The Leonard Bernstein Letters (99 page)

Dear Lenny,

What an experience!
²⁹
The Via Dolorosa, The Masada, wading in the Dead Sea, peering into Lebanon, exploring Jerusalem, meeting new friends, hearing and seeing you conduct in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and so much more.

There is no way I can express my feelings towards you and to you when I think of our magnificent trip to Israel. A first visit would always be exciting but the circumstances that permitted me (and Gloria) to share with you, be part of your routine, to be included in your success and adulation, to listen to you, to learn (!) from you, and, most important, to
be
with you – is something I will never forget.

It's incredible for me to realize that we spent so much time together in Israel (and in Fairfield) and the thrill of being with you will never diminish. It seems you are a bit biased. Whatever I do, right or wrong, you always justify my mistakes or ignorance with a kindness and warm admonition that I am grateful for and love.

And so, Lenny, I thank you again for a “dream trip” and my gratitude for including me in your life knows no bounds.

Imagine, from Roxbury to Jerusalem!

Where next?

With love, from your devoted and oldest,

Sid

Dear Lenny,

After spending so many wonderful hours with you in Israel, I thought you'd like to have something to remind you of the many wonderful hours we spent together over a half-century ago. God, that sounds ancient!

The first few letters were written in the summer of 1933, when you were in Sharon and I was at Revere.
³⁰
Luckily you numbered your pages so that you can now better follow the order in which they were originally written.

In 1937, when you were at Harvard, I began to “seriously” study with you … no more governing chords, finishing chords, pre-finishing chords, etc. Your notes to me show that we really started with the basics … and we're still at it!

Now on to the next fifty!

With love as always,

Sid

Love,

L

Dear Harry,

Having just finished Martin Gardner's brilliant/hateful wipe-out of occultism (in the
N.Y. Review of Books
, a propos the collected
oeuvre
of Shirley MacLaine) I find myself beset by feelings of paradox – and thinking of
you
. I guess your paradoxical duality is one of the things I most like in you (and, for that matter, in any thinking–feeling person – including myself, in those ever-decreasing moments when I like myself).

Which of us worth his salt is not a paradoxnick? There's something in the Bible we all believe, even if not literally; and there's also something in Darwin and Freud that grabs us equally. Wm. Blake vs. Martin Gardner, X vs. Y, and on down the list of all the antitheses that engender free inquiry and democracy.

I like to think of myself, and of you, as primarily rational humanists, but then, there I go inhaling cosmic energies via Aaron Stern.
³²
And then, there
you
go, so movingly, pursuing your profound and loving experiment with Patrick Porter.
³³
I can't tell you how touching I find it.

This is not a sketch for some future lecture, but a spontaneous love-letter on your birthday. Have a happy one and many more.

Lenny

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

The show is off and the star is off-colour, but the memory is just the grandest.
Wonderful Town
ended in triumph, with a dynamic show, encores and bravos, a weeping star, the weeping star's children in
Wonderful Town
T-shirts, coming on stage bearing flowers – the whole audience on its feet and a mass “Conga” round the stage and auditorium.
³⁵
The rafters sang with your wonderful music and I
hope it continues to do so right through the next production (which should never have been allowed in!)

Looking back, we had just the best notices we could have wished for, but no advertising, no record – no hype! You can't exist without it now in the West End. We had “a perfect gem” as the
Punch
critic said – but we needed a master jeweler – Van Cleef & Arpels even! – to set us, invisibly, into the bracelet of Shaftesbury Avenue! I wish I had hot latkes [potato pancakes] for every person who came to the dressing room glowing with the pleasure of seeing a
real
show with a book, lyrics, music and a HEART. After being disappointed by the Phantom of the Chessboard school of musical theatre.

Enough. Onwards. I know you are working on a new project with Stephen Sondheim and I wish you huge success. I'm taking three months off to do a second book and I hope it will be OK to include a wonderful picture of you and I – me kissing you on the nose, taken by Christina Burton of Watford.

Meanwhile – this really is the point of this rambling missive –
Thank you
, for the privilege of your music in
Wonderful Town
and for the joy of translating it, through Ruth, for the last year. God bless and take care of you.

Love,

Maureen (Lipman)

Dear Lenny,

Merely a line to tell you that 1) you nearly caused me to have an accident and 2) I heard a performance of the Mahler Second that was more overwhelming than anything I remembered even you ever having done – and that goes back to my unforgettable first encounter with the work, singing it as a teenager under you at Tanglewood.

Earlier today I drove down to NYC from Lenox. When I got close enough to catch a City station worthwhile fielding, the radio was in the middle of the Mahler. Almost immediately, even with the lo-fi of car radio, I realized I was
surrounded by an extraordinary performance. By the middle of the last movement, I concluded that a new champion of the work had succeeded in snatching from you the belt reading “Most in Tune with Mahler's Soul.”

I anticipated the penultimate choral chord – and what genius did it take to bring this epic to its perfect climax simply by expanding a dominant from closed to open position? – but what I heard so overpowered my expectations that I did something I haven't done in a couple of years.

I cried.

It only lasted a moment, but in that moment, I nearly swerved into another car as we came to the 59th Street exit of the West Side Highway.

You needn't worry. By 42nd Street I had already forgiven you. During the interim, Marty Bookspan had announced which Philharmonic concert had just been rebroadcast.

Does anyone realize how dangerous great music can be? I mean, Plato's dead and all that, but even he could only have had a more formal, Dionysian version of Rock in mind, and everybody knows to complain about
that
. No, I'm referring to the perils of the classics. I hope Surgeon General Koop doesn't find out.

As always, with love.

Lenny

Dear Claudio,

I am at this moment remembering, with deep emotion, our Brahms D minor in 1946. It was your birthday; and besides playing like a god, you had a post-concert birthday party at your house. It was at this party that I met a ravishing girl called Felicia Montealegre, who was not only a fellow-Chilean of yours and your one-time pupil, but who also shared your birthday,
and
for three decades thereafter shared my life.

So you see, my dear Claudio, how closely intertwined our lives have been, with Music playing the rôle of Destiny. May we long continue this closeness.

A very happy birthday, and may you go from strength to strength.

Love,

Lenny
³⁸

Dear Lenny,

I cannot thank you enough for your beautiful words of good wishes on the occasion of my 85th birthday. Imagine, 85, hard to believe.

As I sat holding the Festschrift on my lap, we all remembered our dear Felicia. Your words have special meaning for us and always will.

Now that you yourself are getting to be a grand old man, don't let the thought of age bother you. It really is not so bad. Some of us get better and stronger and I hear that is what is happening to you. So God bless you because nothing is more wonderful than fulfillment in later life.

All our love.

As ever,

Claudio

Dear Lenushka,

Sorry we didn't meet yesterday. It was
Fancy Free
's 44th birthday – and I was looking forward to giving and getting a big hug!

But
, I was very happy to know you were working hard on your new piece – and I know how much that means to you,
and
all of us.

We do have some things to solve, not much, but things we can settle so we can move ahead.
³⁹
W
[
est
]
S
[
ide
]
S
[
tory
] is in pretty good shape as we outlined it with only one spot a bit bumpy. [
On the
]
Town
needs some talking about. I've a few ideas. So let's get it done & out of the way.

I look forward to Tuesday (and the hug) and any other time you can manage to make for us.

Love,

Jerry

Dear Lenny,

Here's a tape of the
On the Town
Ballet such as we have put together musically and I have choreographed. It combines the elements we talked about and where I had some problems we made some temporary fill-ins and adjustments. I know there will be places which you think are over-extended musically, such as in the Penny Arcade and in the Dance Hall section which follows it, but they don't seem over-extended when you watch it with dancing. However, I'm certainly looking forward to your reactions and help.
⁴⁰

Scott, the pianist, did a wonderful job and I like the total buoyancy of the piece. It still is episodic which curtails a dynamic flow-through feeling. But, I like the little reprise of the fugato leading back into the finale material very much. I know you will love what I have choreographed for the fugato and the music that comes after it. It's all joyous and now that I've completed sketching it, I'll do better by it when I get back to it. But I'm most anxious to get your reaction.

Sorry I can't be there to dance it for you. You know how much respect I have for the music and anything we have to add has been an imperative necessity to make the logic and the story work out.

So how are you? I miss you and hope you're not too tired and that the tour has been wonderful. I cannot come to Chicago but I hope to see you on the 26th of June.

I send you a big hug and await your response.

Love,

Jerry

P.S. I've started finding out about the
Dance in America
tape rights. Of course if I can manage to help, I will.

Dear Leonard,

Having received the Son[n]ing Award in Copenhagen which only Isaac Stern, Stravinsky, you and I have received
⁴²
I am reminded of what an honor it is to be in your and their company.

I also think about the time when my wife,
⁴³
who was the lead dancer in
West Side Story
, said to me: “Leonard wants you to think about playing this music”, and I replied “how am I going to play this corny shit”. Needless to say it turned out to be a classic.

You are one of America's true geniuses along with [Thelonius] Monk, [Dizzy] Gillespie, [Charles] Mingus and [Charlie] Parker. You are a true musician and if you chose to be you could be a great pianist in addition to being a great composer and conductor.

On this your 70th birthday, I wish you all the best and wish you many more productive years in pleasing the world with your music.

Sincerely yours,

Miles Davis

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

I send greetings and wishes for much nachas, as well as “harmony and grace,” on your birthday. After having made so much great music as composer, conductor, and teacher over the past seven decades, I'm sure you won't be content to rest on your laurels now.

I'll always be grateful for the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship that allowed me to spend an inspiring summer at Tanglewood in '71 – not least for the unforgettable
Missa Solemnis
you conducted that season. Hanging around the B.S.O. all summer certainly contributed to my appetite for the big orchestra, of which you've heard some of the fruits. And fellow TMC Fellows of the time are now friends and colleagues. The ties that keep bringing me back to that wonderful place formed then and keep growing.

Finally, here's a coded message for your seventieth. A key is included for the lower stave;
⁴⁵
you're on your own for the upper stave.

Many happy returns – from Ari, too.

Jerry Levinson