The Leonard Bernstein Letters
Page 74
The best to you and your family.
Love,
Christa
I think it is wonderful that our Lied [von der Erde] and Brahms Lieder are now on records!
574. Thornton Wilder to Leonard Bernstein
Edgartown, MA
20 July 1975
Dear Leonard Bernstein,
As I told you on the phone:
I did not want an opera to be made of The Skin of our Teeth.
But I admired and trusted you, and was persuaded. I trusted you and the fellow-worker you would select.47
When your fellow-work fell apart – who was left to write the book? – I felt relieved of my commitment to you.
Hereafter, while I'm alive no one will write or compose an opera based on that play.
Torn from its context, Sabina's opening aria “Oh! Oh! Oh!” sounds awful, unmotivated, synthetic vivacity.
The nearest thing to it would be Zerbinetta's aria (or rondo). Who cares what her words are, except as are implied somewhat in Ariadne's abandonment? These words bear the weight of a crowded historical story of many facets.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my mistake was to have said “yes” in the first place; yours, to have not followed through with the original plan offered me.
Always with much regard.
Ever,
Thornton
575. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard Bernstein
[New York, NY]
23 July 1975
Dear Lenny,
I encountered the enclosed when I was organizing my files (well, it's better than working). I thought you might like to have them for future archivists, as your corrections are on them in your inimitable handwriting.
Love from Kanagawa,48
Steve
576. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard Bernstein
15 November 1975
Dear Lennie,
Thanks for the good wishes. We got one terrible review (from Kevin Kelly, very bitchy) and one mixed (Eliot Norton, heavy on the good side), the rest raves.49 The show needs an enormous amount of work on details: clarity, making the numbers land (the “button” problem again,50 God save us), timing, etc. But the structure is sound and the production startling and terrific. Keep your fingers crossed.
Hope things have taken an upturn on your show and your spirits.
Back to rewriting the opening number.
Love to Felicia,
Steve
577. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard and Felicia Bernstein
16 January 1976
Dear Lenny and Felicia,
Just a note to thank you for the tree – I've discovered that it thrives if you keep yelling ‘Bonsai!’ triumphantly at it. It's easily fooled.
Love,
Steve
578. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard Bernstein
26 January 1976
Dear Lenny,
I've responded to the Societi Musiki Shiki as per your request. I sent them my collection of Bernstein birthday and Christmas compositions and advised them to make their own choice. I also offered to conduct for them, since I figure that the placement of downbeats is irrelevant in Japan.
Love,
Steve
P.S. Your letter arrived with no postage and came from the Dead Letter Office. Should I read anything into this? S.S.
579. Jerome Robbins to Leonard Bernstein
The Barclay, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA
[February 1976]
Dear Lenny,
Good Morning!
I wanted to talk to you last night just for a moment. I understood your black moment of despair – but for God's sake, you are a big, capable, enormously talented man – with tons of energy – and so is Allan [recte Alan Jay Lerner] and don't sink (like that down moment). It's understandable; but now is the time to muster up all your wonderful optimism and get it still moving, come to the aid etc., and above all – as in the show, keep it going! You are rehearsing in public, you are in some chaos, but as in our democracy, you must believe your system will work, which I know you do, in order to move it. Your show now is exactly like the one you are writing about.51 Now you can make it work much much much better. Take care of your house. You can do it. Come on kid, get the spirit up again. No limp cocks!
Ole Coach Jer[ry]
See you about 1.
LOVE
580. Stephen Sondheim to Leonard Bernstein
New York, NY
4 May 197652
[Telegram]
The point is it's over and you're still the only artist writing musicals with one exception that is.
Love
Steve
581. Sid Ramin to Leonard Bernstein
8 May 1976
Dear Lenny,
Just a note to thank you again for your marvelous gift. Not only is it lavish but the inscription on the inside of the beautiful Gucci leather case is something I will always remember and treasure.
As you may know, Lenny, I'm always on cloud nine when I'm in the same room with you. The show made it possible for us to spend some time together and I savoured every minute.
From our pre-orchestration meetings to our post-orchestration meetings to our Fine and Schapiro53 festivities, I look back at the last three months with great affection.54 Especially, one very long and late meeting (in [Apartment] 92 [in the Dakota]) when we talked into the dawn. I'll never forget it.
I'm sorry the show didn't work out for you (for us!) but I will be eternally grateful for the wonderful moments I've had (including that great night at the Variety Club) in just being with you.
Gloria joins me in sending you much love.
Always,
Sid
582. Richard Avedon55 to Leonard Bernstein
407 East 75th Street, New York, NY
[May 1976]
Dear Lenny,
I know it isn't what you dreamt it would be,56 but you can not be responsible for anything but your music which is superb! I wept during “Take Care of This House” as I haven't since “ … and make our garden grow!”
And:
Rehearse
Seena
The dirge during the second act funeral –
The Red, White, and Blues
and much more. It's just beautiful, Lenny, and everyone near me was moved, and happy, and so was I, and it was because of your music.
You stand alone. Terrifying, but true.
Love always,
Dick
583. Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates
“Xmas 1976” [December 1976]
Dearest Helen,
At this very crucial turning-point57 in both our lives my annual wishes for a happy new year carry very special weight. So: a very Happy '77, with all my love.
As always,
Lenny
584. Leonard Bernstein to Irwin Kostal58
17 June 1977
Dear Irwin,
I've just heard the Fiedler–Pops recording of my Mass music, and I am so pleased that I must write you. What a job of sound-making you did! I almost don't miss the voices …59
I hope all is going well with you. My warmest thanks for Mass –
and my affection,
Lenny B
585. Oliver Smith to Leonard Bernstein
70 Willow Street, Brooklyn, NY
18 December 1977
My dear friend,
Your Songfest60 is a composition of such emotional variety and richness, it is difficult to be articulate about it after one hearing except to express to you the tremendous emotional effect it had on me. It contains ravishing sound, humor, tenderness, strident joy and anger, and sweet melancholy. Whatever I say to you is inadequate in expressing the joy your beautiful music gave me.
You are such a dear, great artist, and I hug you again with great love and thankfulness.
Oliver
586. Leonard Bernstein to Helen Coates
Hotel Sacher, Vienna, Austria
28 January 1978
Dear Helen,<
br />
I haven't written in all these three weeks (this pen is finished!) because I've been spending all my time between rehearsals in bed, sleeping and trying to regain my strength. It's a long, slow haul, and I still don't feel quite up to snuff. The doctor says that I don't need medicine, but a vacation in the sun, and that's just not possible for many weeks to come. So I muddle through, and Fidelio goes surprisingly well (tremendous reaction & critics) considering that I don't feel my full powers, and that I had to cancel so many rehearsals. Tomorrow is the live TV broadcast – I pray it will go well.61
So you too have had the flu! Isn't it ghastly? It's as though one's whole body had been attacked, ear-lobes, toe-nails & all. I also have no appetite & have lost weight: I hope yours is restored to normal.
I'm expecting Felicia on the 3rd of February & I hope you can give her a pleasant birthday party. She sounds splendid on the phone.
Do take care of yourself, & write – I love hearing from you.
Always,
Lenny
587. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein
117 East 95th Street, New York, NY
2 July 197862
Dearest Lenny,
The impossible letter must be written. I have seen you, and we have talked, and I have felt close to you, and it is hard to write when you are close, and you know that so much is both expressed and understood without the need for the written word. Yet I think of you and feel for you, and I think of Felicia, and what this last year must have been like for you, and the void that is now, and I wish I could write something to lessen the pain so visible in your eyes.
That Felicia was an extraordinary person, we all know. She impressed me the moment you brought her to our green living room on 55th Street. Her patrician beauty and her cool sparkle awed me a bit. I later came to enjoy her great earthy streak, crazy sense of humor, and her many sudden radiant bursts of warmth, and I wish I could have gotten closer than I did. I was close enough to feel totally bereft now.
You must not blame yourself for not coming through this as a kind of patriarchal leader and rock of ages. If I am bereft, what must you be? You are entitled to full grief, and floundering, and, yes, weakness. These are the feelings you expressed to me. This is a deep tragedy you are experiencing. You are so much, Lenny – so many qualities and gifts and inner voices not given to many human beings. You will find your strength somehow in them – and in the beautiful elements added to them by the co-mingling of your life and Felicia's.
Much love, always, from Steve and from me.
Betty
588. Nadia Boulanger to Leonard Bernstein
Écoles d'Art Américacies, Fontainebleau, France
7 August 1978
Dear Lenny,
To try to be with you in your commensurable distress.
And you knew so well, and for so long. Hope she did not suffer too terribly. Life sometimes is so difficult to stand. May your courage be as great as your sorrow.
Forgive these poor lines, I feel myself so sick and miserable.
With love,
NB
589. André Previn63 to Leonard Bernstein
The Watergate Hotel, Washington D.C.
28 August 1978
Dear Lennie,
It bothered me a lot to hear you sounding so depressed when I spoke to you the day after the concert. I thought about it quite a lot. At first I came to the naive conclusion that writing to you about it was none of my business, but then, the more I gave it thought, the more I realized that both as an old friend and as a musician, it was. I've been an admirer and a follower and, in a more remote way, a disciple since I first heard you make music in San Francisco in 1950 with the Israel Philharmonic. You've touched, directly or circuitously, a great many musical decisions of mine, but what's more important, the lives and ambitions of every conductor in this country. That's the kind of statement usually found on the scrolls of Doctorates, but for all its grandiloquence it happens to be true. Therefore, if you were to succumb to a depression, however temporary, that would keep you from your usual frighteningly energetic achievements, you'd be letting down an amazing number of musicians. You've kept those of us who grew up in the same years as you feeling young; you've kept those older than you correctly infuriated, and you've been a lighthouse of constancy to all those 20-year-old current phenomena. As a friend, I can see that this is a burden you might not want right now, but as a member of that weird band who feel that a day without music is an irresponsible waste, I have to tell you that you're stuck with it. I'm certainly not entitled to be a spokesman, and all this sounds terrifyingly pompous, but we depend on you and love you and trust you.
When I celebrate my 60th birthday, you will be a hell of a lot younger than […] Karl Böhm is right now, and I will expect you to play the Triple Concerto while I conduct.
See you soon.
André
590. Aaron Copland to Leonard Bernstein
Peekskill, NY
5 September 1978
Dear, dear Lenny,
That was a beautiful note you sent me. I was so pleased that you were pleased with the Jeremiah movement.64 It sure is a beauty!
And now the sad part. I'm not going to be present at the “Remembrance” for Felicia on the 18th because I am under contract to conduct the same day in Virginia (Norfolk). But my thoughts will be with you and the family that day.
As ever,
Aaron
591. Leonard Bernstein to Burton Bernstein
“Sharm-el-Skeikh, Tiran Straits, Sinai, Israel (or, by the time you get this, Egypt?)”
[October 1978]
Dearest BB,
I've thought of you all day, driving down the old S[inai] Peninsula (with the McClures and Tommy C.) and hearing your voice from Eilat to Sharm, Bedouin by Bedouin, camel by camel (one dead by the road in rigor mortis) & glorious geological grandeur by g. g. g. But the climax came tonight, walking up the beach from our Tunisian shrimp dinner, as we were confronted by one of the truly great signs of my experience, repeated at intervals along the strand, in the usual 3 languages. The English reads (and this may well merit a New Yorker appearance):
SECURITY WELL DESTINED
FOR ABSORPTION SUSPICIOUS
OBJECTS ONLY.
I cannot get it out of my mind: it defies all intelligibility. “Only”!
Aside from this I've thought of you often this month (Holidays very late this year) climaxed by Shmini Hatzsreth65 (gasp! of childhood total recall) only yesterday. Rosh, Kol, Yom, Succoth, etc. have come and gone in a welter of rehearsals & concerts & much sleeping in between. Very difficult to resume the old schedules, but God knows I've tried, acquitted myself passably, & have these 4 days of desert holiday before attacking the even more rigorous set-up in Vienna. I'll make it …
This great wonderful Sinai … give it back?!
Not one word have I received from anyone all month. I have phoned & written: not been answered. What is happening to the loving old family? Do call Mamma (if that is indeed her name) & give her my love. Tell Horse she's a cad not to have called or written.
And much love to all, & to you, – mine Brothoass,
Ben
Best from Moish [Moshe Pearlman].
I hope the book goes apace.
1 Published by Alex Ross in The New Yorker online: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/08/the-bernstein-files.html (accessed 26 February 2013). It would be reassuring to think that this bizarre episode was the only time that the words of the Latin Mass came under suspicion from a Presidential aide. Presumably, Buchanan's main cause for alarm might have been the last line of the Agnus Dei: “Dona nobis pacem” (“Grant us peace”). It's surprising that Buchanan felt the need to “get us a good Jesuit” to provide a translation, since he had himself been educated at Jesuit-run institutions: Gonzaga College High School and Georgetown University, and English translations of the Mass were so readily available.
2 Oliver Knussen, “Bernstein: Dybbuk,” Tempo, No. 119 (
December 1976), p. 34.
3 Oliver Knussen, “Bernstein: Songfest,” Tempo, No. 128 (March 1979), pp. 21–2.
4 Dougary 2010.
5 Burton 1994, pp. 446–7.
6 Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic recorded Thompson's Second Symphony for Columbia Records on 22 October 1968, straight after four concert performances. It is difficult to argue with the composer's delighted response to Bernstein's magnificent recording of the work, which has been reissued on CD by Sony Classical (SMK 60594).
7 Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (1925–2012), German baritone who had sung the title role in Bernstein's Vienna production and recording of Verdi's Falstaff in 1966, the reason he signs himself “Sir Dieter Falstaff” here.
8 See Letter 548.
9 Rabbi Judah Cahn (1912-84) was the founding Rabbi of the Metropolitan Synagogue of New York, which has always had a reputation as an informal and liberal Reformed synagogue. Cahn was a family friend of the Bernsteins, and he was also passionate about music (he appears as a speaker on Bernstein's recording of Bloch's Sacred Service).
10 A reference to the fundraiser for the legal defense of the Black Panthers held in Bernstein's apartment. On a number of occasions Bernstein explained that the event had not been intended to endorse the radical (armed) agenda of the Black Panthers. But Tom Wolfe's description of the event as “radical chic” (in New York Magazine, 8 June 1970) has refused to go away.
11 Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007), Swedish film and theater director, described by Woody Allen (in a TV interview with Mark Kermode) as “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.” Unfortunately, the plan outlined by Bernstein for a filmed production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde came to nothing.
12 Bernstein's concerts with the Orchestre de Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in February 1971 included Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin and the G major Piano Concerto (directed from the piano), and Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette.
13 Bernstein's concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic on 20 and 21 Februrary 1971 included Haydn's Symphony No. 102, Ravel's G major Piano Concerto (directed from the piano), and Schumann's Fourth Symphony.
14 Ethel Linder Reiner was a Broadway producer whose credits included Candide in 1956. Her death was announced in The New York Times on 11 February 1971.
15 Debs Myers was described in his New York Times obituary as a “political press aide.” He worked on Senator Bobby Kennedy's Senate campaign and on both of Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaigns. He died on 2 February 1971 at the age of 59.