Gore Vidal Sees Music

Vidal with his Olympian view

Leonard Bernstein

Gore Vidal permitted few visitors the use of the study in his Olympian-situated home at Ravello, on the Amalfi coast of Italy. But one of them was the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

“I watched him working on two scores that he was going to conduct in Amsterdam,” Vidal recalled. “They‘re like atlases, and he had a red pencil and a blue pencil. Why? ‘I’m doing Mahler and I’m doing Schumann,’ he said. … ‘With the red one I make a track for myself through the score. With the blue one I change the instrumentation.’

“It was fascinating to watch the way he worked. I said, ‘Do you hear it as you see it?’ He said, “No, I see it.’ I said, ‘How does that correlate with hearing?’ ‘What do you mean hearing? I’ll hear when the instruments play it.’ ‘Do you know what it’s going to sound like?’ ‘Well, of course I do. I see it.’ ‘But do you hear it?’ ‘Of course I don’t hear it!’

“I began to understand the mystique of what music is about. Closer to mathematics than language.

“I thought the overture was like Ives. ‘God, you’re stupid musically,’ he said. ‘It’s not Ives. It’s Aaron (Copland) I’m ripping off. Can’t you tell?’”

—   Source: “Gore Vidal: A Biography” by Fred Kaplan

Vidal's home in Italy, La Rondinaia