Bernstein's letters

[Guest]

This sounds interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/28/west-side-story-composer-almost-gave-up-on-show

I've a suspicion that a Forum member could tell us more details - when can we buy the book, for example.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I've a suspicion that a Forum member could tell us more details - when can we buy the book, for example.

A new, comprehensive collection of Bernstein's letters, most of which have never been made public before, will reveal next month that the extent of bad feeling between the composer and playwright Arthur Laurents put the whole production in serious jeopardy.

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780300179095&guni=Article:in

[VodkaDilc]

A new, comprehensive collection of Bernstein's letters, most of which have never been made public before, will reveal next month that the extent of bad feeling between the composer and playwright Arthur Laurents put the whole production in serious jeopardy.

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/Be...uni=Article:in

Thanks. Reasonable price too.

[amateur51]

Thanks. Reasonable price too.

Not due out until end of October and currently £5 more expensive in Amazon UK.

[makropulos]

This sounds interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/sep/28/west-side-story-composer-almost-gave-up-on-show

I've a suspicion that a Forum member could tell us more details - when can we buy the book, for example.

The Guardian's price (£20 for 600 page hardback) is the best deal I've seen anywhere for it. At the moment amazon has the book at the list price (£25) but maybe that will change before the publication date?

[Petrushka]

The Guardian's price (£20 for 600 page hardback) is the best deal I've seen anywhere for it. At the moment amazon has the book at the list price (£25) but maybe that will change before the publication date?

Already down on my Christmas wish list!

[makropulos]

Already down on my Christmas wish list!

As the editor of the book, I'm incredibly flattered and happy about that! Thank you :)

[makropulos]

For anyone who is interested, apparently the Daily Telegraph is going to be printing several pages of extracts in its review section on Saturday, 19th October.

[VodkaDilc]

For anyone who is interested, apparently the Daily Telegraph is going to be printing several pages of extracts in its review section on Saturday, 19th October.

I'd be very interested, but it depends on whether I can get someone to buy a Telegraph for me. I could not risk going to a shop and perhaps being seen doing so by a friend - imagine the shame!

Glad to hear your response; as you see from my first posting, I remembered that you were a contributor here, but not your name.

As an aside, I wish people were less inclined to save a few pounds by buying online - many bookshops have reductions too. £25 is very reasonable anyway.

[makropulos]

I'd be very interested, but it depends on whether I can get someone to buy a Telegraph for me. I could not risk going to a shop and perhaps being seen doing so by a friend - imagine the shame!

Glad to hear your response; as you see from my first posting, I remembered that you were a contributor here, but not your name.

As an aside, I wish people were less inclined to save a few pounds by buying online - many bookshops have reductions too. £25 is very reasonable anyway.

:D I hope to find an elderly relative who can do likewise for me!
And I do agree with you: rather than paying postage on this doorstop of a thing, people would be better off supporting a local bookshop and buying it there. I'm delighted Yale is putting it out at such a reasonable price. (And since I have an advance copy I can say that they've done a beautiful job –all faults are my own...).

[Petrushka]

I'm intrigued to know how an editor is chosen for this job. Presumably these letters belong to the Bernstein family and if that is the case, I wonder if they approach you or you approach them. Without knowing the contents of the book I would expect the letters to be edited for spelling, punctuation etc but also to provide a linking commentary between the letters to put them into context. Quite clearly, the task will need someone of specialist knowledge of classical music and of Lenny's life and times. I'm sure you have all these credentials and more but as I've always been puzzled by the mechanics of how an editor is chosen it's the best opportunity I'll ever have to ask the question and finally find out!

[makropulos]

I'm intrigued to know how an editor is chosen for this job. Presumably these letters belong to the Bernstein family and if that is the case, I wonder if they approach you or you approach them. Without knowing the contents of the book I would expect the letters to be edited for spelling, punctuation etc but also to provide a linking commentary between the letters to put them into context. Quite clearly, the task will need someone of specialist knowledge of classical music and of Lenny's life and times. I'm sure you have all these credentials and more but as I've always been puzzled by the mechanics of how an editor is chosen it's the best opportunity I'll ever have to ask the question and finally find out!

That's a very interesting question, and I'm sure it varies from case to case. So, I can only tell you about how this one came about, but I'm very happy to do that. Sorry, but this is going to be a long post!

The Bernstein family placed all of Lenny's correspondence (letters *to* him) in the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress, so it was, and is, all there for anyone to consult. I first came to work with that collection when I wrote a book about "West Side Story" –much of that was about the manuscripts, but I delved into some of the correspondence too. As a result of that I established cordial relations with the curator of the collection and with the Leonard Bernstein Office, from whom I needed permission to make photocopies of MSS and so on. After finishing that, and after leaving the job I was then in, I was looking for the next big project. My curator friend suggested I should do something about the letters. There are in excess of 15,000 of them, so it was going to be a monstrous task –and certainly fit the bill as a "big project". I also wanted to use as many letters from Bernstein as I could –and this was made easier by the fact that there are xeroxes of many hundreds of them in his correspondence files, and since his death many people have donated important material to the collection. I made a tentative approach to the Bernstein Office (which controls all the rights on behalf of the family) and received an encouraging response. So I then wrote a proposal and submitted it to Yale University Press (which had published two earlier books of mine). They liked the idea too, so –with the agreement of the Bernstein Office – I was able to make a start. The Bernstein Office gave me permission to use all and any of the letters from Bernstein that I wanted to use –and did so without any interference at any stage (for which I am enormously grateful). This project complicated (but made more interesting) by the fact that the Library of Congress collections made it possible to have correspondence going both ways –to and from Bernstein to the likes of Koussevitzky and Copland (among many others), since their papers were also in the Library. Thus I needed to request permission from all of the rights holders of those lwho had written *to* Lenny as well getting permission from the Bernstein Office to use the letters he had written. I hope that's made the book a good deal more interesting –as you can imagine, it was hard work, but in the process I was able to unearth yet more letters.

As for what "editing" meant in this case, the first thing was making a selection: there are 650 letters in the book, and that's 600 pages, which was as big as it could reasonably go. So I spent the best part of two years (on and off) working through many thousands of letters, selecting those I thought would make for interesting reading. Sifting through that selection and refining it down from about 2,000 letters to a manageable number was quite a lengthy task.

Having done that, the most important aspect of the editing process –and by far the most time-consuming –was writing notes on each of the letters. Some of these notes are quite lengthy, while others are shorter and help to identify names, pieces and so on, where this wasn't clear, or where I thought something needed to be added for the sake of clarity. As you suggest, that's where the specialist knowledge comes in, and I was also helped with solving mysteries (of which there were quite a few) by some of the correspondents who are still alive. Finding out who some of the correspondents were was also a challenge at times –and I was only defeated by one correspondent who I couldn't identify (but it was such an interesting letter –about Bernstein's reactions to listening to recordings of ancient piano recordings –that I put it in anyway).

Other problems included reading some frankly atrocious handwriting from some correspondents (the vast majority of the letters are hand-written anyway; fortunately Bernstein himself had beautiful writing, and though things are not always immediately clear, it's usually relatively easy to make sense of them; others were nothing like as straightforward!). Dating was another problem, as a lot of letters have no date, or just say "Monday" or whatever; I wanted to place these as accurately as possible in what is a chronological sequence. And then there was the really small stuff, like correcting spellings –but there was very little of that to do, since Bernstein and his correspondents were a pretty literate bunch. Since this is a book in which most of the correspondents are American, we (the publisher and me) decided early on that all the notes and commentaries were also going to use American spellings –an odd experience for me, and a fascinating one as it turned out.

Originally i was planning to write linking commentaries between all the letters, but eventually I was persuaded (rightly, as it turned out) to put most of the comments in notes (some of which are enormous), and to begin each chapter with a prose introduction that set things in a broader context. I hope it's worked –and the aim was for things to be clearer for the reader. When I tell you several of the chapters have almost 200 notes each, you'll understand that there was a lot of clarification, explanation and –very occasionally –speculation to be done.

After all that, I submitted the manuscript for approval to the Bernstein Office, and not one change was requested. This is a significant point –and one worth underlining: when the Bernstein family (through the Bernstein Office) placed the correspondence to him, and –where possible –Bernstein's own letters, in the Library of Congress, the intention was for this material to be available and fully accessible. They were absolutely true to the spirit of this when it came to publishing the letters, even ones that are highly personal (not least the superbl letters between Lenny and his wife Felicia). From that moment on it was a case of pure mechanics: copy-editing, proof-reading and so on –routine publishing stuff. And the day arrives when the first finished copy lands on the table –which is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, as there's nothing that can be done to change things!

I do apologize for going on at such inordinate length –but it's been four years of my life, one way and another, and it's been hugely exciting time –as I'm sure you can imagine. I hope that's some sort of an answer!

(After all that, clicking on a thing that say "post quick reply" seems a little ludicrous, but here goes :) )

[VodkaDilc]

Messages like the one above make this forum so valuable! It makes it worth ploughing through the occasional (?) trivial or mundane postings if we can also read genuinely informative ones like this. Many thanks to makropolus for his thoroughness in replying to Petrushka's question.

Regarding the notes to the letters, I wonder if the system he uses is the same as that used in the recently completed Britten letters. That worked well, despite the slight problem of the notes going over several pages. (Notes at the foot of the page seem preferable to those put at the end of the book.)

The Guardian review suggests that there are some possibly sensational revelations about Bernstien's private life. I hope these do not dominate the coverage when the book is published; we do not want a repetition of the scandal-mongering which accompanied the publication of a recent Britten biography.

[amateur51]

A thorough, generous and fascinating reply, makropoulos. Many thanks indeed - it has made me want to read the book even more

[makropulos]

Messages like the one above make this forum so valuable! It makes it worth ploughing through the occasional (?) trivial or mundane postings if we can also read genuinely informative ones like this. Many thanks to makropolus for his thoroughness in replying to Petrushka's question.

Regarding the notes to the letters, I wonder if the system he uses is the same as that used in the recently completed Britten letters. That worked well, despite the slight problem of the notes going over several pages. (Notes at the foot of the page seem preferable to those put at the end of the book.)

The Guardian review suggests that there are some possibly sensational revelations about Bernstien's private life. I hope these do not dominate the coverage when the book is published; we do not want a repetition of the scandal-mongering which accompanied the publication of a recent Britten biography.

Thanks for wading through such a long message so patiently!

The notes are in a smaller typeface than the in Britten letters, but the approach is broadly the same in terms of the sort of information they contain (I think the Britten letters are beautifully done, and was certainly influenced by the way the editors of those present information when I was sorting out Bernstein).

As for the Observer/Guardian piece, it wasn't a review of the book so much as a piece based on a little bit of it. But yes, I share your hope about how things are tackled in reviews: this is absolutely not intended to be a collection of sensationalist letters (though some of them may be that, of course, and it would be very unfortunate to have coverage dominated by just a few out of the 650 that are in there. From my point of view, I hope there are things that will surprise or interest those fascinated by Bernstein. A couple of people have asked me what I think the most "sensational" aspect of the book is, and I'd say it's not a specific letter or moment, but the simply chance to see such a range of Lenny's private thoughts on a huge range of things –from love and marriage to the finer points of composing "Fancy Free". The other thing I found quite marvellous as an editor was the fluency and eloquence of his prose. Nothing very sensational about that, I know, but something that made the whole task far more rewarding.