Dear Lenny, Dear Aaron

Glimmerglass is performing Copland’s The Tender Land this summer, and as a benefit (.pdf) tomorrow night at the New York Historical Society, Sam Helfrich is staging a reading of Copland’s correspondence with Leonard Bernstein: Jamie Bernstein is narrating, Joel Grey is reading Copland, and—how thrilling is this?—I get to play Bernstein.  More after the event: but now, a bit of wisdom from AC to LB, after the latter had railed in a letter about this or that musical catastrophe—a scandal, an outrage!—at Harvard:

“What an outburst!  What a boy!  It completely spoiled my breakfast.  But it couldn’t spoil the weather, so thank Marx for that; the sun has been shining in a way to defy all wars and all dictators…as for your general disappointment in Art, Man, and Life, I can only advise perspective, perspective, and yet more perspective.  This is only 1938.  Man has a long time to go.  Art is quite young.  Life has its own dialectic.  Aren’t you always curious to see what tomorrow will bring?”