Okay, Bernstein fans....

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 10:57am

All right, bit of a story here, some of which is covered in the blog I've linked.

My friend Randy Riddle is an old time radio enthusiast and has become something of a national authority on it. He's been on NPR a couple of times talking about this stuff and generally knows it pretty well. And Im saying that at the outset so you know this is not just some schlub with a blogsite.

Look at the second entry: 'SKIN".

Her's the thing: Randy got a whole stack of reel to reel tapes from WCBS. Most were standard issue radio shows, but one is a bit of a mystery, suggesting the possibility that Leonard Bernstein was working on a musical version of SKIN OF OUR TEETH with (perhaps?) Stephen Sondheim in 1955.

Now, yes, I know Lennie was working on it in 1960 with Comden and Green and that it really didnt go anywhere. But the reel here is listed as having been recorded in 1955, with (again, possibly) Bernstein at the piano. There's what looks like a song list — Randy's scanned it and posted it, as well as a brief clip of the opening number, which I guess would be Sabina's song? (The metre sounds about right, with a lot of triplets for "Antrobus" and "six o'clock". And there's a post card with "copy to SS" and the initials LB in a different hand.

I listened to the sound clip, and my first thought was "Okay, that's the Simpsons", until a composer friend of ours pointed out that it was also Bartok, who was a huge influence on Bernstein (who was in turn a huge influence on Elfman...).

Randy has, over the years, unearthed some pretty amazing things: among them, supposedly lost episodes of various radio shows and a copy of the OBC of Allegro actually signed by Richard Rodgers. It wouldnt surprise me that he's found something serious here. But what? This has all of us stumped. Any ideas?

You have to have a Facebook account to comment at his site (That's a Podbean requirement, not his.). If you dont, leave some word here, and I'll pass it on.


Rand's Esoteric OTR

Updated On: 3/26/13 at 10:57 AM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 10:59am

Here's a direct link to the entry. I probably should have used that, huh.
SKIN reel to reel

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 11:28am

Sorry, just one other note. Comments at his site are moderated (He got hit with some intense spam last year), so dont be surprised if it takes a while for something to show up. He sometimes doesnt get to it until after the work day is over.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 8:20pm

Just bumping. I wont do this if it annoys folks, honest. But it would be interesting to find out if indeed this might be an early Bernstein / Sondheim collaboration that few know about.

[all that jazz]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 8:31pm

I think WSS is the best work of both Sondheim and Bernstein so it would be really exciting to find an undiscovered collaboration between this two. Sadly I don't have any knowledge on the matter, therefore I cannot help you, but I'll be carefully following your thread, Good Luck!!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/26/13 at 11:38pm

The "55" is undoubtedly a typo for "65" (1965).

Bernstein took a 15-month sabbatical from the New York Philharmonic from June 1964 to September 1965 to write a musical based on "The Skin of Our Teeth" with Betty and Adolph. It was not a fruitful collaboration.

Lenny published a poem in The New York Times on October 24, 1965, detailing his sabbatical, which included the lines:

Since June of Nineteen Sixty-four
I've been officially free of chore
And duty to the N.Y. Phil.--
Fifteen beautiful months to kill!

But not to waste: there was a plan,
For as long as my sabbatical ran,
To write a new theater piece.
(A theater composer needs release,
And West Side Story is eight years old!)
And so a few of us got hold
Of the rights of Wilder's play The Skin of Our Teeth....

Six months we labored, June to bleak December.
And bleak was our reward when Christmas came,
To find ourselves uneasy with work.
We gave it up, and went our several ways,
Still loving friends; but there was the pain
Of seeing six months of work go down the drain.

According to Humphrey Burton's biography, Lenny wrote a letter to composer David Diamond in January 1965, bemoaning the reunited collaboration. He said "I am suddenly a composer without a project, with half that golden sabbatical down the drain. Never mind, I'll survive."

Burton then writes that Bernstein then had a "flurry of meetings" with Sondheim, Laurents, and Robbins, hoping that the West Side team could save the doomed project. But those meets went nowhere as well. Undoubtedly that was when the tape your friend "unearthed" was made.

But in February 1955, Bernstein and Sondheim had not even met.

It was in the Autumn of 1955 that Arthur Laurents had his famously described "forehead-smiting" meeting with Sondheim, at the opening night party for a play called "Isle of Goats," at which Arthur told Steve he and Bernstein and Robbins were giving up on their plans to write a musical based on James M. Cain's "Serenade" and find a new project, possibly one based on Romeo and Juliet.

Then Arthur smote his forehead and said that he wanted to introduce Steve to Lenny, as a possible lyricist for the project.

The rest, as they say, is Rashomon.

Updated On: 3/26/13 at 11:38 PM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 12:12am

It's very possible this was recorded in 65. Randy's tapes were from all over the timeline, from about 1950 to late in the 60s. I wish he could post the entire thing; I think you guys would find it fascinating: there's a couple of things that sound like rejects from CANDIDE and one that sounds like a precusor to MASS. But, as he points out, the Bernstein estate would probably have a major fit.

I must admit, I'm trying to imagine how inept an assistant it must have been to miss the date on a label by ten years. LOL Another possibility: since the card wasnt dated, Lenny could have recorded it in February and then arranged to have sent it to Sondheim after that meeting? Obviously, it never got to him, since it never left WCBS, but it's indeed possible.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 12:15am

Lenny didn't work on Skin of Our Teeth until 1964.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 12:18am

As far as we know, anyway. It'd been a project he'd wanted to do for a long time, and given that he had trunks and trunks of unpublished stuff, who's to say that he didnt sketch something out before starting with C&G?

Just sayin', it's possible.

[fogtalent2]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 1:04am

Updated On: 4/2/13 at 01:04 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 8:12am

It may, but it would have been odd of Lenny to work on something in 1955 and NOT tell his friends.

And in 1955, Sondheim was ensconced in working on Saturday Night, which he played for Lenny when the two men met at the "audition" Arthur arranged. If Sondheim had done some work with Bernstein before they met it would have been a big deal to their not-yet-coalesced social circle.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 8:37am

Someone at Randy's blog pointed out that these may have just been Lenny playing with themes as opposed to actual songs, and I'd buy that. The song list looks pretty generic as opposed to actual titles, almost like he was playing with ideas where songs *could* go.

As for him working on something and not telling anyone... hell, I have stuff that I've sketched out and then left abandoned for the moment, only to return a few years later and think, "Wait, what was this again?". I think all creative people work this way, to a certain degree. Inspiration strikes and you grab it, then shove in a drawer and forget about it. I doubt he was that much different from the rest of us in that regard.

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 9:15am

One possibility: The songs were recorded in February 1955, before Bernstein and Sondheim had met. And then a copy of the tape was sent to him after they'd met and had started working together.

Offhand, it seems plausible that Bernstein might have started working on a Skin of Our Teeth musical in 1955 or a bit earlier, thinking he'd work on it with Comden and Green, but they weren't available. After he started working with Sondheim (after Comden and Green weren't available for WSS), he proposed the idea to Sondheim, but that idea fizzled for one reason or another.

Then in 1964, the project was resurrected, this time with Comden and Green.

Is this implausible in some way that I may be missing?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 9:44am

There are, indeed, preliminary notes for the Skin of Our Teeth musical, written by Bernstein in September 1962. They're quoted in the Barry Seldes biography of Bernstein. (He cites them as being in the Leonard Bernstein Collection of the Library of Congress, Writings, Box 81, Folder 4.)

But they're very preliminary and don't seem to refer to things written seven years previously.

I think a lot of effort is going into proving a fiction to be true, when it is clearly no more than a fantasy.

There was a lot of drama surrounding the failure of the Skin of Our Teeth project, and Lenny was, if anything, an overly dramatic man, not the kind of poker player who kept his cards close to his chest. If there had been an early attempt to work with the young Sondheim (who, you will remember, did NOT want to write lyrics-only), it would long ago have become part of the West Side Story story.

[fogtalent2]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 9:53am

Updated On: 4/2/13 at 09:53 AM

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/27/13 at 10:55am

WCBS had a number of rental studios, so it's conceivable that Lenny used one for this recording, which might explain how it got into their archives, just someone mis-filing somewhere. And if it were part of Omnibus, I think *that* would have a paper trail someplace.

It does leave the mystery of who SS might be, but you're probably right that it's not Sondheim. Fun to think about, tho.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/31/13 at 11:28pm

Not to be pointlessly bumping this thread, but for anyone following it, I thought I'd give you an update.

Randy posted a link to it on the Sound Archivists' Forum, which is this bunch of big mucky-mucks who've worked with sound recording since... well, Edison's tubes, I suppose. At any rate, some big poo-bah there (I didnt recognize the name, but Randy says he's won a Grammy for technical production) has pretty well decided that the tape is indeed Bernstein, that the playing is reminiscent of recordings of the period of him at the piano. This guy's apparently been around long enough to know.

Needless to say, things are very excited at Mr. Riddle's house tonight.

[ABitOnTheSide]

Posted: 3/31/13 at 11:44pm

Wow!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/31/13 at 11:51pm

that the playing is reminiscent of recordings of the period of him at the piano

Which period?

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 3/31/13 at 11:53pm

He compared it to a recording made in 1947.

[temms]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 10:55am

Crazy thought - has anyone asked Stephen Sondheim about it? He's reachable.

Edited to add: This is fascinating stuff, thank you for posting it! Keep it coming, anyone not interested can easily skip the thread. This is the kind of stuff I keep coming here for. Updated On: 4/1/13 at 10:55 AM

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 12:53pm

It seems to me quite possible that Bernstein might have had the tape sent to Sondheim not because he wanted Sondheim to work on Skin of Our Teeth with him but to see if Sondheim thought that any of the music on the tape might be usable in West Side Story.

Obviously, nothing but speculation here. But I'd say that the well-known failed collaboration with Comden and Green on Skin of Our Teeth from the 1960s does not preclude the possibility that at an earlier time he might have played around with some musical ideas for a Skin of Our Teeth musical. If he was just playing around, he might not have told anyone, or it may be that any written materials got lost or were not filed correctly.

As for asking Sondheim, it would be a good idea but his memory is not so good at this point.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 1:14pm

If he was just playing around, he might not have told anyone

No. Given the man you're talking about, that scenario is not very likely.

[fogtalent2]

Posted: 4/1/13 at 1:36pm

Updated On: 4/2/13 at 01:36 PM