The Leonard Bernstein Letters (45 page)

Dearest A,

Well, we've gone and done it. The [Third] Symphony seems to be a success! Of course we could have used much more rehearsal (our schedule is unbelievable), but after the fourth performance it has begun to sound, and quite magnificent at that. It's really a fantastic piece! I must confess I have made a sizeable cut near the end
¹²⁵
(after the second performance) and believe me it makes a whole lot of difference. Hope you enjoy the enclosed. Most people loved it (the symph.).

In the midst of all this marvelous history & miracle-land & excitement of life, I have miraculously fallen in love. It's the works; and I can't quite believe that I should have found
all
the things I've wanted rolled into one. It's a hell of an experience – nervewracking & guts-tearing and wonderful.
¹²⁶
It's changed everything. The Swedish is all yours now.

Hope the picture goes beautifully, & my love to all the nice people in H'wood. I can't wait to hear the B[enny] G[oodman] concerto. (By the way, B.G. here means Ben-Gurion. Strange world, no?)

Much love,

L

Hope very much to be able to do the May 4, but I can't be sure til I get back to the States, which will be early in Dec. Where will you be?

A wonderful hot day. We left our grand pre-fabricated house, Helen, as you see, in the lead, followed by our friend Katya, m'self and artist Yosi.
¹²⁷
Driving to Ain-Harod we passed so close to Nazareth that we couldn't resist having lunch there. It's a marvelous town; and while Helen ran around photographing everything and everyone in sight, I had a glorious Arab meal, with kh'umus and t'hina, and a fine Arab lad shined my boots. Bought rosaries (blessed by the church) for various Cath[olic] friends, and headed for Ain-Harod, the largest kibbutz in the land.

Of course, first thing I had to have a horse. The gent in charge, a real kibbutz lion, took me out. I had a sort of Palomino beauty which I soon discovered I couldn't handle. So the lion-gent exchanged horses with me (I took his dray-horse), and it turned out he couldn't handle him either. Then the stable-man was called in, and he didn't do better, and since it became a bore to go only in circles we called it a day and went swimming in a marvelous pool in the middle of nowhere. The best swim-sun-and-air I think I've ever had – or thought I had until I went to Elat, but more of that anon. Meanwhile, there is a concert coming up for all the kibbutznicks of the vicinity, 5000 strong.

Jennie T[ourel] sang like an angel. The audience was, as always, the most attentive and appreciative in the world, although they don't know the conventions of clapping, so that Jennie T. lost an encore or two that had been planned. I finally played ye
Rhapsody in Blue
, and we adjourned to a huge party where we danced and sang and drank and made with the Hora until Godknowswhen A.M. To bed, in a real guest-house (a fantastic achievement for a kibbutz) – then up betimes and on to Acre (old Arab city which Napoleon couldn't take) and with the military governor of Galilee went off to visit an Arab village. The road up to it was, as you can see, a real reducer. Since we were with the governor, whom the Arabs adore and fear, they staged for us what is known as a “Fantasia”, with guns going off, music, dancing and nineteen lunches, coffee sessions, etc. Whole lambs are brought, torn to pieces by the host (who never sits with the guests but waits until they are through, then with his pals dives into the leavings. When they are through the women pounce on
their
leavings, then the children, then the dogs. Such is the hierarchy.) Then, already sick with so much food, we proceeded to mount the local camels, who are nasty, haughty, dirty beasts. Jennie T., who will do anything for a photograph, allowed herself to be ruptured on one. Accompanied by the elders of the village (Druses, and splendid figures
they are) we jolted back to Haifa for a concert – one of the worst I've ever given. Arabic burps punctuated the Mahler, which was worse in Jennie's case than in mine. Next morning a great Oriental dancer named Yardena Cohen
¹²⁸
performed for us – then quick to Lydda airport for the big climax – the trip to Elat. This is the newly-won spot on the Red Sea, southernmost Negev, across from Aqaba (Transjordan) on the Gulf. A beautiful flight (we were flown by the army in a Dakota with bucket seats) and landed in a wonderful Arizona-like wilderness, dry and windy and awesome. After a marvelous swim in the Red Sea (which is the bluest thing you ever saw) and a hard-tack dinner we drove up into the hills and entertained the soldiers stationed there. Jennie sang Carmen, of course – and this place at night really knocked me out. If you can imagine an intimate desert, where every rock and dune seems familiar, this is it. Yosi and I wandered afterwards for hours through the hills. I never wanted to leave, and did everything to miss the plane the next morning. But no soap: they waited for me. So sadly back to T[el] A[viv], and concerts and parties and god-damned professional life, which is driving me mad. But I leave tomorrow for Holland, and my one nostalgia, besides Jerusalem, will be Elat.

Love, Lenny

Phil,

Many thanks for the clipping. It makes me very angry, and doubly so to think of all the fuss that's made over the Furtwängler & Gieseking business,
¹²⁹
while no attention at all is paid to this
echt
Fascism in our own cities. How did H[enry]
R[eichhold] ever let himself be quoted in such out-and-out Nazi lines? Have they set the date for burning the library in Cadillac Square?

Much love to you and Babs.

L

Dear Lenny,

Thank you for your nice letter and poem to which I have this to answer: “When the real animus and the real anima web, you can get married and take your wife to bed.”

Some short remarks on your dream: when you are unconscious (“taking a nap, sleeping”), you find that your rather undifferentiated feeling is playing tricks on you, bringing people into your psychology whom you do not want to have in there. Rather than finding out what these people really want from you, or why they were invited, you get angry at that side of yourself who played the trick on you. You get in touch with that side by hurting it, then you regret. You would know more if you would try to make her understand why you don't want these people anymore. Then, when you do get away from the unwanted collective, you get into an even less desirable one, a very pedestrian collective (street). Being alone now, without anything but yourself, you are eager to make contact with some other side, contact in the usual average pedestrian way – sex – which is the substitute for human relationship. When you find that that is impossible you are caught in some very dull, past aspect of your own bourgeois-side. That shows very nicely why you are so eagerly seeking homosexual contact in reality, it seems the way out or the escape from the fear of being caught in bourgeois patterns, and seems to symbolize the free and non-bourgeois life. They talk about your work in the dream; your fear always seems to be that being a conductor and being set in a profession is the same as being dully married and leading a middle-class life. I am sure it could be that way, but must not be that
way, and will stop to look to you that way the moment you get some real color into your life; then you can give up to the so-called “colorful life” you are leading.

Freud's definition: Id – subconscious; Ego – conscious; Super-Ego – conscience. Ego is the whole of consciousness. Jung: has the same concept of the Ego, he terms it the center of consciousness, the difference between F[reud] and J[ung] is in the way [the] use and function of the Ego are seen. With F. it is the censor and adaptor to reality. With J. it is understood as the channel for the forces that want to flow from the inside to the outside, and vice versa, it has a consciously screening function and serves the forces of the Self or the unconscious. With F. it is supposed to master them. To F. the Ego is the human being as such, therefore it has a very high value; to J. it is an aspect of the human, subordinated to the Self, which means the unspoiled essence of the human being. The Self is to J. the highest value in a human being. I hope that does not confuse you more.

I wonder if you have enough contact with my way of analysis yet that the long distance dream-interpretation means anything to you. Generally it is difficult to get anything out of such answers in such an early stage of work; later when one is more attuned to each other it is easier. Let me know.

I hope you have a fairly good time, not too many tensions.

Kindly,

Renée

Dear Howard,

For a period of one year from the date hereof I hereby engage you, and you hereby accept such engagement, to act as my exclusive adviser and representative, to assist me in securing employment and negotiating contracts for my services as a performer in radio, television and motion pictures, as a composer of scores and incidental music for motion pictures, and in negotiating a contract for the production of
Operation Capulet
, a dramatico-musical composition based on
Romeo and Juliet
, for which I am currently composing the score and some of the lyrics.
¹³²
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, it is clearly understood that my services as a conductor are excluded from the scope of this contract.

In consideration of the above services, I shall pay you a sum equal to ten percent (10%) of the gross compensation served or received by me in connection with any employment and contracts in the above fields, which contracts are entered into or negotiated for during the terms hereof, and upon extensions, additions, renewals and substitutions of such contracts and employment. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, it is understood that I shall pay you no compensation with respect to my ASCAP royalties.

Very truly yours,

Leonard Bernstein

Accepted and agreed to by Howard Hoyt

Dear Hans,

Good news for a change!

a) Kouss has promised, finally and definitely, the premiere of
The Age of Anxiety
for April. Originally it was to be the 22nd and 23rd, but my benefit for Weizmann and Truman on the 23rd interferes. He has promised to find some other week in April.
¹³⁴
Will you check officially with Leslie Rogers at Symphony Hall?

b) I've just this minute finished scoring the first movement (and, to quote Bill Schuman, is it beautiful!!). I'm mailing it to you, registered, and you can begin extracting at once. I hope to finish the second movement by next week. It's a mad race, and I'm exhausted, but it's challenging: and I hope to have it all scored by the beginning of March. (Please God!)

Please let me know right away how the print comes out: I've been using a Parker 51 pen on it, just as an experiment. If it's no good – I have the other ink with me, and can change.

I've set two Rilke poems for Jennie Tourel (when? I don't know!) and she will do one or both at her March 13th Town Hall recital. I hope to have more of them soon. They make a fine group: “Lovesongs” by Rilke.

And love to you –

Lenny B

Dear H,

This is a blessed day for a tired guy. Quiet and raining here, and peaceful enough to orchestrate like mad (page 67 already!).
¹³⁵
Concert tonight in Zanesville, O., then return here, and I can work til three tomorrow afternoon, when we leave for Dayton.

[…]

It's been a grim weekend: I've been overtired again, and had the jumps at the concerts. I played a very inferior Mozart Concerto, but the Shost[akovich] was great. Too much farewell party. Also, Reiner has left a trail of hostility against me in the orchestra
¹³⁶
and around it, which makes it still very difficult to establish
rapport
with the men. It's the first time I've had this problem, and it does remove the element of fun to an alarming degree. (The critic Lissfelt,
¹³⁷
whom you've no doubt been reading, is one of the Reinerites who is simply basically antagonistic. What a sourpuss!)

I think I'll manage all right on tour, if I can get enough rest. I've set myself a deadline of having the score finished by the time I return to N.Y. for the Rutgers concerts. Let's hope & pray.

Love,

L

Izler Solomon
¹³⁸
just called & we may have a drink tonight. Tossy S[pivakovsky]
¹³⁹
is here playing Bartók with him.

Dear Lenny,

I'm sending a copy of this to Jerry [Robbins] so that there won't be any wheels within wheels and we'll all be abreast of what is what.

Quite frankly, I was disturbed by our phone conversation Monday night. Unless I seriously misinterpreted you, this is what I understood you to say: You conceive of the show's script as being written in an almost purely poetic style; you have doubts (understandable) whether I can write in that style without forcing; and – most important – if my writing cannot be that poetic, then you would not have complete faith in the project and, therefore, would rather abandon it before spending any actual working time.

It is this last point which I found disturbing. I myself have enormous enthusiasm for and belief in the show. I spent a good deal of time and money in New York talking about it and would not have worked on it there
and
all these weeks here had I not, quite naturally, assumed the thing was settled: we were going to do it. It is difficult to work on something you feel may explode in your face at any moment. But difficult or not, I cannot turn back. I am “in” it, and
want
to be “in” it; I must proceed. True, the possibility of chaos does superimpose an unfortunate level to plow through before working. But I'm working. As Jerry knows too well, I was in a vaguely similar situation myself before – when I first started in analysis, incidentally. But even then, I had spent time on the project and had worked on it, and then pulled out (for reasons, which I now regretfully admit, were erroneous and foolish).

Be that as it may, the phone call brought up several problems I had not realized existed. First, the possibility that, even at this date, you might not do the show. Second – the conception. What I have tried to do is make the scenes between the lovers poetic in contrast to the violence of the world they live in. I do not think the rest should be ultra-realistic but I am doubtful whether I think it should be as poetic as you apparently do. Almost pure poetry is competing with Shakespeare on his own play. I can't stand up to that, the show can't stand up to that, no one today, unfortunately, could stand up to that. That is realistic fact. Plus the fact that I don't completely see the show that way. Also – and this would naturally follow your concept – you conceive, as I do, of the lovers' scenes as being almost completely musical but the others as being almost completely musical, too. I admit I do see less music and certainly “songs”. I don't mean this
as a cut-and-dried rule. As you will see, the last scene in the first act calls for music almost throughout, for example.

Perhaps both you and Jerry disagree with me about the concept: perhaps the difference is merely one of degree (which I fervently hope). I am not adamant or absolute in my feelings; they can be modified. But a musical show (and I see this as a musical show or whatever you want to call it, but
not
as an opera or even a modified opera) is a collaboration. A collaboration calls for compromise. Certainly, I don't ask either of you, any more than you ask me, to compromise to the point where you disbelieve in what the final outcome will be. That is foolish and makes for bad working conditions and, more important, bad work. We all must create as we feel and believe. I would not ask you to write a pop tune any more than I would ask Jerry to create a Berlin Ballet Mécanique. You might be able to do it, but it's doubtful whether it would be very good. So you would have to do
your
conception of a pop tune, and Jerry, his conception of the Ballet Mécanique (which, in his hands, might be very funny, come to think of it). I think we all know each other's work, we all can concede and adjust, and there can be a meeting point.

I don't feel that the current lack of exact agreement is a crisis nor do I mean to provoke one. The only serious point in my mind – and forgive if I repeat this – is the one I have stressed. Namely, we agreed to work on the show, to do it, and now – again, unless I misunderstood – you are unsure whether you will or will not do it – unless the conception is the way you visualize it. This stand leaves me on a high wire and I don't know how to walk a tight rope although I am willing to learn. Mind you, no word, line or scene I've written or will write is sacred. I agree some of it should be more poetic. In the very first scene, for example, I was counting on the initiation-ritual being sung in contrast to the sharp violence of the opening (and thus to set the pattern of the show). You told me on the phone that you did not think there should be any music in the scene (although if you look at the graph you yourself drew up in New York, I'm sure you will find music indicated there). But I wonder if we do not disagree about the quantity as well as the quality of poetic language and the quantity of the music. And those points must, of course, be settled soon.

I'm continuing on the script, whipping the rest of Act One into shape so that I can send it off to you and Jerry by, I hope, the week-end. After you read it, you will be able to judge whether our concepts are so far apart after all. Please let me know – and as soon as you conveniently can. The high wire is awfully thin. I'm still planning, too, on coming to New York sometime toward the end of the second week in May.

Best to you both,

Arthur