The Leonard Bernstein Letters

by Leonard Bernstein

  60 During the summer of 1946, Felicia performed in the Broadway production of Swan Song by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht at the Booth Theatre.

  61 A reference to Bernstein's unhappiness during his visit to London in June 1946.

  62 The new Bernstein-Robbins ballet Facsimile was first performed on 24 October 1946 at the Broadway Theatre, New York, by Ballet Theatre, with Bernstein conducting.

  63 Philip and Barbara Marcuse's children, Ann and Philip.

  64 Solomon Braslavsky (1887–1975) was born in Ukraine and studied in Vienna, where he was subsequently appointed professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary and conducted Jewish choirs and orchestras before moving to Boston to become Director of Music at Temple Mishkan Tefila in 1928 (see Sarna 2009, p. 39, for details of Braslavsky's early career). Bernstein was overwhelmed by the music he heard at Temple Mishkan Tefila, and wrote to Braslavsky in 1973 that he would “never forget the tremendous influence you and your music made on me when I was a youngster.”

  65 The text of this letter is taken from the version published in the Jewish Advocate on 17 October 1946, p. 6.

  66 Braslavsky wasted no time doing so: the letter appeared in the Jewish Advocate on 17 October 1946, just a week after Bernstein wrote to Braslavsky.

  67 The Preface for this publication was written by Hugo Leichentritt, who pointed out the similarities between Hebrew sacred music and Gregorian chant, and writes that “Mr. Braslavsky's arrangement is distinguished by a close acquaintance with the peculiar style of this old religious music, and by the skill and beauty of its harmonic treatment.” A review by Jules Wolfers appeared in the Jewish Advocate (25 September 1947): “Four extremely interesting Hebrew chants arranged for four part mixed voices and organ […] have recently been published by McLaughlin and Reilly, Boston. That a Catholic publishing house is the medium through which these chants are issued is in itself indicative of the all-over worth of this music. The day is past when Jewish music was of interest only to Jews. […] For Jewish choirs and choral groups their chants are obviously a must. In addition, any person interested in Jewish music will probably wish to acquire this set. Publication of four traditional Jewish chants by a firm named McLaughlin and Reilly must make some sort of publishing history. This is a commendable and heart-warming gesture.”

  68 Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961), Austrian-born pianist who commissioned a number of important new works for piano left hand after he lost his right arm during the First World War. The composers he commissioned included Britten, Hindemith, Korngold, Prokofiev, Franz Schmidt, Richard Strauss, and Alexandre Tansman. The most famous Wittgenstein commission was Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, the subject of this letter.

  69 Wittgenstein performed the Ravel concerto with Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony on 14 and 15 October, in a program that also included Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Olin Downes, reviewing the Monday performance in The New York Times (15 October) praised Wittgenstein's playing: “in a most authoritative way, he interpreted the music … He has a singing tone as well as five fingers with well-nigh the virtuosity of ten, and he is a colorist who understands not only the piano part but every detail of the orchestration. Mr. Bernstein, conducting, supplied a spirited accompaniment and both men acknowledged the long applause.”

  70 Though this letter is undated, it must have been written on 25 October 1946, the day after the “ballet premiere” that Bernstein mentions (the first performance of Facsimile). The concert to which the letter refers was given by the New York City Symphony on a visit to Boston on 13 November 1946. Though Bernstein had included the Enigma Variations in his New York programme on 11 November, the Christian Science Monitor announced the change to Dvořák's Second [Seventh] Symphony in a short article published on 12 November.

  71 It's difficult to see what Koussevitzky's problem was with Bernstein bringing his own New York City Symphony to Boston, but clearly the whole episode distressed Bernstein. Relations between the two continued to deteriorate in the last weeks of 1946.

  72 Lukas Foss (1922–2009), German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist. Foss' friendship with Bernstein lasted fifty years, from the time of their first meeting at Tanglewood in 1940 until Bernstein's death in 1990. He consistently supported Bernstein's compositions and often appeared as the piano soloist in The Age of Anxiety. He conducted the first performance of the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

  73 It certainly was. If The Shoe Fits (with a score by David Raksin) opened on Broadway on 5 December 1946 and closed after just twenty-one performances.

  74 This refers to a project that was never realized. Bernstein is referring to the proposed film The Beckoning Fair One in which he was to co-star and for which he was to compose and conduct the score (see Letters 228 and 238).

  75 Program annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

  76 The Associated Press broke the news of the engagement in Hollywood on 31 December 1946 and it was quickly reported by the East Coast press.

  77 Thor Johnson (1913–75) was appointed Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 1947, announced as the youngest native-born American conductor to lead a major American orchestra. He remained in Cincinnati for eleven years. During his tenure of the orchestra he conducted the premieres of 120 American and European works, many of which he had commissioned.

  78 Farley Granger (1925–2011), American actor best known for his roles in two Alfred Hitchcock films: Rope and Strangers on a Train. His first Hollywood appearance had been as Damian Simonov in The North Star (he met Aaron Copland during the filming). According to Granger's memoirs (Include Me Out), he subsequently had a two-night fling with Bernstein in the late 1940s.

  79 Ethel Schwartz and Saul Chaplin were married at the time. They divorced in 1949.

  80 Leonore Goldstein (1875–1971) was on the Board of Directors of the St. Louis Symphony for over sixty-five years. Bernstein often called her “Leonore III” after Beethoven's overture. She was the wife of Dr. Max Goldstein, founder of the Central Institute of the Deaf in St. Louis.

  81 Stanley Donen (b. 1924), American director of some of the most famous Hollywood musicals. His credits include On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, and It's Always Fair Weather.

  82 This letter is undated, but must date from early 1947. Bernstein had a four-week guest engagement with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in February 1947, and Bette Davis was pregnant at the time: her daughter Barbara was born on 1 May 1947.

  83 Place and date added by Helen Coates.

  84 The score for Spellbound was composed by Miklós Rózsa.

  85 Progressive Citizens of America. In Bernstein's FBI file, an Office Memorandum dated 2 March 1949, to the Director from D. A. Ladd, indicates (p. 10) that “Buffalo informant [redacted] advised that on March 25, 1947, Bernstein had been the principal speaker at a meeting of the Progressive Citizens of America in Buffalo, New York.”

  86 Alice Berezowsky was a friend of Koussevitzky, wife of the composer Nicolai Berezowsky, and author of the book Duet With Nicky (1943).

  87 Adolph Green was 32 at the time of writing this letter (b. 2 December 1914).

  88 Evidently, this was a working title for Easter Parade, released in 1948. Comden and Green were not involved.

  89 Easter Parade, with a score by Irving Berlin, starred Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Kathryn Grayson were not in the film.

  90 Allyn Ann McLerie (b. 1926), Canadian-born actress. Her Broadway debut was in Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus (1943), and she performed in the ensemble of On the Town before replacing Sono Osato as Ivy Smith.

  91 Adolph Green married Allyn Ann McLerie on 21 March 1947. They divorced in 1953 and she married the actor George Gaynes the same year.

  92 Lewis Funke: “News and Gossip Gathered on the Rialto,” The New York Times, 16 February 1947. Concerning Allegro, Funke wrote that although Rodgers and Hammerstein were “standing guard over it like a couple o
f Fort Knox sentries, Mr. Rodgers admitted the other afternoon that it would be a departure from the conventional. In a mood of convivial candor he even breathed, ‘experimental’, and said it would combine dance, drama and music as an integrated unit – something the avant garde has been talking about for a long time.”

  93 Roger Edens (1905–70) was a composer and producer in Hollywood, an important member of Arthur Freed's team at MGM. Edens is perhaps best known for nurturing the talent of the young Judy Garland (they became lifelong friends). He was Associate Producer on a string of successful MGM musicals. Comden and Green's greatest Hollywood success was Singin' In The Rain (1952), for which they wrote both the story and the screenplay. Most of the songs were by Freed and Nacio Herb Brown, but the new song for which Comden and Green wrote lyrics was “Moses Supposes,” with music by Roger Edens.

  94 In spring 1947, Bernstein was listed as a member of the Renée Longy Miquelle anniversary committee, set up to celebrate her 50th birthday. It is a sign of how widely admired she was that the members of the committee included Samuel Barber, Olin Downes, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Fritz Reiner, and Randall Thompson. Its aim was to encourage donations from friends, colleagues, and former pupils to pay the outstanding mortgage on her cottage on Cape Cod to “insure her future security” in honor of her “long-standing devotion to the profession.”

  95 Sid Ramin married Gloria Breit on 9 January 1949.

  96 Note in Helen Coates' hand: “Tried to call him but he was in Boston.”

  97 April 1947 was a crucial time in the history of Palestine, soon to become Israel. On 2 April the British government referred the problem of the future of Palestine to the United Nations, and on 13 May the UN appointed a Special Committee to examine the question of Palestine.

  98 Bernstein conducted the European premiere of Copland's Third Symphony with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on 25 May 1947, at the Prague Spring Festival.

  99 Koussevitzky had commissioned Copland's Third Symphony, and gave the first performance in Boston on 18 October 1946.

  100 Thomson's The Mother of Us All was first performed on 7 May 1947 at Columbia University. The cast included Teresa Stich-Randall as Henrietta, her operatic debut.

  101 In the Beginning was first performed on 2 May 1947 at Harvard Memorial Chapel by the Collegiate Chorale, conducted by Robert Shaw.

  102 Romolo de Spirito (sometimes given as “di Spirito”), a tenor who specialized in the performance of music by American composers. In his New York debut recital (27 February 1944) he included songs by Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Virgil Thomson.

  103 Carrington Welch, who was Romolo de Spirito's regular accompanist.

  104 The legendary singer and actress Lena Horne (1917–2010) was closely involved in the civil rights movement. She fought institutional racism in Hollywood in the 1940s (her scenes were customarily shot so that they could be removed for distribution to states in the South), she refused to sing for segregated audiences of troops, and she worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to pass anti-lynching laws. She was named as a Communist sympathizer – along with the likes of Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland, Judy Holliday, Langston Hughes, Burl Ives, Zero Mostel, Dorothy Parker, Pete Seeger, and Artie Shaw – in the infamous Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television (1950), and she was blacklisted by Hollywood. After her death in 2010, the president of the NAACP – America's oldest and largest civil rights organization – described Horne as “an outstanding, groundbreaking entertainer and a staunch civil rights activist who stood on the side of justice and equality. Lena Horne won the hearts of millions of Americans of all backgrounds as a glamorous and graceful actress and singer. She broke many color barriers and fought valiantly to bring down the institutionalized racism that plagues our society and prevents all Americans from an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream.”

  105 This may have been the occasion referred to by the television personality Ed Sullivan – “at the very least a facilitator, if not an informant, for the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee” (Vaill 2007, p. 171) – when he put pressure on Jerome Robbins in 1950 to disclose “the names of people who had been at a cause party for Soviet–American friendship he'd allowed the singer Lena Horne to give at his apartment” (Vaill 2007, p. 172). At that point Robbins did not name names, though he did so when he testified in public to the HUAC in May 1953.

  106 This was one of many organizations supporting African-American causes that came under suspicion from the government. FBI records reveal that the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America was described by US Attorney General Tom Clark on 4 December 1947 as “subversive and among the affiliates and committees of the Communist Party, U.S.A. which seeks to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.”

  107 Richard Adams Romney (1918–2009) was often known to his friends as “Twig”. A collection of letters to him from Bernstein, Christopher Isherwood, Osbert Sitwell, Pavel Tchelitchew, John Van Druten, and others is to be found in Yale University Library (Beinecke Library, Gen Mss 462). Romney's obituary published in the Albany Times Union (19 July 2009) includes the following information: “Richard Adams Romney, born July 15, 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah, died in Troy, N.Y. on July 15, 2009. Mr. Romney had been a resident of the Van Rensselaer Manor since September 2001 where he received wonderful care and made many friends. A veteran of the US Coast Guard, he served in the North Sea, receiving an honorable discharge in 1944. Mr. Romney was a resident of Manhattan's Upper East Side from 1945 to 1997 where he worked in the real estate and insurance industries. From 1950 to 1954, he was a gallery assistant at the Betty Parsons Gallery, Manhattan, the first home of artists like Ellsworth Kelly, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. He was the original owner of Pollock's Number 3, 1949. The great relationship of his life was that with the American heiress and supporter of the arts, Alice De Lamar. Their correspondence for half a century resides in the Beinecke at Yale. There are no surviving family members.”

  108 The United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Romney had served as a Coast Guard in the Second World War.

  109 The Gallery by John Horne Burns (1916–53) was published in the summer of 1947 and acclaimed by the likes of Gore Vidal, Edmund Wilson, and John Dos Passos. Burns, a Harvard graduate, served as a US intelligence officer in North Africa and Italy during the war, and his book is one of the first to explore gay life in the army.

  110 This letter indicates that the suggestion for using Auden's The Age of Anxiety as an inspiration came initially from Romney, who developed his idea in the letter of 29 July 1947. Romney sent Bernstein a copy of the poem very soon after it was first published in July 1947. In Bernstein's reply of 1 August he thanks Romney for the books, but after that there is no mention of The Age of Anxiety in his letters to Romney until May 1950.

  111 Romney predicts the early performance history of The Age of Anxiety with uncanny accuracy. After its first concert performances in 1949, the work was used for a ballet by Jerome Robbins in 1950.

  112 Presumably a reference to Bernstein's concert at Tanglewood on 27 July 1947 when he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, Schubert's “Great” C major Symphony, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, the first time anyone other than Koussevitzky had conducted the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. The New York Times reported that the concert was attended by 8,500 people and that “Dr Koussevitzky listened from his box in the center of the music shed, and later appeared on the stage to congratulate Mr. Bernstein.”

  113 Whatever was “enclosed” has not survived.

  114 James M. Cain (1892–1977) was an American writer and journalist whose novels included The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Mildred Pierce (1941) and Double Indemnity (1943) as well as Serenade (1937). Though Cain disliked the label, he was one of the leading writers of “hardboiled” crime fiction.

  115 The “most successful operetta composer we have” and the “highly successful libr
ettist” who had approached Cain (in 1940) were Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II (see Hoopes 1982, p. 366), so Bernstein had reason to be flattered by Cain's positive response to his request for permission to base an opera on Serenade.

  116 This project was reported in The New York Times more than a year after the exchange of letters between Bernstein and Cain. On 5 December 1948 an article headed “Opera Projects” stated: “Leonard Bernstein has asked James M. Cain for permission to base an opera on Serenade. He also asked Mr. Cain to write the libretto for him. The author declined the job, suggesting the composer was competent to write his own book. He promised, though, that he would give no one else prior operatic rights to the novel before the end of the year. He himself is skeptical about the project, for he wrote his agent, Harold Ober: ‘I know that anyone who undertakes any stage work based on this book is letting himself in for a thousand headaches.’ It was in April that Mr. Bernstein gained his promise from Mr. Cain. Since the composer–conductor will not be back from Palestine till some time this week, it is not known how far he has gone with his plans.” In fact, this project went back to the autumn of 1947, as we see in the correspondence between Cain and Bernstein.