{"id":507,"date":"2013-11-12T23:44:05","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T04:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=507"},"modified":"2013-11-12T23:44:05","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T04:44:05","slug":"leonard-bernsteins-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2013\/11\/leonard-bernsteins-letters.html","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Bernstein’s Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewing the new book The Leonard Bernstein Letters in last Saturday\u2019s Wall Street Journal<\/em>, I write:<\/p>\n

In June 2011, the estate of Leonard Bernstein donated to the Library of Congress 1,800 letters that had been sealed at his death. As the library\u2019s Bernstein Collection already included more than 15,000 letters, postcards and telegrams, the resulting amalgamation obviously called for a book\u2014and here it is, 23 years after the composer-conductor\u2019s death at the age of 72.<\/p>\n

As composers go, the champion letter writer was Ferruccio Busoni, whose correspondence serenely discloses an acute humanistic observer and hypnotic personality. If their letters are less splendidly literary, Wagner and Sch\u00f6nberg were composers whose galvanizing complexity of affect was copiously mirrored in words on paper. Tchaikovsky\u2019s letters are remarkable acts of intimate self-revelation bearing on his sexuality. The Bernstein correspondence partakes somewhat of all these qualities but without attaining a comparable density of disclosure on any front. Mainly his letters, as selected and edited by Nigel Simeone, are less about music or ideas or the wide world than they are about Bernstein\u2019s breathless aspirations and mercurial ups and downs: ecstasies of fulfillment in rapid alternation with disappointment, backaches and \u201cbig, soggy depressions.\u201d <\/p>\n

The bulk of the letters predates his 1969 departure from the helm of the New York Philharmonic. That is, they include the period of his tutelage by the composer Aaron Copland and the conductors Serge Koussevitzky and Fritz Reiner; of his Broadway triumphs \u201cOn the Town\u201d and \u201cWest Side Story\u201d; of his Philharmonic music directorship (1958-69); and of his 1951 marriage to Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein\u2019s sexuality is a dominant topic, frankly and seriously discussed. Young Lennie was gay, and so were many of his friends. In letters variously airy and anguished, he craves company and describes himself as chronically lonely. \u201cYou may remember my chief weakness\u2014my love for people,\u201d he confides to a Harvard classmate in 1939. \u201cI need them all the time\u2014every moment. It\u2019s something that perhaps you cannot understand: but I cannot spend one day alone without becoming utterly depressed.\u201d Nor can he figure out whether to compose symphonies or shows, or to conduct. Koussevitzky and the composer Roy Harris advise him that he needs a non-Jewish last name. \u201cI suppose I haven\u2019t approached [Koussevitzky\u2019s] model for me sufficiently,\u201d he tells Copland in 1942. \u201cI haven\u2019t changed my name, or learned to schmoos, or become a dignified continental. The hell with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Of his amours, the Hollywood actor Farley Granger writes to him with a \u00acspecial sweetness. Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896- 1960), Bernstein\u2019s too little remembered predecessor on the Philharmonic podium, was a major conductor who did nothing to conceal his homosexuality. He writes to Bernstein in the late 1930s, when they became intimate: \u201cHave I really failed to you, have I really left you a void after our last meeting? This thought makes me crazy, and so happy that I dare not believe it. .\u2009.\u2009. Dear boy, if you only could know how alone I am.\u201d In a 1939 letter, Mitropoulos writes: \u201cI am very happy to hear that you are working hard .\u2009.\u2009. I see you too come to the position now to have problems: musical, artistic, social and spiritual\u2014and the worst of all, sexual. Unfortunately I am too far away to help\u2014to give you good advice.\u201d <\/p>\n

In this context of high-pitched conflict and confusion, Bernstein\u2019s correspondence shows Copland as a lifelong pillar. \u201cDear A,\u201d Bernstein writes in 1967, \u201cI suppose if there\u2019s one person on earth who is at the centre of my life, it\u2019s you; and day after day I recognize in my living your presence, your laugh, your peculiar mixture of intensity and calm .\u2009.\u2009. I hope you live forever. A long strong hug.\u201d Bernstein\u2019s 1979 Kennedy Center tribute to Copland (included here) extols \u201cthe Copland grin, the Copland giggle, the Copland wit and warmth, and width of his embrace.\u201d Bernstein also recorded that he had only once seen Copland weep\u2014\u201cat a Bette Davis movie that caused me to oo and ah and marvel and groan \u2018NO, NO, NO\u2019 at the unbearable climax.\u201d Copland, Bernstein continues, turned to him, \u201chis cheeks awash with tears, and sobbed \u2018Can\u2019t you shut up?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

The union with the actress Felicia Montealegre was an experiment. During the long and twisting courtship, his analyst, Marketa Morris, had written in 1947: \u201cYou are seeing Felicia and the day she leaves you have to see a boy. The same old pattern. You can\u2019t give up.\u201d One month after the wedding, writing to Copland, he finds marriage \u201cfascinating .\u2009.\u2009. the most interesting thing I have ever done, though there are times when one\u2019s interest must be that of a person in an audience, or one would go mad. It is full of compensations and rewards, and reveals more to me about myself than anything else ever has.\u201d Around the same time, Felicia writes to him, acknowledging \u201cyou are a homosexual and may never change.\u201d But, she continues: \u201cLet\u2019s try and see what happens if you are free to do as you like, but without guilt and confession, please! .\u2009.\u2009. Our marriage is not based on passion but on tenderness and mutual respect. Why not have them?\u201d <\/p>\n

Three years later, Bernstein wrote to his sister, Shirley: \u201cNow I feel such a certainty about [Felicia and myself]\u2014I know there\u2019s a real future involving a great comradeship, a house, children, travel, sharing, and such a tenderness as I have rarely felt.\u201d The birth of their first child, Jamie, in 1952, deepened everything. Years later, in 1976, Bernstein left to live with a male lover; Felicia cursed him and predicted, \u201cYou\u2019re going to die a bitter and lonely old man.\u201d When she died of cancer in 1978, Bernstein blamed himself. In a 1987 letter to his business manager, Harry Kraut, Bernstein alludes to \u201cthose ever-decreasing moments when I like myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letters here collected contain surprisingly few musical nuggets. There is new information about the gestation of \u201cWest Side Story\u201d and about frustrations regarding the ways in which it was recorded and filmed; writing to Arthur Laurents in 1961, Bernstein decries the \u201cline-by-shot destruction\u201d of Laurents\u2019s book \u201cby the H\u2019wood exegists,\u201d making \u201cpainfully obvious\u201d the \u201cline, however fine, between whatever art is, and non-art.\u201d Two heated 1955 letters to the composer Marc Blitzstein memorably record Bernstein\u2019s failed attempts to get La Scala to mount Blitzstein\u2019s formidable American grand opera \u201cRegina\u201d\u2014which Victor de Sabata, La Scala\u2019s artistic director, liked so much that he would perform the number \u201cWatching my gal watch me\u201d at the piano. But the most substantive \u201cmusical\u201d letter is not by Bernstein but by a contemporary, the composer\/performer\/teacher Gunther Schuller, commenting on Bernstein\u2019s presentation of \u201cmodern music\u201d on a 1957 \u201cOmnibus\u201d TV show. In 10 closely reasoned paragraphs, Mr. Schuller gently chides Bernstein for fashioning a narrative slighting the contributions of Debussy and Webern.<\/p>\n

The reason this letter interests is that Bernstein, master educator that he was, favored schematized readings of musical history that could be perilously reductionist (as when his allegiance to Copland\u2019s modernist moment led him to patronize Ives and Gershwin as gifted dilettantes). That in his correspondence Bernstein seems so hurried feels relevant. Among the most resonant phrases to be found in these letters are \u201cthe whole desperate race with time\u201d (1947) and the \u201cpanic at time running out before all our works can be finished\u201d (1981).<\/p>\n

Ultimately reading \u201cThe Leonard Bernstein Letters\u201d is a discomfiting experience; one feels like a voyeur peeking at Bernstein\u2019s own discomfiture. Bernstein\u2019s versatility and ambition were such that he spent a lot of time trying to figure out who he was\u2014which also meant searching for American music and for the future of music generally. This book doesn\u2019t resolve Bernstein\u2019s quest. But it\u2019s an invaluable resource, and the quest itself continues to fascinate and to matter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewing the new book The Leonard Bernstein Letters in last Saturday\u2019s Wall Street Journal, I write: In June 2011, the estate of Leonard Bernstein donated to the Library of Congress 1,800 letters that had been sealed at his death. As the library\u2019s Bernstein Collection already included more than 15,000 letters, postcards and telegrams, the resulting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-8b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}