The Leonard Bernstein Letters (81 page)

Dear Louis,

I have finally listened to the recordings of ancient pianists & composers that you so kindly sent me. It has been a ball! Grieg performing his
Papillon
like a young lady just out of conservatory, Busoni stuttering his octaves, Ravel heavy and rhythmically obscure, [Teresa] Carreño running out of gas in the Liszt Rhapsody, [Vladimir] de Pachmann setting an all-time record for ritards at the end of Chopin's C# minor waltz, et al, et al – and all marvelously authentic, surprising, other-planetary, incredible. It is a thrill to hear these records: we not only extend our knowledge of past pianistic styles, but we gain a fresh view of our own age. And not only pianistically; this glimpse into the past, to the thoughtful observer,
becomes nothing less than a revelation of the present!
¹¹⁰
I thank you for sending it to me.

Affectionately

[Pencil draft, unsigned]

P.S. Congratulations on the new baby.

Dear DD,

Welcome! I had no idea you were already here: not a word have I had, or Aaron, or anyone. Your birthday card was the first modest sign. You were sweet to send it, to remember. How goes it? Plans? Medical matters?

I am at this second in the hurried grip of time, for a change: my last day in the country. Tomorrow (my birthday!) I rehearse the ork all day for the tour, which starts on Tue[sday]. Gone for 4 weeks to H'wood & back. But I wanted at least to say hello-&-have-a-good-visit-and-a-successful-one before I vanish for a month.

Best news is that I have finished
Kaddish
this summer. That's all I did. I had virtually no vacation. My text still needs cleaning up – and a short section or two remains undecided; but actually it's a piece! My first in 6 years – my first
concert
piece in 9 years! I can't wait for you to see it. Will you be in town late Sept? (when I return?) Let Helen know: on me – she can send you my itinerary.

Good health, love to you and Sabina.

L

Dear Lenny,

Two points. First, I am very grateful to you for having decided to present my work and that of [Morton] Feldman and [Earle] Brown before your audiences.
We all admire your courage in doing this at the present time, for actual hostility toward our work is still felt by many people.

Second, I ask you to reconsider your plan to conduct the orchestra in an improvisation. Improvisation is not related to what the three of us are doing in our works. It gives free play to the exercise of taste and memory, and it is exactly this that we, in differing ways, are not doing in our music.

Since, as far as I know, you are not dedicated in your own work to improvisation, I can only imagine that your plan is a comment on our work. Our music is still little understood and your audiences, for the most part, will be hearing it for the first time. It would seem best if they could do so without being prejudiced. I admired Aaron when he presented my work at Tanglewood, letting the audience know beforehand that, though he didn't share my views, he felt the music, since it was seriously written and had found a following among composers, performers and audiences around the world, had a right to be heard attentively. I feel the opposite way about Smallens who, I am told, after conducting a first performance of Webern for the League here in New York, turned toward the audience and joined them in derisive laughter.

Surely there must be some less provocative way to conclude the program, one which will leave no doubt as to your courage in giving your audiences the music which you have chosen to present.

With best wishes and friendliest greetings,

John Cage

Dear John,

Your letter astonishes me. What, for example, makes you think that our orchestral improvisations should in any way constitute a “comment” on your work and that of your colleagues? What, again, gives you the idea that everything in this part of the program must be confined to the realm in which you work? The overall idea is
Music of Chance
and there are chances and chances in your work as well as that of Brown and Feldman and
as well
in total improvisation. We are trying to have as comprehensive a look at the aleatory world as is possible in half a complete program; and it seems clear to me that improvisation is an essential part of such a look. And, finally, how can you deny that your music enlists “free play of taste and memory” when you write for an orchestra that may or may not play at any given time, and if it
does
play, render approximations?

If it will make you feel any better, I shall be happy to play the improvisation
before
your work, thus avoiding the tendentious notion of its being a final
comment on the preceding music. I hope that this will alleviate your concern, and prove to you the integrity of my intentions.
¹¹²
Most cordially.
¹¹³

Dear Maestro,

I want to thank you by heart for everything I learnt by you during the weeks that I spent in New York with the Philharmonic. What I learnt from your rehearsing, from the musical and human point of view, I tried now to actuate in the rehearsals of my last concerts. So I succeeded in finding always a human contact with the orchestra, forgetting everything of the dictatorial way that I had in past years. The results have been wonderful, and I could musizieren in a
completely new way in the last concerts in Rome, Venezia and Berlin. For all here in Berlin, also because the orchestra is better, I have been particularly happy. With this orchestra, with whom I will conduct also tonight and tomorrow, I have been invited for a European tournée.

Coming back to New York, I should be very happy to have the opportunity to speak with you about your music and about your wonderful interpretation of II [Symphony of] Mahler.

Grazie ancora ed arrivederci presto!

Claudio Abbado

For many years – six to be exact – I've been your highly expendable “children's expert.” We all know you don't need a children's expert, and you don't need me for early morning joke telling either. But for me, it's a nice job. I love it. I love you.

It's occurred to me that I've never bothered to mention this before – and now seems a good moment.

What Kennedy
¹¹⁵
did for the affairs of the world, you do for the heart of the world. It seemed to me, tonight, that you two are not (were not) unalike – in courage, in conscience, in warmth and in purpose.

I'm grateful,
very
grateful, that there is one of you left.

Bless,

Mary

My dear friends,

Last night the New York Philharmonic and I performed Mahler's Second Symphony – the
Resurrection
– in tribute to the memory of our beloved late President. There were those who asked: Why the
Resurrection
Symphony, with its visionary concept of hope and triumph over worldly pain, instead of a Requiem, or the customary Funeral March from the
Eroica
? Why, indeed. We played the Mahler Symphony not only in terms of resurrection for the soul of
one we love, but also for the resurrection of hope in all of us who mourn him. In spite of our shock, our shame, and our despair at the diminution of man that followed from this death, we must somehow gather strength for the increase of man, strength to go on striving for those goals he cherished. In mourning him, we must be worthy of him.

I know of no musician in this country who did not love John F. Kennedy. American artists have for three years looked to the White House with unaccustomed confidence and warmth. We loved him for the honor in which he held art, in which he held every creative impulse of the human mind, whether it was expressed in words, or notes, or paints, or mathematical symbols. This reverence for the life of the mind was apparent even in his last speech, which he was to have made a few hours
after
his death. He was to have said: “America's leadership must be guided by learning and reason.” Learning and reason: precisely the two elements that were necessarily missing from the mind of anyone who could have fired that impossible bullet.
Learning and reason
: the two basic precepts of all Judaistic tradition, the twin sources from which every Jewish mind from Abraham and Moses to Freud and Einstein has drawn its living power. Learning and reason: the motto we here tonight must continue to uphold with redoubled tenacity, and must continue, at any price, to make the basis of all our actions.

It is obvious that the grievous nature of our loss is immensely aggravated by the element of violence involved in it. And where does this violence spring from? From
ignorance
and
hatred
, the exact antonyms of learning and reason: those two words of John Kennedy's were not uttered in time to save his own life; but every man can pick them up where they fell, and make them part of himself, the seed of that rational intelligence without which our world can no longer survive. This must become the mission of every artist, of every Jew, and of every man of good will: to
insist, unflaggingly
, at the risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to
insist
on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

We musicians, like everyone else, are numb with sorrow at this murder, and with rage at the senselessness of the crime. But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather it will inflame our art. Our music will never again be quite the same. This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly, than ever before. And with each note we will honor the spirit of John Kennedy, commemorate his courage, and reaffirm his faith in the Triumph of the Mind.

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

I hope you will forgive me for writing to you and will not think me presumptuous. I did have the pleasure of meeting you briefly in New York when you kindly allowed me to attend one of your rehearsals, at the request of my friend, Dr. Chuck Solomon. But you will not remember this.

The choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester Cathedrals combine for a short festival each year which takes place in the three Cathedrals in turn. I enclose copies of the programmes for the last two years to give you some idea of the sort of thing it is. It has proved extraordinarily successful and I think it will be fair to say that it reaches a very good musical standard. Naturally, it is concerned to a great extent with the wealth of music written for such choirs over the centuries, but I am most anxious that this should not be regarded as a tradition which has finished, and that we should be very much concerned with music written today.

The Chichester Organist and Choirmaster, John Birch, and I, are very anxious to have written some piece of music which the combined choirs could sing at the Festival to be held in Chichester in August, 1965, and we wondered if you would be willing to write something for us. I do realize how enormously busy you are, but if you could manage to do this we should be tremendously honoured and grateful. The sort of thing that we had in mind was perhaps, say, a setting of the Psalm 2, or some part of it, either unaccompanied or accompanied by orchestra or organ, or both. I only mention this to give you some idea as to what was in our minds.

I have always been most eager to do anything I possibly can to foster the ancient links between the church and the arts. Before I came to Chichester when I was in Northampton, I got Henry Moore to carve a Madonna and Child, and Benjamin Britten to write a cantata. I am most eager to carry on this work and it would be a great pleasure and encouragement if you felt you could help us. Please do. We would of course be only too happy to pay a fee to the best of our resources.

I shall be of course delighted to give you any further help I can or information you may require, and again may I express the hope that you will forgive me approaching you.

Yours sincerely,

Walter Hussey

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

I want to thank you very much for including me in your concerts in New York. It made me very happy and proud. I think that the piece except its creation by H[ermann] Scherchen had its first real performance on January 64 by you!
¹¹⁸

Under your impulse the series of these concerts brings New York at the head of the cities who care for new music, because of the real popular character you give to them and because of the first quality of the orchestra and of the performers.

I wanted to write you one month ago, but I fell ill and had to support a heavy and painful operation in Paris. Now I can write you, being back in Berlin (I have received a Ford Foundation award and I am an artist in residence of Berlin for one year).

I wish you all the most brilliant success for your effort and that other concert organizations take you as a model.

Thanking you again.

Yours sincerely,

Xenakis

P.S. If there is any time left to you, I would appreciate very much to have your opinion on my piece. I'll send you my book
Musiques formelles
in French
¹¹⁹
(Mr. Karl Haas told me that you speak French) hoping that you'll enjoy it.