Renée Miquelle tells me of your piece, which she liked, & of doing the Village with you. Was it fun? She is terribly upset about France, more than all of us, because her home town & mother are involved. A ghastly business.
It was Heaven when Aaron came to Boston.
I want an reste, I've been working intermittently on my Violin Sonata, which I like, & which you probably won't, I'm afraid. These labors, Catiline, what with learning new scores & practising Tombeau de Couperin & assorted small subjects, & trying to see all the people I should when I have no real desire to, and trying to awake from a general depression, have all kept me fairly tied up. La vie marche. La mort approche. La naissance reste.
I really regret not having seen you – I wanted to – and perhaps you'll have some reason to be in the City next week. I hope so. Write me there if you can't come.
Best always.
Lenny
54. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein
[New York, NY]
Wednesday, 26 June [1940]
Dear Lenny,
Enclosed please find an impressive looking letter – and my love. I'm glad New Hampshire was on hand to welcome you and it sounds nice up there. You may or may not know that we all crashed Leonard Lyons’ column in an item about Aaron [Copland] being the distinguished page-turner at the telecast.71 Adolph has spoken to Aaron and he is amused and amazed – and not the least bit angry.
There is a slight lull. Judy [Holliday] is away. The rest of us are doing some work and hoping that by the end of the week we'll be able to take a day or two off too. A dull letter, I know – but I'll write soon again – and I hope I'll have something to enclose as well.
Love,
B
Do you want those lovely slacks? – and jacket?
55. Leonard Bernstein to Renée Longy Miquelle72
Hanover, NH
1 July 1940
Chère Mme,
Lunch is calling, and I have but a moment to write – the television venture being over, I am safely ensconced in this charming but dull college town with the Silvermans73 (or should it be Silvermen?) and working, actually. I see nobody, but lead a quiet, useful and pleasant existence. I've already learned Beethoven's 4th and Scheherazade. Starting Copland's Music for the Theatre today. Practicing. Composing. The fiddle Sonata almost prêt. Leaving for the Cranwell School, Lenox (my next address: please write) on the 5th, probably. Aaron told me that I might have to conduct Randall Thompson's Symph. (No. 2, naturellement) the first week, since that's when Randy will be there. Kouss, in searching around for the person to do it, suddenly said to Copland (so goes the tale) “your Bernstein!” I don't know.
Nothing to do but pray. And perk up about the abroad situation. It's getting exciting now; Russia, it seems, is going to have a lot to say about what Germany does, soon, and forcibly. Again, we can only pray. […]
Lenny
56. Betty Comden to Leonard Bernstein
17 July 1940
Lenny dear,
Kouss may have been impressed by your conducting – but his feelings cannot compare with mine. I'm thrilled at the thoughts of your concerts and I absolutely will make it my business to get up to see you somehow this summer. But actually conducting! And after all that silly fretting over whether or not you'd memorize Scheherazade in time. […] It's wonderful about the conducting and the summer sounds magnificent for you. […]
57. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman
17 Lake Avenue, Sharon, MA
[August 1940]
Ken,
I was very desolated that your visit was so short – it hit me afterwards that I hadn't really seen you outside of some small talk & some big talk forced in somewhere to give your return significance. I wanted so to reestablish us again – & then you left. I find you, thank God (?) very much the same Ken, the most pleasant article to be with I've ever encountered, cool, and unimpressed by most superficial things, more impressed than he will admit by the basicker things. I was touched by your reaction to the hundreds of busy little Tanglewood bees: if it caused the slightest stirring up in yr creative being, I feel a Messiah, indirectly. Hast du ein eingiges Wort geschrieben? Is Palo Alto? Does your family intrigue you any more? You should keep away from it. It's a kind of monstrosity anyway, as you will admit – but you can't live in a sideshow.
Come east, where I can see you often.
Tanglewood was a complete success. Where did you leave? – yes, at the Bach, which was done standing up & [Putnam] Aldrich playing the harpsichord. The performance was an ode to Viola Wasterlain. Scheherazade was wonderfully exciting, despite some bad slips from the solos, & there followed the Haydn Symphonie concertante, the Brahms Haydn Variations, Copland's Outdoor Overture (at the Allies Benefit!), & a performance I wish you could have seen & heard of Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat with my own words (local color) served up as a surprise for Koussie on his terrace at a tea he gave for the school. A hit. Kouss is greatly impressed wants me to study with him in Boston this winter, if he can get an orchestra for me to work with. I'll know in a few weeks. Write, & spare no gory details. I'm with you til the plane wheels flaming to the Japanese (Chinese, I suppose it shd be) soil –
Len
58. Leonard Bernstein to Aaron Copland
17 Lake Avenue, Sharon, MA
[August or early September 1940]
Aaron, foremost of men,
Where are you? And if so, why no word? You said you'd write, according to Green. Not seeing you is something of a shock, you understand. The summer was a revelation in that regard. Neither of us (I hope) tired of the other (I had feared you might) and I came, in fact, to depend in many ways on you. I've never felt about anyone before as I do about you. Completely at ease, & always comforted with you. This is not a love letter, but I'm quite mad about you.
Might Yaddo on Sept. 7 & 8 be interesting?74 Are you planning to go? I was thinking of upping to Lenox next week or so to see the Kouss. Perhaps I could combine both. Write fast & let me hear. Best to Victor.
Love,
Lenny
P.S. I've finished the Fiddle Sonata, &, by God, there's something about the ending that's wonderful – almost mature. I want you to see the whole thing now – I like it better.
59. Leonard Bernstein to Serge Koussevitzky75
17 Lake Avenue, Sharon, MA
[before 5 September 1940]
Dear Dr. Koussevitzky,
Words are a remote enough medium of expression for any musician, but it is especially difficult for me to find words for this letter. Let it be brief.
This summer to me was beauty – beauty in work, and strength of purpose, and cooperation. I am full of humility and gratitude for having shared so richly in it. These last six weeks have been the happiest and most productive of my life. I have been able, for the first time, to concentrate completely on my main purpose, with a glorious freedom from personal problems.
It was a renaissance for me – a rehabilitation of the twisted and undefined Weltanschauung with which I came to you.
For your creative energy, your instinct for truth, your incredible incorporation of teacher and artist, I give humble thanks. Seeing in you my own concepts matured is a challenge to me which I hope to fulfill in your great spirit.
I am now at home, resting with my family. I hope to be in Lenox within the next few weeks, and I should very much like to see you and talk with you. Can you let me know when this would be best for you?
Please give my very warm greetings to Madame Koussevitzky, and to Miss Naumoff.
In devotion, and in gratitude,
Leonard Bernstein
60. Serge Koussevitzky to Leonard Bernstein
Lenox, MA
5 September 1940
Dear Leonard,
Thank you for your letter.
Nothing could have made me happier than to know that your work this summer has really given you beauty and strength and a better understanding of the gifts with which nature has endowed you.
I shall be glad to see you sometime during the middle of this month, let us say Tuesday, the 17th, or Wednesday, the 18th, – and I shall look forward to your coming to Lenox.
My best wishes are with you always.
Serge Koussevitzky
61. Leonard Bernstein to Serge Koussevitzky
86 Park Avenue, Newton, MA
30 September 1940
Dear Dr. Koussevitzky,
As I sit and wait for the outcome of your plan, in a kind of Proustian twilight state between knowing and not knowing, between sleeping and waking – in the midst of all this I have had an inspiring idea. It would have to have – and I pray it will have – your support.
I have met one or two of the people who have been conducting small orchestras in Greater Boston, and I have been singularly unimpressed – or rather, singularly impressed with their lack of equipment. It occurred to me that if they can get orchestras of young people, perhaps I could. And with your support, almost certainly.
If you are unable to establish connections with the representatives of Backward Boston, don't you think it would be wise for me to attempt the organization of a young orchestra? I am sure there are many instrumentalists in Boston who would be glad of orchestral experience; if you liked the idea, we might even establish it as a kind of training orchestra for the Boston Symphony. If these young people knew you were behind it, I am sure they would rally to the cause.
The problem for me is to make contact with these people. Again, if you could speak to the men of your orchestra, they might be willing to send their pupils to this orchestra. I realize the responsibility I would be shouldering, but I do it only under the influence of your spirit which still hovers around me. I could then work with an orchestra (which would derive great benefit from their association with you) and still be here to work with you this season. Please don't think me presumptuous; I am just making a great effort to be practical.
Please try to get some rest before the season. I am sorry to intrude on your privacy even with this letter; but I am made bold by my recent reading of Nietzsche, who teaches me that I must be somewhat bolder if I, like his Zarathustra, shall ever face “the great Noon-Tide.”
In eternal devotion,
Leonard
Warmest greetings to Madame Koussevitzky and Miss Naumoff.
62. Leonard Bernstein to David Diamond
2122 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
11 October 1940
Dear David,
I am (O wrest the power from the powerful) in Philly. Nay, living here. There has been a commotion in the diplomatic heavens76 and I, O fearful pawn, was set with a sharp click in Rittenhouse Square. I'll tell you all anon.
Which means that I shan't be in Boston when you are. God bless the Sat. night concert, & have a good burlesque show.
I'd be incredibly happy to do the NMQR recordings. I am “serious” about it, and very flattered that you should still want me to do it. So write, & set some dates, voice the stipulations, & I'll pop out as from a pigeon-hole. Mais l'important, que tu m'écrives, et cela bientôt.
Lenny
63. Leonard Bernstein to Kenneth Ehrman
2122 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
15 October 1940
Cher Kenneth,
Incredible that you put up with what you put up with what you put up (with?). Everything that constitutes a means of improvement for you is at your disposal, except, apparently, the initial desire. That's available, to, at a reasonable fee. You're not lazy. Why don't you investigate?
I couldn't imagine what you were doing at Lafayette, Ind., but I wrote you there, & no response. Of course, I wrote you again at Palo Alto (first sending it to Box 817, Palo Alto, 'steada Menlo Park). By the way, did you know there was Menlo Park, New Jersey?
But having forgotten what I said to you in that Odyssean letter, I may be guilty of repeating myself. En tous cas, comme tu aperçois, sans doute, ci-haut (that sounds wrong) I am in Philly. I don't know; I never asked to be here. Something makes it inevitable. I may have told you that Kouss had great plans for me which involved my staying in Boston but they were given the K.O. by the Hon. Curtis Institute, which objected strenuously at (read: to) student-swiping, & vowed to discontinue all relationship with Kouss & his school if I didn't return. Matter of ethics, don't you know, setting a precedent, don't you know, etc. Reiner was furious. He had seen me referred to in printed items as Kouss’ pupil – no mention of him (antecedents again; means Reiner). So me voici, & lucky to be, O misery me, ta da ta da. But I've got a magnificent room with a double bed & massive mahogany furniture, & the school is doing almost all the supporting. Therefore, easier. Therefore, out goes Mexico, & Kouss, & you, & Cambridge, & California. Nothing left for you to do but come here. Please try; there are some things you might profit by that you haven't yet seen. By “here” I mean East, not Philly: I'm in this city only because Koussie realized that he'd be losing an A-1 customer in Mrs. Bok if he didn't kowtow. So I became a fearful pawn ([Edna St Vincent] Millay) in the hands of wily diplomats. Write me very soon.
I to my naked spinet in your corner.
Lenny the pawn, & Penny the prawn,
and Henny the lawn, & Jenny the spawn, & Renny the griswoldforlawn.
64. Alfred Eisner to Leonard Bernstein
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Culver City, CA
[?October 1940]
Lennie, old mole,
I have just finished reading Hemingway's new novel from the galley proofs and am still a little breathless.77 A master stroke managing to get hold of those proofs, involving larceny of some proportion. But she's a novel, old gum drop, a book of infinite insight and agony and the soul of a man hovering halo fashion over the brow of his body while he kills with cold savagery. Writing that positively gooses you! Hemingway saw Spain cameo-clear; and his book is just two years – two? Four! – too late and its anger will cause not a ripple in the hysteria of warmaking. 'Twill be just a good novel by Hemingway about something out of ancient history. The people who will realize what it is he is saying will already know, and there it will end.
Where have you been, old sausagefoot? Aeons have whirled their course since that card from Tanglewood. Not a word. I suppose by this late date you have a devoted slave in the Kouss. I thought as much. Indirect word of you from Austin, who described you as “forging ahead” and deciding with some acumen, I think, that he (A.) and Kenneth needed a kick in the pants. Back at Curtis? What? All the days crammed to the brim that I must know about. Successes. Quiff. Friends. Plans. Already written, in the writing, to be written. Prospects. Aaron. On and on, and I want to hear about it all. So to it, Rosinante, to the road again; get thee pants and write me a letter that will consume at least a morning of MGM's time in the reading. Trust me to kill the afternoon.
I won't even mention the draft. It's just too goddamn funny to even talk about. One thing: what are you going to do? Me, I can't wait until the army makes a man of me. Can't decide between the air force and fighting my war toying with some secretary's breasts. Simply can't decide. We live in parlous times, halvah, old boy, very. Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla. But yes.
Hattie arrives in some two weeks to take over not only my care and feeding but also the not inconsiderable job of delivering me from the financial toils. I make enough money for three men, and am a pauper, yea, I sit among the ashes and for garments sackcloth. I'm tooting madly about looking at houses. To date, nothing I like. Must find something within the week.
Of my tenuous existence, trivia. The Eisner soul grows small and curls inward like the anemone to confess that he has ghosted two (I must be very tired or something) jobs for a quickie studio, for the gain of silver.78 One, a mouse called Thirty Boys and a Girl (subtitle: The Gangfuck) has just been finished. Shooting time: six days. Budget: 10 grand. So you can imagine. No, you can't imagine. But the banks honor their checks, if you worry them into giving it to you. Working here at Metro with a couple of German Jew writers whose English is even
worse than their script which is negligible. We communicate in mangled French, English and German. Nice people though: one an outspoken anarchist. All for the assassination of L.B. Mayer (after the expiration of his contract, of course). The other is a gourmet who drags me about to restaurants of stature and flies into tantrums if the béarnaise sauce is not up to his idea of sauce béarnaise. One night he insisted on going to the kitchen and bawling out the chef. I was sure he was going to get a meat cleaver in his head. Nip and tuck there for a minute.
Taking a course in the novel given by the League of American Writers school here, more as discipline to make me sit down more often to an already started novel, than in the hope of learning anything. Some very wacky people in that class: I expect murder before the month is out. And River79 (The Torguts) to have nervous prostration. Also a new story of mine will appear in The Clipper, a literary monthly put out by the League pretending to some excellence. Be in excellent company anyway: Dreiser, Meyer Levin, Belfrage, others. I think every writer in America is either here or on his way. You meet them all.
Intended coming home this month, but Mother Metro like the python has me in her coils. In the spring. Letter from Ann and Nathan today: they desire word of you. And remember, it's Keats. So heavyhearted, I go home to my cell and it's another day. Write, sluggard, hear the voice crying in the wilderness and write.
Con brio,
Al
65. David Diamond to Leonard Bernstein
Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY
29 October 1940
Dear Lenny,
Henry Cowell80 forwarded your little “critique” to me, asking me to get some definite plan worked out for the recording. Naturally, I don't feel the way you do about the 3rd fugue and neither do I approve of a series of preludes. If I had wanted that, I would have written them without the fugues. And Lenny, perhaps your kind of musicianly temperament will be the kind that succeeds best because it turns hot and cold easiest, but in the long run you will find your own way of treating music (the way John Kirkpatrick does by the way, but instead of saying “dull”, he says, “quasi-baroque”) to be the merest surface glazing. It seems incredible to me, that in this short time, you can already pronounce so dark a verdict on the several fugues, when I'm sure, knowing your high-pressure endocrine system, that you could hardly have spent much concentrated effort on them since Cowell got the music back to you. I can only say that I believe in the 3rd Prelude and Fugue whole, that if the fugue to you seems dull, it is like X telling me much of the Art of Fugue and the Great Fugue is dry and paper-music. The art of counterpoint is a true art. It has to be realized before one can say things pro or con. And to realize the 16th century masters, much of late Bach and Beethoven, the Stravinsky of Persephone and the Symphonie de Psaumes, the fugue from Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, we must first know the notes so well, the line so accurately and the nuances so perfectly and rightly proportioned, we should be able to reconstruct the works ourselves. You will say, but I am no sixteenth century master, Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, or Bartók – but my aims and purposes are the same, my deep compassion for the past the same and my belief in the future the same. Lots of Reger may be dull, but not this baby. I've learned when to stop the machine in time of crisis! When you employ the word dull to the 3rd fugue, you are simply failing to unmask the secret character behind the piece.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters Page 8
