Read The Leonard Bernstein Letters Online
Authors: Leonard Bernstein
The Leonard Bernstein Letters (17 page)
53
Britten and Pears spent six weeks of the summer at Woodstock, NY, as neighbors of Copland's; they left Woodstock a few days before Bernstein wrote this letter. The “Concerto” was Britten's Violin Concerto, which he worked on throughout the summer and completed at the end of September.
54
Bernstein spent the summer of 1939 in New York, looking for a job, without success. But it was a productive stay: there was a grand piano in the apartment and he spent a good deal of time playing and composing, as well as enjoying evenings with Green and the other members of The Revuers, including Judy Holliday and Betty Comden. Most importantly, Bernstein was starting to think seriously for the first time about a conducting career, and getting down in earnest to composition. The Lamentation he sent to Copland did indeed become “a movement of a symphony.” In the programme note for the 1944 premiere of the
Jeremiah
Symphony, Bernstein wrote: “In the summer of 1939 I made a sketch for a Lamentation for soprano and orchestra. This sketch lay forgotten for two years, until in the spring of 1942 I began a first movement of a symphony. I then realized that this new movement, and the scherzo that I had planned to follow it, made logical concomitants with the Lamentation. Thus the symphony came into being.” Almost forty years later, at a concert for Bernstein's 60th birthday on 25 August 1978, Copland conducted the Lamentation from
Jeremiah
.
55
Presumably a reference to The Revuers whose regular venue was the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village.
56
Arthur Szathmary, who co-directed
The Cradle Will Rock
with Bernstein at Harvard.
57
Dimitri Mitropoulos.
58
Isabelle Vengerova (1877–1956), pianist and teacher who studied with Theodor Leschetitzky. One of the founding teachers of the Curtis Institute, her pupils included Samuel Barber, Lukas Foss, Gary Graffman, Abbey Simon, Gilbert Kalish, and Jacob Lateiner, as well as Bernstein.
59
Alfred (Al) Eisner was Bernstein's room-mate in Eliot House at Harvard. After graduation, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a scriptwriter at MGM. He died from a brain tumor on 4 January 1941, in his early twenties. The third of Bernstein's
Seven Anniversaries
is entitled “In Memoriam: Alfred Eisner (Jan. 4, 1941)”.
60
Betty Comden (1917–2006), American lyricist, writer, and performer, the writing partner of Adolph Green for numerous successful Broadway shows and Hollywood films. Bernstein came to know Comden in 1939 through Green, when both of them were members of The Revuers. Bernstein made one of his first recordings with The Revuers in March 1940 (
The Girl with the Two Left Feet
), and they subsequently collaborated on two Broadway triumphs:
On The Town
and
Wonderful Town
. Betty Comden was to remain a lifelong friend. Like Green, she was passionate about serious music, and was as interested in Bernstein's conducting and his concert compositions as she was in his work for Broadway.
61
A reference to
The Girl with the Two Left Feet
by The Revuers, with improvised music by Bernstein. A proposed recording is the subject of Comden's letter.
62
The Pursuit of Happiness
was a CBS radio show broadcast for one season (1939–40; 30 episodes in all). Directed by Norman Corwin and Brewster Morgan, and hosted by Burgess Meredith, it was aired immediately after the Sunday afternoon broadcast from the New York Philharmonic. The Revuers appeared in two episodes, on 12 November 1939 and 18 February 1940.
63
Probably Margaret Prall.
64
Gordon Messing and Robert Wernick were friends from Harvard.
65
The Revuers and Bernstein did record
The Girl with the Two Left Feet
for Musicraft in March 1940. This was Bernstein's first commercial recording. He plays an improvised score between accomp-anying the songs performed by The Revuers. This delightful recording was released on CD by Pearl in the set
Leonard Bernstein – Wunderkind
(GEMS 0005).
66
David Diamond (1915–2005), American composer. He quickly became one of Bernstein's closest friends, though their friendship was often stormy and disputatious. Their correspondence over almost half a century is extremely lively, and sometimes volatile. Bernstein provided financial assistance for Diamond from time to time, while Diamond was an enthusiastic supporter of Bernstein's own compositions. Diamond studied with Bernard Rogers at the Eastman School, with Roger Sessions, and with Nadia Boulanger. Bernstein performed several of Diamond's major works and recorded the Fourth Symphony for Columbia in 1958. Diamond recalled his first encounter with Bernstein in an interview with Paul Remington for
Cosmik Debris
(No. 21, February 1997):
I had heard about him from Aaron Copland and Marc Blitzstein. They told me about this extraordinary pianist that was at Harvard studying with Walter Piston, Edward Burlingame Hill and Randall Thompson. And, one weekend I was going up the stairs to thank Koussevitzky for such a wonderful performance after a Boston Symphony concert. They performed Ravel's Left Hand Piano Concerto. Of course, he knew I had known Ravel, so he was so pleased that I came back and that I was so moved by the performance of the work. And there at the top of the stairs was this very good-looking young man. I remember he was looking down at me. He said, “I know you!” I said, “Who are you?” He said, “I'm Leonard Bernstein.” I evidently reacted to that, and he said, “and you're David Diamond!” He said, “You must come out to the Curtis sometime and spend a weekend with me there.” He had enrolled in the Curtis Institute and had a full scholarship there. So, I got him to record some of my Preludes and Fugues. It was the first professional recording he had made. … I would go out to visit him almost every other weekend. I helped him with his counterpoint, I remember. … He was still a conducting student of Fritz Reiner's while at the Curtis Institute. He was composing at that time and had written theater music while he was at Harvard. But, he was working on a clarinet sonata, or maybe it was a violin and piano sonata that became a clarinet sonata. I didn't know him at all as a composer. But, he was a phenomenal pianist. From an orchestral score, he read through my 1st Symphony that way. He just knocked me out as a musician. He was just phenomenal. And so, as the years went on, he saw that I was being performed a great deal. Then he made that amazing debut with the New York Philharmonic, substituting very quickly for Bruno Walter. Then, suddenly, he was on the map as a conductor. Then he was given the City Center Orchestra, which was an orchestra that was put together for him. He wasn't paid a salary, but that orchestra that he built up had marvelous programs. The second year he had that orchestra he did my 2nd Symphony, after he had heard Koussevitzky do it. Then, almost every other year he would perform a work of mine. And then he began to compose a lot. But, I guess I was the only one of the friends that felt he was a gifted composer. Copland didn't think he really had it as a composer. He thought he was very good for Broadway, but he didn't care for his composing. He didn't like
Jeremiah
whatsoever. Now, I thought
Jeremiah
was extraordinary.
67
In 1940, Mitropoulos conducted
The Coliseum at Night
by Frederick Woltmann.
68
The actor Wallace Beery (1885–1949).
69
We Who Are Young
was released on 19 July 1940. Produced by Seymour Nebenzal, the cast included Lana Turner in one of her first major Hollywood roles.
70
Albert Maltz (1908–85), author and screenwriter, one of the “Hollywood Ten” blacklisted in 1947 for refusing to answer questions from the House Un-American Activities Committee.
71
This telecast was a “special” from NBC's experimental studio, featuring The Revuers. Bernstein was the pianist and Copland turned the pages (see Burton 1994, p. 72). In Lyons’ article, Bernstein is described only as “the accompanist”: “Saturday Night, when The Revuers appeared on NBC's full-hour television program, the unbilled stranger who turned the pages for the accompanist was Aaron Copland, the noted American composer” (
New York Post
, 25 June 1940).
72
Renée Longy Miquelle (1897–1979), French-born pianist, theorist, and teacher. She moved to the United States when her father, Georges Longy, became principal oboist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her first teaching post was at the Longy School of Music, which her father founded in 1915. Subsequently, she taught at the Curtis Institute (where she was Bernstein's score-reading teacher), then at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, the University of Miami, and the Juilliard School in New York. Her other pupils included the pianist Jacob Lateiner, cellist Leonard Rose, and several members of the New York Philharmonic including flutist Julius Baker and oboist Harold Gomberg.
73
Raphael Silverman, later known as Raphael Hillyer (1914–2010), was a graduate student at Harvard where he often performed with Bernstein. He led the orchestra in the 1939 production of
The Birds
with Bernstein's incidental music. After a spell in the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a violinist, Hillyer switched to the viola in 1946 and became a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, with which he played for 23 years. He was the dedicatee of Bernstein's Violin Sonata, referred to in this letter.
74
A weekend of the Yaddo Music Festival comprising four concerts of contemporary American music given at the Yaddo artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, NY. The programme for the weekend was printed in
The New York Times
on 7 September 1940 and listed works by (among others) Paul Bowles, Henry Cowell, Paul Creston, David Diamond, Roy Harris, Mary Howe, Charles Ives, Gail Kubik, Otto Luening, Paul Pisk, and Quincy Porter.
75
Serge Koussevitzky (1874–1951), Russian-born conductor who served as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949. Along with Copland, Koussevitzky was one of Bernstein's most important mentors, initially through conducting classes at Tanglewood, then as an enthusiastic promoter of Bernstein's career as a conductor, pianist, and a composer of “serious” music: he strongly disapproved of Bernstein's activities as a Broadway composer, and this may well be one of the reasons why, after
On the Town
, Bernstein wrote no Broadway shows until after Koussevitzky's death.
76
Presumably, the “commotion” was Fritz Reiner's furious reaction to Koussevitzky's suggestion that Bernstein should study with him in Boston rather than with Reiner.
77
Hemingway's
For Whom the Bell Tolls
was published in October 1940. It is likely that Eisner's letter was written shortly before then. The draft mentioned later in Eisner's letter was the Selective Training and Service Act, which came into force on 16 September 1940, the first peacetime conscription in American history.
78
Much of this sentence has been deleted and retyped.
79
Walter Leslie River (1902–81), American novelist and screenwriter.
80
Henry Cowell (1897–1965), American composer and founder of the periodical
New Music
for which Diamond's piece was being recorded.
81
Bernstein's first solo recording, made for New Music Recordings in January 1941, was of David Diamond's Prelude and Fugue No. 3. The tetchy correspondence about it was symptomatic of many of the letters Bernstein and Diamond exchanged over the next half century.
82
The first performance of the Suite from
Billy the Kid
was broadcast on Saturday, 9 November 1940, by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under William Steinberg.
83
Harold Shapero (1920–2013), American composer. A near contemporary of Bernstein's at Harvard (Shapero graduated in 1941), he subsequently taught at Brandeis University for 37 years. Bernstein recorded Shapero's
Symphony for Classical Orchestra
in 1953.
84
Walter Piston (1894–1976), American composer and teacher who taught both Shapero and Bernstein at Harvard.
85
Charles Demuth (1883–1935), American artist whose friends included the poet William Carlos Williams, the artist Marsden Hartley, and the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. He bequeathed many of his paintings to Georgia O'Keeffe. A childhood illness left Demuth with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life, and his health was always precarious. According to Robert Hughes: “Demuth was not a flaming queen, in fact he was rather a discreet gay, but if he could not place his deepest sexual predilections in the open, he could still make art from them” (Robert Hughes,
American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America
, New York: Knopf, 1997, p. 380).
86
Probably a reference to the draft papers drawn up in Washington, D.C. in 1940, which had the numbers 1 to 7,836 printed on them.
87
Shapero is being hard on himself here. The
Nine-Minute Overture
won the American Prix de Rome in 1941. His success was reported in the
Harvard Crimson
on 9 June 1941: “Harold S. Shapero '41 of Newton has won the annual Prix de Rome in Music, it was announced yesterday by Howard Barlow, conductor of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. The work,
A Nine-Minute Overture
, was played during Barlow's regular Sunday afternoon radio program. Instead of the customary privilege of studying at the American Academy in Rome, Shapero will receive $1,000 outright. Recently awarded the Knight Prize for composition by the Music Department, Shapero is the first Harvard undergraduate to win the Prix de Rome. The winning piece is his first attempt at writing for orchestra.”
88
The award of the Prix de Rome and Harvard's George Arthur Knight Prize (for composition) enabled Shapero to study with Nadia Boulanger after graduation.
89
Virgil Thomson (1896–1989) began writing for the
New York Herald Tribune
in 1940.
90
Robert Weatherly (1921–2005) was a student at Juilliard when Copland sent this letter. He later became principal trumpet of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.