{"id":1100,"date":"2018-08-12T20:08:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T00:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2018-08-12T20:08:41","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T00:08:41","slug":"bernstein-the-educator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2018\/08\/bernstein-the-educator.html","title":{"rendered":"Bernstein the Educator"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Museums curate the past. They help us to shape and populate our impressions of history.<\/p>\n

Orchestras do not curate the past. A typical symphonic program (alas) begins with the selection of a soloist. The resulting programs are eclectic: a potpourri.<\/p>\n

During his historic music directorship of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein was the rare conductor for whom curating the past was an urgent priority. During his first season \u2013 1957-58 \u2013 he undertook a survey of American music \u201cfrom its earliest generations to the present.\u201d The resulting programs, sans soloists, started with George Chadwick, Arthur Foote, and Edward MacDowell.<\/p>\n

Ever the educator, he turned all that into his second Young People\u2019s Concert: \u201cWhat Makes Music America?\u201d (Feb. 1, 1958).\u00a0 It\u2019s an essential Bernstein document. You can revisit it on youtube here.<\/a><\/p>\n

For the Brevard Music Festival\u2019s Bernstein Centenary festival-within-a festival this summer, it was my pleasure to create a young people\u2019s concert about Bernstein\u2019s Feb. 1, 1958, young people\u2019s concert. The musicians were gifted high school students (comprising one of four Brevard orchestras). The conductor and host (also gifted) was Kenneth Lam. I created the script. Peter Bogdanoff created a visual track. You can see and hear what it looked and sounded like here<\/a>. To sample the gist of it, start at 20:31, where we ask what made Bernstein’s young people’s concerts utterly different from all those that had gone before (the Philharmonic had been doing them since 1924) and answer: “personal need.”<\/p>\n

The music for our \u201cBernstein The Educator\u201d concert derived from the works sampled by Bernstein on \u201cWhat Makes Music American?\u201d \u2013 pieces by Chadwick, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copland. In Bernstein\u2019s exegesis, they charted an evolutionary ladder from \u201ckindergarten\u201d to \u201ccollege\u201d and beyond. We added a fifth composer who Bernstein memorably championed \u2013 but who doesn\u2019t fit the ladder: Charles Ives.<\/p>\n

Hearing the finale of Ives\u2019s Second Symphony (composed long before World War I) alongside An American in Paris<\/em>, the finale to Harris\u2019s Third, and \u201cNight on the Prairie\u201d from Copland\u2019s Billy the Kid<\/em> was a terrific experience. I am sure I am far from the only listener who found Ives fresher and more original than the Harris or the Copland. And yet in its day, Roy Harris\u2019s Third\u00a0 (premiered by Serge Koussevitzky\u2019s Boston Symphony in 1939 \u2013 a dozen years before Bernstein discovered the Ives Second) was widely considered the foremost contender for \u201cGreat American Symphony.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for An American in Paris<\/em> \u2013 though Gershwin was once widely perceived as a gifted dilettante, this irresistible tone poem sounds to me exceptionally well put together. As in Rhapsody in Blue<\/em> and the second movement of his Concerto in F, Gershwin reserves his Big Tune (the languorous song for solo trumpet) for late in the game. And how cunningly he uses it \u2013 varying its mood and velocity — to drive his piece to a climax. I would call Harris\u2019s fugal finale clumsy by comparison.<\/p>\n

My script ended:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we to make of Bernstein\u2019s \u2018evolutionary ladder\u2019 today \u2013 more than half a century later? This question is not so simple to answer. The main challenger to Bernstein\u2019s 1958 narrative is Charles Edward Ives, born in Connecticut in 1874. Many would today call Ives the greatest American symphonist. And yet \u2013 and this is a problem — Ives\u2019s symphonies did not become well known until long after he composed them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, Charles Ives\u2019s most important advocate among conductors was . . . Leonard Bernstein, who in 1951 introduced the world to a Great American Symphony: Ives\u2019s Symphony No. 2, completed in . . . 1909.<\/em> Packed with fiddle tunes and hymns, Stephen Foster songs and Civil War marches, Ives\u2019s symphony is a grand American tapestry containing not a single original melody. It\u2019s an act of visionary genius that Serge Koussevitzky didn\u2019t know existed during those interwar decades when he predicted \u2018the next Beethoven\u2019 would show up in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Koussevitzky, Copland, and countless others, Leonard Bernstein believed that the 1920s and thirties constituted a new dawn for American music \u2013 a brave New World without real ancestors. This conviction, and the narrative behind it, was a catalyst. Never mind whether Chadwick was actually a \u2018kindergarten\u2019 composer. Never mind that Ives came first. The storied new beginning was energizing, invigorating. It empowered Bernstein to compose, to advocate \u2013 and to educate a new generation of American concertgoers.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what happens next? We still mainly hear European works in American concert halls. Audiences are aging and dwindling. And when in 1992 Bernstein\u2019s Young People\u2019s Concerts were offered to American public television, nothing happened. There was far stronger interest in revisiting these historic shows in Germany and Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a cultural challenge that must matter to all of us. It requires the kind of creative response to a pressing need that once impelled Leonard Bernstein to re-invent the New York Philharmonic.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was invited to spend five days with Brevard\u2019s young musicians exploring these questions. Ten of them took part in a vigorous post-concert discussion lasting the better part of an hour. I felt we had managed to concoct a learning exercise worthy of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s high example.<\/p>\n

Next summer Brevard will present a Copland festival. I\u2019m working with Jason Posnock, Brevard\u2019s far-sighted artistic administrator, to implement another such young people\u2019s concert — in which the musicians themselves will serve as hosts and commentators. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Museums curate the past. They help us to shape and populate our impressions of history. Orchestras do not curate the past. A typical symphonic program (alas) begins with the selection of a soloist. The resulting programs are eclectic: a potpourri. During his historic music directorship of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein was the rare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-hK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}