The recently televised documentary "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note, An 'American Masters' Special," the release of a remastered original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story, an article in The New Yorker, and the eighth anniversary of his death set me thinking large about Leonard Bernstein. Here's an open letter. (In truth, I don't really have great expectations of receiving a reply.)
Dear Mr. Bernstein:
I grew up into a Leonard Bernstein world and was spoiled by it. At the time to call you ubiquitous would be practically understatement: appearances on television in programs and concerts, in your books, in the newspapers and magazines, your work and works on and for the stage and in the concert hall -- it was as if there could be no serious music without Lenny.
Underlying all your efforts was the passion to educate. Through your Young People's Concerts, Omibus programs, "LB and the New York Philharmonic," and other intentionally educational appearances, a cross-generational mass audience was taught how to be open and to listen, and was enlightened to possibilities about which they would not have dreamed but for your intercedance.
We were taught to be open about the attempts of contemporary writers to expand the borders of what was considered "listenable." We were invited to explore the works of forgotten masters, and rediscover the masterpieces of the heroes of music. We were tricked into blindly accepting the fugues, pan-tonality, compound metricality -- the undisguised, yet nonetheless palatable complexity of your writing for the commercial theatre!
You taught, cajoled, tricked, teased, invited. By whatever means you could find you got us to expect a continuing growth, onward and upward into a glorious and urbane musical future.
But you lied to us, Lenny. There was an implied promise that the music in our lives would continue to be enlightened and enriched by intelligence (I don't mean just "intellect"), that we could forever expect to be challenged by the concert world and the musical theatre. But it hasn't turned out that way. When not laboring at deliberate alienation, the "serious" music scene continues to fail in finding ways to appeal to the general public, while the musical theatre's obsequiousness to profit has led to pandering to the lowest common denominator. The new "corporate" theatre's quest for more bang for the buck squeezes out any sign of intelligent life. Other than an occasional radar blip from Stephen Sondheim, what happened to the world you promised, the one that makes room for and, yes!, celebrates shows by writers willing to challenge us, the likes of Ricky Ian Gordon, Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Leonard Bernstein? Instead, ninety percent of the time clueless producers, out of some confused sense of loftiness, foist what they believe to be erudite instead of merely obtuse on a public too naive to recognize the difference (and how could they if they're never given the opportunity?).
Or perhaps we failed you. If we had been more attentive could we perhaps have learned more, learned better? If we had been better students might we have grown to develop our own opinions instead of leaving the decision to a few self-appointed "authorities" and misguided critics (who fail to understand that the purpose of criticism is not to beat the object of its attention into the form and shape of some goal desired by the critic)? Did we fail you by not returning the faith, support, and encouragement you gave us? By not behaving, not listening in the way you taught us when you so rarely gave us the opportunity to experience your creative mind, to hear what up until that moment only you had heard? By not allowing you the opportunities to try and fail, and try again?
I know you were driven by your own demons. That you often made the mistake of being abstruse when imaginably heartfelt might have been better. But I can only imagine a world graced by what you might have done, might have written had we given back to the composer Leonard Bernstein half of what the conductor/historian/educator Leonard Bernstein gave to us.
Damn, I miss you.
Arthur Honeggar said, "Write music understandable to the great mass of listeners, and yet so free from banality that it could hold the interest of the true music-lover. ...One cannot, indeed, one must not make concessions to the big public, but neither should one leave it in the dark."
Want to feel better about it? Pick up a copy of Audra McDonald's recent CD, Way Back to Paradise. There's very little in the way of "stupid" music on it, and Time Magazine's Terry Teachout thinks it's a sign of better times to come, and USA Today's David Patrick Stearns thinks may be "the long-awaited future of Broadway."
Or better yet, buy some Bernstein.
You can read PBS'
description of the documentary, "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching
for the Note, An 'American Masters' Special," at
the PBS site. You can also read more about it, as well as
learn a whole heck of a lot more about the man, at LeonardBernstein.com.
The documentary is available for purchase at the PBS site and
through these link for DVD
or VHS
tape (which also has a thorough synopsis of the video).
The remastered original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story is available for purchase through this link.
Good luck finding anything of interest at The New Yorker's site; there's nothing to search for or read, but you can get a subscription. Perhaps that scrawny guy with the top hat and the stiff collar is in charge of their web efforts.
The entire Young People's Concert series may be purchased on VHS. It was also available in book form, edited by Jack Gottlieb (although it's out of print now).
C U @ the Theatre!
Originally published at Suite101.com Theatre, 1/26/99
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