Dear Editor
Dear Editor Major Doubts Norman Gelb is right to hedge his bets while suggesting that the Labor Party's new leader, Tony Blair, may well be Britain's next Prime Minister ("Mining the Middle in...
...Christopher Niebuhr Roger Draper replies: Christopher Niebuhr is correct to say that many Americans, particularly in the Democratic Party, hoped to conquer all of Mexico, and not just the 40 per cent of it the United States won in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo...
...Although Polk accepted the treaty, he dismissed Trist, who had studied law under Thomas Jefferson and married his granddaughter...
...In the case of Copland and Bernstein, is this so different from Burton's own "nobody can say for certain whether they were lovers...
...A photograph shows him a foot clear, which is high enough in all conscience...
...One need only recall the experience of Neil Kin-nock, who appeared to be on his way to taking up residence at No...
...7. He conducted "Mozart's Mass" (i.e...
...Mexico, I should note, did not abolish slavery primarily as a humanitarian gesture...
...Consider the last movement, which was played at the opening of Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall last July, reportedly moving several listeners to tears...
...The order of Cav and Pag was not reversed when Bernstein conducted Cav at the Metropolitan Opera in 1970...
...But there is an unflappable quality about Major, a sturdiness that contrasts sharply with Blair's easy, open style...
...the unfinished Mass in C minor, K427) in Germany, not Austria...
...Indeed, had we taken over all of Mexico in 1848, we might have avoided the Civil War, for the new states would have brought in senators opposed to slavery...
...Moreover, I think it is a mistake to underestimate the staying power of Prime Minister John Maj or...
...Besides, consider the man who was reduced to tears by Harry Truman's piano rendition of "The Missouri Waltz...
...Another important cause—perhaps the main one—was the belief of many well-to-do people here that the taking of huge blocks of territory would raise high U.S...
...1. Bernstein "probably had affairs" with Aaron Copland and Marc Blitzstein...
...The Mexican War generated a good deal of American opposition, and slavery alone does not account for it...
...Mexican Standoff At the start of his provocative discussion of The Great Divide: The Challenge of U.S.-Mexican Relations in the 1990s by Tom Barry, Harry Browne and Beth Sims ("A Marriage of Convenience," NL, July 4-18), Roger Draper notes that this country "is uniquely different from Mexico...
...The Democratic Party under President Polk did not want to annex free-soil land...
...Nor can it be denied that his government has been shaken "by a series of highly publicized scandals within Conservative circles...
...He adds that the "antagonism" between the two "dates back to their respective foundings...
...6. The American premiere of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood was in 1946, not 1945...
...Its chief aim was to annoy—and, if possible, force out—the American settlers in Texas, most of whom did own slaves...
...I doubt the fonner and think the latter impossible...
...We cannot really be sure, moreover, that Mexico's abolition of slavery would have prevented its reimposition if the United States had seen fit to annex the whole country...
...to return home after an armistice agreed to at the end of August broke down within a matter of weeks...
...I feel entitled to think conducting was Bernstein's true career, even if I agree that West Side Story and Fancy Free are fine pieces...
...The major problem was that Mexico had abolished slavery...
...And, to be sure, "Byzantine monk" refers to Mitropoulos...
...Labor has shown an uncanny ability to blow its chances for returning to power when its prospects seem brightest...
...Finally, it is not clear that this uncertainty—or, if Niebuhr is right, this impossibility—is the main explanation of our failure to gobble up Mexico lock, stock and barrel...
...The more land we conquered, the more strongly did this concern influence our policy...
...He is unquestionably a rather lackluster personality...
...California in its Constitution had already ratified the free-soil character of its land...
...As a longtime follower of U.S.-Mexican tensions, I would like to offer some amplification of what Draper refers to as a continuing "disequilibrium.' The United States government and Army wanted to conquer all of Mexico...
...another was the desire of small farmers, who usually could not afford slaves, for new land...
...3. Dimitri Mitropoulos was not "the conductor of the New York Philharmonic" before 1942...
...I can, however, assure Burton that I have, to my sorrow, heard all of the Concerto for Orchestra more than once, and that I am no more impressed with "thousands" of anonymous performers who may disagree about Chichester Psalms than I am with the "several" listeners in tears at the concerto...
...About the quality of Bernstein's "serious" music, the endless debate rages on...
...5. Conducting was not Bernstein's "true career...
...There is nothing untrue about Bernstein's compositions, such as West Side Story or Fancy Free...
...Stockbridge, Mass...
...But a wish to increase the number of slave states was not the only reason for this phenomenon...
...The letters included in my book, and the photographs, tell a different story...
...In the early 1850s, the issue of extending slavery into the territories gave rise to the formation of a new political party...
...I'll even throw in On the Town and Wonderful Town, yet what are three musicals and one ballet as against a whole lifetime of conducting...
...Dear Editor Major Doubts Norman Gelb is right to hedge his bets while suggesting that the Labor Party's new leader, Tony Blair, may well be Britain's next Prime Minister ("Mining the Middle in Britain," NL, August 15-29...
...9.1 do not state that Bernstein "leaped three feet high off the podium...
...The Cav and Pag running order, it is true, was not actually reversed, but Bernstein's plumping for it strikes me as hubris enough...
...Neither should Chichester Psalms be written off as "pretty paltry...
...The movie Anne of Green Gables, starring Anne Shirley, appeared in 1934.1 state correctly that she was named Anne after the heroine of the book...
...Finally, I may be "blunderingly insensitive" about Bernstein's love for his wife, but the recurring flings with men during all of his marriage, and the several more protracted affairs during its later phase (which Burton in one of his not infrequent lapses of diction describes as "perhaps only the tips of the iceberg that threatened the equilibrium of his marriage"—how many tips does an iceberg have...
...2. He studied with Reiner before Koussevitzky, not after...
...10 Downing Street in the 1992 general election...
...8. Apropos Karajan's apocryphal sneer concerning Bernstein's Sibelius interpretations, Bernstein performed a cycle of Sibelius symphonies in the 1960s and soon after was made a Commander of the Order of the Lion by the Finnish Government...
...Now to more substantial matters...
...London, England Humphrey Burton John Simon replies: I am grateful to Humphrey Burton for his close reading of my review, and catching such errors in chronology or dating as he notes under rubrics 2, 3,4, 6,11, and 12...
...But new negotiations were already under way, and Trist decided to ignore his instructions The result was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which gave the United States 530,706 square miles, or 40 per cent, of Mexico's land area...
...I suspect Simon listened only to the group improvisations of the opening movement...
...Yes, a three-foot leap from the podium would have made Bernstein a high jumper or a ballet dancer, and I agree with Burton that a foot is "high enough," or, if one prefers one's conducting tasteful, low enough...
...4. Bernstein's New York Philharmonic debut was not November 13, but November 14, 1943...
...In the case of Blitzstein, the younger musician's ardent pursuit of his admired senior may indeed have been mere artistic and sentimental adulation, but, given the known proclivities of both men, how are we to take Lenny's reference to Marc as the man who "seduced my soul...
...wage rates even higher by making it very difficult for large farmers to attract and keep laborers...
...Its appeal to the British voter should not be underestimated...
...I have been abroad and have only seen the piece upon my return to London...
...But it is not surprising, as Gelb further notes, that the "danger of warfare erupting once again within his party nonetheless remains a matter of deep concern for Blair...
...Bernstein was rather the conductor as boxer (p...
...It is true, as Gelb says, that "Labor's often bitterly divided factions have set aside their fraternal squabbles and political reservations, at least for the moment...
...Simon refers generously to my own work, but his long-standing hostility toward Bernstein's achievements is no justification for the small mountain of errors he commits in the course of his article...
...Under rubric 1, there is, of course, no proof, which is why I wrote "probably...
...President James Knox Polk ordered the secret State Department envoy sent to arrange a peace with the Mexicans, James P. Trist...
...seem to justify my skepticism about Bernstein's conjugal love...
...Bernstein's sister, Shirley Anne, was born in 1923...
...Cambridge, England Robert Thornton Bernstein in Excelsis I must apologize for the tardiness of my response to John Simon's review of my Leonard Bernstein biography ("Diabolus in Musica," NL, June 6-20...
...178) or as a chap indulging in show biz antics (p.321...
...Named the Republican Party, it was dedicated to preventing slavery in the territories, especially those that had been captured from Mexico...
...Here are some of the facts he gets wrong (in order of appearance...
...The basic facts are well enough known," states Simon...
...The Karajan remark about Bernstein's Sibelius may well be apocryphal, but is considered worthy of inclusion in Roger Vaughan's Herbert von Karajan...
...Bernstein became Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958, not 1959...
...In fact...
...Thousands of performers would disagree...
...So did a great many Americans, who argued strongly for annexation after the Army broke through Mexico City's defenses in September 1847 and became an occupation force...
...We permanently consolidated our status as Mexico's national enemy in 1848 by forcing it to cede almost half its land—land, to be sure, that it had never controlled...
...Where's the proof...
...Bernstein's Concerto for Orchestra (1989) cannot be dismissed in its four movement entirety as "glaringly cacophonous posturing...
...The New Yorker description of a conductor looking like "a Byzantine monk frantically shaking martinis" is of Dimitri Mitropoulos, not Leonard Bernstein (see page 283...
...But I don't see what they, or the geographical slip under rubric 7, have to do with what he calls "a long-standing hostility toward Bernstein's achievements...
...Simon, blunderingly insensitive, states that Bernstein did not "start loving" his wife Felicia until she was on her deathbed...
...That the Finnish government awarded a medal to Bernstein reflects on the number of his Sibelius performances, not on their quality, something beyond the judgment of bureaucrats...
...by the 1820s those Americans were clearly a threat to Mexican rule...
...Asked whether this was because he was a Missourian, the man replied, "No, because I am a musician...
Vol. 77 • September 1994 • No. 9
