sauce L. B. OWES J. R. $100. Debt for debt, mine is hardly worth mentioning.

  Except that, weeks from now when you are savoring a distraction or two instead of settling down to write the next to last song for that Brecht show, into the mind of you will come the picture of me. I will be seen sitting, sitting and sitting at some many Philharmonic rehearsals, day after day after day. Why, you will then ask yourself, did he come round so often? Why, why, why? Then a terrible thought will come over you, a thought so disruptive that it may dislodge forever that shred of melody you were counting on to get you started again, the thought that I was sitting there not watching and listening to you work with the orchestra at all, but instead just waiting there like some mouse creep of a bail bondsman from Baxter Street worrying about his cheesy C-note.

  But, my ever so dear friend, that is not why I was there, nor why I will be there tomorrow maybe. I like it there, but you know all that. I just want to protect you from that blinding light in which I might glow, though dully, like a mouse. I don't want you to lose that shred of tune, and surely you don't want me to sit there at rehearsals with these grotesque introspections.

  Unless I know

  That you know

  About my dough

  At Expo,

  I can't show

  At rehearsals any mo'

  Bo'.

  Love,

  Joe Roddy

  … and I don't even know what present you bought for your sister.

  531. Leonard Bernstein to Joe Roddy

  27 October 1967

  Dearest Joe,

  Why, you will ask yourself, $112.49? Precise figures follow: $100, plus interest (at, I believe, the going rate of usury, 4%), making $104, plus interest compounded for compound guilt and shame, making $108.16, plus further compound interest for neglect and discourtesy.

  My only redeeming feature for my life-long inability to remember debts owed is my concomitant inability to remember debts owed to me by others. In short, money is the thing that interests me least of all this world's wonders.

  But:

  Now that you know But be my beau,

  That I've eaten crow Dear Joe,

  Over the dough Fo'-

  You lent at Expo ever. And FO'-

  Never go GIVE!

  Away no mo',

  Love,

  Lenny

  532. Leonard Bernstein to Aaron Copland

  [New York, NY]

  12 November 1967

  Dear A,

  It's two days before your birthday, but I'm already thinking hard and tenderly about you; and this note is your birthday present carrying with it such abiding love as I rarely if ever get to express to you in our occasional meetings. I don't know if you're aware of what you mean, have meant for 30 years, to me and my music and so many of my attitudes to life and to people. I suppose if there's one person on earth who is at the centre of my life, it's you; and day after day I recognize i
n my living your presence, your laugh, your peculiar mixture of intensity and calm … I hope you live forever.

  A long strong hug.

  Lenny

  533. Janis Ian to Leonard Bernstein

  Richard Armitage Management Corp., 130 East 57th Street, New York, NY

  [November 1967]

  Hello Sir,

  (“Sir” on account of “Lenny” sounds too presumptuous, and “Mr. Bernstein” too unpresumptuous)

  I guess you know what happened by now, everyone calling up and apologizing for not playing “Society's Child”, and then playing it and it turned into a top twenty record … and the album too … and the new record looks like it will …

  Because of that, because you drilled me on Spanish, because you're a nice person, I'd like to invite you to my concert.

  It's to be at Philharmonic Hall on December 8 (a Friday night). I'd really like to have you there, and though I can't quite explain why, I'm sure you understand.157

  If you can come, would you please call Jean Powell who's my manager, and let her know how many tickets you'll want. Or ask David [Oppenheim] to call if he's around, as we're inviting him too and it'll be killing two birds with one stone.

  I really hope you can come.

  Yours for sunshine etc.

  Janis

  P.S. Passed my Spanish Regents with an 86.

  534. Leonard Bernstein to Joe Roddy

  [New York, NY]

  7 January 1968

  Dear Joe,

  Your piece in Look was a fine Xmas present, in that it is always a gift to read something sanely considered and well told.158 I have, naturally, a few objections (oh, two or three hundred) – nothing sensational, like what's so special about sport-jackets (Dimitri [Mitropoulos] wore them constantly, as do you) and who ever lived like Scott Fitz[gerald] – anyone – who, me? – at 32 W. 10th? 40 W. 55th? The Chelsea? What else? Oh, On the Town is not in any sense a version of Fancy Free: there is not one note in common – only three sailors.

  But all these I forgive easily; what may take a bit more time is your quoting a quote which is a misquote to begin with, and by Ned Rorem, at that! I never expected that you'd reach that far and that low, just for a kicker. But peace, I'll get over it. And I'll manage to survive not being loved by you, which should patently disprove Ned's quote.