Burton Bernstein - Leonard Bernstein: American Original

BY BARBARA B. HAWS

a nother book on Leonard Bernstein?

Arent there enough already? After all, Lenny was the most photographed, televised, documented, scrutinized, analyzed, criticized, and finally lionized and celebrated artist of the second half of the twentieth century. What more could there be to say?

Ninety years have passed since Bernstein was born, nearly twenty years since he died, and fifty years since he was appointed Music Director of Americas oldest symphony orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. Time and cultural distance provide the opportunity to explore not only the unseen connections within Bernsteins own life and work, but between him and the time and place in which he lived.

The intent of the book is not simply to provide another telling of the Bernstein story but to place him in a particular context and to explore the synergies that arose between the person and that context. And to reinforce or contrast that outsiders view, Burton, Lennys brother, provides the personal, firsthand accounts. For the most part, the context here is New York City between 1943 and 1976 and to a certain and crucial degree the groundbreaking social movements and political actions in the world at large during that time.

The year 1943 marks Bernsteins well-known conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic, a concert that was heard live, coast-to-coast, which put him on the front page of The New York Times. Although the concert was a truly impressive career start, no one would have predicted that fifteen years later a forty-year-old American would be appointed Music Director of the New York Philharmonic which up to that time had been held by Europeans, most of a fairly advanced age.

Just another New Yorker Leonard Bernstein on Seventh Avenue outside Carnegie Hall, 1956.

Being the New Yorker. On location for a photo shoot on a Manhattan roof with the Empire State Building as a backdrop.

At around this time, Bernstein burst onto the Broadway scene with a spectacularly successful show, On the Town. Thus began a long association with that unique American institution, the musical, and with a group of collaborators that included writers Betty Comden and Adolph Greene and choreographer Jerome Robbins; that eventually led to his teaming up with others that included Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents and West Side Story in 1957.

In 1943, one could begin to see the end of World War II and discern the political, economic, and military factors that would make the United States a world power and New York City the cultural Capital of the Worldthe center of wealth, entertainment, television, recording, art, baseballthe most exciting place where anyone could hope to live, the place everyone outside looked to. I would argue that it was due to New York as the cultural capital that Bernstein became a household name even to people who only dreamed of visiting the city, who never set foot in a concert hall or went to a production on the Great White Way.

The end point of our story, 1976, marks the nadir of the city; its breathtaking fall from gracea time of white flight, subways filled with graffiti and muggers, beautiful parks fallen into decrepitude, tourists too afraid to visit, politicians booed just for being politicians, and the elimination of arts education in the public schools. As a practical matter New York City went bankrupt, because Wall Street stopped financing the citys deficits. The Daily News captured Washingtons antipathy for the citys crisis in its now-famous 1975 headline, Ford to City: Drop Dead. Reflecting not only the citys malaise but the nations, under Nixon and Agnew, Bernstein wrote his last politically relevant musical theater piece, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which quickly succumbed under its own weight and the critics brutal objections. Finally in 1976, as the United States celebrated its 200th birthday, Bernstein took his Philharmonic on tour to Europe for the last time, also in celebration of his countrys Bicentennial, with music exclusively by American composers.

The coming together of Bernstein and New York City, with the Philharmonic serving as his primary vehicle of expression, gave rise to extraordinary public scrutiny. And even though he invited the scrutiny and most of the time seemed to relish it, New York was the place that rendered his smallest utterances newsworthy, his grandest gestures second-guessed, and all of his activities, larger than life.

We invited nine writers to take on specific topics. None of them had particularly close or personal relationships with Bernstein, which provided the distance that isuseful in hindsight analysis.

Finding his way backstage at the Herodus Atticus amphitheater, Athens, Greece, 1959.

The chapters take us from the general to the specific and back to the general, revealing intriguing connections through varied interpretations of the same events and activities. These different viewpoints create a rich and provocative picture of the man and his time.

What was it like to live in the city during Bernsteins time? Remarkably, no comprehensive history of New York City for these years exists. So we view the transforming metropolis through something of an Everyman history. To paraphrase the well-known tagline of a 1950s television show, There are eight million stories in the Naked City and this is one of them. Our Everyman is music critic Alan Rich, who provides his own personal account of arriving, finding that place to live, getting that dream job, recounting favorite eateries, encountering the famous, living through history-making events, and becoming one of the citys stories. Of course,

Making friends. Russian maids at Bernsteins Moscow hotel wish him a Happy Birthday.

Rich is more than an Everyman. He rose to be chief music critic of the Herald Tribune and later a writer for the early issues of New York magazine, which became a significant antagonist in the Bernstein Story. But his experience does have a universal quality, since few who arrive in New York are exempt from the extreme challenges or exhilarating pleasures posed by becoming one with the city.

If there was a single universal idea that informed all of Bernsteins work and actions, it was his hope and vision that the world could be a better place. This made him a lightning rod for a diversity of opinions: that he was nave and out of touch; that he was a threatening figure on the radical fringe; that, with his prominence, he could have done much more to right social wrongs. The American historian Paul Boyer weaves together a remarkable account of Bernsteins lifelong social and political involvements, overlaying them on the broader cultural movements of the time: growing up in Roosevelts America; barely escaping the red scares and McCarthy witch hunts; attempting to enlarge the opportunities of race and gender through the Philharmonic; participating tirelessly in the anti-Vietnam War movement; and becoming disillusioned with the Presidential administrations and the Military