Day Seven and Eight

Today is musical theater day with emphasis placed on the music, influence, and significance of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein's music is understood better by an understanding of his worldview and his genius. As a first-class pianist, conductor, author, speaker, and composer, Leonard Bernstein's complete brilliance including originality, creativity, and personal charisma found an audience that reached an entire world. While his legacy may be the Overture to Candide, which happens to be the most played orchestral work in the world, and the music from West Side Story, it is in the areas of music theater, symphonies, choral music, and chamber music that he excelled.

But the music cannot be understood without addressing Bernstein's worldview and the philosophy that led to his eclecticism. His commitment to writing music that could relate to all age groups, religions, cultures, and nationalities gave him a type of universal religion not far from a variation of pantheism. This unusual collectivism gave his music a blend of sophistication mixed with popular culture. Musicians embracing music primarily for entertainment often find Bernstein's music to be overly-complicated, academic, and unusual. Cultivated musicians, conversely, often believe Bernstein's music is geared for a wide audience and therefore leans on the simplistic side and is given to cultural idioms of the time period.

Ironically, in a way, these criticisms are justified particularly when one studies only pockets of Bernstein's output. Yet taken as a whole, Bernstein's music is extraordinary in its complexity, beauty, energy, and creativity. It is perhaps his Mass, written for the opening of the Kennedy Center, that demonstrates his eclectic spirit as well as his controversial originality. We listened to several part of this engaging work, and I pointed out the usage of mixed meter, rock inflections, jazz idioms, and the religious qualities of the work. I encourage you to acquire a recording and listen to it; yet I also must qualify that it contains some inappropriate language. The work is guaranteed to make someone upset! But it also contains beautiful and shimmering music that exemplifies his style and his philosophy.

We listened to Chichester Psalms, part of Symphony No. 2, and a few measures of Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs. These selections demonstrate mastery of harmony, counterpoint, melody, and orchestra. They further show Bernstein's eclectic incorporation of jazz idioms, religious worldview, and dramatic emotional content. We concluded our Bernstein discussion with a brief look at West Side Story and his love of music theater.

The next few minutes we discussed Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, Frederick Lowe, Andrew Loyd Webber, and Cole Porter. Obviously many others contributed to American music theater, which may be a form of opera, and Broadway continues to be a vital part of American culture today. We spent a few minutes discussing the role of harmony in music theater with the reminder that songs containing rich harmony tend to "rise" to the top as music and withstand the test of time for excellence.

What do you think? Did Leonard Bernstein achieve the "bridging" of the gap between academic elites and popular masses? Is this a good thing? What other composers have attempted to do similar things?

We now jump backwards to the Renaissance for a couple of days of discussion of polyphony and development. It promises to be fun for all!