Leonard Bernstein
(1918–1990)
Who Was
Leonard Bernstein?
A Brief Introduction
Leonard Bernstein was a dazzling all-round music-man: composer, conductor, pianist, educator. His creative output included both symphonies and Broadway musicals. He was internationally in demand as a conductor whose vitality on the podium was transmitted directly into orchestral sound. Through his televised Young People’s Concerts, he reached audiences around the globe and made music analysis fascinating.
A guest at the White House during John F. Kennedy’s presidency, he took seriously his role as a civic figure, national ambassador for the arts, and global humanitarian. He raised his voice against racism, made his presence felt in Israel, and, in the last year of his life, conducted performances in Berlin of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Early Years: The Ascent
Bernstein was born in 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to Jewish parents who had immigrated from the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). His father, a successful businessman, initially opposed his son’s musical studies, but relented in the face of his drive and supported him when he was a student at Harvard College (1935–39). Hugely talented, gregarious, and immediately likable, Bernstein made contact with musicians who were more important to him than his professors—notably Dmitri Mitropoulos (1896–1960), at the time principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony, and the composer Aaron Copland (1900–90). He went on to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (1939–41), and, in 1940, met another important mentor at the Berkshire Music Center (now Tanglewood) in Massachusetts: the conductor Serge Koussevitzky.
He then settled in New York City, where he supported himself through various musical jobs while working on his first published compositions, including his First Symphony (1942), subtitled “Jeremiah” and, in its finale, setting verses, from the Book of Lamentations, for mezzo-soprano. The work established the thoroughly American basis of his style in a lyricism that could move freely from Jewish chant to popular song, coupled with jazz dynamism. Copland was his musical godfather, with Igor Stravinsky and Gustav Mahler in the background.
Bernstein: Sonata for Clarinet and Piano
His breakthrough as a conductor came in November 1943 when, at short notice and without rehearsal, he substituted for the conductor Bruno Walter at a New York Philharmonic concert that was broadcast nationally. Afterwards, invitations came immediately from other orchestras, and he was able to present his symphony in Pittsburgh the following January. Later that year, in New York, came two more premieres: a ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins (Fancy Free) and a musical that came out of that score (On the Town, which, in 1949, became an MGM film with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra).
Middle Period: The Creative Peak and the Philharmonic Years
Bernstein found it difficult to keep going on two fronts simultaneously—composing and conducting. He became music director of the New York City Symphony (1945–47) and conducted for the first time in Europe and Israel. Five years passed between the three important premieres of 1944 and the next: his Second Symphony, subtitled “The Age of Anxiety” after the poem by W.H. Auden, similarly reflecting on how World War II had brought not peace, but unease. The premiere, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was conducted by Koussevitzky in Boston in April 1949, with Bernstein himself performing the important part for solo piano. Eight months later, also in Boston and with the BSO, Bernstein conducted the first performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie (1946–48).
In the 1950s, Bernstein took off as a composer. He wrote a one-act opera about a marriage on the rocks (Trouble in Tahiti, 1951), right at the time of his own marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre. (His bisexuality would remain an issue throughout his marriage.) This was followed by the musical Wonderful Town (1953), a score for the Marlon Brando movie On the Waterfront (1954), and Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)—a violin concerto from 1954 in five character studies, based on Plato’s Symposium.
Bernstein was soon working on two more Broadway shows: Candide (1956), which flopped but left behind a brilliant overture; and West Side Story (1957), which was a success from the start. Putting a social problem on stage—the conflict between young white New Yorkers and immigrants from Puerto Rico on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—the piece brought a challenging immediacy to musical comedy, yet has gained an enduring place in the repertory, with its edgy dance numbers, openhearted love songs, and Latin flare.
In 1957, Bernstein was also appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. During 12 remarkable years there, he familiarized his audience with the works of Mahler, Jean Sibelius, and Charles Ives, and presented new music by Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, and Luciano Berio, among others, especially championing American composers, such as Copland, William Schuman, and David Diamond. He also invited artists who he felt, despite his reservations, merited a hearing, artists such as John Cage and Glenn Gould (for a performance of Johannes Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, before which he calmly expressed his disagreement from the podium). Besides making a large number of recordings, he recognized the importance of television, which he used skillfully, and without condescension, in his Young People’s Concerts.
During this time, composition—once again—took a back seat. Bernstein’s one important work from his Philharmonic years was his Third Symphony (1963), subtitled “Kaddish” after the Jewish prayer. Scored for large vocal-orchestral forces and led by a narrator, this was another effort to address the age—the age of the Cold War and of disbelief—on the part of its most prominent US musician.
Later Years: The World Musician
Bernstein stepped down from the Philharmonic to devote himself to a work that would contend with the chaos of music and beliefs the US was starting to experience at the beginning of the 1970s; it would also be a major statement, fit for the opening, in 1971, of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers was designed as music theater, with a protagonist, the Celebrant, who loses control of the ceremony. Ranging from popular song to orchestral catastrophe, with elements of jazz, rock, and sacred music from diverse traditions, the work has stayed controversial for more than half a century.
The steadier works Bernstein wrote include Dybbuk (1974), the ballet score; Songfest (1977), a celebration of American song for six singers and orchestra; A Quiet Place (1983), an operatic sequel to Trouble in Tahiti; and Arias and Barcarolles (1988), a chamber piece for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and piano four hands.
Bernstein: Arias and Barcarolles for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone, and Piano, Four Hands
Once more, time for creative work had to be found in a schedule dominated by conducting engagements around the world. Continuing to perform with the New York Philharmonic (in 1969, he was named Laureate Conductor for Life) and the Israel Philharmonic, Bernstein also undertook major projects with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also maintained his association with Tanglewood, where his last concert took place, in August 1990—two months before his death, at his home in New York City.
Legacy
Bernstein’s huge legacy of recordings goes back to phonograph records and snippets of television broadcasts from the mid-1940s. During his time with the New York Philharmonic, he conducted repertory from J.S. Bach to Ligeti in the recording studio. Later he preferred to record in a performance space: the concert hall, church, or opera house. Several of his Young People’s Concerts remain available on video, along with documentaries he made subsequently—always to his own scripts.
What still keeps his name vibrantly alive as a composer is West Side Story, which was brought to a new generation by Steven Spielberg’s 2021 film.
Watching and Listening
Apart from his early Clarinet Sonata (1942), most of Bernstein’s chamber music consists of short pieces, including Three Meditations from MASS for cello and piano (1977) and Canon for Aaron for violin and piano (1970)—a 70th-birthday tribute to Copland. All these are in the Digital Archive, along with Arias and Barcarolles and two songs from West Side Story.
