The Leonard Bernstein Letters (16 page)

1
Burton 1994, p. 11.

2
Helen Coates (1899–1989) was Bernstein's piano teacher from the end of 1932 until 1935, and they became close friends. She kept a maternal eye on her protégé during his student years, and gave up piano teaching to become his secretary in 1944. She remained so until 1989. Her unspoken role in this book is of the greatest importance. It was Miss Coates who assembled and maintained Bernstein's scrapbooks, filed all his correspondence, labeled his photographs, organized his papers, and, as a consequence, did much to arrange the comprehensive documentation of his life that later formed the basis of the Leonard Bernstein Collection in the Library of Congress.

3
At the top of this letter Helen Coates has written the date of their first lesson: “Sat. at 1:00 Oct. 22”.

4
Sid Ramin (b. 22 January 1919), American composer, songwriter, arranger, and orchestrator. His credits as a Broadway orchestrator (in collaboration with Irwin Kostal, Robert Ginzler, or Hershy Kay) include
West Side Story
(1957),
Gypsy
(1959),
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
(1962) and
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
(1976). He won an Academy Award for the new orchestrations he made with Kostal for the film of
West Side Story
(1961) and wrote the original score for
Stiletto
(1969). As a songwriter, Ramin is best known for “Music to Watch Girls By,” originally written for a Diet Pepsi commercial, and subsequently widely recorded.

5
This is the first of several letters sent by Bernstein to Ramin during the summer of 1933. Bernstein turned 15 on 25 August 1933 and Ramin was five months younger. Both had attended the William Lloyd Garrison Elementary School; when Bernstein went to the Boston Latin School (1929–35), Ramin went to Roxbury Memorial High School, but the two remained close. Ramin characterized their lifelong friendship as “a relationship of teacher and student that never changed throughout the years. Lenny was a born teacher; I was a born listener. […] That relationship really was one that lasted until Lenny passed away. Always, it was teacher and student” (quoted in Oja and Shelemay 2009, p. 13).

6
Jacques Fray and Mario Braggiotti were a celebrated piano duo. They began their career at Le Bœuf sur le Toit, the Parisian cabaret, and became friends with George Gershwin when he visited Paris in 1928. They first came to New York in 1929 and quickly achieved immense popularity through regular appearances on the radio, and extensive tours of the United States.

7
Eddie Ryack was a school friend, and co-inventor with Bernstein of Rybernian, the imaginary language they devised.

8
Lawrence Bearson, who later worked as a writer for the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), c. 1937–9.

9
AVOL were sponsors of a series of Sunday radio broadcasts on WBZ, Boston in 1935. These gave the young Bernstein some early experience of playing on the radio.

10
Mischa Tulin (d. 1957) was a Russian pianist and Theremin virtuoso who emigrated to America at the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution. His teachers included Glazunov and Busoni.

11
Beatrice Gordon (1918–83) lived in Roxbury, MA. She was described by Bernstein as “the love of my life” at the time (Burton 1994, p. 22). She performed in his teenage productions of
Carmen
(1934) – a spoof version, performed in drag (she appeared as Don José opposite Bernstein's Carmen), and as Pitti-Sing in
The Mikado
(1935), a more ambitious staging put on by “The Sharon Players.” Burton summarized their relationship as follows: “His attachment to Beatrice Gordon, who sang Don José in matador pants at Sharon, went well beyond music. They were both romantics, enamoured of poetry and words. He called her “Tiger on Brocade” (an early example of his obsession with anagrams) and “Rosebeam”’ (Burton 1994, p. 29).

12
Probably a reference to “Miniver Cheevy” (who “loved the Medici”), by the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935).

13
Amy Lowell (1874–1925), American poet who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1926.

14
Verne was Beatrice Gordon's middle name.

15
In some of his letters to Beatrice Gordon, Bernstein signs himself “Lamb's Ear”.

16
A reference to Bernstein's first encounter with Dimitri Mitropoulos in January 1937, which was evidently a torrid occasion.

17
On 31 July 1937, a few days before writing this letter, Bernstein had been musical director for a Camp Onota production of Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Pirates of Penzance
, with Adolph Green as the Pirate King. The first known photograph of Bernstein as a conductor – conducting the Camp Onota Rhythm Band – also dates from the summer of 1937.

18
Mildred Spiegel (b. 1916), American pianist. One of Bernstein's closest friends in the 1930s and early 1940s, she became his regular partner on two pianos and they were both pupils of Heinrich Gebhard. Bernstein wrote his Piano Trio for Spiegel's Madison Trio (active from 1935 to about 1940). Its members were Mildred Spiegel (piano), Dorothy Rosenberg (violin), and Sarah Kruskall (cello). According to the violist Raphael Hillyer (1914–2010), Spiegel also played the Piano Trio with him (violin) and Jesse Ehrlich (cello) at Harvard in about 1939 (see Derrick Wang: Raphael Hillyer Interview,
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=bernstein
). In 1951, Spiegel married Zevi Harry Zucker (1921–2012).

19
Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896–1960), Greek conductor. Bernstein first encountered him in January 1937 and the two immediately became very close. At some time in the late 1930s they almost certainly became involved in a relationship.

20
Some of Mitropoulos’ spelling has been silently corrected.

21
Aaron Copland (1900–90), American composer whose music, and whose friendship, wisdom, and advice, made the deepest impression on Bernstein. Always regarded by Bernstein as his most important musical mentor, Copland's admiration for Bernstein was more nuanced: he had the highest regard for him as a conductor but sometimes expressed reservations about his compositions. From the start of Bernstein's career, Copland gave him the fullest support. On 17 March 1940, he wrote the following recommendation to Mrs Grant for Bernstein to be admitted to Koussevitzky's conducting class at Tanglewood: “In my opinion, Mr. Bernstein is an extraordinarily gifted young musician. I have seldom met his equal for sheer musicianship. His musical memory is remarkable, and so is his ability to sight-read both scores and piano music. He is besides a first-rate pianist. He possesses the type of temperament which I believe is particularly sympathetic to Dr. Koussevitzky. His practical experience as a conductor is very slight, but he has had a year's training at the Curtis Institute under Fritz Reiner. Randall Thompson told me that Mr. Reiner considered Bernstein one of the best students he had ever had. Needless to say, I think it important that Bernstein gain an individual seance with Dr. Koussevitzky when the proper moment arrives. I'd appreciate it if that could be arranged.”

22
A work Bernstein knew very well. He had played to Copland when they first met, on 14 November 1937 – Copland's birthday.

23
Presumably Copland's
What to Listen for in Music
which was published in 1939.

24
The Works Progress Administration.

25
Copland's mention of Bennington is presumably a reference to Bennington College in Vermont. Norman Lloyd (b. 1914), American actor, a member of the Mercury Theatre founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

26
Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 14 and 15 October in a programme that included Copland's
El Salón México
, Mozart's Divertimento K287, and Dvořák's “New World” Symphony.

27
Copland's
El Salón México
.

28
Clifford Odets (1906–63), American playwright and screenwriter. He was a founding member of the Group Theatre.

29
For Bernstein's Harvard production of Blitzstein's
The Cradle Will Rock
.

30
Probably
Billy the Kid
, first performed on 16 October 1938.

31
The piano–vocal score of
The Second Hurricane
was first published by C. C. Birchard of Boston in 1938.

32
Kenneth Ehrman was a friend of Bernstein's in Eliot House at Harvard. He graduated in 1938 and Bernstein corresponded with him regularly during his own senior year at Harvard and his time at the Curtis Institute. Ehrman recalled one of his earliest encounters with Bernstein in a letter to Humphrey Burton dated 23 October 1991 (copy in the Library of Congress): “He had been playing the piano in the Eliot House Common Room after dinner, and it was a beautiful warm spring night and we walked around Cambridge for several hours. He was talking non stop about his plans – the composing, playing, writing, teaching (he never mentioned conducting in those days, at least to me). About the […] musical world, and how he would be such a big part of it. Suddenly he stopped, looked at me and said, ‘Who do I think I am, everybody?’”

33
The Harvard Advocate
is Harvard's undergraduate journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism.

34
This is part of a longer letter, but its main interest is Bernstein's scathing attack on the Harvard Music Department.

35
Presumably “Californiac”.

36
Mitropoulos specialized in directing concertos from the keyboard, notably Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3.

37
Hanya Holm (1893–1992), German-born American choreographer and dance educator.

38
Copland did so. His Piano Sonata was composed between 1939 and 1941. The earliest sketches date from about June 1939, shortly after he sent this letter.

39
Ehrman was living in Paris at the time, on his way to Italy and Greece.

40
Margaret Prall, David Prall's wife.

41
David Prall (1886–1940), professor of aesthetics at Harvard whose teaching had a profound influence on Bernstein.

42
The Birds
was first performed on 21 April 1939.

43
Adolph Green (1914–2002), American lyricist, playwright, and scriptwriter whose writing partnership with Betty Comden produced several successful Broadway shows including
On the Town
and
Wonderful Town
, both with Bernstein. In Hollywood, Comden and Green's greatest successes were at MGM, notably
Singin’ in the Rain
. Green first met Bernstein at Camp Onota in the summer of 1937, where Bernstein put on a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's
Pirates of Penzance
and Green sang the part of the Pirate King. They instantly became firm friends through a shared passion for music, and within a couple of years Bernstein was playing the piano for Comden and Green's comedy troupe, The Revuers.

44
Bernstein's production of
The Cradle Will Rock
opened on 27 May 1939. The
Harvard Crimson
(23 May 1939) announced the event as follows: “The Student Union will present Marc Blitzstein's opera
The Cradle Will Rock
at Sanders Theatre, Saturday evening at eight-thirty o'clock. The production is under the direction of Leonard Bernstein '39, and Arthur Szathmary, 2G. This Student Union presentation will be the first Boston production of Blitzstein's proletarian music drama. Featured in the cast are Donald Davidson, '39, William Whitcraft, '39, Rupert Pole, '40, and Myron Simons, '40, all of Eliot House. The piano, which furnishes all the music, will be played by Bernstein.”

45
The production of
The Birds
with Bernstein's incidental music.

46
Julian Claman (1918–69) sometimes appeared with The Revuers and became a writer and playwright. His 1955 play,
A Quiet Place
, starred Tyrone Power, but closed out of town, before reaching Broadway. The title and title song (sung by Power in the show) were taken from
Trouble in Tahiti
. In 1953, Claman married the actress Marian Seldes; they divorced in 1961.

47
Claman has written in the margin: “Tentative love, Julian”.

48
Probably Robert Weil, mentioned in Letter 538.

49
Davidson Taylor worked as musical supervisor for the CBS radio network at the time. It was one of several positions he held in the company. In 1938, Taylor had been the executive producer of Orson Welles’
The War of the Worlds
. He later became a vice president at CBS.

50
Made for the 1939 New York World's Fair,
The City
is a documentary film notable for its close integration of spoken narration (written by Lewis Mumford), cinematography (by Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke), and Copland's score. This score led directly to Copland's invitation to work in Hollywood the following year on
Our Town
.

51
Ernest Hutcheson (1871–1951) was an Australian pianist and composer. He was President of the Juilliard School, and Director of the Chautauqua School of Music at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York State. In 1925, Hutcheson had arranged for Gershwin to be given secluded accommodation at the Chatauqua Institution so that he could complete the Concerto in F.

52
Britten came to America in April 1939, staying until April 1942 when he returned to England. He first met Copland at the 1938 ISCM Festival in London (where Copland's
El Salón México
and Britten's
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge
were performed in the same concert); “Britten thought
El Salón
‘really beautiful and exhilarating’ and the ‘brightest piece in the festival,’ while Copland admired ‘the technical adroitness and wizardry’ of the
Variations
” (Pollack 1999, p. 72). Copland spent a weekend with Britten after the festival, and a warm friendship developed during Britten's time in the United States. On 17 June 1950, Pears and Britten gave the world premiere of the first set of Copland's
Old American Songs
at the Aldeburgh Festival, and subsequently made the first recording for HMV. For Britten's links with Bernstein see note to Letter 87.