From the Library of Congress in Washington,
DC
David Diamond:…a painter named Romaine Brooks.
She lived in Paris for many, many years, wonderful
painter. She had a studio in in Carnegie Hall.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Mm hm.
DD: I used to come to…to call on her. She
was not well. I would love to know what ever
happened after her death, what ever happened
to all the, the
ETZ: the memorabilia
DD: the memorabilia that she had, yes. She
had a huge…she had James Joyce manuscripts
on, she had them framed. Oh there’s so much.
Was there a Mister…Who was the man who ran
the audio at the top of the, the hall when
they recorded us and did some things?
ETZ: That I do not know. I mean that’s a
very interesting question. I don’t know
that those things are around.
DD: In those days, but, but that’s…they
say he was the one who really rounded up all
the stuff.
ETZ: Mm hm. I don’t know. I’d like to
get to the bottom of it.
DD (to camera man): Should I take these off?
Cameraman: Let’s…You can take them off.
DD: Sure
Cameraman: I don’t know over there. It might
be a problem over there. Right here it’s
fine.
DD: They don’t, these…
ETZ: me something about this wonderful photo
of...
DD: yes, …a Rochester photographer, who
was the concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic
between nineteen… thirty-two and 1935. His
name was Alexander Leventon, and he was the
one who took these pictures of Lenny when
he came...to conduct for the first time after
he had already had his great success and was
beginning now to guest conduct everywhere.
ETZ: It’s a beautiful picture.
DD: It’s beautiful. I would guess that’s
around nine…
ETZ: This says, this says ’48. I don’t
know.
DD: That’s it. That’s it.
ETZ: Actually, there’s a, there’s a nice
later one that seems to have suffered in the
archives in some way.
DD: Yeah that’s a beautiful…I always liked
that one, yes.
ETZ: I think…Whitestone took that picture.
DD: Yes. Yes. Yeah that’s a regular commercial…that’s
a commercial.
ETZ: 'Cause I know he too my first commercial…photograph…and...
DD: And then there was a Blackstone.
ETZ: Yes.
DD: That was another, another one that did
a lot of that.
ETZ: Here’s a picture of, of… Lenny just
after the...
DD: That’s the famous one with John Corigliano.
ETZ: Corigliano, yeah.
DD: And…oh, there’s Polisi’s father.
ETZ: Oh really?
DD: Yes
ETZ: Really?
DD: That’s Joseph Polisi. He was the first
bassoonist.
ETZ: He was the bassoon, right? Yeah.
DD: And that’s…Leonard Rose.
ETZ: My goodness. That’s, that’s interesting.
DD (to cameraman): I bet you’re going to
get every pore in my, in my face.
Cameraman: No, it looks that way. It’s the
kind of lens that it is. It’s…
ETZ: Well…
DD: These are extraordinary pictures.
ETZ: we, we asked for the Doris Day treatment,
you now, the cheesecloth over the...
DD: Yes
ETZ: But they wouldn’t do with that and...
DD: Well, about my wrinkles I don’t worry
about. It’s about the pores.
ETZ: That’s interesting. These, these ought
to be identified.
ETZ: We ought to tell Gino, you know, identify
the people in this picture, cause it wouldn’t
occurred to me that that’s Leonard Rose,
but, but of course it is.
DD: I think they, I think those are, they
are in Avery Fischer Hall. They are. That’s
there and it has a little thing on the side
of it that gives the names of that particular
one.
ETZ: ...of who it is. Yeah. Well, that’s
interesting. And of course John Corigliano
is, is so well-known to us as a composer.
Yeah. Well, so.
DD: Can I tell the story about John not wanting
to play in Lukas’s piece? Or are those terrible
stories not permitted.
ETZ: No holds barred. You can tell any story
you like, David. This is…
DD: He would not. He would. Lukas wrote this…it
was…he called them Baroque Variations, …where
he would take Bach’s pieces and cut them
up in little pieces, a page of it, and he
distributed these pieces…to the stands.
And in this case the first set that he did
was called…Variations on Bach…and…the
concertmaster was asked, John Corigliano,
Lukas said, “Now please”…He was guest
conductor, Bernstein had asked him to be guest
conductor, …he said “Now John you will
play maybe about, oh let’s say half of the
Preludium” (which was what he cut up in
pieces) “You will play it in its original
form and then my Variations will begin.”
So, Corigliano took for granted, [sings: diddle
um bum bum bum]. I mean it sounded wonderful
and then he sat down. So, came the variation.
Now he didn’t know that Lukas was doing
these stunts. He had been introduced to John
Cage by his wife Cornelia. So, he cut up these
pieces and now on cues from Lukas doing his
Boulez things all hell broke loose. [Diamond
makes random noises]. It just was not… John
was so bewildered that he stopped playing,
you know. So, he looked up and he put up his
hand and said “What’s going on? What’s
going on?” So Lukas said “These are my
variations and of course you will do it exactly
at, at the performance, won’t you?” So
John said, “You’re not having me perform.
I will refuse.” Then he found out also that
he would have to play the original facing
the wall. He would not be playing it to the…he
would have to face the wall.
ETZ: Oh, oh that’ll do it.
DD: I will never forget that day. Lenny was
brought in. The union man was brought in and
as a result of Lukas carrying-on those three
weeks he guest conducted…there was a petition
signed by the orchestra. He couldn’t conduct
the Philharmonic for, I think, something like
twenty years. They never had him back because
of this.
Off-camera person: That’s a great story.
DD: As you see I tell the story with glee
because thank God, I’ve had my vendetta
about Lukas…we’re finally talking again.
To me this was the most horrendous sell-out
by such a gifted…we really felt he had great
genius…I met him as an eighteen year old
when he came over… Aaron Cop…
ETZ: You’re talking about Lukas.
DD: Lukas. [mumbles]. We gave a welcome party
to him at Aaron’s loft where the state theater
is now. He was a little arrogant. His father,
a brilliant philosopher…I liked the father.
And then Lukas, you know, went the way of
all flesh. He wasn’t strong-willed enough
to…resist John’s sort of theories and
when I was giving a series of lectures in
Buffalo at the university there, Lukas happened
to be the conductor of the Philharmonic. So
there were these terrible, terrible arguments.
“Lukas, why?” Such beautiful music. He
also put an edict down. His publisher could
not anymore distribute any of his tonal music.
The Oboe Concerto was never to be played again.
His Second Piano Concerto…first…didn’t
want…Today he’s allowing his old mu…Mr.
Masur is doing his…let’s see they’re
doing the Renaissance Flute Concerto, which
also has a little nutsiness at the end cause
Jane…Backstresser has to walk off as she’s
playing. Suddenly for, nobody knows, why,
all of the sudden, she’s playing, she suddenly
decides to walk off, you see. No bowing. She
comes out for a bow. Why this, why he has
to think this, all this stuff up I don’t
know. It’s…otherwise it’s such a good
piece.
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: Do you have any theories about, Ellen,
do you have theories about…What, what is
this thing called, they call it performance
something…
Off-camera people: Art [laughing]
DD: Performance art.
ETZ: Yeah. Well, I think that’s another,
another day. I think we should…
Off-camera person: To answer your question,
yes we have theories [mumbles]
DD: All right.
Off camera person: Do you want a glass of
water?
ETZ : Yes, I think that’d be very nice.
DD: So, where would you like me to sit?
ETZ: I think this is for you. Are we okay
here now?
ETZ: I brought, remember the picture David
that you sent me of Sessions…I brought that,
and then I brought a picture I took of him
in 1980, so, we’ll put this over here.
ETZ: Which is which
Robert: This is the sparkling…
ETZ: I don’t see a whole lot of sparkle,
so. That’s all right with me. That’s ok.
DD: Dead sparkle
ETZ: Okay, terrific. Thanks very much, Robert.
…
DD: Ahhh, that’s great.
ETZ: Good, huh? For the 
record I’m Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and I hold
the first Carnegie Hall Composer’s Chair…
and this is the first in our series of conversations
with composers here in the archives of Carnegie
Hall. Today we have the very distinguished
American composer David Diamond with us and
this will be a casual conversation with David
about his history, the history of Carnegie
Hall, the history of American life, the history
of the twentieth-century.
David, first of all let me just say that we
know that you have been flying all over the
country celebrating your eightieth birthday
with many, many honors and, and orchestral
and other celebrations including having just,
within the last few weeks, received the Presidential
Medal in the Arts at the White House from
President Clinton.
DD: Yes. I was very touched by that.
ETZ: I can imagine… and it’s sort of wonderful,
I mean all these things that have been heaped
on you, the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Gold Medal in 1991 and the MacDowell Colony…
I don’t know if it’s a medal or…
DD: Yes, the Edward MacDowell Gold Medal for
Lifetime Achievement.
ETZ: And which is a very…you’re among
a very distinguished crowd in both those cases.
DD: I was very touched actually by that one
because… when I was a penniless nineteen-
twenty-year-old composer, had Mrs. MacDowell,
who was still very much alive at that time
and did live on another ten years, had she
not heard that I was in need of a place to
work for the summer… …I would not really
have had any place to go, and I worked all
of 1934, ’35 there.
ETZ: Oh how nice.
DD: went back again in ’42. So, that medal
meant more than just the MacDowell Medal for
what it was, but also the gratitude I felt
for having been there so early on.
ETZ: Do you remember what you were writing
there?
DD: Yes, absolutely. I threw…it’s away
with discarded works. It was a setting of
an Ezra Pound poem called “Night Litany”
and…I had worked on it with Boulanger and
she thought that, that, that it had very,
very strong elements in it, but I don’t
know as the years went on, I found that it
was weak. It had a lot of tremolandi in the
strings and I don’t like…I tell all my
students at Juilliard, I say, “Please, Sibelius
did them, no tympani rolls, this is out. If
you want to use the tympani, give them rhythmic
motivic ideas that are in your materials.
Don’t, don’t have those old nineteenth-century
rolls.” That’s the only thing I agree
with Boulez about.
ETZ: [chuckles] I started my First Symphony
at the MacDowell colony so I, I know how you
feel that sense of…
DD: It hasn’t changed very much. It’s,
it’s still…the hurricane that was there
I think it was ’38… …did so much damage
we had to raise lots of money for it, but…it’s
back to what it was.
ETZ: Well at any rate…it’s, it’s nice
to see at this stage in, in one’s life the
kind of… …not just acceptance, but the
reverence that people feel towards what you’ve
done and, and your music. , I’d like to
really back all the way up though. Let’s
go back to your childhood and talk about…coming
of age and…your family was not musical,
was it… or…
DD: No, but I would say…my sister and my
mother were definitely artistic. My mother
was a very well-known dress designer, dress
maker for the Yiddish theater in during the
Austrian, Austro-Hungarian Empire, was known
as Lemberg and today it is Lviv. It was taken
over by the Soviet Union and is right under
Kiev. So as a child I grew up with four languages
including English, but there was Yiddish as
well, so five languages going, Ukrainian,
Russian, German, Polish, which is what the
other language that they spoke. This helped
me enormously. Then my sister played the mandolin
and that sort of gave me, it, well it would
confuse me as well. I think I remember telling
you once that when I first discovered a violin
it was lying open in a neighbor’s case and
it had four strings and I was already imagining
music in my head, but I, as I heard the notes
in my head I saw four strings. Well, this
created havoc when I wanted to write it down
on, on paper. You see I would draw my own
lines. I didn’t know anything about buying
manuscript paper. I was only about six then,
or something. So, what happened was that with
all these strings on the mandolin there was
double confusion. So, I asked my sister what
kind of music she reads from and she didn’t
have any other music but a piece called “Sobre
las olas,” which turns out to be “Over
the waves.” You know, dee dee duh duh duh.
ETZ: [chuckles] Sobre las olas
DD: So this was my great masterpiece that
I, I learned, you know, first. But it also,
the four lines gave me a chance, then when
I discovered there were five lines to music
staves…
ETZ: So it was a tablature that she had.
DD: That’s right. So what it did for me,
it taught me instinctive transposition, you
know, fixed do up and down.
ETZ: Yeah. That a staff isn’t a, a God-given
thing and, yes exactly.
DD: That’s right. The do can be, where now
with five lines, it’s down there and then
it’s in the space.
ETZ: It’s interesting sometimes these little
things that, that resonate throughout our
lives.
DD: Oh yes.
ETZ: Just, just a small thing like that.
DD: That is emotionally very vivid to me,
my discovery that I now could move up notes
any place that I wanted and could hear them.
I must have had perfect pitch as a child…I
have close to that now. I never did have it,
but as I get older, I seem to developing perfect
pitch.
ETZ: Hmm. I have it, but… I wasn’t even
aware of it for a long time in in my life…I’m,
I’m such a believer in, that that music
takes place in between the notes that I tend
to put little emphasis on having perfect pitch
or not, but…David, when did you start to
study music?
DD: I began to study the violin at the age
of…well, this violin was given to me as
a gift. This open case that had this three-quarter
size violin belonged to a neighbor, friends
of our family, the Weiner’s, as a matter
of fact. And Ruby Weiner, the, the boy was
about four years older than I was, he wouldn’t
practice. So, my mother asked Mrs. Weiner
if I could have it and I remember picking
it up and just taking the bow, and just going…I,
I can still feel…I had very large hands
even as a, as a six…very abnormally large,
and I could…so I began doing things like
that. I don’t know w…I hadn’t yet heard
of violins in concert either… the only violin
music was on ourVictrolla, 78 recordings of
Tosha Seidl playing Humoresque of Dvorak and,
Träumeri of Schumann, Heifitz playing On
Wings of Song. That’s about it, as far as…we
didn’t have money to go to the Eastman Theater
in Rochester to to hear concerts, but...
ETZ: Did you begin to study, now this is in
Rochester, which is where you were born…
DD: A private Russian teacher, his name is…
ETZ: oops, sorry (drops notes)
DD: Mr. Sifkin. He was an immigrant, who like
many Russian immigrants got out of Russia
after the Revolution and Rochester had the
wonderful Rochester Philharmonic, which was,
I would say, full of Russians, Belgians, and
French. Rochester’s Philharmonic was number
five among the top.
ETZ: Oh really?
DD: Yes. Today…
ETZ: Now this is after World War One…
DD: After World War One
ETZ: So you’re talking about refugees from
World War One? Or people who…
DD: No, from the Russian Revolution.
ETZ: From the Russian Revolution.
DD: Yes who came over after 1917. Some had
even gotten away after the 1905 revolution,
and they came to the cities where already
great orchestras were established. We had
for example as our, why I remembered him so
vividly is he had a name that was an English
name, Albert Coates…
ETZ: Oh sure.
DD: …he conducted here at Carnegie Hall,
but when I learned that he was born in Russia,
and conducted, had a career in Russia, that
was a great amazement to me. [yawns] excuse
me.
ETZ: …You left Rochester to do your first
early important studying though…didn’t
you though…you went to Cleveland.
DD: That would be then, let’s see, that
would be in nineteen twenty six seven. (1926/7)
ETZ: and the family moved...
DD: That was again, because my father, who
was…you’re asking me about…were there
musicians family…artist…my mother was
the dressmaker. My sister just simply played
the mandolin, but my father was an artist
in his way. He made those wonderful hope chests…
ETZ: Oh.
DD: …that women always had when they married.
They would have one of these hope chests always,
and then when…mechanization came in…he
was out of work because he did all his work
by hand. So, out went his job. Now what else
does one do? One depends on relatives and
they were all in Cleveland. And so my mother’s
brother Harry was there and Harry invited
us all to come there…just that is my, my
sister was about to be married, but…my mother,
my father, and they had a fruit business on
105th Street. It was kind of a ghetto section.
I grew up in the ghetto section in Rochester
and I loved it, because there again, I had
all the different nationalities. It’s so
different from our time today, where everyone
is at each other’s throats, you know…and
not at all. Our black neighborhood was only
one block…let’s say from 63rd Street down
to 59th…that…a couple of blocks, you see.
And that was it…but we had a large Polish
neighborhood one block away, large Ukrainian,
Irish, we all got along beautifully.
ETZ: Hmm.
DD: The Jews didn’t fight with the Italians,
any of that, see. So, it was a happy childhood
in many ways except, the mother, who…practice,
you know.
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: So, that was about it.
ETZ: …so then you’re in Cleveland about
the time that Sessions was there at the Institute?
DD: Just as Roger…this, I’ll make this
very brief… every summer we would go to
visit our relatives. So we were going there
before the 1927 period when we moved there.
Every summer that we visited my Aunt Florence,
my mother would enroll me to the Cleveland
Institute of Music. In the old building at
Bloch, Ernest Bloch was the director of the
school. And Mrs. Franklin B. Sanders, who,
who started the school with Bloch got me financial
aid to study with André de Ribeaupierre,
the violin teacher, who also, because he knew
that I was composing, he had me take Josephine
Trott, the scale studies…
ETZ: [laughs] Oh yes, I remember those.
DD: And…write a second violin part. And
so what I did was write the second violin
part with first finger, fourth finger and
go right up and down, third position down,
with…so I would get seconds and fourths
all the way up. Well he found this so interesting.
ETZ: Ah, you were a modernist already, right?
DD: He said, “Ravel”…now, now comes
1928, this is a year after we moved there.
He said “Ravel is making his first tour.
David, he will be fascinated to see what you
are doing with your harmony, and anyway I
think he should see some of your pieces you
are writing.” I remember this one ghastly
piece, I still have it, called The Doll Dances,
it was…a horror, just terrible, but it had
weird harmonies, that’s for sure. I didn’t
know what I was doing, but I liked these sounds.
And sure enough Ravel’s first… it was
January, very cold winter…
DD: I have the original manuscript. It is
a horror.
ETZ (to cameraman): We ready?
Cameraman: yup
ETZ: Well, it’s, it’s…
DD: Give me my two words. He gave, Ravel gave
two concerts, the first evening was a concert
of his piano music. Now I felt he played beautifully.
Joseph Fuchs, the violinist who still teaches
ETZ: Who’s still, yeah
DD: at the Juilliard School today. And we
were just talking about Ravel, he thought…he
was the concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra
at the time…Sokolov, Nikolai Sokolov was
the conductor then… Joe Fuchs thought Ravel
played badly, that he wasn’t a pianist…he
thought he was a terrible conductor…I thought
he was a wonderful conductor. I remember he
used a rather large stick and that in La Valse,
which absolutely wiped me out…I mean, I,
I…if there are pieces of music that absolutely
knocked me out as a kid, La Valse was one
of them.
ETZ: Hmmm. Did you hear Ravel do this with
the Cleveland Orchestra?
DD: That, that was the second concert. First
night was piano music. Second night. Now,
after the second night, Mr. de Ribeaupierre
took me back. Now I was wearing…I still
have it too, it’s not moth eaten…a purple
turtleneck sweater…we were very poor, my
mother, you know to buy a shirt, was some
thing like two dollars I think in those days,
and that was a lot of money for a shirt…So,
I washed my turtleneck sweater every other
day and I had green corduroy pants. I loved
wearing those green corduroy pants…and suede
shoes. I don’t know how I came to the suede
shoes, but I, I must have been a walking rainbow
for sure…
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: ...and all this red carrot curly hair
falling all over my head. That’s the way
I came into the room with Mr. de Ribeaupierre
and I can still see Ravel’s face. [laughs]
He just fixed me like this camera’s fixing
me and he walked up to me…“C’est tardons”…[laughs]
C’est tardons…I didn’t know what in
God’s name…it sounded like a swear word
to me, it was so terrible…and he took me
by my hand, sat me…He was a very tiny man
with a huge, abnormally large head, white
hair, prematurely white hair, on a jockey’s
body. It was absolutely a jockey’s body.
Everything was perfectly proportioned, except
the body was smaller than the…the head was
out of proportion to the rest of the body.
He was still in his tails and he sat me down
on the couch and Mr. de Ribeaupierre brought
along these Trott studies and my counterpoint
and my harmony exercises and he quickly looked
at them. He said “demain, demain.” I didn’t
know what “demain” really meant, but I
got the idea that it had something to do with
afterwards, afterwards…but it meant then,
and I heard them talking…it meant I…Mr.
de Ribeaupierre was to bring me to the Wade
Park Manor, was the name of the hotel. I don’t
think it’s there, or it may be there, but
it’s not a hotel I don’t think. It was
right opposite Severance Hall, where Severance,
that was not there then… the concerts took
place in the public auditorium down in, where
the baseball, new baseball stadium is today.
ETZ: Oh really? Yeah.
DD: And…
ETZ: So this is all before Severance Hall
and Cleveland?
DD: That’s right, but the Wade Park Manor
was right, right there where, right opposite
the, what became Severance Hall there. And
so I remember being ushered in with Mr. de
Ribeaupierre. There was a grand piano in the
room and… he was now wearing a regular afternoon
suit and this is what he was wearing. I can
still see…yellow shoes, well what they called,
what golf players in the twenties and thirties,
you know, sort of brown and white…yellow,
however, with stripes that went like this…orange
socks, orange wool socks…a green shirt
ETZ: Maybe you inspired him
DD: No, this was, this was…Ravel was famous
for these outfits. An orange tie on a green
shirt… a jacket that was a mixture of the,
of turquoise and the green of the shirt and…it
all fit, but he was a walking rainbow. So
this time I guess I was looking at him and
then he said something again in French and
broken English about, “I, I am in competition
with you,” or something 'cause…[laughs]…here
I was again in my purple turtleneck sweater,
you know, and something about concurrence,
it was explained to me afterwards by Mr. de
Ribeaupierre. And so there he really looked
carefully through and he said the following
too in a kind of broken English…“Il faut,
Il faut, that you, that you, Il faut that
you study, study, you will come to France
and you will study with,” and now I heard
for the first time the name, Nadia Boulanger.
And then when, when I went back home that
night I wrote down this name, I remember I
spelled it N-A-D-J-A, you see. Again it was
the Polish spelling.
ETZ: Mm hmm, sure.
DD: And I immediately, after he left, I think
he finished up the tour in three other cities…After
he left, he had given me his address, I sent
off a letter to him, a thank you note, and
in less that three weeks I got a letter from
Paris from him and we corresponded regularly.
Now that letter that’s in the Ravel Reader,
the R. B. Ornstein anthology, is one from
1933, but we kept writing to each other and
he said, "now it’s important…c’est tres
important que vous venez en France, you know
this, and, and what can be done. I have spoken
with Nadia." Now he was one of the first to
help establish the Conservatoire Americain
in Fontainebleau, you see…Walter Damrosch
from the States, they, I think Damrosch raised
the money…Mrs. Henry Harkness Flagler also
contributed. The Warwick family contributed
money. And so it was started and then of course
Aaron Copland had heard from Marion Bauer,
the American composer…it’s too bad people
have forgotten about Marion Bauer. They talk
about Ruth Seeger a lot today as a woman composer,
but I think Marion Bauer’s music should
be looked into. She’s totally forgotten.
She’s written a good book about American
composers. At any rate, she was the first
American composer that worked with Nadia Boulanger.
Then she returned and told Copland about this
extraordinary woman and then Aaron went, you
see. And so Aaron spent 1921, ’22, I think
part of ’23 and then began the regular pilgrimage
of Roy Harris, who was already older than
the others, Piston, Virgil, and then a lot
of others. But one can count really on two
hands the American composers that spent, really
time. I spent, if you add up the different,
between ’36 and the outbreak of the second
world war, I would say it was a total of three
years that I was with her and this is after
I’ve already finished theoretical studies
with Bernard Rogers, another Ernest Bloch
student, then came to New York during the
depression years, worked with Sessions at
the Dalcroze School, now really counterpoint,
and then florid counterpoint, harmony, analysis.
That was a great school over on 9 East 59th
Street.
ETZ: The Dalcroze?
DD: The Dalcroze and New Music School was
called…run by a man named Paul Buchla, who
conducted the Dessoff Choirs. So with all
that training, when I arrived with Boulanger
that …summer…’36 she simply looked at
my Psalm for Orchestra. She said, I want Stravinsky
to see this. So she took me over to Stravinsky’s
on a Sunday afternoon in his beautiful apartment
on the Fauxbrooks St. en Oreille and we played
it four hands…and at the very end there’s
…just before the big F major chord comes
for the whole orchestra… there are four
bars of one trombone just going [sings: bum
bum bum bum]. And I held it three beats...
DD: “...that that tubular bell that you
have…the…I like very much how you space
the chord, encore une fois.” So, mademoiselle
and I and we played that big chord spaced
in a very unusual way and then the tubular
bell plays the F so you. “Now you be sure
that you hear, make them play for you this
tubular bell so we hear an A-flat, we don’t
want an A-natural. Wouldn’t it be marvelous
when you can hear A-flat on top of A-natural.”
I said, “Oh that’s certainly what I wanted.”
He said, “Make a note in your score that’s
what you want.” So I added that to the score.
ETZ: That’s, that’s wonderful. You remind
me of course that it was considered a normal
thing for an American to, to go to Europe
to make, to make his or her way I think in
the ‘20s and ‘30s.
DD: I, I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say
it that was normal. I would say, I would say
there was already this story that there was
this woman…unless you’re talking about
in general,
American pianists and violinists going to
Europe. That I don’t really think was so.
I think that was so about Germany in the last
fifty years of the nineteenth century…but
like Mrs. Beach and Edward MacDowell, even.
Germany was the place they all went to study
with Raff and some of the others. But actually
France, that was writers mainly, the American
writers, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, but
I don’t think until Aaron started this then
Elliott Carter went, you see…Piston.
ETZ: , I guess what I’m getting at is that
it seems to me to have taken quite a while
to develop an American… center you might
say where it was, it was understood that young
people could study here and study with the
best in the world.
DD: You mean in in Paris?
ETZ: In, in, no, in in the States, in New
York or Philadelphia, Cleveland, wherever.
DD: Oh, that, that certainly did take a long
time. Although to be really quite fair, and
I have not read books that really document
this carefully and accurately… down at the
New School for Social Research, Henry Cowell
already in the late ‘20s, after he had returned
from tours in Germany…he went around, you
know, with his strange instruments, that boomerang
instrument, and then plucking the piano, you
know, inside the strings…George Antheil
as a young, very young boy went over to Germany.
He met Hans Heinzhammer, who was at Universal
Editions, he wrote his opera Transatlantique.
It was performed all over Germany. So it was
really Antheil, Henry Cowell, who were after
MacDowell in the nineteenth century, the American
composers who were the best known. Then we
have Nicolas Slonimsky…
ETZ: Who is still with us as we speak in 1995.
DD: That’s right and that extraordinary
man, who went over and began to perform with
French musicians, the music of Carl Ruggles…
John Becker, all the composers that finally
Ives’s money helped to establish the New
Music Editions…and then there was Lazare
Saminsky who was the director of music as
Temple Emmanuel on Fifth Avenue…and I must
say I was always grateful to who helped me
out financially my first year in New York…Miriam
Gideon, Vivian Fine, and I would also write,
oh, sacred sections of the Friday night service,
the Saturday morning services. And, this is
all again depression years. So, Mr. Saminsky
who was published by Maurice Senour and Max
Eschig, French publishers, who was, he was
a Rimsky pupil. He went over twice a year
to conduct American works including his own
works. And so he also conducted a great deal
of the lesser well not definitely avant-garde
people, but Edward Burlingame Hill, Emerson
Whithorne, almost forgotten men, Charles Griffes.
That was Mr. Saminsky’s thing. So you see
there, there were people bringing Varèse
- that’s Slonimky conducting Varèse in
those days - but Varèse had still, he stayed
on in Paris until he came to New York a little
later.
ETZ: So it wasn’t a vacuum that Mitropoulos
walked into in in any sense of the word.
DD: I would say no. No. I would say what happened
was that it may, you…Yes one could think
of it as perhaps being a vacuum that that
happened because suddenly there was a big
indifference with a capital “I” that set
in about American music and I think it had
a great deal to do with the fact that Toscanini
was the big center focal personality. Koussevitsky
was in Boston, you see, but Toscanini was
right here in Carnegie Hall and then he was
with the NBC and he did not play American
composers.
ETZ: What what years are these that you’re
talking about.
DD: Nineteen twenty six, seven, eight
ETZ: Now were you in New York at this time?
Did you…
DD: I, we would come to visit relatives. Naturally
I would go. I remember hearing Klemperer,
Furtwängler, Mengelberg, I heard Yehudi Menuhin’s
debut recital in his little pants, I remember...
ETZ: Oh really, and that’s right here at
Carnegie Hall, right?
DD: At Carnegie Hall. Yes. He was chubby…and,
oh he played that Beethoven Concerto like
an angel.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: …that’s when I knew I would never
be a violinist.
ETZ: A violinist…[laughs], David let’s
talk about your performance of your First
Symphony. The premier with the, what is now
known as the New York Philharmonic, then the
Philharmonic Symphonic Society of New York…
DD: Society.
ETZ: …Actually that's the way our contracts
still today read, is it, you know
DD: really, you have [?]
ETZ: What led up to this, you know how does
a young, young kid from Rochester, what led
up to your…to this performance with Mitropoulos
and the First Symphony at Carnegie Hall?
DD: Well don’t forget I’m…don’t forget
that I’m already here in New York studying
with Sessions, that is from from ’34, ’35,
you see. So now we’re, well it’s played
in ’41 or ’40 was it?
ETZ: ’41
DD: ’41
ETZ: 1941
DD: But I had finished up with Boulanger,
the second world war broke out, I had to come
back, and I came back with sketches for a
real first symphony. And I had written one
with Sessions, which resides in the Free Library
in Philadelphia, discarded that…One at Eastman
School I did with Bernard Rogers. That’s
in the Sibley Music Library. So now I wanted
to do my real first one. The very first one
that Gerard Schwartz will conduct on Wednesday
nigh, the one Mitropoulos gave. So I was,
again, penniless, you know, came back, my
Guggenheim money was used up. I wrote Mrs.
MacDowell who was …not alive anymore then.
So I wrote Elizabeth Ames at Yaddo…I was
told about the Yaddo Festival by Aaron Copland.
So I wrote Mrs. Ames and she invited me to
come with Aaron’s letter of reference and
I began working. I shared the north farm with
Katherine Ann Porter, the writer.
ETZ: Mmm hmm.
DD: And it was wonderful because I had met
her in Paris. She was the last…the year
I was there, she was finishing up her work
there. And we shared the apartment. We cooked
meals one night. She was a very good cook.
Other time, I would cook. And she was working
on ship…
ETZ: And you’re a very good cook I must
say.
DD: Now I don’t cook so much. But she was
working on Ship of Fools, the novel that finally
brought her some money. But one night I remember
that I was…while I was working on the symphony
she’d come back to the little woodshed that
was my studio and I would play her sketches
of the, of the symphony and ask her what she
thought about it, and she, she was very musical
and she made wonderful suggestions. Now the
symphony is done, and the problem parts, you
know. So they tell me the Free Library of
Philadelphia has something called the Fleisher
Collection, and if you write them they will
copy and Arthur Cohn, I believe, was working
for Mr. Fleisher in that collection. He would
go around to all the American composers and
say “if you need any parts copied”…remember
we had no publishers…Aaron Copland was the
first to go to Alma Morgenthal of the Morgenthal
wealthy family to set up something called
Cos Cob Press and that, they were the first
to publish Sessions, Copland, Emerson Whithorne,
Edward Burlingame Hill, otherwise there was
nothing. Schirmer took Ernest Bloch’s music
cause he was a friend of Carl Engel’s, who
was then head of the Schirmer Publications
Department. So to come back to my symphony,
it was done now. The parts… I heard about
this collection. I wrote away to Mr. Fleisher
whether they would be kind enough to copy
my parts. They wrote back yes they would be…they
would have to know if there was a performance.
ETZ: Performance. Yeah.
DD: So, the next thing I wrote Copland was
“Who shall I send the score”, because
in those days, you know, there were very,
very few outside of Koussevitsky. So I said,
“Do you think that Koussevitsky would be
interested?” He said, “I think he would
be very…it might be a little too energetic
for him. That first movement it's pretty…that’s
pretty top-heavy-going there. I don’t think
he would quite…cause he always hated my
music. If the first movement was a little
too, too Allegro.” So, , “I don’t think
he…but anyway, take a chance.” So I thought,
what I will do is I’ll write three conductors
and the first that says yes…I don’t know
why I didn’t think they’ll all say no,
but the first that says yes, that conductor
will get it. So I sent Koussevitsky, and Aaron
said “definitely.” I had heard about Mitropoulos
that he was supposed to be extraordinary.
He had just had that tremendous debut, and
then Lenny. I had known Bernstein by then.
He, we had met at, after a Boston Symphony
concert. And I wrote him and he’d said “Oh
I met the man. He’s a genius. He’s extraordinary.
Yes, you must send your symphony to him.”
And the other one was Sir John Barbirolli.
The tel…the first telegram…the only telegram
came back was from Mitropoulos. “I would
like very much to see your symphony.” From
Koussevitsky I had an informal letter about
a month afterwards. It’s interesting that
it…Olga Naumoff, who he married later, was
the secretary. And I never did hear from Sir
John. As a matter of fact my publisher sent
the Psalm for Orchestra, that very piece Stravinsky
made suggestions about, that was sent to Sir
John here. I don’t think unless you have
in records that he actually had played some
American composers. I’d love to know who
he played. I know he played Stanley Bate and
Norman Dello…no, no, that was Bruno Walter.
ETZ: He played a piece by Morton Gould, I
know.
DD: All right, there we are. Morton Gould
may be the only one. But I could never even
get an answer from him. So, you see, it was…it
was wonderful when Mitropoulos answered. So…
ETZ: You must have been very excited.
DD: Oh! You know I thought my God this is
extraordinary. So, I sent him the score at
once and I sent him a letter, a copy of the
letter, Mr. Fleisher’s, that the parts would
be ready. And then before I knew it he had
scheduled it for that date…December something…I
don’t know. You have it down?
ETZ: December 21st
DD: Yes.
ETZ: 1941
DD: Right.
ETZ: ...we have some goodies here. One is
the original program.
DD: That I have a copy of. That I have.
ETZ: And…
DD: With…wasn’t his picture on the cover?
ETZ: I don’t know…I don’t think so.
DD: Oh did they take the top, the top page
off?
ETZ: These are the…just the programs.
DD: Yeah, but every program had the conductor’s…There!
ETZ: There we go. Yes.
DD: That’s…That’s it. You see, that’s
the way…every program had.
ETZ: Here’s a very fine…
DD: That’s a wonderful picture.
ETZ: Isn’t that a marvelous picture of him?
DD: Yes. Yes.
ETZ: Now this is from 1941.
DD: Right.
ETZ: So that’s what he looked like I guess.
DD: He sure did. And there’s the man who
jumped up, hit the ceiling almost of Carnegie
Hall at the first…
ETZ: Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff
DD: Boom!…my piece begins with a tuba. Up
he shot and out into the corridor.
ETZ: …I was going to ask you, what it was
like to be on the same program with Rachmaninoff,
and how he treated you, and how you felt,
and…
DD: Well, I loved his music, and, you can
imagine how hurt I was…
ETZ: I certainly can.
DD: You know, an E major chord… [sings:
bum, bum, bum]…a triad for the motive.
ETZ: And psht.
DD: What’s so terrible, you know?...Out…So,
I…you know I…I just couldn’t figure
it out. Now comes the intermission and he’s
now up with Mitropoulos. And so I’m coming
up the stairs…I think I was in tears, a
little bit…and Mitropoulos took me by the
hand, pulled me up...he’s inside, you know…so,
he says “Now dear, don’t…don’t be
upset, it’s not your music”, he said.
I said, “yes.” He said “Come, come,
come.” And there he was standing this big,
tall man and he looked down at me and he said,
“You must understand it is not your music.
I just have no time to listen to American
composers.”
ETZ: Oh boy.
DD: That didn’t help matters I can assure
you.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: So I took one look at him and walked out.
That’s all I…right down the stairs.
ETZ: And he was at the, the peak of his career…
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: And you were twenty-five, twenty-six.
DD: No. Let’s see nineteen forty…
ETZ: forty one
DD: Yeah. So what, twenty, twenty...
ETZ: Twenty-five, twenty-six.
DD: Twenty-five, twenty-six, right. But you
know what it was really, this man suffered
from terrible depressions. He was not a well
man. He had already…Well they…He was told
that he had cancer, you see. So, with his
record of alcoholism way back when…his analysis
way back when with a doctor…he couldn’t
compose, you know, the famous story about
Dr. Dahl curing him of, of all these problems.
So, when this was ex…now Mitropoulos takes
me out to lunch, some greasy spoon down the
street, he explains to me about Mitropoulos’s
problems and how, how…what and unhappy man
he was…
ETZ: Mm hm.
DD: And so I was not…so after…he didn’t
come to the performances…but I never held
it against him. Now one night at Kyriena Ziloti’s,
Ziloti taught, as you know, at the Juilliard
School piano for a long time
ETZ: I didn’t know.
DD: He was a friend of Tchaikovski’s and
of course conducted Rachmaninoff’s music.
They were both conductors in in Russia before
the Revolution. So at the Ziloti’s Easter,
Russian Easter party, there is Mr. Rachmaninoff.
And this would now be, oh I would say, three
to four years later. And we were at the…it
was a long table, and he was sitting sort
of on the other side, and I looked over and
I said “Mr. Rachmaninoff, it’s such a
pleasure to, to see you again.” And he said
“I was not very nice to you, was I?” I
said, “No, no, no…I…Mr. Mitropoulos
explained everything fine.” He said, “But
you know I heard Koussevitsky play your second
symphony…much more talent than I have.”
ETZ: Oh that’s very lovely.
DD: Which…which, you know, touched me so
much and I didn’t know whether to believe
him or whether he was making it up, you know,
compensation. But that was the last time that
I saw him.
ETZ: That’s, that’s lovely.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: David, I have another photograph here
of a very handsome young man
DD: Ahh. The young, the young man.
ETZ: And the inscription is from that…the
very thing that, that caused Rachmaninoff
to pop up out of his seat.
DD: That’s…that’s it. See, there’s
that tubular bell.
ETZ: [laughs] That’s…
DD: My God it’s nice. I still used deep
green ink then.
ETZ: Really?
DD: Yeah. You see?
ETZ: Yes I do.
DD: I still use it today.
ETZ: Why?
DD: I don’t know. It’s again one of those
color fetishes. Green…See I’ve got green
on today.
ETZ: And you…you write with…you still
write with ink? With your scores?
DD: …no, no, because of this damn carpal
tunnel stuff that developed in my hand, it
got to be too painful, you know, having to
use…and then lining up with those draft
ink to get the bar lines. So what I do is
with…I use the black wooden pencil. I’ve
been doing this since Italy.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: And then I have it Xeroxed. It’s much
easier for me to work.
ETZ: Well the copy machines are so good today,
[?]…
DD: Well, I don’t like the computer, you
know, you know, I like to have my…That’s
why when I see your manuscripts, when I see
the facsimiles of yours, I feel more comfortable.
ETZ: Yeah it’s funny some conductors feel
that way that that they get…
DD: If that personality…
ETZ: They feel the personality behind it when
they see the actual manuscript.
DD: Even my students, they drive me up the
wall, I said, “Look, I don’t want to see…don’t
bring your stuff to the lessons on a computer.
I want your manuscript. I get a great deal
more about you. I learn about you from your
handwriting. So please don’t.”
ETZ: Interesting. It’s…
DD: These are wonderful to have.
ETZ: Yes, you see some of the ads are quite
interesting.
DD: Oh yes. There’s that strange Mr. Wetzler,
who was an old friend from Germany, nobody
knew who Mr. Weztler was, but, you see, already
then Mitropoulos had ways of making programs.
Zirato flipped his lid. He was, you see, I
spoke Italian, so I said, "Bruno, per que
se arrabiato? “Why are you so angry?”
He said…I can’t say the Italian word here.
It’s a dirty word. He said, “this terrible
German music, where does Dimitri get…dig
up this terrible stuff.” I said, “Well
they were old friends when Mitropoulos studied
with Busoni. They were in Busoni’s class
together.” He said, “Vergangnoso.” But
I love Bruno Zirato. They tell terrible stories
about him, but I liked him.
ETZ: Well, this brings me to ann interesting
thing from my point of view. I have here some
of the reviews of this, this first concert.
DD: Was that the…where Virgil Thomson said
it was like an invasion by the Panzer divisions…
ETZ: Yes, that was specifically Mitropoulos
was the…
DD: …the Panzer attacks
ETZ: …the militant. But he was…there were
a number of things that are interesting that
crop up in his review. But first I…the thing
that’s so striking to someone who grew up
when I did is how many reviews there were,
how many newspapers.
DD: Oh yes.
ETZ: It’s, it’s quite extraordinary. How
many were there in, in New York in those days?
DD: And then you have the, I can remember
seven in New York and then there were the
ones in the suburbs, Long Island, Brooklyn,
Bronx, Queens. They all had their own newspaper
and they all had professional music critics,
you see. And then there were the magazines.
The Saturday Evening…Culloden wrote, I believe,
for the Saturday Review of Literature.
ETZ: Yes, I know that.
DD: Yeah, oh but we we had…we had many,
many, many.
ETZ: So it’s a very different situation
than today where you have, you know, one,
perhaps, paper writing about a concert.
DD: Frankly I think that’s why audiences
were larger. You see, I don’t think we’re
losing audiences at our Philharmonic concerts
or any…I don’t think it’s due to the
fact that the younger generation are not interested
in music. I don’t think it’s that at all.
I think there isn’t the PR. See PR…everything
is…the popular culture world gets the publicity…Time
Magazine, even, Newsweek, Michael Walsh, whom
I knew in Rochester as a student…He writes,
he’s the music man for Time.
ETZ: …for Time.
DD: Do you…Now and then there may be a review
of an Elliott Carter piece…But, but what
does it mainly? It’s all the pop rock world.
That’s what gets into the magazines. And
movie page…full page ads for movies, you
know. So, it’s that. People don’t read
about what’s going on at concerts, or what
Virgil would do, my article on Busoni that
was in the…
ETZ: Mm hm, that’s in here also.
DD: You see, does anyone ask me to write an
article on, on a new work of mine? When Mr.
Muzzard did my Eleventh Symphony, did any
paper say, “Would you like to write an article
perhaps on your symphony?” No. So, you know.
ETZ: So, the the print medium was much more
vital…
DD: The print medium. People read newspapers.
Today they watch TV and they read…they…the
younger generation are watching all these
things on TV that have to do with Michael
Jackson and, you know, the ones that knock
themselves out. In twenty years that’s all
gone, you know.
ETZ: It’s it’s interesting to me too…how…when
you have so many people writing about the
same event they can afford to take a tremendously,
almost combative point of view…
DD: Exactly
ETZ: …because you have these different points
of view of the same thing.
DD: And also don’t forget Ellen, that as
a result of what the reviewers in the newspapers
were doing, on the radio discussion programs…there
were lots of radios, radio stations, well
they weren’t called public broadcasting
but they were stations that…WNCN, WHEC or
something…where you would have a review
of the Philharmonic’s concert. They would
have a panel. Now and then I think Lawrence
Moss does that, now and then on one of the
stations here. But these programs were reviewed…NBC
Toscanini Concerts, Boston Symphony…all
reviewed on radio and the newspaper. So, people
knew what was going on.
ETZ: It’s interesting to read Virgil’s
review, which is very colorful of course,
and…
DD: Mmm hmm. He wrote well, very, very well.
ETZ: He…I actually wrote this down. I thought
it was so charming in an awful sort of way,
that this was the Tea Table Stravinskyism
of the Nadia Boulangerie.
DD: Well of course Virgil had to get his little
prickly pear thorns…
ETZ: hands on the …
DD: Yeah, why he did that 'cause I confronted
him. I said, “Virgil that was a nasty thing.
You’re just jealous because Mitropoulos
hasn’t played you yet.”
ETZ: [laughs] and also it seems to me that,
that he levels the charge of Wagnerism at
this gentleman who was on the program, Herman…
DD: Wetzler
ETZ: Hans Wetzler…and you, although he says
that your Wagnerism comes by way of D’Indy,
which is pretty hard to figure, but…
DD: I don’t know what…where he got that
little idea about, but
ETZ: …but, it’s…we could talk a little
bit in a moment about, about Wagner’s…about
Friedlande Wagner and Mitropoulos…
DD: Yes, Yes.
ETZ: …but , something I just have to say
as a composer is that it was very thrilling
to me to read for instance one of these gentleman’s
review. It seemed to me that you were a very
young man and, there was a certain amount
of patronizing of the older critics, you know,
and…about your First Symphony and they talked
about the…
DD: Didn’t it…wasn’t it nominated for
a Music Critic's…yes.
ETZ: Oh yes of course it was. It was.
DD: It was nominated for the Music Critic…and
I think it was Bill Schuman’s Third Symphony
that won it. And Leon Barzin had to play those
two symphonies for the judges and an invited
audience. And then as a result of that I believe
there was a review by Olin Downes saying “Mr.
Diamond’s symphony is brassy and youthful
and bounding, but it’s Mr. Schuman’s symphony,
which was awarded the Music Critics Circle,
that is a vast, large structured work and
the judges decided that as gifted as Mr. Diamond
is, we had to give it to Mr. Schuman simply
because it was much broader.” And I agreed
completely. Completely.
ETZ: Well, the thing that interested me so
much is that while I think I’m fairly knowledgeable
about the history of American music and certainly
composers, this is the first time I’d encountered
the name of Wetzler.
DD: My…the first time I did too.
ETZ: And having…
DD: He’s a three line listing in any of
your Rieman's that you look up. He was never
really even as a young he was, he was in I
would say probably his seventies or eighties
when this work…
ETZ: Yes he was in his seventies according
to one of these reviews.
DD: Yeah. So that he wasn’t really a very…I
think Mitropoulos performed it again…typical
of Mitropoulos’s great, great good nature…in
this new biography that we have that just
came out…
ETZ: the Trotter
DD: Mitropoulos, the Trotter book, you get
a feeling that Mitropoulos very often…just
as he…why would he send me the telegram
that he’ll play my symphony, you see. There
was a goodness of will…
ETZ: a kindness
DD: …and a kindness…this man was extraordinary
and…why should he not play his old friend
from Busoni times, you see…
ETZ: Oh sure
DD: So I think that’s why…
ETZ: I’ve, I think a performance is always
a good thing, 'cause even if it’s a…I
mean everyone deserves a hearing…but the
thing that I was so struck by is that Wetzler
was treated in the press with great seriousness,
whereas they tended to patronize the, the
young composer and his First Symphony, and
now on Wednesday night, I’m going to be
going to hear the David Diamond First Symphony
played by the Juilliard Orchestra and your
First Symphony is still alive and kicking
and I…that thrills me…and it also kind
of gives us a sort of perspective on the…we
always worry about reviews and the power of
the press…
DD: Mmmm, yeah.
ETZ: …but the music has to make its own
life…
DD: Yes, and what made me happy about the
dress rehearsal today was that the, the orchestra,
which is a superb orchestra, that these young
people play that symphony with such a bend
and then rhythmic security. And I would say
about eight of them from different sections
and different times of the rehearsal, came
to me to say, “Mr. Diamond, it sounds as
though you wrote it yesterday”, you know.
ETZ: And the striking thing when you think
about it, not only were these young people
not born in 1941, but probably most of their
parents weren’t born in 1941, when your
First Symphony was born…so it’s.
DD: That’s…that’s what made me think…and
Gerry Schwartz brought this up. He said, you
know, “For me it’s exciting that they
find”…but then the whole program is a,
is a kind, you know, doing another work, The
Enormous Room from the…from 1947, that Szell
first did…to hear that…and, and then the
Janacek Sinfonietta with all those trumpets,
you know, it sounds, that sounds as though
it were written yesterday, too.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: It’s pheno…and then the Prokofiev
Symphony Concertante…it’s a fascinating
piece. It’s a great program.
ETZ: I, I sometimes think that all really
wonderful music sounds as though on the one
hand it had been written yesterday and as
though it was always there.
DD: Right. It’s music that was written,
let’s say ten years ago, that you hear,
let’s say today, and it does…and I hate
to say this Ellen, but you know…all that
avant-garde stuff that was played, you know,
that they constantly…they forgot all about
me and other composers that were writing,
all the 1950s, you know…all that stuff…it’s…nobody
performs it, you know…not even Boulez gets
any performances except by…well Maderna
died, so…but do any of the others…does
Penderecki conduct Boulez…Boulez if he doesn’t
conduct it himself…and it takes so long
to rehearse, you see. Now our wonderful, beloved
teacher Roger Sessions, thank heavens, but
why didn’t they play his symphonies in his
lifetime to, to cheer him up…
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: You know how depressed he would be about
that.
ETZ: Yeah
DD: In his modest way, but… …they didn’t.
ETZ: He’s a, such a…
ETZ: …it was. Stravinsky’s face always
struck me as tremendously interesting…and
on this we're...you have the…
DD: Yeah. He was another sort of jockey type
body…this little man with this big head
and big nose.
ETZ: Yes, I actually saw Stravinsky, but not
Ravel. I just wanted to pull out this picture.
DD: There’s our teacher.
ETZ: This is in your studio at Juilliard,
our beloved Roger Sessions, and who we were
just talking about…
DD: What a…what a musician he was.
ETZ: And when you think of, of his impact
as a teacher. It’s just been quite extraordinary.
DD: Yes, and by the time you got to him, he
was already beginning to age. He was beginning
to slow down a little bit. When I got to him
he was…
ETZ: Young turk.
DD: …very, very energetic…and oh that
sepulchral voice.
ETZ: Yes. Well actually I have a picture that,
David, you sent to me.
DD: Oh the one I took in Florence?
ETZ: Yes, some years ago, this, this lovely
picture of, of Roger Sessions in the 50s when
he was in Italy
DD: Yeah, you see how fill his lips are in
that ’36…
ETZ: Yes.
DD: …and in that even…and the Roger Sessions
that we remember in the last three years,
the lips just…they disappeared. They were…he
had a line. There were no lips.
ETZ: Here’s a picture that I look of him
that’s on the cover…
DD: You see his lips are very different there.
ETZ: …of this particular book.
DD: Of Andrea’s book, yes
ETZ: And we can do these later.
DD: I love those books.
ETZ: But now this was in 1980.
DD: Yeah
ETZ: This is very much the way I remember
him…and...
DD: Yeah, but he was full, large. Never really
overweight. Just a big, big, robust man.
ETZ: A person with an enormous impact on…
DD: And tremendous culture…
ETZ: Yeah
DD: …with Roger you talked about all subjects
ETZ: Absolutely, I…
DD: Do you remember how his day began? When
he would come and stay at the Empire, I was
staying there then, I’d find him down in
the cafeteria early…The New York Times in
one hand, folded over, two parts, and just
the summing-up parts of all the news. He’d
read that first just to get what was going
on in the world and all the news at once.
Then he’d start, then would come the egg,
you know with the…with the pieces of bread
in the, in the glass. [?] He had his little
rituals for breakfast.
ETZ: Yes, and his martinis for lunch, too.
[laughs] Or whatever.
DD: Lunch…and then his little flask the
last years of his life, the flask.
ETZ: Yeah, he was, he was a great man.
DD: A very remarkable man.
ETZ: You had such a relationship with Mitropoulos
though it goes beyond the, just the performance
of your First Symphony at Carnegie Hall…
DD: Well, Ellen you know…you’ve read the
Trotter book, and already the book is being
reviewed and I’m getting phone calls and
telegrams. I would not be here talking to
you. He was the one who saved my life.
ETZ: And in small ways as well as the large
public ways…
DD: Well if he hadn’t called the police,
I would…the, the sleeping pills would have
done their job. He called from Minneapolis,
I think they were chopping down the door.
I had a cold-water flat at 544 Hudson Street.
It’s still there strangely enough, that
building. He called the main police center
and…See what I did, I’d gotten back, I’d
gone out to Eddie Condon’s to hear jazz
to try to cheer myself up. I was totally broke.
You know it’s terrible when you…
ETZ: And what year was this, David? Do you
remember?
DD: This was 1946, about ’46, ’47. I was
totally broke. I’d had Guggenheims, I had
been helped, I had…I was being played a
great deal and suddenly you can’t get a
position. Morton Gould’s orchestra was not
functioning, the Hit Parade was not playing
those particular weeks. I was down to nothing.
ETZ: And you had been playing…you played
in the Hit Parade and you played with Morton’s
orchestra?
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: I understand you did some time behind
a counter in a drug store…
DD: at Walgreens
ETZ: …you know whatever was…
DD: That’s when I’m teach…when I’m
studying at the Dalcroze with Roger. Mopped
the floors at four in the morning for a dollar
and earned three dollars jerking sodas. So
I got little sleep and …but I got all my
counterpoint done…that never, you know,
took time away from the work. Maybe that’s
why today I…I don’t know, people say,
“You really made eighty with, with all the
difficulties healthwise and all.” Remember
how sick I was those years you were…
ETZ: I do remember. Yeah.
DD: Had cancer, leukemia, and all that, and
somehow I got through it all. But just think
if those pills…I took twelve Seconals…and
six o’clock in the morning got back from
Eddie Condon’s…I wanted to borrow some
money. We…this was the jazz, Eddie Condon’s…I
loved going to his place on West Third Street…I
thought I’d borrow ten dollars from Eddie…he
used to give me a fiver now and then…Sinatra
wasn’t in New York. I couldn’t borrow
any money from him. He used to give me a couple
bucks every now and then. So, I don’t know.
I was just at such a terrible state. I wasn’t
thinking about music. I wasn’t thinking
about the family. I was just too far gone
and I just decided because I had difficulties
sleeping anyways…so, I had this prescription.
So, I just downed them all and having had
liquor before, they got to work. But I picked
up the phone before I took them and Mitropoulos
was the closest person to me. Lenny Bernstein
was already all over the country. He was going
to Europe. I couldn’t call Lenny. You see,
there was nobody. I didn’t get along with
his sister Shirley, so I was stuck. And, I
said “Dimitri, I, I really can’t go on
and…I, I just feel terrible and will you
take care of all my music? Be sure that, that
you don’t let anything happen to it”…and,
I said goodbye and hung up. And then I took
the pills and I think it was maybe…I was
getting a little drowsy but I could still
hear this banging downstairs, and then this
crashing into the door downstairs and up come
these cops, and off they hauled me to St.
Vincent and oh, I still remember the pumping.
It was dreadful. Anybody who’s had their
stomach pumped knows what that was like. Oooh.
Anyway, that’s it. They were still…they
were getting gelatinous…some, a couple of
them. So, I was in for two days and luckily
I didn’t get arrested and…you know if
you attempt suicide you’re in for…
ETZ: Was it a crime?
DD: [nods]
ETZ: ...but didn’t he also…I remember
you telling me once he gave you an overcoat
and some clothes and…
DD: Oh, a jacket to come to Philadelphia to
hear him conduct at the, what’s the place
called outside…
ETZ: The Academy of Music?
DD: No, the, the summer...
ETZ: Oh, Robin Hood Dell?
DD: Robin Hood Dell. He felt that I should
have a new jacket and a pair of shoes. So,
he gave me a jacket and then he gave me money
to buy shoes, and then I would get his secretary,
Faith Reed, would give me every two weeks
a check for fifty, sometimes a hundred, until
I got a next commission, you see…so.
ETZ: And what were commissions in those days?
DD: The Second Violin Concerto…that’s
Rodzinski after the…
ETZ: Yes, we’ll get to him in a moment.
DD: …that great story. He managed to get
twenty thousand out of Mr. Percevil, who had
invented laundromats, you see.
ETZ: Ooooh.
DD: So he was a millionaire and so I could
ask for that.
ETZ: That was a lot of money in those days.
DD: Plus the copying of the costs…copying
costs taken care of…So, I bought myself,
oh, I bought two suits and two jackets…I
went to Kaiser’s…I hear it’s still down
in the Village.
ETZ: Twenty thousand…twenty thousand in
what year?
DD: …forty…let’s see I finished the
concerto in ’48. So, it’s ’47.
ETZ: That’s amazing…I mean…I imagine
in those days you could have bought a pretty
fancy house for twenty thousand dollars.
DD: It lasted. It lasted, yeah.
ETZ: That’s terrific.
DD: As a matter of fact I did want to get
an apartment because the girl I was living
with, that wonderful painter, Allela Cornell,
she had committed suicide and that had contributed
to my…
ETZ: …to your wanting to...
DD: … to my depressions too. We were sharing
that cold-water flat.
ETZ: It, it struck me when I was looking at
this program from 1941, December 21st, this
being two weeks after Pearl Harbor, what was
it like as a young composer growing up during
the war? And did things change a great deal?
DD: Well I think I told you…There again,
I was very lucky…right after the symphony
was done, my great friend Irene Lee, who was
working for Hal Wallace in Hollywood at Warner
Brothers. She had sublet to have a place in
New York…she had sublet an apartment at
the Gainsworth Studios on Central Park South,
and that apartment belonged to Artie Shaw.
So, one night she had a little party and Artie
was there and he said, “What are you doing
these days? I heard your symphony, you know,
was a wonderful piece and what are you doing
these days?” I said, “Well, frankly I’m
looking for a job.” He said, “Looking
for a job! You’ve got it.” I said, “Doing
what?” He said, “I’m taking you to Hollywood
with me and you’re going to teach me counterpoint
and harmony. I’ll pay you twenty five a
week.” That’s it…and that’s how I
got out to Hollywood.
ETZ: That’s…that’s so interesting. I
mean Artie Shaw. I guess a lot of people would
still recognize the name as the swing clarinetist.
DD: Still crazy Artie and has got a new novel
coming out. He commissioned some composers
to write clarinet concertos but Norman Dello
Joio didn’t finish his.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: And I refused to write one because he
insulted my beloved Lana Turner. He was married
to her and he treated her like a pig.
ETZ: Well, wasn’t he married about eight
times?
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: So, he didn’t single her out for special
…[laughs]
DD: Well… …he made her miserable. He wanted
her to read War and Peace. You don’t throw
books at Lana Turner, who’s just a young
evolving actress, got enough to do at the
studio. We fight still. This I gotta tell
fast to you. This is a [?]. He had a son by
Betty Kern, Jerome Kern’s daughter…Stevie,
wonderful little kid and I called him two
weeks ago to find out whether his novel was
finished that’s about to come out. I said,
“How is Stevie doing?” He said, “Don’t
bring up his name!”…talks a mile a minute…"Don’t
bring up his name. That guy doesn’t walk
into my house. You know he’s tattooed from
his little toe to the top of his head. Doesn’t
get into this door. Up his!” That’s the
way, you know he…
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: I said. “Artie, he’s your son.”
“Gotta get the goddamned tattoos off. He’s
covered with them.”
ETZ: I guess Ravel would have liked that too.
[laughs]
DD: I wonder. I think that he would have not
liked. [laughs]
ETZ: David, when you, when you went to Hollywood,
this is when you met Stravinsky and Schoenberg?
DD: No, no. Stravinsky was Paris.
ETZ: Paris. But, but Stravinsky would have
been in Hollywood then when you were there.
DD: That’s right, and broke…broke. If
Frau Mahler-Werfel were not living there…If
Salka Viertel, who was Schoenberg’s great
friend…See, Schoenberg at least had his
job at the university, as small amount of
money as they paid him, but he still had a
job teaching. Stravinsky didn’t want to
teach. His money, his royalties were frozen
in Europe because of the war, you see, and
Associated Music Publishers were not giving
him big advances. After all, what was he giving
them? Warner Brothers made him write little
cues to see whether he could write for the
movies. So there was some movie on the Norwegian
quizzlings. So, he wrote those pieces which
became the Four Norwegian Moods. They didn’t
like the music. Korngold turned them down.
So there he was without a job until…
ETZ: Korngold was a music director at Warner
Brothers?
DD: At Warners at that time, yes. And Max
Steiner, too. So these guys ganged up on him.
I mean this world famous Stravinsky can’t
write for the movies. So, it was not a happy
time, but they were, they were friends but
Frau Mahler got him some money, and Salka
Viertel got many…Paul Mooney gave him a
check every now and then would send a check.
ETZ: And then his assets became unfrozen
DD: And then once the war…the money released
from those German…Schott was whom he was
with…When they had their factory renovated
they found all the plates of his Violin Concerto,
everything was destroyed, but they did get
royalties, back royalties to him. So, he was
able to get going again.
ETZ: Good. Meanwhile you, you wrote film,
several film scores.
DD: That, that would be ’49.
ETZ: ‘49
DD: But in ’41 I was trying to…Artie wanted
to introduce me, but then Warner Brothers
was sewed up between Steiner and Adolf Deutsch,
who was one of the judges, by the way, on
that Elfrida Whiteman Fellowship that I won.
That’s how I met Gershwin…
ETZ: Really?
DD: …and when I won for the Sinfonietta…and
George had died in 1937. So, had he lived
I bet you he could’ve gotten me a job like
that.
ETZ: Yeah. What was he like?
DD: Gershwin, wonderful. Warm, marvelous.
The work I submitted was under pseudonym.
This was for a scholarship Paul Whiteman was
giving for young Americans. So I sent in a…I
wrote work…even though I’m getting up
early in the morning and jerking sodas, I
wrote the Sinfonietta reflecting the spirit
of American life. That’s what the, the thing
in the Times said…
ETZ: And this was in the 30s?
DD: This was1934, the fall. And the judges
announced would be Deems Taylor, George Gershwin,
Robert Simon, and Adolf Deutsch, who was staff
composer at Warner Brothers.
ETZ: Hmm.
DD: So I submitted it under the pseudonym
Selva Oscura, you know the, I’d read Dante,
so the obscure soul…So now, they opened
the envelopes after all the scores are read
and they see David Diamond, Rochester, New
York, and the story goes Robert Simon, who
was the critic for the New Yorker, tells me
that Gershwin said, “Rochester, New York,
can you imagine? My sister Frankie lives there.”
And sure enough Frances was married to Leo
Godovsky, Leopold Godovsky, the son of the
pianist Godovsky and Leopold, the…
ETZ: of the opera
DD: the husband of Frances was working on
Kodachrome, Kodak, Kodachrome it was called,
color photography in Rochester. So they were
there, you see. And I knew Frances. Ahh, so…then
comes the party, now he, you know, so oh,
wonderful. Now Paul Whitman gives the party
and I have to get a tux. So here Mr. Saminsky
gives me his tux and I had to quickly get
it fixed up. I took my wonderful Winnie Lansing,
the girl that I was crazy about at that time
and we go to the party and there’s Gershwin
chomping on his cigar and he’s…comes right
for me… "Hey kid, where’d you learn to
orchestrate that way?” [laughs]
ETZ: And what did you say?
DD: I said, “Mr. Sessions.” [laughs] That’s
all, Mr. Sessions.
ETZ: David, let’s back up …go a little
forward and a little backward here to Rounds,
which was…
DD: That’s Mr. Mitropoulos’s doing.
ETZ: Didn’t he commission it?
DD: He commissioned it, yeah.
ETZ: But then Rodzinski did the, the premiere
performance.
DD: Mm-mm. No. What happened was
ETZ: That’s…Are you sure?
DD: No. This is very interesting…Oh with
the Philharmonic, yes.
ETZ: With the Philharmonic, yes.
DD: Dimitri came out of…I usually met him
after his rehearsals 'cause he liked to take
me to lunch a great deal and sort of check
on me whether I was okay. So, I met him, it
was about, ooh I would say quarter of one,
the rehearsal I think finished at twelve thirty-something
and this man came down the stairs…I’ve
never seen…If you’ve ever saw a face of
despair, this was the face of despair. I said,
“Dimitri, what happened? You look as…what,
what happened?” He said…he had a way of
taking you by the hand and pulling you on…and
he led me out to 56th Street and he took me
under the arm and walking and he said “I
don’t hear anymore. I don’t hear.” And
I said, “What don’t you hear?” The rehearsal
was Schoenberg’s Erwartung, and evidently
the men in the orchestra gave him a terrible
hard time. He said “Can you imagine that
Linzer. He’s trying to test whether I can
hear those harmonies.” And he stops, puts
up his hand and he said, “What note’s
going on there. I’ve got a b, b-flat or
something. What notes going on?” Can you
imagine doing this…this stop the rehearsal.
He said, “Dear I don’t hear this music
anymore.” I said, “I, I don’t believe
it, but you, you...” He said, “It’s
such depressing music. So depressing.” And
he’d been playing Krenek symphonies, you
know.
ETZ: Mmm hmmm.
DD: And Schoenberg’s Orchestral Variations,
Op. 31, almost every other year, every year,
there was a new Krenek symphony, very hard
music, tough music. And he simply…finally
we got to the, to the greasy spoon. He said,
“Dear, I want you to write me a happy piece.
Somebody’s got to be writing happy music.
You, you write very good Allegros. Write me
a happy piece. Make me happy.” So, I, I
thought, well, I’ll write him a string piece.
So, I heard, you know [sings]…So, he played
it first in Minneapolis and then played it
with guest tours and then wanted to do it
and record it in New York, but because Goddard
Lieberson and David Oppenheim didn’t want
to take time out for a string orchestra piece
when they had to get a Chausson symphony recorded
and something else
ETZ: Was Goddard Lieberson then…
DD: the head of...
ETZ: Head of CBS
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: At that time even?
DD: Yeah. And here’s Goddard, an old friend
of mine from Rochester, but…he got the Romeo
and Juliet music recorded but the Rounds he
didn’t. So, Dimitri was very upset. So it
didn’t get done by the Philharmonic because
they were supposed to record it with him,
you see.
ETZ: But we have a program from the Philharmonic
here at Carnegie Hall…
DD: Mmm hmm.
ETZ: …in 1946 with Rodzinski.
DD: That’s right. That’s Rodzinski, but
that’s after…
ETZ: Is this Rodzinski?
DD: Yeah, that’s…that’s right.
ETZ: I never knew him.
DD: Yeah, well I told you the story.
ETZ: Yes. Please tell me again. I love that
story…that’s a….
DD: Well it’s by way of…well I better
make the introduction. Arturo Rodzinski for
years, when he was in Chicago, when he was
in Cleveland still, I would send scores, Koussevitsky
play…I sent the Second Symphony…nothing,
nothing. I would see him at the Russian Tea
Room, so…I was usually at the bar having
a cocktail. He’d come in. So, one day I
got off the stool and I said, “Mr Rodzinski,
I sent you some scores of mine and did you
ever receive them?” He took one look at
me and walked on. So that was that. I left
it alone. Now, next year, this time I didn’t
have two martinis is the story, so I had one
martini. And the bar was here and over here
were the round tables and the benches, you
know, where you eat. And so this time as I
saw him coming in I just swiveled around on
this chair and I said, “Mr. Rodzinski, I
wrote you a letter last week” Oh! I must
tell you before…Leonard Bernstein, who was
his assistant then said “David, he wants
me to read your Second Symphony.” I said,
“Oh great then I can come to the…” “No
you can’t, he said, keep you out…but get
up, way up on top but don’t…I don’t
want not a sound out of you up there.” So
I get up…somehow I got up to the last, what
do they call it, the third balcony or something
and I try not but it did, you know, [makes
noises] hear coming down the stairs, you know,
they could hear. Rodzinski heard and said,
“Diamond’s up there! Out! Out!” That’s
all I had to hear and I think he heard about
six bars and he stopped. I guess I’m really
responsible for his having stopped the whole
thing. Anyway, I go to the Russian Tea Room
and half hour later in he comes and I said
“You pig! You son of a bitch!” And I hauled
off…and went flying against the bench. He
wasn’t hurt, luckily. Mr. Kaye, Mr. Kaye,
who was the owner of the restaurant, he got
a hold of me and said “Don’t you ever
come back again.” I went home and oh, Lenny
called me and gave me such a…he said, “You
need help!” I said, “No, that son of bitch
needs help. I don’t need the help.” And
here he was taking out his gun and rehearsals
and putting it on the thing, you know.
ETZ: Yes, he had quite a stormy history…
DD: He had a pistol.
ETZ: …of his own and I always…
DD: Yes, now the nice things…
ETZ: I never believed that that story with
the pistol…
DD: Oh no, no I saw it.
ETZ: …is it really true?
DD: Oh yes, I saw it. All the men…Lenny
saw it. Didn’t Helena when you spoke…
ETZ: Well everybody told me about this but
it just seems…
DD: Oh no, he couldn’t come out. He was
a sick, sick, sick…
ETZ: a little far-fetched, you know, to have
a…to carry your pistol to rehearsal.
DD: No, no, absolutely. Oh this was his security
you know. This was the great…this was his…Now,
what happened was that I get a call from his
wife Helena. This big bass voice says, “David,
come over to the house.” I said, “What?
What for? I don’t wanna see your husband.”
“You must come. Artur forgives you.” I
said, “I don’t…well I haven’t forgiven
him, I haven’t forgotten”… …“Come
over, it is something wonderful.” So, I
get over to the house and I come and he’s
sitting on, on the sofa with his adorable
little son Ricky, who I…Is he out in San
Francisco Opera now or something?
ETZ: I think so, he’s in management there.
DD: He’s an adorable little kid and everything.
And so…Oh before that, Helena said in the
vestibule, “Please don’t make any scenes
because, you know, Artur did forgive you.”
So, I come in and said, “Mr. Rodzinski,
good afternoon.” “Good afternoon, sit
down here for a minute.” So I sat down.
“Now listen to me. God has spoken to me.”
[laughing] I swear to God. “God has spoken
to me and told me to forgive you. Now come
inside. There’s a gentleman I want you to
meet.” So, he puts Ricky down. Ricky goes
off with the nurse that was there. And we
go and I this very pleasant looking man with
a very, very handsome woman. Her name was
Doritha Powers. She was known as a fairly
good violinist, but not really a great one.
Carol Glenn at that time was considered the,
the top notch and Ida Haendel from Canada
was considered the big one. And so, “This
is Mr. Arthur Percival and now I’m going
to close the doors and you will talk and work
things out.” So, Percival says, “Oh, I’m
very happy to meet you, and this is my wife
Doritha Powers and you will write a violin
concerto for her.” All I could think is
that God certainly did speak, there’s no
doubt about it. So, I asked
ETZ: [laughs] in mysterious ways.
DD: In ways. So, I said to Doritha, I said,
“Do you know my violin piano music?” She
said, “I heard Mr. Szigeti play your sonata
at Carnegie Hall.” “Oh,” I said, “Well,
I’m glad.” “And I know your First Violin
Concerto.” I said, “Wonderful, I’m delighted.
So, then I will write another concerto for
you, and I’ve heard you play, so I know…Do
you want a really, a big-scale work? Do you
want a modest work? Do you want a big cadenza
in both movements…tell me a little bit of
what kind of concerto do you want?” She
said, “No, I leave that up to you.” And
so I was waiting now for money to be mentioned,
you know…How much is this going to be? If
God spoke then it better be, you know…so…
ETZ: A few sheckles.
DD: So when I said, “Mr. Percevil, your
wife is so amenable. I’m delighted that
she will leave it up to me to write the kind
of work I want. How much would you, would
you pay for this work?” He said, “Why
don’t you give me a figure.” And for some
strange reason two-oh came to mind. So, God
must have spoken this. So, I said, “Does
twenty thousand seem reasonable enough? Half
down and half on completion of the work and
copying costs.” He said, “That’s fine.
That’s fine.” And right up there drew.
Now unbeknownst to me I didn’t know that
there were two little sons that Mr. Percevil
had…King and I forget the other son’s
name, who would grow up and both become lawyers…and
only in recent years did Gerard Schwartz manage
to get that piece away because they wouldn’t
give up the original manuscript after Doritha
died…
ETZ: Oh, they owned the manuscript.
DD: They owned it. There was nothing stipulated
in the contract for that. At any rate, I wrote
the work…
ETZ: But that was a princely sum in those
days.
DD: Yes. And so I bought myself the clothes
and I was able to get a home and I gave my
mother a little bit of the money and my sister
a little bit of the money. And this kept me
going for quite a while. I spent the year
composing the…she played it, oh now comes
the thing…Koussevitsky had Rodzinski over
because they bought a farm right on in Stockbridge
near Tanglewood. So, Koussevitsky came over
and Szell came over, 'cause they…the idea
was that they would engage her to play with
their orchestras. Well, to tell the truth,
she had learned it by heart but she wasn’t
that good enough for…
ETZ: Really?
DD: Yeah. So, the result was that Jacques
Singer, who had the Vancouver Symphony, had
her play it with him and I have acetates of
it. It’s alright. I mean, she gets through
it but it’s not…until Gerry gets it recorded
and performed with his concertmaster Ilka
Tovey…Now Joshua Bell the other night, playing
with Gerry, Joshua says he wants very much
to see it because he heard the recording.
He said, “This is for me.”
ETZ: Oh good.
DD: “This concerto’s for me. I would love
to have the music.” So, now finally Gerry
said, “You haven’t heard from Percevil”…the
son, the one that wouldn’t release the parts
or anything…but to Gerry he did. But he
made Gerry pay a certain amount of money,
you see. So I think what will happen is that
my publisher will…who has a Xerox set…will
just send it and make a copy of the piano
rehearsal score and send it to Joshua. And
let’s hope Joshua will play it.
ETZ: Yes. I hope so. So Rodzinski did your
Rounds in ‘46…
DD: So that’s after…
ETZ: and it grew out of that…
DD: Yeah. So, after the God story and the
commissioning it…then he, he now plays The
Rounds and what a fantastic…I have an acetate
of it…
ETZ: Oh I’d love to hear it.
DD: And Yehudi Menuhin was on the program
ETZ: Yes, Yehudi played the what, the Brahms
Violin Concerto was it?
DD: I think it was Brahms…I think it was
Brahms.
ETZ: I just put that program away. Yes, he…the
Brahms Violin Concerto.
DD: It op…Did he open the program with Rounds?
ETZ: He opened the program with Rounds and
then the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony…
DD: That’s it! And what a performance that
was. Yes, that’s when I changed my whole
tune about Rodzinski.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: And I even got a little, a little weird
I must say because when it was over, I go
backstage and without keeping my mouth shut
I say the following, “Mr. Rodzinski, God
certainly loves you because that was one of
the greatest performances you gave of my piece.”
And he says, “And what about the other works?!”
[laughs]
ETZ: You don’t like the other tie, right?
DD: I said, “The Fifth Symphony Prokofiev…”
He’s like, “How ‘bout that Scherzo?
Too much meowing, don’t you think?” He
hates when it’s like [makes a noise]. Too
much meowing.
ETZ: Well he must have been a very…
ETZ: …but really made his major career here…'cause
he was with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
the…He was here in Carnegie with the New
York..
DD: Chicago Symph…And don’t forget God
didn’t evidently help him out much when
he was with those orchestras because, you
know, they got rid of him.
ETZ: Yes I think he had very stormy relations…
DD: Oh boy! He made hell on wheels for the
mangers and the trustees.
ETZ: L.A., Cleveland,
DD: Every one.
ETZ: New York , Chicago.
DD: Every one.
ETZ: …he was also an assistant to Stokowski…
DD: Right
ETZ: ...in Philadelphia and we’ll get to
Stokie in a, in a little bit, but…
DD: And was a great opera conductor.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: Really. He would give concert versions
of Elektra and Fidelio since…
ETZ: I believe he was the first to do that,
wasn’t he?
DD: To start that, right. Then Mitropoulos
began doing it with Wozzeck and some of the
others.
ETZ: …here are some wonderful little programs
also after Rounds. Here’s a, let’s see
which is first, Spivakovsky, Tossy Spivakovsky.
DD: Oh yes, the violin and piano pieces, right.
ETZ: This is with Jan Baer at the piano. Jan
Baer. Is that the same Jan Baer who…
DD: I thought…at the piano I thought it
was a man named Kornman.
ETZ: Well, this says Jan Baer at the piano.
I knew Jan as an assistant conductor at the
Met…
DD: Is this the premiere? Is the premiere,
because I thought the premiere was with a
pianist named Kornman.
ETZ: This is the world premiere.
DD: Oh…see my memory slipped on this.
ETZ: And this says the Canticle and Perpetual
Motion
DD: Perpetual Motion. I thought it was Kornman.
Okay, that’s, that’s interesting. I must
look that up.
ETZ: And I notice, you know, one of the ways
in which this would be different from a program
today is that Spivakovsky did the Mendelssohn
Concerto with piano on the program.
DD: Oh yes, he liked doing that very much.
ETZ: Did you see this? There’s a wonderful
ad for corsets next to it.
DD: [laughs] Girls still wear dresses like…well,
at least the upper part.
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: Jan Baer…that’s right.
ETZ: Yes, I knew Jan at the Met as the assistant
conductor there and...Now that was in ’47…
…that’s the Canticle and Perpetual Motion.
DD: Right.
ETZ: But here’s the Szigeti program in ’48,
where he did your Sonata.
DD: That’s right. Oh that was a great night.
ETZ: That must have been something very special,
'cause this was the…
DD: Oh the whole program…first time the
Prokofiev sonata was played…
ETZ: Did Brahms, G Major
DD: Yeah…And then Bach
ETZ: He did Bach at the end, which is kind
of interesting…but he did the Prokofiev
F…
DD: But wasn’t the Prokofiev the first time?
ETZ: ...it doesn’t say.
DD: I thought it was the first time in New
York.
ETZ: It doesn’t say. Yours is described
as the first New York performance…but…and
then he did…he ended the program with a
Bach solo sonata.
DD: Oh, that was so impressive, his doing
that, you know, it was so sort of the great
musician telling us this is the music he really
loves.
ETZ: Here’s a picture of him from 1948,
which is…
DD: Ah yes, I’ve got that at home, yeah.
Ah, he was wonderful. This was a man who really
played contemporary music, played the old,
and you know he wrote so wonderfully on the
Beethoven Sonatas, that small book he wrote.
ETZ: Yes, and there’s another picture.
DD: Yeah that’s very typical. Yeah, he was
extra special.
ETZ: He signed a number of these to Carnegie
Hall, which is…
DD: He was marvelous. He came to Rochester
to play as soloist. I can’t remember…I
can’t remember who the conductor was, but
he was staying at a little hotel near the
Eastman Theater and he asked me to come to
meet him for breakfast. So, I arrive for breakfast
and he came down. He had a black eye. It was
purple still completely discolored. I said,
Yashka, what happened to you? He said, “Those
sleeping pills. I took two sleeping pills
and I walked into the damn toilet door.”
[laughs]
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: I said, “What are you going to do about
covering it up?” He said, “Ahhh, some,
some girl at the, in the manicurist is going
to find something.” I said, “but doesn’t
it hurt? Will you be alright?” He said,
“I’ll be alright. It’s not the first
time I got a black eye.” I said, “Who
gave you a black eye?” He said, “My wife.”
[laughs]
ETZ: Well. [laughs]
DD: Wanda.
ETZ: Your next big performance at Carnegie
Hall was with Louisville Orchestra…
DD: That I don’t think…I don’t think
I attended that.
ETZ: …and that was…this was 1950…
DD: What date is it?
ETZ: December 29, 1950.
DD: I was…I think I stayed on in Italy in
that …I don’t think I attended that, no.
ETZ: So, you…When did you go to Italy exactly
for…
DD: You mean the first time?
ETZ: No, I mean after this period we’ve
been talking about, the 40s…
DD: Oh, when I decided to go live there?
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: I received a Fulbright. I asked for a
Fulbright to Italy because I spoke the language
and I thought it would be good to get a professorship
at one of the universities. So, it worked
out and I was attached to the university in
Rome and that would be…let’s see, I wrote
the music for the Rose Tattoo, the original
production with Maureen Stapleton in 1950.
So it would be, yeah, right after that I left.
So it’s ’51 that I went to Rome. I was
there for the full Fulbright year then got
a renewal and decided Rome’s just too hectic,
I’d go to Florence. And they…I gave lectures
all over Italy through the U.S. Information
Service. And then, lo and behold I foolishly
came back to the States, having…
ETZ: Why foolishly?
DD: Because, you know, they paid you in lira.
They pay you in the money of the country.
Now you could not at that time change whatever
you had left and they gave you quite a lot
of money… …you could not change lira into
dollars and take it back with you to the States.
So, I bought up a lot of music that I wanted
to, went back to the States, called Lenny
about a job of some kind. And…at, just as
I was getting to the, to give him my passport,
one of the guys takes it away and a guy comes
with a thing and puts it right against my
leg and I realized it was what you call a
Geiger counter. I don’t know what the hell
he was doing with a Geiger counter…and did
it to my violin that I was carrying, and wouldn’t
give me my passport back. And so my sister
had come and she got hysterical and began
screaming and then the policeman came, and
the customs man said, “I think you should
have a lawyer. You should get a lawyer immediately.”
So, I remembered that I had a lawyer by the
name of Fish and he called…he knew right
away what, what it was all about. He called
a man named Boudin, Judge Boudin…a lawyer
by the name of Boudin, who turned out to be
the father of that Kathy Boudin, who with
about five other girls, they were called “The
Weathermen”, blew up a house on 11th Street.
ETZ: Hmm…Near the Carters. Yeah.
DD: Yeah. It was a good idea getting Boudin.
So before I knew it I was being questioned,
the McCarthy committee was already at work
and I couldn’t get my passport to go back
to Italy. So that’s when Lenny got me into…I
played in On the Town in the ‘40s, but then
I think Lenny’s… …it was called Wonderful
Town. It was. He said, “I’ll get Stanzik
to get you in the pit.”
ETZ: So you played fiddle in the…
DD: Viola. I played viola in that.
ETZ: …viola in the pit.
DD: Yeah. So that pulled through and then
the lawyers worked until I got my passport
back.
ETZ: Do you remember the exact year, or…
DD: Yeah, ’53.
ETZ: ’53.
DD: Yeah. And then I finally got the passport
and I went back to Florence, I kept the couple
on. And I was there and then my mother was
dying in ’56 and I come back and the same
thing, my passport’s taken away. Now I have
to go to Washington. So I went down with Judy
Holliday, who was married to David Oppenheimer
at that time, Stella Adler and Norris Hottin.
We were considered big reds. Now why…what
I foolishly did…I was playing in Candide
also, and a woman came down with a piece of
paper. Nobody had warned me that you don’t…if
you touch a subpoena, it means you have to
accept it, you see. So I saw this woman, Dolores
something, her name, there was an informer
at work for local 802. His name was Max Marlin.
We finally found that out. At the back of
the theater was Lillian Hellman, who was still
working on the storyline to get it approved
during trials. And she was going like that.
And I couldn’t connect between this woman
coming at me with the thing and saying “Where’s,
where’s Diamond down there?” with this
thing…and there’s Lillian going like that.
So I did…so I touched it and that was it.
Now I have it framed. It sits on the third
floor, my subpoena. So I went down.
ETZ: So you were subpoenaed for…
DD: So, a year before I could get my passport
back from that damn Mrs. Ashley or…
ETZ: What was that like? You went to Washington
to testify before McCarthy’s committee?
DD: Oh it was awful. Yeah, they wanted me
to give names. Jerry Robbins gave names. He
was down there. He gave names. Gaj Kazan,
Elia Kazan gave names. I didn’t.
ETZ: And the, the crime was having belonged
to a particular organization or known certain
people, or…
DD: That we…well, there were several. First
of all in, when I was at the Dalcroze School…I
came from a socialist family, my father was
always a socialist. When I got to New York,
this is deep Depression years and I was always
interested in the Soviet Union, you know.
I didn’t know yet about those purge trials.
That would be the following year. And I didn’t
like Stalin. I didn’t like what I’d heard
about him, but I joined the Pierre De Geyter
Club. Elie Siegmeister was a member, all the
kids that came to Roger Sessions’s analysis
class…there was Irwin Heilner, Vivian Fine,
we all belonged to the Pierre De Geyter, but
I thought I would join the Young Communist
League. You know Aaron Copland wrote Young
Pioneers, you know, [sings: “into the streets
May first”]. He won the, the New Masses
Prize. Aaron got into plenty trouble, too.
So we were there and Stella, I remember Stella
Adler with all her great elegance she would…she
said, “Why are you asking me stupid questions?
Do I look like a woman who would have anything
to do with Communists? Feh!” [?] She was
extraordinary. Nori Hottin did belong to the
Communist Party and he had gone to the Soviet
Union several times. So he got into hot water.
Let’s see, and then when my turn came this
idiot, Roy Cohn, boy he was a monster even
then. He looked up at me and he said…just
kept doing this at me…"You…you and Bertolt
Brecht were at Lindy’s weren’t you? Were
you having dinner at Lindy’s one night with
Bertolt Brecht?” We had corned beef sandwiches
but Marc Blitzstein was also there and Oscar
Lavant. So what is, you know, you had…Bertolt
Brecht. So I said, “No, there were others
there.” See it didn’t occur to me that
he was giving…
ETZ: Trying to get names, yeah.
DD: Yeah. So, I, I said, “Mr. Cohn, I was
a member of the Young Communist League. That
was 1933, 1934, 1935. I withdrew immediately
after I went to Barcelona, wanted to join
the Lincoln Brigade, and they wouldn’t have
me and I was informed very clearly what Stalin
and the Russian Communists were doing against
the American Lincoln Brigade and against Roosevelt.
And I came out of that party very fast. So
I don’t know what you want of me. I have
had nothing to do with the Communist Party
since then.” He said, “Couldn’t you
tell us about some of your friends like,”
and he gave names. And I said, “I have no
idea.” He said, “Oh it’s obvious you’re
making, you’re lying. You’re a very bad
liar, you know.” And McCarthy is sitting
there sweating and with these cold blue eyes
looking at me and every now and then he’d
go like that, you know. And then the other
guy, Schine was his name…Cohn’s boyfriend
it turned out. Everybody knew it was a boyfriend,
but, you know, only until he died did they
know that he was gay. All the time he was
covered up. He was a real anti… homophobe…phobe,
homosexual, you know, he’s one of those
terrors. At any rate he got his comeuppance
the way he died. But I didn’t give any names.
But when I found out that Kazan and Jerry
Robbins did…I have a hard time still saying
hello to Jerry, but little by little I suppose
I will. But it was a lousy time. It took a
year to get my passport back. I had to keep
paying the rent in Florence 'cause I had the
couple there and I had taken out a lease.
But it all worked out.
ETZ: It’s interesting, sometimes one thinks
that the problems, the bad moments in our
lives…when you’re a person in the arts,
can somehow transform these into artistic
energy and it’s very interesting to see
how that has not wavered at all, that…
DD: You know, Ellen, that’s…that particular
situation was the first time that actually
I was unable to work, to compose. I was so
depressed by what was going on in America
that I couldn’t wait to get the hell out
of this country. And then of course later
on when I got back to Florence came the Rosenberg
business, you know. Now why they had to execute
them, I do not know. It’s not completely
been proven that they were spies. Some say
yes, some…Hiss I knew very well. I still
see him. He used to come to Joe Machlis’s
parties. Now I know that was a trumped-up
business, completely. They had a very innocent
man all those years in jail. But, you know,
I was going to not come back to this country
until it was all over with because I didn’t
want to have anything to do with a country
that would do that, during the Eisenhower
administration particularly. So, I stayed
on and got all that music, almost all of those
symphonies that I got done, all the string
quartets. I worked because I had my ASCAP
check. I had my advances from Pierce Southern,
Mr. Lachond was still…he knew all the troubles
I was having. So I had…well, in Italy it
made do. It wouldn’t have worked in America.
Then Irene Diamond, when she married Aaron
Diamond she had more money so she began to
help me with some money.
ETZ: And she’s no relation, just the name?
DD: No relation whatsoever, no.
ETZ: So then you were basically…were you
in Italy during this period where Munch did
your Sixth Symphony with Boston here?
DD: I came back for that and Leinsdorf had
arranged for me to write a work for his, the
Philharmonic in Rochester, the Sinfonia Concertante.
And they were done. Munch did the Sixth Symphony
the same week. So I flew from Rochester to
Boston. Then he took it on tour, brought it
into New York, and then I came home for the
premiere of the Sinfonia Concertante.
ETZ: Mmm hmm. And the Symphony No. 4 in 1958
in January with Bernstein?
DD: That’s Lenny. Yeah, yeah. That he first
did with the Boston Symphony
ETZ: Mmm hmm.
DD: And then he did that in ’48, I believe,
with the Boston Symphony. Then…
ETZ: Yes he had done it in ’48.
DD: You see, now people…this is not against
my wonderful old friend, and he knows how
unhappy he made me. One of the things that
people always say, “How is it possible that
you were so close and he didn’t show any
favoritism. He should have played you every
year. He had the City Center Orchestra. Why
didn’t he play your Second Symphony? Koussevitsky
played it with such success. Why didn’t
he play it the very next year? Why did he
let two seasons go by?” I said, “Don’t
ask me. I would ask him and he’d say, ‘I’ll
do it next year.’”
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: Now that even went as far as the Ninth
Symphony that he did in ’85 with the ACO.
ETZ: Mmm hmm…ACO.
DD: …“David, this orchestra stinks. I’m
doing it next year with the Philharmonic.”
He never did, you see. So one can have a very
dear friend, but he was not like Mitropoulos.
But, as Trotter says in the book, for the
friendship, the close friendship we had, Mitropoulos
did not play a great deal of my music, but
gives the reason: his manager Mr. Gains, and
then his troubles with the Philharmonic. So
how could he have played me more, you see.
ETZ: Bernstein did the world premiere with
Boston of the Fourth Symphony…
DD: with Boston and then ten years later he
did it with…
ETZ: ten years later he did it here in Carnegie
with the New York Philharmonic…
DD: and then recorded it
ETZ: And recorded it then.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: Do you remember when the American Composers
did my First Symphony?
DD: Yes
ETZ: Which was in 1982…
DD: Right
ETZ: Your Fourth Symphony was on that program.
DD: That’s right. That’s right.
ETZ: So in a way, I guess as composers we
would like to be, you know, played to pieces
but it’s wonderful…
DD: I was very proud of, I was very proud
of that because I thought, “Finally, two
Sessions students are, you know, former students,
are together. This rarely happens. You know
why it temporarily happened, because his other
students didn’t compose much.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: You know we really were the ones. Tsontakis
has done some string quartets. …Brubecker
takes a lot of time. Derek Schwartz just did
a new work of his. But I think we’re the
ones that, at least Roger used to say to me,
“Ellen and you are the ones who really deliver
the goods.” With his voice, “deliver the
goods.”
ETZ: [laughs] Oh that’s nice to hear. Racing
right along, see, you know, you look at this
list of performances in Carnegie Hall and
New York premieres…
DD: See I didn’t know about…I forgot about
some of those.
ETZ: It looks very regular. You know, ’41,
’46, ’47, ’48, ’50, ’51, ’57,
’58.
DD: Yeah. Yeah. As Carnegie Hall per se, but
not certainly orchestral music, you know.
That’s few and far between. So, you’ve
got chamber music there…
ETZ: Well not a whole lot. These are, these
are…
DD: No, the Sonata?
ETZ: Well, the two violin…that’s interesting
that they were sort of clustered, the Spivakovsky
and the Szegeti.
DD: Oh that’s right, the Timon of Athens,
the with...
ETZ: ...with the Louisville Orchestra.
DD: Yeah, that I didn’t hear. I was away.
ETZ: Now that was the program that William
Schuman’s Judith was done with Martha Graham…
DD: Martha danced in front of the curtain,
right.
ETZ: That kind of put him on the map as I
understood it.
DD: That’s right. No. No. It’s the Third
Symphony that put Bill Schuman on the map.
ETZ: And that was before?
DD: Yeah. Yeah. Ahh, I would say that what
it did was that…no, Martha actually was
interested in Bill doing that because he had
done for Tudor, I believe, a ballet called
Undertow.
ETZ: Mmm hmm, yes. I think that…yes.
DD: And she had seen that and, and thought
he wrote very dramatic music…and a good
choice. Gerry just two years ago recorded
Judith. It is a phenomenal work.
ETZ: Yes I know. I heard it.
DD: I prefer that music to his symphonies
any day.
ETZ: I heard that on a program, actually I
believe it was in Louisville when they were
doing a work of mine also and…
DD: It’s very dramatic, very. Yeah.
ETZ: … it was very striking. Then, I wonder
about your love of Shakespeare because I recall
actually playing in the…playing Romeo and
Juliet with the National Orchestral Association
my first year in New York.
DD: Right. Right.
ETZ: …and of course you did Timon of Athens.
DD: And then of course my whole career, let’s
say theater-wise, theater-music-wise begins
with The Tempest, you see. Margaret Webster
was the big director, theater director of
Shakespeare in the late 30s and 40s. She and
Evala Guyen had worked together at the old
Civic Repertory Theater. So Cheryl Crawford
the producer heard my Second Symphony over
the Boston Symphony broadcast. And Cheryl
said, “I think you could write the music,
rather wonderful beautiful music for Margaret
Webster’s production and we are going to
have a fascinating cast.” I said, “Who’s
going to be Ariel, because if I write the
songs, it’s got to be somebody who can sing
those songs.” She said, “Well unfortunately
she’s a great dancer, but she hasn’t much
of a voice. So you’ll have to write a kind
of music that will not be too difficult.”
So Ariel turned out to be Vera Zorina, the
dancer, who married Balanchine. And so, I…Zorina
came down. I had a little apartment down on
Bleecker Street. And she had a range of five
notes. So I wrote all the songs for Ariel
and then we, I wrote all the incidental cues.
We worked spotted, as they call it, where
cues will come here and there. It was a wonderful
production…revolving stage, and Zorina had
one of those Peter Pan flying things where
you go out, you know, into the audience. And
lo and behold, melodrama sets in after the
opening of the...great opening…we tried
it out in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston…great
reviews, fabulous, everything, smash prediction
success. We get it into New York…I have
thirteen instrumentalists in my orchestra.
So I, you know, for the overture, all that
sawing away to build up the storm. How do
you do it with so few strings? I had four
violins first, four seconds. I didn’t have
very much. But I try to make it sound. So
now the local 802…God came down and talked
to me or something…it’s…
ETZ: You have a guardian angel, David. You
have a guardian angel.
DD: They declared it a musical comedy. Well
if it’s a musical it’s gotta have more
musicians. So I said send in the strings.
[laughs]. So then Stokowski wrote and said,
“Double up your winds. Rewrite it and I
will play it.” He had come to a performance.
That’s how I…
ETZ: And he did.
DD: And he did. And then you told me he’d
played it twice. I didn’t know that.
ETZ: Yes, and this was in, in Carnegie Hall,
the American Symphony in 1966.
DD: See I heard the 1949 one.
ETZ: …and…
DD: You say you don’t have the ’49 program
book?
ETZ: No. It’s…
DD: Ellen, look it up…
ETZ: it may be in the archive somewhere, but
not…
DD: It’s there. I remember I came…I had
just arrived from Europe. I ran right to Carnegie
Hall.
ETZ: Well, I’m sure we have it somewhere.
We’ll probably dig it up.
DD: He had a terrible piece on it by that
Dubensky, that Arcady Dubensky, who played
in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
ETZ: I didn’t know him.
DD: Yeah. I’m sure you’ll find that program.
ETZ: The thing that charms me about this particular
program is that I was playing violin in the
American Symphony…
DD: That, see there again, that’s a nice
coincidence. I love that.
ETZ: …at that time. It’s interesting how
many connections there are in music you know.
When you think of…we’re talking about
Rodzinski and Rodzinski was Stokowski’s
assistant and you wrote this music for some
other purpose and Stokowski picked it up and
there I was playing, you know, it’s a…
DD: Right, and you know he also wanted me
to go on and blow up some of the cues. He
wanted to give, he said, “Why don’t you
consider a musical synthesis?” And I thought,
“Gee, he’s got a great idea, you know,
there”…and I still haven’t done it.
But …well other things got in the way.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: But he was very, he was much taken with
that score.
ETZ: He was an interesting man. I certainly…
DD: A puzzler, he was a mysterious personality.
I didn’t quite get it.
ETZ: I had some pictures of him right here.
I don’t know where they are. Here we go.
DD: He would stage his lighting, I remember…
ETZ: Yes.
DD: He would get the lighting people to get
behind him…and he didn’t have much hair,
sort of, in certain periods of life and he
didn’t begin putting things in.
ETZ: I think he teased it, yes.
DD: And he would say, “Now be sure you,
be sure” like Lenny began doing. He said,
“be sure you have one light here so that
there’s a kind of halo behind me,” with
this amazing…what was that accent that he
cooked up?
ETZ: …I think it was supposed to be Polish.
I’m not, I’m not sure.
DD: It was anything but. It was more British.
ETZ: Well he was born in England, but that’s
another story. This is the way he must have
looked right at that time, because this is
the Stokowski that I remember.
DD: Very much so. Very much so. Yeah
ETZ: And as a matter of fact…
DD: Except he wasn’t smiling when I went
back to see him.
ETZ: He wasn’t?
DD: No. Oh. He was absolutely like frozen
faced.
ETZ: Really?
DD: Yes. Yes absolutely like that.
ETZ: He…he could be…
DD: Oh, he was quite distant…
ETZ: …charming and then he could be very…
DD: …quite distant.
ETZ: Really?
DD: You know what my feeling…my feeling
about that is…I don’t know whether I should
tell this…Yes. Poor darling…
ETZ: Tell anything.
DD: Poor darling is dead. So, I don’t think
her niece will, will sue me 'cause it’s
in a book. When I saw Greta Garbo, I said,
“What are all these stories about you’re
having a big love affair with Stokowski? What
is that all about?” She said, “What love
affair? He’s impot…He was impotent. Anyway,
I’m not interested in men.”
ETZ: So much for the great…
DD: So much for the story that they…Now
everybody knows that she was basically a lesbian,
you know. The great, you know, Greta Garbo.
So, these days, it’s like last night I go
to see Carrington at the Film Society, you
know. That you can show this kind of relationships
on the screen, even the sex, it’s just unbelievable
what’s happened, you know. And nobody flinched
at some of these scenes. And here you’ve
got three straight guys in love with this
strange woman Carrington, who’s madly in
love with a homosexual. You know, it’s just
the ending is very…I wonder what kind of
reviews. Oh you did find it in the New York
Times I bet.
ETZ: Oh…well… …
DD: No New York Times around now.
ETZ: These are the pictures of Stokowski when
he was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, I
guess. This looks like the earlier one…
DD: Yeah. See, there’s the lighting, you
see
ETZ: Yeah
DD: You see how the, the lighting is arranged
so that the…
ETZ: the backlit…
DD: Yeah
ETZ: The hands.
DD: I guess that’s from that movie that…
Off camera voice: That’s right.
ETZ: That looks like it’s from the movie,
yes. And this, actually you see he’s holding
a baseball bat. There was one point, I don’t
remember what year exactly, but when I was
in the American Symphony he decided that we
should play…we should challenge the Philharmonic
to a game. And so the American Symphony players
played the Philharmonic. I think we won, although
I didn’t go. But …
DD: Oh that’s a nice story, you know. I
had no idea he would…Gerry said he enjoyed
playing under him, but I did get a feeling
that he would, he would reciprocate, you know.
ETZ: Yeah I was wondering if Gerry had been
in this concert, but I think Gerry was too
young.
DD: I asked Gerry. I asked Gerry. He said
no.
ETZ: Yeah, he was still in high school probably
at that time.
DD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said no.
ETZ: But he was in the American Symphony Orchestra
when he was very young.
DD: Oh yes. He said he learned more from Stokowski
than…well “Boulez and Stokowski,” he
said, “are the ones that I really learned
most of the, the know how to get through certain
pieces and how to rehearse and all that.”
ETZ: Now this is Gerry Schwartz, when he was
a...
DD: … one of the most extraordinary.
ETZ: And, he…I know he did. He was in the
American Symphony the same time that I was
for quite a while, and, before he went to
the Philharmonic. And I can understand that
because when I look back on it I feel I gained
a great deal from Stokowski. It’s hard to
say what exactly, but he had a wonderful way
of making music when he connected with the
music.
DD: Yes. Even, even people in London, when
I was there with Gerry when Gerry did the
Second Symphony, we were talking to some of
the men and naturally Stokowski’s name came
up and they said, “This very old, almost
senile man did some recordings with us and
they were extraordinary sessions. We didn’t
know where his beat was, but somehow we got
through and the recordings are phenomenal.
And we really found this man remarkable.”
Now you don’t get this out of Englishmen
a great deal, you know.
ETZ: No, I know and I’ve heard this from
other friends of mine who are musicians in
England. They felt the same…
DD: So there was, there was something there
for all these stories that one heard always
about him, but f musicians say this man had
something then obviously…You don’t have
to beat like that. That’s not conducting.
You can, you know.
ETZ: How would you say, I know it’s…things
have changed a great deal over your career.
How would you say conducting has changed and
conductors? You have a feeling for that, or…
DD: With all the young conductors that I’ve
seen come up, particularly since the decades
that I’ve been at Juilliard and seen the,
the most gifted ones that came out of Juilliard
and those that were in my seminars that I
used to have like James Conlon, Andrew Litton.
They were all in my classes. I knew when I
saw them in action at Juilliard that there
could…it was a question of time. It’s
like the instrumentalists. Who are the ones
in the Chicago Symphony? Who are the ones
playing in all of the big orchestras? They
are Juilliard string players and brass players
and wind players. This is…Now today at the
rehearsal, I was sitting with Werner Klemperer
and “Werner,” I said, “Did you ever
hear a sound like this? Isn’t this like
the Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony?” He
said, “They’re incredible.” I said,
“Well these are the ones…when the generation
that’s in the Chicago and the Boston are
now time to retire, these kids are going to
be the ones…just as now Barenboim’s got
the ones that…most of them…Solti had I
would say three quarter were Juilliard brass
players. And how…and prepared, repertoire,
and, and you know their training and ear training
at school.” Gerry is phenomenal, you know.
He does the Miss Cox, but he had Madame Lengy.
So, you know, he rattles off, tells brass
players “teke teke teke”. He gives them
the tonguing. He does his own bowing. You’d
think he was a string player. He’s got it
all. No wonder his Seattle Symphony is already
so magnificent.
ETZ: And he’s been a champion of yours,
I would say, would you say first Mitropoulos…
DD: No, I’d say first Koussevitsky
ETZ: First Koussevitsky, Mitropoulos, and
then you have put Rodzinsky in there.
DD: Oh yes. Oh without a doubt.
ETZ: And Lenny.
DD: Yeah. Lenny definitely, yeah.
ETZ: Did Stokowski pick up further things,
or…
DD: No he wanted to do the Second Symphony,
but I don’t know what got in the way. I
have a lot of letters but they’re very strange
letters, just a few lines. That he’s not
well, but he hopes to talk to me when I next
get to America or something. I think he was
getting too old.
ETZ: Yeah. But now, I mean, I think it’s
wonderful at this point to have a young conductor
who’s taken your…
DD: I think it’s all Schwartz’s doing,
frankly. I think once he started to look into
those works that he knew had had such great
first performances…and like the Tom ballet
that I did with Cummings…Where is that?
He, you know I didn’t know him. He knocked
on my door, and…
ETZ: E. E. Cummings you mean?
DD: Yeah. No. Gerry.
ETZ: Gerry.
DD: I had never met him. I knew his first
wife. She was a dancer named Lillo Way. And
she evidently told Gerry that I had written
music for Martha Graham in 1935, ’36. Lillo
had heard about this ballet, Tom, and she
told Gerry to ask me where this music was.
So he knocked on the door. See he had the
Waterloo Festival thing. And so I said, “It’s
in the Free Library in Philadelphia.” He
said, “I’ll play it.” I said, “But
you haven’t seen the music.” He said,
“Ahh.” He got it and played it with great
success…repeated it here at Carnegie Hall.
That program you don’t have.
ETZ: Which orchestra was that?
DD: With the Water, Waterloo… …
ETZ: Oh, with the Waterloo.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: Was that in the summer time?
DD: It was a Sunday concert.
ETZ: Possibly in the summer, cause I know
they were…
DD: In the summer. In the summer. Yeah.
ETZ: This would have been in the ‘60s?
DD: No. This would be in the ‘80s, I would
say. I have a program at home. And it was
a concert…It was sponsored by some, I don’t
know, organization, because people were given
free seats. Some seats were for sale. I think
downstairs, the orchestra was. And people
were given free seats. And there were lines
all around 56th Street and 57th for people
to get in to that concert. It was a great
program…the Dohnányi Suite for Orchestra.
Wonderful things. Yeah.
ETZ: Oh really? Well you know I knew him very
late in his life.
DD: Wasn’t he a fascinating man?
ETZ: Oh he was a wonderful man. This is Ernst
von Dohnányi, whose…
DD: Again, a neglected…He was so neglected.
ETZ: Yes he had a… …a strange career,
really.
DD: Yeah. There, again…
ETZ: But he was a wonderfully gift, wonderfully
gifted man.
DD: Oh a genius. I think absolutely a genius
in composition. You listen to the music today.
Gerry’s played a lot of it. Starker plays
a great deal of it. He recorded the Konzertstück
for Cello with Orchestra with Gerry. It’s
wonderful music. So what if it is…Why should
Korngold’s be the only one that is considered…I
think Dohnányi is much more interesting than
Korngold.
ETZ: Don’t you think we’re at a new point
in the history of, certainly of American music
of looking at things in broader terms, of
accepting many different kinds of music, and…
DD: No doubt. No doubt.
ETZ: I feel really good about that myself.
I think it’s…
DD: I think audiences have made this quite
clear to management. They’re perfectly happy
with Shostakovich, but once, you know…I
hate to say this because Elliott Carter is
an old friend and …I regret that the music
has become so knotty and difficult, but it
takes days to work out a piece of his. That
even Pierre Boulez said to me, “I can’t
even program Elliott’s music, because if
I do a work of mine, which I have to…maybe
in Chicago I’ll be able to do something,
but it takes so much time.” So, you know,
if the music gets that complex then…this
is where they lost their battle. You see aleatoric
music, when that bar line got removed, and
you have to rehearse and explain…Lenny Bernstein
spent two and a half hours explaining to each
desk how to sub, how to divide and play, who
plays what in John Corigliano’s first movement
of his Clarinet Concerto.
ETZ: The Clarinet Concerto, yeah.
DD: It’s all in G major. I said, “John
why the hell didn’t you put bar lines in?”
It’s in 4/4 time. He said, “Well that
was a period where if we didn’t write that
kind of music, Jacob Druckman wouldn’t get
you a commission, or you…” You know, all
that stuff came out finally.
ETZ: It’s, it’s interesting. I think Dohnányi’s
enjoying something of a resurgence.
DD: Without a doubt.
ETZ: And it was a…the special pleasure for
me to have his grandson, Christoph, premiere
my Oboe Concerto because…
DD: Oh you’re very, very lucky.
ETZ: …he’s a wonderful conductor and…
DD: Marvelous conductor
ETZ: You can see there’s a…sort of a chip
off the old block thing.
DD: Yeah. Yeah.
ETZ: It’s also interesting to me you think
about Stokowski and Dohnányi. They’re people
that I knew when I was very young, who at
that time were in their eighties, and I just
love these connections in music that solidify
the continuity of the tradition, you know,
the...
DD: Oh it’s very, very important. It’s
exciting, too, because one realizes the natural
thread, you know. It’s a kind of Ariadne’s
thread that goes through music. This is why
I think French and German music are so consistently
available to people historically, because
they listen that way.
ETZ: Mmm hmm. They’re plugged in…
DD: They get that thread from way back to
Haydn. They get it to Mozart. They get it
to Beethoven to Brahms. That thread goes right
through to the present day, you know. Where
it breaks is when those crazy Germans start
with, you know, Stockhausen and Kagel. Then
it’s all goes berserk, because there’s
no thread anymore.
ETZ: Well it’s interesting to me though
as a sort of a post-war, World War II, American
composer that World War II delivered us Hindemith,
well Bloch was already here, but Schoenberg,
Bartók, and that in a sense that rope of
tradition sort of passed here, that line.
DD: Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And Martinů
ETZ: Martinů. We could go on and on, yes.
DD: And we could have had others, you know,
with the ones, the so-called famous ones that
they now, you know, consider the holocaust
composers.
ETZ: Yes that were…
DD: You know, Ohlman and all those others
who, Schulhoff…
ETZ: Right, who were killed.
DD: who were take...dragged off and gave concerts
in the concentration camps. If they had just
gotten out a little sooner, you know. Hindemith
tried to warn them, you see. Mrs. Hindemith
tried so hard. But they didn’t have the
realistic sense that things were gonna go
badly for them.
ETZ: I think it’s very hard to…
DD: They had jobs also, you see, and the,
the committees hadn’t gotten after them
yet. Schoenberg tried hard to get Schulhoff
to come. Einshammer tried to get all the ones
that Universal was publishing. They wouldn’t
budge. Tanzmann got over from Paris.
ETZ: It’s interesting, I remember hearing
Isaac Singer say that when he left in 1938
I think it was, ’37 maybe even, that is
was a question of taking a new ship and everybody
said, “Oh wait and you’ll have this wonderful
experience.” And he felt the urgency that
he would take whatever was available right
then and get out.
DD: Just get out. Right. Right.
ETZ: And this was, of course, you know at
least a year or so before…
DD: Oh absolutely and you know what Frau Mahler
and and Werfel went through. I mean they were
stuck up there in the Pyrenees and the Gestapo
could have taken them right away, you know.
But by some miracle they thought she was a
rather interesting frowsy old lady. So they
put her up in some little hotel and he had
had a heart attack, so they had a doctor brought
in and the next day some…evidently a man,
who knew quite a good deal about her…got
them in a cab and they were taken off to the
airport, and that they got over.
ETZ: David, did people know she had written
music?
DD: Oh yes. Oh yes.
ETZ: Were they…
DD: I used to have her songs sung in my classes.
They’re great, beautiful songs.
ETZ: Oh I know that. I think they’re they’re
lovely, but I mean, she was a pretty big talent
and…
DD: Yeah but he put the damper down. He wouldn’t
encourage her.
ETZ: I can’t…
DD: Really you know all the things I read
about him and now with the De La Grange…I’ve
read all the other volumes in French because
it’s finished. It’s just the translation
that’s taking time. He was a terrible human
being.
ETZ: Mahler?
DD: Yes. Yeah. I mean this was a…this was
a real, not evil, but malicious man. I mean
a real woman hater, a resenter of women. Maybe
Freud was right about him, that his impotency
and all the other problems he had was probably
due to real fear of strong women. But she
was evidently…she had…like this film last
night, Carrington…it was hard to figure
out how a kind of lovely, strange young girl
like that could have wound all these men,
both gay and straight, around her little finger.
You see, there are women who are…Garbo was
like that. Dietrich…wooo. Look at, now that
we know the truth about Dietrich it’s extraordinary.
Men and women. Just would tie them around
her little finger.
ETZ: I, I never found out how to do that myself.
[laughs]
DD: [laughs] You have to start in Hollywood.
ETZ: [laughs] Right. Here’s a wonderful
program we have from 1985, where the Copland
Statements, Schuman Symphony for Strings…
DD: I got Dmitri to play the Statements.
ETZ: …and this is, this is much later then,
and this is when…when Bernstein conducted
your Ninth Symphony.
DD: Yeah. Oh do you know, it suddenly comes
back to me…I never finished my story about
how, how Mitrop…how we met.
ETZ: Okay.
DD: Yeah, you know, I was about to tell you,
what happened was Aaron Copland said, “You’ve
got to meet this wonderful man.” Lenny Bernstein
already said, “This is such an extraordinary
man, you must…” So Copland said, “David,
we’ll go to one of his concerts together
and then I’ll introduce you to him because
he’s got to know, and bring a score of your
Psalm along. He'd be interested in that piece.”
So we went to that concert. And the concert
was over. And Copland said, “Now we should
begin to go to…he’ll probably come out
of the stage door.” We get down that aisle
that leads to that back door that you come
out. And sure enough just as I was getting
there with Aaron, down comes Mitropoulos.
There he was with these thick rubber-soled
shoes that he always wore, and saw me and
again like with Ravel, boom, he’s looking.
And where are the eyes, on my…this time
it’s an ochre color turtleneck sweater I’m
wearing.
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: “Where did you buy that wonderful sweater?”
So I said, “Down here on 6th Avenue.”
“Oh it’s wonderful.” So, “This is
David Diamond.” “Oh! I know your music.
I have your Psalm for Orchestra.” So I was
hoping he’d say I played it or I’m going
to play it. And that’s how we met.
ETZ: That’s lovely.
DD: See. So then I knew that when I got, you
know, eventually the symphony that it would
go to one these three. And he would be the
one that I would send the telegram to.
ETZ: That’s a nice story with the telegrams.
It’s an illustration of how different the
world was, too, I guess.
DD: Yeah. Well he was a man with a sense of
responsibility and a mission. A young composer
writes him, but he was out with…I wasn’t
the only one. Look how wonderfully he treated
Morton, Elie Siegmeister. You go through that
list of American composers alone, let alone
the Europeans and Krenek and all the others,
and Hindemith. You know, those are phenomenal
programs. So he got into hot water with Zirato
and all the others and Judson, that monster.
But you know, he’d paid a terrible price
but I’m glad that this book clears it all
up.
ETZ: He must have had something special in
humanity. I remember…
DD: He was a saint.
ETZ: Did you know…
DD: You know he was a Saint Francis man.
ETZ: Really?
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: Did you know the mezzo-soprano Alena
Nicholaidi?
DD: Yes, as a matter of fact, I met her through
him.
ETZ: Mmm hmm. They were, they were very close.
She was a Greek mezzo, who sang at the Met
and she moved to Florida State University
when I was an undergraduate there. And for
some reason or other the, the day that he
died, she and I were roommates, I think it
was some place in North Carolina, we were
there to perform in a music festival…and
I remember she got the news of Mitropoulos’s
death…
DD: That was a terrible day.
ETZ: And it was as though, you know, a beloved
friend of the family…
DD: Oh sure, yeah.
ETZ: It was just…And and it struck me, you
know, this was…
DD: It was
ETZ: …a man that many people really, really
loved.
DD: It was a nightmare. As in the book it
tells the last page…He calls it recessional.
Trudy Goth and I are ready to leave Florence.
He invited us to come to the dress rehearsal
and stay for the first performance of the
Mahler Six. And we got the telegram he had
dropped dead. Ah it was a terrible day. Terrible,
terrible day.
ETZ: Yeah. David, I’m happy to see that
we have…our latest entry here is your Ninth
Symphony, but that you didn’t get hung up
on that number and you’re still going strong.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: Are you working on a twelfth perhaps?
DD: And the Ninth Symphony, remember, is dedicated
to Dmitri’s memory.
ETZ: Yes I do.
DD: And that Lenny chose to conduct it was
very interesting to me considering that we
now know the facts of how Lenny also did a
little bit of knifing in the back.
ETZ: Of Mitropoulos, you mean?
DD: Yes, in order to get the job. It’s the
one bitter, bitter pill that I have to live
with now that we know the truth. It’s just…but
Lenny never forgave him for not inviting him.
He couldn’t. Dmitri wrote…my letters are…Lenny’s
letter to me, quoting Dmitri as to why he
couldn’t have Lenny come as the pianist
and as his assistant…because Mr. Gains there
said, “We cannot afford to have another
young American come out here…”
ETZ: This was Boston? Boston Symphony?
DD: No. This was Minneapolis.
ETZ: Oh, Minneapolis.
DD: Yes.
ETZ: Okay.
DD: “…because you are playing too much
modern music and he’s just going to insist
on doing more of it. So it’s just out.”
You see. And Lenny would not accept that.
He said, “That’s a lousy excuse. Lousy
excuse. Why didn’t he have me come later
then?”
ETZ: So you feel that was…
DD: He never forgave him. Lenny never, never
forgave. He remembered every, everything that
he felt conductors or managers had done. He
never forgave even that Boston man who tried
to get Koussevitsky to make him change his
name to Leonard Burns, you know, Todd Perry.
He never forgave Todd for that.
ETZ: When you look back on your career so
far, and I know we’ve got much more coming
out of you, what do you see as sort of like
the highlights for you or for us as Americans
or people who love music. In the last say
fifty years or so, looking back at the material
we’ve just been talking about…
DD: You know, Ellen, that’s a good question
you ask me because at the age that I am now
it’s living constantly with memories of
the dead. And for me those dead…I happen
to have been blessed because one, being born
in Rochester and ours was a great cultural
center in the ‘20s, remember. We were the
first to have a theater orchestra. Ruben Mamoulian
was directing the stage productions. We had
a full orchestra overture before, before Radio
City Music Hall or Roxy. We had this. Whatever
the silent movie was, there was a ballet interpretation
of…I still remember Ernest Schelling, who
was as you know the, one of the conductors
here. His piece called Victory Ball, that
piece still should be played today. It’s
an extraordinary work. I can still see that,
and it was performed when they showed The
Big Parade, that great silent movie with John
Gilbert about the First World War. And so
what was the ballet? It was based on Ernest
Schelling’s Victory Ball, and it ends with
these soldiers coming from both sides of the
stage and this terrible battle. Then a few
years later, All Quiet on the Western Front
comes out. So memories of, for me are a man
like Mamoulian that I meet that makes it possible
when I get into Hollywood to get to know Garbo
and some of the others…Bette Davis is in
Stock Company in Rochester. I meet her. I
run her laundry to the Chinese laundry. Her
mother, the hell on wheels…I get to Hollywood.
I wanna see if she remembers me. “Ahh! What
ever happened to you hair? Where’s all your
hair?” She had remembered all this hair…one
remembers. Now they’re all gone. The only
one alive that I loved and adored was Olivia
De Havilland. Why? Because I wrote the music
for Romeo and Juliet, which brings me back
to the music that you played. That is not
the music that was used in her production
on Broadway. She wanted to do…she knew that
music, but when they began cutting up my long
cues, you know, the balcony scene is one long
line. Just, just two minutes is all that’s
wanted. I said, “No, no, no. I don’t want
that touched. I’ll write a whole new score.”
So I wrote a whole new…little short cues
for everything, you see. So other than Olivia,
who is today big as a house, but …we, often
I meet with her in Paris and we do this sort
of thing. Isn’t it awful. Our friends are
all dead. If I didn’t have my children,
my grown children, what would I, what would
I…I can’t go back and live in the states.
You know this is what goes…So to me, it’s
like with Sessions, with Lenny, Mitropoulos,
it’s my God, even though they’re all gone,
what human beings they were. Everyone. I was
blessed to be born in Rochester, to have had
my childhood meetings with them. And then,
like another kind of thread it goes through.
And somehow I wind up in Hollywood and thanks
to Artie I can find those people again, you
see. Then I go back and write for the movies.
And then I can’t get a job. I come back
from Italy. Howard Hanson still remembers
me as that, you know that modernist. “David,
you’re so talented, why must you be such
a modernist.” So I quit. Went to New York.
Studied with Bernard Rogers, [who] said, “David,
you won’t be happy. Howard does not like
music which is progressive. Go with my blessing.
Roger is a great teacher.” And there again,
then I meet you through Roger. I meet you.
Now Peter Mennen, a former Eastman person.
Bill Schuman, they said, “You should give
David a job.” And so I come to Juilliard
and I’m still there.
ETZ: Do you ever think about legacies, I mean,
what you’re leaving. I remember meeting
you and I had already of course played your
music.
DD: I remember we had a great meal with your
husband at a Hungarian restaurant.
ETZ: Oh yes, of course.
DD: And that cucumber. I went crazy for the
cucumbers. Yeah.
ETZ: [Laughs] They make a great cucumber salad,
don’t they. But …I think that there’s
a sense of not only the past, but the future.
And I remember very, very much your encouragement
and you know how warm you were, and…
DD: Oh Ellen, you were so clearly the more
gifted…You knew the ones. They were all
constipated, you know. Ughh. They could just
barely squeeze out a piece, you know. Here’s
Ellen with this flowing…Even Tsontakis,
he just wasn’t writing music.
ETZ: Well at any rate, but I think there’s
a wonderful sense of participation in the
future, and you know, when you think of the
people that have not even been born yet who
are going to be playing your music and…
DD: Well that you know one can never be sure
about. I can only hope that…that that will…you
know that’s unpredictable. Who really knows
what will happen.
ETZ: Sure.
DD: I, however, am not one of those people
who think that classical music is going to
disappear. I mean I think I’m smart enough
to know that it, it makes no sense from just
a philosophical or historical or, or even
a cultural sense that popular idioms are going
to, or electronic…I can remember when Rosalind
Turek was told by Milton Babbitt that in a
few years she was not going to have a career
because everything would be on tape. There
would be no necessity. He told me, he said,
“David, unless you seriously sit down and
think very carefully about the twelve note
technique and serialism and how important
it’s going to be to the future.” I said,
“Milton, what are you telling me? I know
Schoenberg. I knew Schoenberg. I asked him
whether I can study with him.” He said,
“Twelve notes are not for you. You’re
a young Bruckner. What do you need with twelve
notes? It’s not for everybody. Anyway, I
want to know. I have people who want to study
twelve note music. If they don’t tell me
why first note is B-flat and why twelfth note
is a H,” which is a b-natural in German,
“they cannot come into my classes.” You
see, that…So I tell Milton this. He says,
“Oh that’s right I forget, I forget.”
You know. Today, Milton, he presents me at
the academy, gives the most wonderful introduction,
and he presents the gold medal to me.
ETZ: Yes. Yes.
DD: And reminisces. And today I’m worried
sick about Milton. We never became enemies
cause of this. I said, “Milton, I don’t
have problems with twelve note music. I love
your music very much. I have trouble with
Elliot’s music sometimes, but I have, I
never had anything…I think Philomel is a
phenomenal piece. But even you say today you
couldn’t write another piece like that and
you’re not interested in tape anymore. You
haven’t been for years. And yet you can
tell Rosalind she would be out of work and
that I should think about serialism. And look
how it’s all…who’s really won the battle?”
And he said, “You have.” Now to get that
from Milton was really something.
ETZ: That’s interesting.
DD: So that makes us even closer friends.
So now he’s in the hospital very sick and
I’m worried.
ETZ: Yeah me too. I like Milton. I guess nobody
ever knows how it’s going to come out because
it depends on where you slice it, where you
are.
DD: But it is not going to disappear in favor
of technocracy. A big, big TV screen with
a full symphony orchestra or that theater
up here, you know, down near the 70s, that
shows you a triple screens, all that stuff.
That is, has got nothing…listening to a
symphony program that way is not going to
do it. Audiences don’t want…
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: They don’t want that. They want live
sound, live people on the stage.
ETZ: I, I agree with you that …a lot of
people worry about the direction of things…
DD: They shouldn’t.
ETZ: …and, that you know, this is going
to stop and that. I don’t think so because
I think it’s so intrinsically interesting.
DD: I think the financial worries are realistic.
That I understand. But I don’t think the
financial problems have anything to do with
a lack of interest in classical contemporary
music or classical music of the past. I think
it has to do with yes, a certain amount of
generational gap…but I see plenty of young
people going to the Philharmonic. Plenty.
Plenty. And there will me more.
ETZ: We had a wonderful young people’s concert
here a couple of days ago and it was nice
to see little tots around, and …
DD: Sure. Sure.
ETZ: I personally feel, I love the theatrical
tradition that when Carnegie Hall closes down
for the night, they leave the light bulb on
for the, the spirits of the theater that are
there…
DD: That’s great. Sure.
ETZ: …and I feel that…it’s all in there
in some way in this mix that the people who’ve
been on that stage in the past, the music
that’s come out from there in the past,
and the music that’s to come in the future,
I think it’s, it’s somehow or other all
there.
DD: You’ve hit that point which perhaps
is a mystic point. But it’s that very point
I think that it’s all about. What will keep
serious, so-called classical or long-haired
music, they used to call it…what’s going
to keep that, always, is the fact that it’s
a mountain of masterpieces now. And CDs have
only hammered that in more, because now we
have through CDs of the works. Imagine we
have a revival in Spohr. We’re going to
hear his Odyssey Symphony because Botstein
actually heard the CD of the Odyssey. He would
have never known it otherwise.
ETZ: I don’t know it.
DD: Phenomenal. All of those symphonies of
Spohr. We’re going to begin hearing those,
because otherwise how did we know them…two
violin concertos out of…
ETZ: And the double, double quartets.
DD: Sure, you see. So what is it? CDs are
doing that and that is enhanced even more,
more music from the past. Just think we know
all of Bach now thanks to CDs, Haydn. Everything’s
being completed. The operas we never knew
before
ETZ: David when you were,
DD: Kids, like baseball does. Kids want autographed
baseball things, you know.
ETZ: Yeah. Well I was always sorry looking
back that I hadn’t saved those letters from
Dohnányi.
DD: Yeah. It’s too bad.
ETZ: It’s just very, very super naïve of
me to…
DD: Did you correspond a great deal with Sessions?
ETZ: No.
DD: No? Oh that’s too bad.
ETZ: No. Of course at that time, you know,
the telephone was a…
DD: Of course.
ETZ: I talked a lot with him on the phone.
DD: Even Milton said the same thing. He didn’t
do…keep any of them.
ETZ: Which brings me to the question I was
about to ask you. You mentioned all of the
CDs and how today we have the works of Bach
on CD and we have symphonies of Spohr coming
out and things that were only rumors even
a few years ago…
DD: Library, library scores…you saw them
in the library and said, “when can we hear
it come alive.” All right, so you sit at
the piano…you know, I would get some idea
of them, but that we can hear these pieces.
You know you hear Spohr and, you know, they
were…he overlapped Beethoven. My God, it’s
not to be believed. And yet they talk about
Brahms being the continuation of Beethoven’s…It’s
Spohr who’s the continuation of the Beethoven
symphonies. Now wait ‘til they’re heard.
You’ll see. They’ll change that.
ETZ: When you were very young how is that
you, did you learn like Beethoven symphonies
by playing them four hands or…
DD: Four hands and playing in the orchestra.
See because when we went to Cleveland to visit
relatives my mother immediately enrolled me
in the Cleveland Institute. So that’s how
I met really Bloch. I played viola because
I had a big, big paw. So, I was sent up on
the third floor to play the viola in the first
reading of the Concerto Grosso No. 1.
ETZ: Hmm, really?
DD: I can still hear him screaming…
ETZ: Really?
DD: “Zehr fausa! Zehr fau!” Somebody was
playing out of tune and I didn’t know what
the hell zehr fausa…I thought zehr fausa…It
sounded like an animal of some kind, zehr
faus. It’s false. The note’s false. That’s
why I invited Suzanne Bloch’s daughter to
be with me at the YMHA, because Gerry did
his Episodes, very little played. So Suzanne
began reminiscing and I brought this thing
up about the Institute. She said, “Oh Mon
Dieu.” She, when I, “This little red head
over here. Yes, he was playing in that orchestra.”
That’s the, that’s the joy of, you know…So
I learned music. Then, later on I was in the
regular orchestra at the Cleveland Institute
and we gave two concerts a year, one at the
Dutchess Theater and one at the …at some
hotel I forget…Oh yes, the, the Stillman
Hotel. And the Rakoczy March, when I heard
that orchestration, and I always brought the
pocket score. I would just put it down there.
I remember Mr. de Ribeaupierre. He was the
conductor. “David what do you have between
your legs?” And of course the whole orchestra
would explode with laughter.
ETZ: ...orchestra laughed, yes.
DD: I said, “My score.” [laughs]
ETZ: [laughs] But, you know, even if you played
a lot of concerts in a year that still is
not a whole lot of repertoire. So you probably
were getting it mostly by…
DD: Sibley Library. I lived in the Sibley
Library and that is still one of the great
libraries. And what I did was, just the moment
I would see Schoenberg, out would come…and
that Barbara Duncan, the librarian in the
‘20s, she would bring back the very first
editions of all the new works of Schoenberg,
Berg. Now these names…
ETZ: These were from Europe at the time. Yes.
DD: From Europe. All the Universal scores.
And of course I would take them right out,
have special permission to take them out and
go to right to my room where I had my practice
studio. And I would just, you know, as "des
chiffres" I would sight read as much as I
can. And if I could I would find out when
the orchestra would rehearse with a man named
Paul White. I said, “Paul do you suppose
there might be parts somewhere?” because
the Eastman Theater Orchestra had a lot of
contemporary music…“Do you think we could
read through some of this, just…?” That’s
how I heard, the first time I heard the Webern
Six Orchestra Pieces…read…we didn’t
have all the instruments but I certainly got
an idea of what was going on. And then my
discovery of the Kammersinfonie, Opus 21.
That I did at the piano. But it was the damnedest
thing, you know, trying to figure out, except
for the second movement which has one melodic
line the whole row at the top…the rest was
this. So what I did was…like when I invented
these, you know, the four line business…I
would take a red pencil and start with the,
the pitches and just follow them through.
Little had it occurred to me read the pro...you
know the introductory notes. It would tell
you a little bit. It didn’t say much about
the twelve note technique, but it would tell
you about the Klangfarbenmelodie, you see.
So, another colored pencil would show me where
the harp…and always that clarinet coming
back to an E. So I asked Mr. Rogers about
that and he was the first to explain what
the row was.
ETZ: It’s interesting that that technique
of the colored pencils is still used, you
know…
DD: Now they do that. Sure.
ETZ: It’s like…yeah.
DD: But you see it was really in the library
all the time…or, I did terrible things.
I stole money from my mother. I would take
it and, you know, no money and yet I would
steal. Why? To do what? I saw a catalog of
Elkan-Vogel and it was all the Debussy, Ravel,
Rouselle, these names. And it said, to be
sent on trial. You can, you know, send…and
you have to return it by two months or something.
So, I had my sister type it out and instead
of saying, “Sabina can I have some money
to pay…” I just said, “Well you see,
it says on, they’ll send it on trial.”
So, I would get all these scores, Satie, you
know, Things Seen Left and Right Without Eyeglasses
for violin and piano. So I had to orchestrate
some of those, you see.
ETZ: Well as a matter of fact we did not get
to an orchestration you had done of Satie…
DD: ...of Schoenberg…and Schoenberg, too.
ETZ: Oh really?
DD: I did the Opus 19 pieces, sure. [?] showed
them to me, loved it.
ETZ: …Mitropoulos actually did…
DD: He did the Messe…he did the Messe des
Pauvres and the Passacaglia.
ETZ: Right. On…in 1951.
DD: And now Gerry’s…right. Now Gerry’s
going to do the Messe des Pauvres, I think,
at his last concert at the New York Chamber
Symphony. Leinsdorf conducted them a great
deal. And I wrote at the age of 19, I wrote
my Hommage à Satie and I put it away, I,
you know…so French. I was a little embarrassed,
you know. It was the first piece I had played
in New York City before I came to study here.
And Gerry said, “I want to see that damn
piece.” I said, “Gerry, it is awful. You’d
swear it was written by Debussy.” He said,
“I want to see it.” So now in January
Koch is bringing out all my orchestrations
of Debussy, the fugue that I did of Ravel’s,
that he left out of the Tombeau de Couperin.
ETZ: Oh!
DD: It’s going to be done with the fugue,
because Ravel told me he was going to begin
it with a flute. So I did it. Sounds exactly
as he had done it. The Passacaglia, the Debussy
Hommage à Haydn and the Ravel Hommage à
Haydn, which were originally for piano. So
this…and then my little Hommage à Satie.
Gerry decided it’s good enough. “If Koch
says it’s good enough you’ve gotta say…”
I said, “Gerry, it still doesn’t represent…”
He said, “Forget it. You wrote it when you
were 19. So it’s got to be in.”
ETZ: He’s right.
DD: He’s right. I’m accepting it as long
as…
ETZ: …another thing that I would like to
touch on a little bit is the piece that Bernstein
premiered here with the Philharmonic on…The
World of Paul Klee. And, and I think it’s…
DD: Oh my God. I forgot about that one.
ETZ: It’s kind of interesting to people
who are not musicians to hear a composer talking
about the rest of the world and, you know,
I think they think sometimes we’re off in
an ivory tower.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: But you’re clearly someone who, for
whom literature has been very important all
of your life.
DD: Oh, Rochester again. Sure.
ETZ: …and the movies, or whatever.
DD: Rochester.
ETZ: …here’s a, here’s a case of of
a…now Klee in 1960, I guess he was just
being discovered, had really just in the past
ten years been quite well-known in the States.
DD: You mean as a painter?
ETZ: As a painter.
DD: Actually, no, Ellen. When I was quite
small, I remember going to the home of a women.
Her name was Kathleen Cunningham, in Rochester.
And we had a marvelous…a patron and his
wife Hildegard Watson, great friends of E.
E. Cummings and of Virgil Thomson, Mrs. Hildegard
Watson, Dr. Sibley Watson. He set up our Genesee
health service in Rochester, but he was also
a real medical doctor. He was among the first
who truly, truly made film, that can be called
avant-garde. You may have seen it as a matter
of fact. It’s called Lot and Sodom and the
other one is The Fall of the House of Usher.
ETZ: Mmm hmm. Yes.
DD: They have, they have them at the Museum
of Modern Art.
ETZ: ...at the Museum of Modern Art.
DD: Now for the photography…He had seen
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but in his home
on Sibley Place, when we were invited…Cummings
was invited once to come and show some of
his paintings at the Memorial Art Gallery
in Rochester…I was invited to come for tea
to meet Cummings, and there in the little
room…the house is still there, the Klee’s
have gone over the Memorial…There on the
wall were these very small Klee paintings
and there was the little heart-shaped girl
doing the dance of the grieving child. She’s
in the shape of a heart with a feather.
ETZ: Sure. Sure.
DD: And when I saw that…So when I chose
the pieces to illustrate in those…when Jakov
Schlomoff commissioned, you know, we all had
to write pieces for his Portland Junior Symphony.
That’s how I got to write them. I thought
immediately of The Dance of the Grieving Child
and the Pastourelle…They had the Pastourelle
and the Twittering Machine…they owned that
one. And that one fascinated me, you know,
with that little bird on the top. And now
comes another crazy story, you see. Now I’m
living in Europe. I’m in Italy that particular
summer. This was the summer of…four…no,
’49, actually it was. And Felix Klee, Klee’s
son, was in Florence. I thought well I haven’t
seen his father since we played in quartets
together cause when I was studying with Scherchen
in Neufchâtel, he…
ETZ: When was this?
DD: This was 1938. The piece Gerry played
the other day. That was the one that Scherchen
gave the premiere of and I wrote that in ’38.
And that…as matter of fact Klee would come
very often to lessons that Scherchen…Ben
Britten was in our conducting class as a matter
of fact. So I would go over and I usually
brought my violin because he played, you know,
not as bad as Einstein, but he played fairly
well. So I played second fiddle, he played
first, and we played Haydn quartets. We played
Girovetz, the first time I knew about Girovetz…sounded
like, like Haydn and Beethoven mixed. And
he was an adorable man. And that’s how…I
still have a Klee today in my house. I have
one call "L'oeil." It’s just a big eye.
Then the next thing I knew Clifford Odets…after
I got to meet Clifford through Stella Adler
and Aaron…Clifford bought about fifty Klees
and had them in his apartment on 70th Street.
And then the Museum of Modern Art gave a big
show. So I was, you know, really taken by
this man’s work and…I love the…I love
his painting
ETZ: Yeah, I like it too.
DD: Maybe that’s part of what’s childlike
still in me that, that goes…I like less
the ones that are just cubes, you know, the
chessboard sort of ones like…I don’t like
Mondrian very much because it’s just too,
too abstract, geometric. But give me the Klee
of the angels and the strange creatures, you
know, and the birds. They’re child…they’re
kind of childlike paintings. He was also very
childlike. And then don’t forget his paintings
were based on…if you’ve seen his diaries,
he took the Bach Chaconne opening line and
wrote the music out and then underneath worked
out Klee-like little designs that mirrored
the shape of the [sings: bum, bum, bum, bum]…absolutely.
ETZ: Mmm. I haven’t seen that. I’d love
to see that.
DD: He was a musician every moment of his
painting. So that, there was my attraction
for Klee, you see. And so it was inevitable
that when Jakov Schlomoff asked me to write
a piece I thought, what idiom? I can’t write
my usual modal idiom and anyway by then I
was already introducing more chromatic…ah,
Roger and I had quite a good deal after the
Second Symphony of his and I saw that he had
moved out of completely diatonic…and Aaron
Copland, he said, “David will you get out
of those white notes all the time. Come on.
Put a few black ones in.” You know, I…Well,
now I am going to find the right idiom. The
character I need is chromaticism. And I decided
since each picture has to be framed, I would
begin each picture with a frame. So what do
I have, a twelve note row for each one. See.
So each picture one is the retrograde of the
original row, the other is the inversion.
So my first twelve-note piece is really The
World of Paul Klee.
ETZ: Wonderful. That’s about the same time
that Gunther wrote his…
DD: As a matter of fact, there’s a Time
Magazine review of both our pieces, pictures
of both of us…I think Leinsdorf may have
done his, and …Tommy Shippers I think or
somebody…Yeah Tommy did The World of Paul
Klee. Mine got the rave review and Gunther’s
got…Oh I’m afraid not a very good review.
And…the result is his Klee pieces are played
more often than my Klee pieces, which shows
you that the lousier your piece does, it gets
more performed.
ETZ: [laughs]
DD: No sense.
ETZ: There’s always some…
DD: No sense to any of that.
ETZ: …silver lining there
DD: Yeah a good review doesn’t make a damn
bit of good.
ETZ: Well, do you want to say anything about
the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York premiere
of your Seventh Symphony here at Carnegie…
DD: Oh! Oh boy! You know what…
ETZ: …with Ormandy?
DD: …all I remember is it was the worst
snow storm that ever hit the city. I’ve
never known anything like that night. And
here I have Greta Garbo on my arm to get her
out of a cab and into the auditorium, you
know, and it’s blowing and here’s this
big Scandinavian, you know, I thought she
could handle wind, but after all she was getting
on in years…and on my other arm was Mrs.
E. E. Cummings that I’m taking to the concert.
And I tell you, to get those two women into
the auditorium with the wind blowing, the
cold…Finally we get in. Of course, the…it
wasn’t full as it usually is for Philadelphia
New York concerts. So it wasn’t…
ETZ: And the reason?
DD: The snowstorm, this horrendous snow…but
the…
ETZ: Oh just the snowstorm. You don’t think
it was…You don’t take it personally? [laughs]
DD: No because I remembered how great the
Philadelphia performances were.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: It was unbelievable.
ETZ: We have a picture of Ormandy here from
about that time. What was it like… …That’s
a nice picture. Who took that?
DD: I thought he was the most wonderful…the
way he worked out the rehearsals, the way
he got everything clear…the general rehearsal
pattern. Yeah. You know there’s some people
say that when he would be walking around Broadway
they would think it was me and…I don’t
quite see…maybe the baldness…
ETZ: Oh, I don’t see that at all.
DD: No, but I don’t…and then others would
say, “Oh you look just like Leinsdorf,”
or something.
ETZ: No. No. But his brother Martin certainly
looks like him.
DD: Isn’t, isn’t he…you know he’s
still playing with Gerry’s orchestra, yeah?
ETZ: He’s still playing! Yeah he’s still
playing.
DD: It was the most clean, beautiful exciting
performance that I…I really …
ETZ: January 30th, yes, would be winter time.
DD: Yeah. And it was…Oh you mean in New
York?
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: Ohhhh.
ETZ: Bartók, Two Portraits…
DD: It was so great, that program.
ETZ: …your Symphony Number 7
DD: Right.
ETZ: Mozart Concerto in B-flat with Rudolph
Zircon
DD: Right. It was a great program. And poor
Rudy. All he kept…When we were…
ETZ: And then the Beethoven Concerto?
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: Number 4
DD: That’s right.
ETZ: Boy, that’s a…
DD: Because when we back, when we went back
Ormandy said, “Where’s Garbo? Why didn’t
you bring Garbo back?” I said, “She’s
out in the corridor. She’s freezing.”
He said, “Bring her in. Bring her in.”
So I go out. She says…she took one look
at me and went in to the ladies room and stayed
there. [laughs]
ETZ: [laughs] My goodness. Anyway it’s been
a wonderful history at Carnegie Hall and I
hope it will be many, many, many years to
come.
DD: It’s, it’s extraordinary, you know,
to do it this way. I would never have gone
back in memory, collectively thinking this
way, you know, unless you do something like
this.
ETZ: Yeah. It’s a…
DD: But it’s amazing to see, you know, that
their programs are…I wasn’t even aware
that…I forgot about those performances,
even. Especially that second Tempest performance.
ETZ: Yes. Yes. Well I couldn’t forget that
one since I was sitting there playing.
DD: Making all da-da-da-da-la, the opening
storm, all those strings.
ETZ: Yeah. I had to have a massage after that,
David. What are you writing now?
DD: Orchestrating my opera. But it’s a sad
time because as you know Christopher Keene
died.
ETZ: Yes.
DD: The real funeral was just yesterday and
the memorial will be on Wednesday, the day
of the concert.
ETZ: I know that Juilliard, Joe Polisi told
me.
DD: We’re going over… we’re going right
over to the…it’s 5:30 is the memorial
and then we’re going over to the hall. We
were supposed to listen to singers for my
opera which is for the Spring of ’97. The
opera’s called The Noblest Game and …Julius…
ETZ: The libretto is…
DD: By Katie Lockheim. She was President Roosevelt’s
cultural adviser all during his administration
and a beautiful poet. And I had started operas,
On the Wings of the Dove, and I told you about
Ben Britten taking my idea for Billy Bud.
He had already played through my settings.
They were published. And then he said, “How
are you going to write an opera on Billy Bud
and with no woman.” Next thing I know a
telegram…"Sorry, he’s writing an opera
on with Ian Forrester on Billy Bud.” So
I wrote him a letter. He never…We never
talked again after that. So I said, “No
more public domain stuff for me. I’m going
to get an original libretto.” So I asked
Mrs. Lockheim if she knew of any interesting
story that might turn into a good opera. I
said, “I want a realistic. I don’t want
grand opera stuff. I want a real, if possible
a contemporary subject.” So she said, “My
God, let me think…but I think I have something.”
And she thought of this woman who, very beautiful
woman in Washington, who had an affair with
a senator, which an autistic child was the
result of this affair. And this child functions
in the opera in a very strange way. Doesn’t
sing a note, doesn’t speak a word. But at
certain things that happen in the opera, that
child is there. Now Julius Rudell and Gunther
commissioned it for the city opera. It was
supposed to be Beverly Sills, who would sing
it. Now I swear to this day, this minute,
I never knew Beverly had retarded children
of any kind.
ETZ: Yeah.
DD: She read the libretto and said, “Rudell,
you tell David Diamond he’s a monster to
have a librettist put a child like that into
an opera. He knew I was going to sing in it.
Anyway! I will not sing any of those filthy
words that she’s got in this damn opera.”
There’s one f-word and one s-word in it.
That’s all, you know. And those are spoken
in anger at a certain terrible, strategic
moment. So today when I see Beverly, you know,
or see Rudell…It’s too involved. But anyway
Christopher Keene…said, “I want to read
it.” He read it, said, “My God, I don’t
believe it. It’s foolproof. Get the music
to me at once. I got him the, the vocal score
and he said, “Is the orchestration done?”
I said, “No. I wouldn’t think of orchestrating
an opera until I know when…” He said,
“We’ll do it…two years from now. How
‘bout that?” So I got started and developed
carpel tunnel. Couldn’t work for a year.
So that was the year they did Marilyn and
Lukas’s instead of mine and it was not a
very successful year. And then my hand got
better after partial surgery. So I got going
again. And now I’m doing little four pages
a day and it will be done this spring. But
how sad…
ETZ: Oh it’s very sad…
DD: Gerry Schwartz will conduct…
ETZ: Good.
DD: But how sad that…that he will not be
there.
ETZ: Yeah it’s a…
DD: And Katie died in… a few years after
completing the libretto. She was ninety something.
So these…that’s what I’m working on
now.
ETZ: That’s, that’s a full plate.
DD: Yeah.
ETZ: Anyway David thank you very…
DD: Oh, we’re finished.
ETZ: very much. Unless there’s something
else you’d like to add. It’s…
DD: Oh no. My God it is five o’clock.
ETZ: I’m afraid I’ve …
DD: And I’m not hoarse either.
ETZ: talked you out here. This has…
DD: I enjoyed it I must say.
ETZ: …been nice.
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