The Leonard Bernstein Letters (52 page)

Dear Twig,

Your news is good: and I hope your sense of future is as strong and high as that to be found here. Pretty inspiring stuff, and fairly original, I'd say, in a world of passivity and backsliding.

Tonight I give a gala concert here celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Hebrew University. Irony: the University buildings lie in the unspeakably touching view from my window here, across the Old City, but they are unused,
unavailable, in Arab hands. Such angering nonsense. But the University functions well in temporary borrowed buildings here, and will celebrate doubly hard tonight.

I am tired, but, as always, goaded on to any amount of activity by the passion in this air. I will be in Holland the first two weeks in July, then flying to America for Tanglewood, then leaving again in mid-August for the Edinburgh Festival. We should be able to see each other there (I shall be in Scotland about Aug 20 to 25): then I return to Holland to finish the Festival. Do let's meet.

The
Age
[
of Anxiety
] is already recorded by Columbia, & should be released in the fall. Glad you like it – I do too.
¹⁶

Till Scotland, then, be good and tranquil. Helen sends a kiss.

L

Dear Hans,

The good news about
Peter Pan
continues to pour in from all sides. What a pleasure. Now to do something really important musically. I can see more and more clearly that the conducting side of my life will diminish rapidly, and the writing side augment. I feel myself less and less a performer. Maybe you'll have a Bernstein catalogue after all. We have to follow our insides, not our externals: was soll'n wir machen? It is a tide.

I was horrified to read about Weill.
¹⁷
This must have been a great shock to you. We will all miss him.

Good news about the recordings. How did Goddard [Lieberson] ever agree to a non-Brigitta album?

How is the “plugging” situation?

I was very much pleased with the published songs, but furious at the word-changes in “Peter Peter”. They may have been necessary for purposes of the show – but certainly not for general consumption. I find the new lines almost unsingable, awkward and without meaning. Can something be done before more copies are made (if there is a demand)?

The
Age
[
of Anxiety
] was a wild hit in Torino, and a great success here with the musicians, though the public seems a bit puzzled. I have decided that the ending is all wrong (don't scream!). It is only a shame that the recording is
already made and the 2-piano version published. But I am still going to change that Epilogue. After all, Bartók published two endings now and then.

Is it possible that I can see
Peter Pan
before the recording takes place, or is it to be done immediately? I'd love to have something to say about it. But I suppose not.

My best to Nat [Broder]: and thank him for all his efforts. And to you, warm greetings from this marvelous land. I hope we meet somewhere in Europe.

Fondly,

Lenny B

Dearest Lenny,

Knowing, as I now do, that you save every scrap of correspondence you get, from Koussevitzky's pages on life, music, and your career – to Auntie Clara's hot denunciations of meat, I write this letter with the full burden of realizing that it must top my incomparable “Musicraft”, or “Sam [Paul] Puner” file of a few years back. As if this were not enough, I have the added load of trying to tell you what has been happening these last weeks with you so far away – and successfully bridging the gap of time and miles. Need I add that when I say “I”, I am really referring to a certain dark fellow [Adolph Green] as well as myself – although somehow, through some odd trick of fate, it is I, only myself, who is stuck with actually writing the letter. Anyway –

I should begin by saying that the show we all want so much to happen – is not truly an existent entity yet, although we are still working at it, and very hard, too. When you tore off in that hot flush of enthusiasm – we started meeting, and, as you know, met with Jerry [Robbins]. He got interested in the idea – and had some general “feelings” about it – but nothing very specific, and since then – we have met – just ourselves – and a few times with Oliver [Smith]. We talked a great deal about the house on Middagh Street – and the many people who lived there, and what they wanted and how they behaved – and tried like fury to settle on some main characters, and a line of action. What kept happening is that the feeling of the thing kept veering from what we consider one bad extreme to another – either it acquired that “young hopeful” quality of something like
Look, Ma
or
Stage Door
– being about young artistic people trying to “get ahead”, or it became about eccentric characters too removed from audience sympathy and identification – too bizarre – too enfant terriblish – too personal. We tried staying in the House for the whole show. We tried getting out of it for most of the show. To arrive at some main story and characters we attempted, finally, a kind of modern
Bohème
– the girl a smart 1950 tramp and the guy a writer or
musician, involved in the House – which led us out of the House altogether to thinking of just “a modern love story” – (Does this strike a familiar chord?) – who needs the eccentrics except as background people – let's write that contemporary big relationship story. This ended nowhere – after spending a full day and evening with Oliver. Back to the House idea. We even went to Brooklyn with the boy from Middagh Street himself
¹⁸
– and roamed the Brooklyn Heights streets – and saw where the house originally stood – and looked at the breathtaking view of Manhattan – and got all inspired, and came back – and still have not captured what we want on paper. But what has disturbed us particularly is that we get no musical thoughts whatever. We find it hard to think of “number” – the musical expression of what the show should be. We cannot hear it. We sometimes feel it is more a play – and not suited to musical theatre at all. Have you had any time to think of it at all? – and if so, what does it seem to mean to you, musically? All of which brings us to how we wish you had not sailed away before anything could be talked out and either concretized – or discarded. All we have to go on is your parting enthusiasm. That evening should have been followed up by a week of intensive meeting together, but it was impossible. It just feels like no way to work together at all – being so far apart, and not being able really to talk things out. We feel so far removed from what you may be thinking – and even wonder if we have been proceeding at all along the lines that you are. Or are you? We know that outside of being frantically busy you have been sick – but if you have had any fleeting thoughts or impressions about the Idea – or any concretizing of your own feelings about it – please enclose them in return mail.

To add to our situation, we are, as you can tell from the postmark, still in the East – having run into that situation in Hollywood we all thought might happen. Not the right property. We
could
be doing
The Life of Sigmund Romberg
– but as the creators of
Bazooka
¹⁹
we do not feel we could do the subject justice. MGM is out buying us things – but it has dragged on this long, and may a little longer – and what does that do to the date department you may well ask. All we know is – we will do the picture soon.

We want so much for the show to be. We are keeping at it – and in fact have a date to see Jerry about it today or tomorrow. I just felt we had to apprise you of the thoughts we have been having – and also to ask you what has been churning in your head these many weeks. Maybe this will be the first of a series of letters which in a few months will add up to S-H-O-W – a show that will open next spring. Please write – we will again soon. Onwards and upwards!

Much love,

Betty

It's so wonderful about
Peter Pan
!

Shalom Shvestoah!

Since I couldn't sleep last night after the concert I have made this a do-nothing day: relaxo profundo on the wonderful beach for three or more hours, followed by relaxo in bed, followed by relaxo with Irwin Shaw's novel. Concert coming up again in an hour and a half – but I want to begin a letter anyway: there is so much to say. Relaxo always brings on tension for me – I'm so unused to any period without release of some sort. I have been engaged in an imaginary life with Felicia, having her by my side on the beach as a shockingly beautiful Yemenite boy passes – inquiring into that automatic little demon who always springs into action at such moments – then testing: if Felicia were there, sharing with me that fantastic instant when the Khamsin is suddenly gone, and a new wind, west from the sea, comes in to cancel the heat with its almost holy approach – and the test works. It's surprising how true some of the old saws out of the analysis book can be: “to establish a good relation to yourself is the prerequisite to any other relation.” This self-relation is what I have begun to find: I have discovered the core in myself of human relationship (words, words til now) – the core of a sunburst of quiet energy, and always apropos of Felicia. This, after years of compulsive living, of driving headlong down alleys of blind patterns, dictated by God knows what vibrations – this is a revelation. Not that the demon absents himself: he still pokes me when his occasions arise – the French horn player, the artist in Jerusalem: but the old willingness to follow him, blind to any future, blind to the inner knowledge of the certain ensuing meaninglessness – that is gone. So the demon diminishes.

How can I tell you how touched I was by your letter? You have grown so – you are more than understanding: you understand so many things I didn't say. And you've become articulate in a way I never expected. Your control problem is all too familiar to me – an old Bernstein custom. We can work through it: only it can't be planned, like a Bar-Mitzvah, for a certain date. One day – boom! I feel you're on the road.

I'm happy about Felicia's reaction – especially by the apparent lack of ingrown hostility. We are both in such a strange condition: she with her double-edged sword, I with pure waiting. Waiting is a salutary state for me: heretofore it wasn't possible without tension. But now I feel such a certainty about us – I know there's a real future involving a great comradeship, a house, children, travel, sharing, and such a tenderness as I have rarely felt. I want to comfort her for all her heavy wandering, and to make it right. Only one thing: why does she insist on prolonging the suffering? Is she as sure as you that her present life is not her future? I sure hope she is: – I know from some almighty source that Dick was created for other things. And Felicia is for
me, because the thought of her makes me strong enough to deserve her. This is by now repetitious, probably the product of having no contact with her except through you, and I must stop this proxy-relationship. You're a darling, and you have been good and loving in your handling of a delicate position.

Thanks for the idea about Aaron's concerto: I've written him & Dave [Oppenheim], although I suspect Ormandy will get it.

What of Kay Brown? Never a word from her. And what motivates your dark words about Betty & Adolph? You scare me. As for
Tree
²⁰
I thought Alex North was to do it. I'd hate to be strung up again with a show – that would be too much after last year. What of Charlie Feldman &
Streetcar
?

The parents are furious that you haven't written. Neither has Burtie. What is with that journalistic tycoon? I miss him terribly. The aforesaid parents dash about madly: mother is a regular Marco Polo, & Daddy, in his bungling way, is on top of the world. Helen flies about with seventy friends, busy and protective as ever. Since our housekeeper speaks only French and Bulgarian, Helen has to deal with her in her own mad French, which is mostly a series of those old American whinnies plus endless strings of Oui Oui Oui Oui – replacing the former yes yes yes yes. In French, these strings begin to approximate Rybernian. Weep weep.

It seems I've been here forever & there's still over a month to go. It's partly, I guess, not seeing you (which had become a pleasant lifelong habit) & partly the waiting game with Felicia. I don't feel the same permanence & in-living here that I felt last trip, during the war. Of course there was Azariah [Rapport] then – it all seems so impossible and of a different life. I realize now that he personified for me the war, the incredible bravery of these people, the beauty of their vision. Now, in an American double-breasted plaid – zero.

Give Fel. my dearest love, & tell her not to suffer any longer than absolutely necessary. I treasure the page from
Cue
[Magazine].

Be well; remind Gabey that I exist, & write more often. A letter takes ages (your last took 14 days, what with return for additional postage, etc.). And if Felicia feels she can write – even a line – it would make me so happy!

Bless you, dear Hilee,

L

Shalom Aaron,

So much time goes by: I don't know you any more – not even through your music, which is not exactly forthcoming. I played your violin sonata with a fine
fiddler here the other day, and had a real old-fashioned nostalgic kick. Those faraway days when the C# was holy and the form so surprisingly right.
Where's your music?
God knows we need it. There hasn't been a real exciting American premiere in years.

I fought with Kouss valiantly over the Clarinet Concerto, to no avail. Benny & Tanglewood don't mix in his mind. Shirley had a good idea the other day: to do it with Dave O[ppenheim] at the NY Philh. next Feb. Then someone tells me he read that you've disposed of it to Ormandy. What is the story? I'd love to do it in New York with Dave. Let me know.

What's up? Movies? [Emily] Dickinson? A piano concerto? Eric [Erik]
²¹
& Victor?
You?

Israel is lovely, weather delightful, concerts fine, [Jascha] Heifetz in top form, Roy Harris 3rd successful, the people gay & forward-looking. I miss you.

Love,

L