Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards as well as an Academy Award nomination. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981.
As a composer, Bernstein wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music, and pieces for the piano. Bernstein's works include the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two feature films, as well as three symphonies, Serenade and Chichester Psalms, the original score for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, and theater works including On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, and his Mass.
Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a legacy of audio and video recordings. Bernstein was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most interested. A skilled pianist, Bernstein often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He shared and explored classical music on television with a mass audience in national and international broadcasts, including Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic.
Bernstein worked in support of civil rights; protested against the Vietnam War; advocated nuclear disarmament; raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness; championed Janis Ian at age 15 and her song about interracial love, "Society's Child", on his CBS television show; and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. He conducted Mahler's Resurrection Symphony to mark the death of president John F. Kennedy, and in Israel at a concert, Hatikvah on Mt. Scopus, after the Six-Day War. The sequence of events was recorded for a documentary entitled Journey to Jerusalem. Bernstein was a member of the executive committee for Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group. On Christmas Day, 1989, Bernstein conducted a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Less than a year later, in October 1990, he died of a heart attack in New York, aged 72.
Early life and education
1918–1935: Early life and family
Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to Jewish parents of Russian/ Ukrainian heritage, Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, both immigrants to the United States from Rivne, Russian Empire. His grandmother insisted that his first name officially be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. He legally changed his name to Leonard when he was 16. To his friends and many others, he was simply known as "Lenny."His mother had moved in with her parents, in Lawrence, toward the end of her pregnancy with Leonard, her first child. Since he was sickly as an infant, he stayed there until he was strong enough for him and his mother to join his father in Boston. There, the boy attended the William Lloyd Garrison School and then the Boston Latin School, where he and classmate Lawrence F. Ebb wrote the class song. When Leonard was 15, the family moved to nearby Newton, Massachusetts.
Samuel became a wealthy man as the owner of the Samuel J. Bernstein Hair Company, which, in the 1920s and 1930s, held the exclusive distribution rights for the Frederick's Permanent Wave Machine.
In Leonard's early years, his main exposure to music was on Friday nights at Congregation Mishkan Tefila, in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. When Bernstein was 10 years old, his Aunt Clara, Samuel's sister, deposited her upright piano at their house. Young Bernstein asked for lessons and subsequently studied with a variety of piano teachers, including Helen Coates, who would later become his secretary. In the summers, the Bernstein family would retreat to their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts, where Leonard conscripted all the neighborhood children to put on shows, ranging from Bizet's Carmen to Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. He and his two younger siblings, Shirley and Burton, remained close their entire lives.
Samuel initially opposed Leonard's interest in music and attempted to discourage it by refusing to pay for his son's piano lessons. So, Leonard took to giving lessons to young people in his neighborhood. One of his students, Sid Ramin, would become a beloved lifelong friend and Bernstein's orchestrator for West Side Story.
Eventually, Samuel came around, taking his son to orchestral concerts in his teenage years and ultimately supporting his music studies, as well. In May 1932, Leonard attended his first orchestral concert with the Boston Pops, conducted by Arthur Fiedler. There, Bernstein first heard Ravel's Boléro, which impressed him greatly.
On March 30, 1932, Bernstein played Brahms's Rhapsody in G minor at his first public piano performance in Susan Williams's studio recital at the New England Conservatory of Music. Two years later, he made his debut as a soloist with an orchestra, playing Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the Boston Public School Orchestra.
Among his strong musical influences was George Gershwin. When news came of Gershwin's death, in July 1937, Bernstein, then a music counselor at a summer camp, interrupted lunch in the mess hall and played Gershwin's second Prelude as a memorial.
1935–1941: College years
Harvard UniversityIn 1935, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard College, where he studied music with, among others, composers Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston. Bernstein's first extant composition, Psalm 148, for voice and piano, is dated 1935. He majored in music with a senior thesis entitled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music". One of Bernstein's intellectual influences at Harvard was aesthetics professor David Prall, and one of his friends at the school was future philosopher Donald Davidson. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for Davidson's production of the Aristophanes play The Birds, performed in the original Greek. Bernstein recycled some of this music in future works. While a student, Bernstein composed for the Harvard Glee Club and was briefly its president while also serving as the unpaid pianist for Harvard Film Society's silent film presentations.
Bernstein mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the premiere. Blitzstein, who attended the performance, subsequently became a close friend and mentor to Bernstein. As a sophomore at Harvard, Bernstein met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, who was an influence on Bernstein's eventual decision to become a conductor. Mitropoulos invited Bernstein to come to Minneapolis for the 1940–41 season to be his assistant, but the plan fell through because of union issues. In 1937, Bernstein sat next to Aaron Copland at a dance recital at Town Hall in New York City. Copland invited Bernstein to his birthday party afterwards, where Bernstein impressed the guests by playing Copland's challenging Piano Variations. Although he was never a formal student of Copland's, Bernstein regularly sought his advice, often citing him as "the closest thing to a composition teacher ever had." Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude.
Curtis Institute of Music
After graduating from Harvard, Bernstein enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner; piano with Isabelle Vengerova; orchestration with Randall Thompson; counterpoint with Richard Stöhr; and score reading with Renée Longy-Miquelle. In 1940, Bernstein attended the inaugural year of the Berkshire Music Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home. Bernstein studied conducting with the BSO's music director, Serge Koussevitzky, who became a profound lifelong inspiration to Bernstein. He became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant at Tanglewood and later dedicated his Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety to Koussevitzky. One of Bernstein's classmates, both at Curtis and at Tanglewood, was Lukas Foss, who remained a lifelong friend and colleague. Bernstein returned to Tanglewood nearly every summer for the rest of his life to teach and conduct the young music students. Bernstein received a diploma in conducting from Curtis in 1941.
Career
1940s: Rise to prominence
Soon after he left Curtis, Bernstein moved to New York City where he lived in various apartments in Manhattan. Bernstein supported himself by coaching singers, teaching piano, and playing the piano for dance classes in Carnegie Hall. He found work with Harms-Witmark, transcribing jazz and pop music and publishing his work under the pseudonym "Lenny Amber".Bernstein briefly shared an apartment in Greenwich Village with his friend Adolph Green. Green was then part of a satirical music troupe called The Revuers, featuring Betty Comden and Judy Holliday. With Bernstein sometimes providing piano accompaniment, The Revuers often performed at the legendary jazz club the Village Vanguard. On April 21, 1942, Bernstein performed the premiere of his first published work, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston.