The Leonard Bernstein Letters (89 page)

94
Nadia Boulanger conducted four concerts with the New York Philharmonic on 15, 16, 17, and 18 February 1962. The program comprised Fauré's Requiem, the premiere of a specially made orchestral version of Virgil Thomson's
A Solemn Music
, and three Psalms by Lili Boulanger. There was another, more somber reason for this being a “moving week”: the Fauré Requiem on 17 February was dedicated to the memory of Bruno Walter, who had died that day. Bernstein addressed the audience before the performance:

95
Presumably Boulanger's sister, Lili (1893–1918).

96
Nina Maria Felicia Bernstein was born on 28 February 1962.

97
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

98
Nina Bernstein.

99
Rudolf Bing (1902–97) was General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972.

100
A draft of Bernstein's reply (in Helen Coates' hand) is attached: “Whole starting point of this venture was the prospect of collaboration with Z[effirelli] & without that collab. the whole project loses its orig. meaning. It was not simply a case of finding a suitable opera to conduct at the Met, but rather to make my first appear. at the Met in this specific collaborative enterprise. I must therefore insist on collaborating with Z. or have approval of a substitute.”

101
Louise Talma (1906–96), American composer. She was a pupil of Nadia Boulanger and a regular at the MacDowell Colony, along with composer friends of Bernstein such as Irving Fine, Lukas Foss, Harold Shapero, and Arthur Berger. In her will, Talma left a bequest of one million dollars to the MacDowell Colony. Talma's letter refers to Bernstein's first visit to the Colony, in 1962, when he went there to work on the
Kaddish
Symphony.

102
Karl Böhm (1894–1981), Austrian conductor. He established a warm friendship with Bernstein. The two conductors admired each other greatly.

103
Böhm conducted a month of concerts with the New York Philharmonic in November 1962, sixteen in all between 1 and 25 November.

104
Morton Feldman (1926–87), American composer. A leading figure of the musical avant-garde and a pioneer of Indeterminate music.

105
Lina Abarbanell (1879–1963) was an opera singer and casting director. She was Marc Blitzstein's mother-in-law. As a singer, her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 25 November 1905 was as Gretel in the Met premiere of Humperdinck's
Hansel and Gretel
, given in the presence of the composer. She later became a successful casting director (including
Street Scene
and the movie version of
Carmen Jones
). Though her daughter Eva died in 1936, she remained close friends with Blitzstein. Bernstein included Lina Abarbanell's name in the opening scat trio of
Trouble in Tahiti
(“Who but Abarbanel[l] buys a visa”).

106
Chronochromie
was composed in 1959–60 and first performed on 16 October 1960 by the Orchestra of South-West German Radio conducted by Hans Rosbaud. The New York Philharmonic performed two movements (“Strophe” and “Antistrophe”) at a concert on 24 July 1965 conducted by Lukas Foss.

107
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

108
Written in French; English translation by the editor.

109
In a marginal note, Bernstein has written: “Jack [Gottlieb] misrepresented my reaction.” Bernstein performed (and recorded) Feldman's
Out of Last Pieces
with David Tudor and the New York Philharmonic in February 1964 as part of an extraordinary programme that included “Autumn” from Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
and Tchaikovsky's
Pathétique
Symphony in the first half, and music by Cage (
Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music
), Earle Brown (
Available Forms II
) and Feldman's
Out of Last Pieces
. Bernstein was fascinated by Feldman's music even if he wasn't particularly sympathetic towards it.

110
Though the recipient of this letter has not been identified, this pencil draft of Bernstein's letter has been included because of his interesting comments on some of the legendary pianists of the past.

111
John Cage (1912–92), American composer and musical pioneer.

112
Bernstein did place the orchestral improvisation at the start of the second half of this programme, which was given on 6, 7, 8, and 9 February 1964. The first half included “Autumn” from Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
and Tchaikovsky's
Pathétique
Symphony. According to Harold Schonberg's review in
The New York Times
(7 February 1964) it was an unusually long evening, ending at around 11.05 p.m. Of the second half, Schonberg wrote: “these pieces, with their new sounds, apparent chaos and weird textures, shook the audience quite a bit. Not unexpectedly, the most unconventional was Mr. Cage's [
Atlas Eclipticalis
]. He used an orchestra of more than 80 players, and each instrument was equipped with a contact microphone that led into a little preamplifier on the floor. This preamplifier led into an electronic mixer, which fed into six amplifiers, which went to six loudspeakers scattered through the hall. The piano was amplified, and on the podium was, instead of a conductor, a mechanical affair with a spoke that slowly revolved. When eight minutes were up, the piece was over. In the Brown piece, though, two live conductors were needed –Mr. Bernstein and the composer. One might think that Mr. Cage's piece, and the others, would have caused some kind of demonstration. What happened was that during the progress of the work, people walked out. When it was over, there was a more general exodus. There were a few lusty boos, a few counter-cheers, but on the whole the music fell flat. So did the music of Mr. Feldman [
Out of Last Pieces
] and Mr. Brown [
Available Forms II
]. The audience, the part that remained, seemed more amused than anything else. Its amusement had started with a demonstration of IBM music, and an improvisation by full orchestra that lasted a minute and a half.”

113
Draft reply written in pencil on the verso of Cage's letter.

114
Claudio Abbado (b. 1933), Italian conductor. In 1963 he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Prize, which enabled him to work for several months with the New York Philharmonic. Abbado has kindly supplied this reminiscence: “For the 1963–64 season, I was assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, an opportunity given me by the Mitropoulos Prize, which I won that year. So I had the opportunity to watch and conduct major concerts, working with George Szell, Josef Krips and soloists such as Arthur Rubinstein and David Oistrakh, as well as with Bernstein. Just to mention one episode, I remember very well during the rehearsal of Mahler's Second Symphony that Bernstein went to sit in the hall and asked me to get on the podium. He wanted to hear the very complex part, in the finale, where the principal ideas are played by the small orchestra offstage. Bernstein was surprised and very happy that I was aware of how difficult this passage was, though he didn't know that I had actually already done that symphony in Europe” (Claudio Abbado, personal communication).

115
President Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963.

116
Walter Hussey (1909–85) was Dean of Chichester Cathedral from 1955 to 1977, and before that was vicar of St. Matthew's, Northampton. In both these posts he commissioned an extraordinary range of new music, literature, and works of art for the Church. In Northampton these commissions included Benjamin Britten's
Rejoice in the Lamb
, Gerald Finzi's
Lo, the full, final sacrifice
, W. H. Auden's
Litany and Anthem for S. Matthew's Day
, Graham Sutherland's
Crucifixion
, and Henry Moore's
Madonna and Child
. At Chichester, he continued his commissions, notably stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall, a magnificent tapestry by John Piper – and Bernstein's
Chichester Psalms
.

117
Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), Greek composer and architect.

118
On 2 January 1964 (repeated on 3, 4, and 5 January), Bernstein conducted the first US performances of
Pithoprakta
by Xenakis and
Atmosphères
by Ligeti.

119
Musiques formelles
was published in Paris in 1963.

120
Harpo Marx (1888–1964; born Adolph Marx), American comedian and actor, the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers (Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo). He was famous for never talking during performances or on screen (though in fact he had a deep, rich speaking voice). Harpo was also a regular of the Algonquin Round Table (with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott, George S. Kaufman, and Robert Benchley). He wrote this letter just before his decision to retire from public life, and he died on 28 September 1964.

121
This letter is written on a sheet of manuscript paper, decorated with treble and bass clefs, rests, a fermata, and a double bar at the end of the last sentence. The titles at the head of the sheet have been filled in by Harpo Marx as follows: Prod.: “Maybe”, Title: “Letter to Maestro Bernstein”, Page: “3,472”, Arranger: “Harpo Marx”.

122
Marc Blitzstein was murdered in Martinique by three Portuguese sailors on 22 January 1964.

123
The Blitzstein Memorial Concert took place at Philharmonic Hall on 19 April 1964. Bernstein included “With a Woman to Be” from
Sacco and Vanzetti
, extracts from
Regina
and other songs, and a complete performance of
The Cradle Will Rock
narrated by Bernstein and directed by him from the piano.

124
A reference to the Boston premiere of
Kaddish
, conducted by Charles Munch on 31 January 1964, the first performance of the work in the United States.

125
Dr. Cyril [Chuck] Solomon was Bernstein's doctor for many years and a personal friend.

126
Bernstein and Copland were both awarded honorary doctorates of music by the University of Michigan, conferred on 19 September 1964 (the date of Bernstein's sonnet), as recorded in
The Proceedings of the Board of Regents (1963–1966)
, University of Michigan, p. 577 (electronic edition: Ann Arbor, MI:University of Michigan, Digital Library Production Service, 2000).

127
The concerts of Diamond's music took place along the lines discussed here: Bernstein conducting the world premiere of Diamond's Fifth Symphony followed by Diamond conducting his Piano Concerto with Thomas Schumacher as the soloist. In the second half, the eventual choice was Sibelius' Second Symphony.

128
The saga of
The Skin of Our Teeth
is an unhappy one, though it did eventually provide some of the musical material used in the
Chichester Psalms
. As long ago as 12 September 1962, Sam Zolotow reported in
The New York Times
that “the Broadway association of Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Adolph Green and Betty Comden will be renewed with the song and dance version of Thornton Wilder's fantastic comedy,
The Skin of Our Teeth
, winner of the 1943 Pulitzer Prize” and announced that everything would be “ready for a Broadway presentation during the 1964–65 season. […] As explained yesterday by Mr. Bernstein, the reason for the long-range project is that ‘we haven't started work on it yet.’ Miss Comden said: ‘We have been meeting on and off whenvever we can. Intensive work, however, will be done during the 1963–4 season.’” A year later, on 29 August 1963, Zolotow wrote of it as “an early 1965 entry,” to which Robbins would turn his attention after the upcoming “Tevye” – not yet called
Fiddler on the Roof
. Another year later, on 4 September 1964, Zolotow wrote of the $400,000 investment in the project from CBS (following the success of their backing of
My Fair Lady
and
Camelot
) and promising that Columbia Records would be making the cast recording of
The Skin of Our Teeth
. But by the New Year, the whole project had fallen apart and the persistent Zolotow delivered the bad news on 5 January: “Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Adolph Green and Betty Comden have cancelled their plans to do a musical version of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize play,
The Skin of Our Teeth
,” adding that Bernstein “had told a friend that six months of work had gone in the wastebasket due to a dispute with his colleagues.”

Bernstein himself wrote about this project in the poem he composed for
The New York Times
as a report on his sabbatical in 1964–5, published on 24 October 1965: