Bernstein, Leonard

Bernstein, Leonard (1918–1990), composer, conductor, teacher, pianist.He was the first American‐born and ‐trained symphonic conductor to achieve peak international celebrity as an interpreter of the mainstream European repertoire. As a composer, he combined American popular influences (including Broadway and jazz) with European forms and genres. As an educator, he tutored a mass public and inspired legions of gifted young musicians. His mentors included the Boston Symphony's Serge Koussevitzky, who inculcated both a belief in America and a pedagogic bent.

Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Bernstein attended Harvard College and Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music. Becoming assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Symphony in 1943, at twenty‐five, he won notice that November by stepping in at the last moment for the ailing Bruno Walter. Bernstein's early compositions included the Serenade for Violin, Strings, and Harp (1954), perhaps his finest concert work, and such Broadway fare as On the Town (1944); Wonderful Town (1953); Candide (1956); and his crowning creative achievement, West Side Story (1957). In 1958 he became the first American music director of the New York Philharmonic. In this capacity, he enduringly championed the music of Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler (with whose polyglot synthesis or fragmentation he strongly identified). Building on an ingenious series of television “specials” beginning in 1954, he invigorated the Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts as a nationally televised medium for music education. Breaking with traditional “music appreciation,” he refused to sanctify famous music; rather, he dismantled it to see how it worked, or juxtaposed it with popular songs he adored. He campaigned for contemporary music and American music.

After leaving the New York Philharmonic in 1969, Bernstein increasingly based his career in Europe. With the Vienna Philharmonic, he consolidated his reputation as a performer of Beethoven, Brahms, and other European masters. His identification with American music faded; his boyish optimism, which he had retained into middle age, gave way to Old World gravitas and gloom. And yet he is bound to be remembered as a defining American cultural icon, signifying energy, enthusiasm, irreverence, versatility, and eclecticism.
See also Music: Classical Music; Music: Popular Music; Musical Theater.

Bibliography

Leonard Bernstein , The Joy of Music, 1959.
David Schiff , Re‐Hearing Bernstein, Atlantic, June 1993.
Humphrey Burton , Leonard Bernstein, 1994.
Joseph Horowitz , The Teachings of Leonard Bernstein, in The Post‐Classical Predicament, 1995.

Joseph Horowitz