Jamie Bernstein Remembers Candide

The history of Candide the musical is as picaresque and convoluted as Voltaire's narrative itself.  And I would add that Candide the musical is an excellent demonstration of crankiness being channeled to good use -- the crankiness in question being that of that world-class curmudgeon, the playwright Lillian Hellman.

 

It was originally her idea to adapt Candide.  Voltaire's satire of the Spanish Inquisition, with its religious hysteria and official torture, struck her as a perfect way to demonstrate the folly of the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950's, which sported their own imperiously hurtful inquisitory body, the House Un-American Activities Committee.  You may recall that it was Lillian Hellman who, when summoned before that committee, refused to testify against her colleagues.  What was her famous line?  "I will not cut my conscience to fit the political fashion of the times."

 

What began as Hellman's notion in 1953 took three years to come to fruition -- and over the years since the first Broadway production of Candide, there have been dozens of revisions, additions, subtractions, tantrums, permutations and transmogrifications.  And don't worry; I'm not going to list them all for you.

 

Candide is baseball-like in its tendency to sprout statistics.  There are over two hours of music in Candide, comprising an incredible 30 musical numbers.  Writing the show's book, Lillian went through 14 different versions.  My father saw at least seven different versions of the show over the course of his life.  The original Broadway production ran a paltry 73 performances, barely two months' worth of shows, for a total gross of $340,000.  For his three years of labor, my father made $10,000.  (Voltaire, by the way, wrote his novella in 3 weeks.)

 

Many of you may be familiar with the parade of writers who participated in the book and lyrics of Candide over the years: John LaTouche, Richard Wilbur, Dorothy Parker, Hugh Wheeler, Stephen Sondheim, John Wells.  And then there are the directors: Tyrone Guthrie, Gordon Davidson, Jonathan Miller, Harold Prince.  Seems like everybody knocked his or her head against Candide at some point.

 

Even though the original production of Candide closed in a couple of months, Goddard Lieberson at Columbia Records had the prescience to record the cast album, and that recording is really what put Candide on the map.  It became a cult classic.  And how glad we are that Barbara Cook's performance as Cunegonde was preserved for all to enjoy.  A few years ago, Barbara wrote a wonderful description of her first audition for the show:

 

"Bernstein swept in wearing black patent leather loafers and a loden cape lined in red.  I'd never seen anything like it or his energy.  His incredible energy!

 

"I sang my usual audition number, 'Make the Man Love Me' from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Then he asked,  'Do you have anything else?'

 

'I have a version of 'You Are Love' I could sing for you.  It's got a big high-C ending.'

 

'Don't sing 'You Are Love.' I know exactly how you'd sing 'You Are Love.''

 

.Big pause.

 

'Well. I've never sung this outside my voice teacher's studio, but I guess I could sing Madame Butterfly's entrance for you -- but I don't have the music.'

 

'That's okay, I know it,' he replied, and sat down at the piano.  'Oh Lord,' I thought.  But when I ended with the big high-D-flat (I sang the bejeesus out of it), he just BEAMED."

 

I still remember opening night of Candide in December of 1956 -- not because I saw the show, but precisely because I didn't.  My parents were all decked out in their finery.  "Where are you going?" I asked.  "We're on our way to see "Candide!" my mother said, with a little shiver of anticipation.  All dressed up to see candy?  That sounded just perfect for 4-year-old me.  "I want to go, too!" I said.  "No, darling, this is for grownups."  Candy -- for grownups?  Were they kidding?!  "I want to see the candy.  I want to see the candeeee!" Quite the tantrum I threw.

 

 

 

I like what Terry Teachout wrote a few years ago in the Wall Street Journal: "If you don't succumb to the champagne-like charms of 'You Were Dead, You Know,' 'Glitter and Be Gay,' 'The Best of All Possible Worlds,' 'I Am Easily Assimilated' and the divinely radiant 'Make Our Garden Grow,' it's time to triple up on the Prozac."

 

But here's the irony: at the point where the score chokes you up with joy, that's precisely the point where Bernstein and Voltaire have parted ways.

 

Voltaire's caustic sensibility was much closer, actually, to Lillian Hellman's than to Bernstein's.  As effervescent and delightful as the songs are in Candide, it was not enough for Bernstein to leave it at that.  He just had to give the show some heart.  But in truth, heart in no way conveys the sublimely mean spirit of Voltaire.

 

The tone of Voltaire's novella is remorselessly cynical about the foibles and hypocrisies of man -- and yet Bernstein's music takes us somewhere else entirely, especially in the much-loved finale, "Make Our Garden Grow."

 

When Candide says "Cultivons notre jardin," Voltaire meant it as an expression of rueful resignation, an acceptance of one's limitations -- as if Candide were saying: "Oh, let's quit spewing our fancy philosophy and go make ourselves useful for a change."  But the music is telling us something completely different: the soaring chorus seems to be telling us that growing our garden is a metaphor for the flowering of mankind itself! I'm pretty sure that's not what Voltaire meant.  But while this finale may not quite align itself with Voltaire's original intent, I think the end result is greater than the sum of the parts.  After all, when it comes to cynicism and idealism, the truth about our existence lies somewhere in between.

 

There was a wonderful article about Voltaire by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker a few years ago.  It was actually a review of two new books on Voltaire, and he discusses Candide at some length, in a most intriguing way.  Gopnik is particularly insightful about this whole notion of "optimism," the philosophy presented in the teachings of Leibniz, which Voltaire uses as the springboard of his novella.

 

Dr. Pangloss is Voltaire's cartoon version of Leibniz.  Pangloss takes the philosopher's notion that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and then renders it preposterous.  Voltaire does this by juxtaposing Pangloss' dogged optimism against the most ghastly evidence of human suffering.  Hence, the earthquake in Lisbon that killed 50,000 people was a good thing, see, because house builders got so much work out of it.

 

Gopnik writes about how a calamity like the Lisbon earthquake could -- literally -- shake people's faith to their foundations.  He then speculates that the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11 was our own faith-shaking equivalent.  Gopnik writes: "The realization that all may not be tending toward the best, that religious fanaticism and tribal intolerance could prevail over liberal meliorism, is the earthquake of our time."

 

That was a new word for me: meliorism, the belief that the world keeps getting healthier, wealthier and wiser.  It-just-keeps-getting-better-ism.  Unconsciously or not, most of us go through life harboring that general sensibility -- until something comes along to shake us up.

 

I think there were two events that shook up my father and his generation: the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 and then, nearly two decades later, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  In 1956, post-bomb and pre-JFK, were the Candide authors in terminal despair over the state of the world, or did they think a couple of corrections could set it back on its proper path?

 

I'm not sure of the answer, but I do know that my father struggled all his life with his own clashing emotions of optimism and pessimism.  He worked so hard to make the world a better place.  But was the world coming to its senses?  Was it in fact becoming a better place?  He wasn't sure, and we can hear him wrestling, as a composer, with the notions of faith, hope and despair in piece after piece.  But during his lifetime, he never stopped working toward the goals of brotherhood and world peace that he held so close to his heart.  And in spite of his gloom about the way things were going, he never quite gave up hope for a better world.  After all, artistic creation is in itself a most profound act of -- well, optimism.