Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC

Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC PDF Author: Daniel Abraham
Publisher: Eastman Studies in Music
ISBN: 1580469736
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
Composer, conductor, activist, and icon of twentieth-century America, Leonard Bernstein (1918-90) had a rich association with Washington, DC. Although he never lived there, the U.S. capital was the site of some of the most important moments in his life and work, as he engaged with the nation's struggles and triumphs. By examining Bernstein through the lens of DC, this book offers new insights into his life and music from the 1940s through the 1980s, including his role in building DC's artistic landscape, his political-diplomatic aims, his works that received premieres and other early performances in DC, and his relationships with the nation's liberal and conservative political elites. The collection also contributes new perspectives on twentieth-century American history, government, and culture, helping to elucidate the political function of music in American democracy. The essays in Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC, all newly written by leading authorities, situate this important American cultural figure in the seat of United States government. The result is a fresh new angle on Leonard Bernstein, American politics, and American culture in the second half of the twentieth century. Daniel Abraham is Professor of Music at American University, Alicia Kopfstein-Penk is Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University, and Andrew H. Weaver is Professor of Musicology at The Catholic University of America.

Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC

Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC PDF Author: Daniel Abraham
Publisher: Eastman Studies in Music
ISBN: 1580469736
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book

Book Description
Composer, conductor, activist, and icon of twentieth-century America, Leonard Bernstein (1918-90) had a rich association with Washington, DC. Although he never lived there, the U.S. capital was the site of some of the most important moments in his life and work, as he engaged with the nation's struggles and triumphs. By examining Bernstein through the lens of DC, this book offers new insights into his life and music from the 1940s through the 1980s, including his role in building DC's artistic landscape, his political-diplomatic aims, his works that received premieres and other early performances in DC, and his relationships with the nation's liberal and conservative political elites. The collection also contributes new perspectives on twentieth-century American history, government, and culture, helping to elucidate the political function of music in American democracy. The essays in Leonard Bernstein and Washington, DC, all newly written by leading authorities, situate this important American cultural figure in the seat of United States government. The result is a fresh new angle on Leonard Bernstein, American politics, and American culture in the second half of the twentieth century. Daniel Abraham is Professor of Music at American University, Alicia Kopfstein-Penk is Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University, and Andrew H. Weaver is Professor of Musicology at The Catholic University of America.

The Joy of Music

The Joy of Music PDF Author:
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781574671049
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
(Amadeus). This classic work is perhaps Bernstein's finest collection of conversations on the meaning and wonder of music. This book is a must for all music fans who wish to experience music more fully and deeply through one of the most inspired, and inspiring, music intellects of our time. Employing the creative device of "Imaginary Conversations" in the first section of his book, Bernstein illuminates the importance of the symphony in America, the greatness of Beethoven, and the art of composing. The book also includes a photo section and a third section with the transcripts from his televised Omnibus music series, including "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony," "The World of Jazz," "Introduction to Modern Music," and "What Makes Opera Grand."

The Leonard Bernstein Letters

The Leonard Bernstein Letters PDF Author: Leonard Bernstein
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300186541
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 903

Get Book

Book Description
“With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein’s letters blow all biographies out of the water.”—The Economist (2013 Book of the Year) Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician—a brilliant conductor who attained international superstar status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life—musical and personal—and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities. Bernstein’s letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein’s musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor. “The correspondence from and to the remarkable conductor is full of pleasure and insights.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “Exhaustive, thrilling [and] indispensable.”—USA Today (starred review)

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein PDF Author: Meryle Secrest
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9780747531913
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 471

Get Book

Book Description
This biography covers Leonard Berstein's life from his childhood growing up in a Hassidic family in Massachusetts through to the start to his career and his success in both classical music and musical theatre. Bernstein the family man is also featured - the father to his three children and husband to Felicia Montealegre, and the generous mentor, the temperamental artist, the hypochondriac, the politician and the businessman.

Historical Dictionary of Leonard Bernstein

Historical Dictionary of Leonard Bernstein PDF Author: Paul R. Laird
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538113457
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book

Book Description
Historical Dictionary of Leonard Bernstein contains a chronology, an introduction, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries encompassing people whom he befriended or worked with, institutions, orchestras, performance venues, cities, compositional methods, and compositions.

Leonard Bernstein in Context

Leonard Bernstein in Context PDF Author: Elizabeth A. Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108875912
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Get Book

Book Description
Designed for students, aficionados of classical music, and historians, this volume offers a wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary and comprehensive view of one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century at his 100th anniversary. Scholars from diverse backgrounds and fields have contributed rich insights into Bernstein's life and work in an approachable style, shedding light on Bernstein's social, professional and ideological contexts including his contemporaries and rivals on Broadway, his artistic collaborations, his celebrity status as a conductor on the international concert circuit, and his involvement in music education via broadcasting. From his early education, through his conducting and composing careers, to his fame as musical and cultural ambassador to the world, this book views Bernstein the man and the artist and provides a fascinating overview of American classical music culture during Bernstein's long career in the public spotlight.

Famous Father Girl

Famous Father Girl PDF Author: Jamie Bernstein
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062641379
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book

Book Description
The oldest daughter of revered composer Leonard Bernstein offers a rare look at her father on the centenary of his birth—illuminating a man, a city, and an era that defined modern culture—in a deeply intimate and broadly evocative memoir reminiscent of Alexandra Styron’s Reading My Father and Richard Ford’s Between Them. The composer of On the Town and West Side Story, chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, television star, humanitarian, friend of the powerful and influential, and inveterate partygoer Leonard Bernstein was a massive celebrity during one of the headiest periods of American cultural life, and perhaps the most talented musician in American history. To his eldest daughter, Jamie, he was all that and more; he was the man in the scratchy brown bathrobe that smelled of cigarettes, who sat late at night at the piano when he couldn’t sleep (he could never sleep). An incredible jokester, an incessant teacher, he taught her to love the world in all its beauty and complexity. In public and private, Lenny was larger than life. In Famous Father Girl, Bernstein mines the emotional depths of her childhood and invites us into her family’s private world. A fantastic set of characters populate the Bernsteins’ lives, including: the Kennedys, Mike Nichols, John Lennon, Richard Avedon, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and Betty (Lauren) Bacall. An intoxicating tale, Famous Father Girl is an intimate meditation on a deeply complex and sometimes troubled man and the beautiful music that was the soundtrack to his life. Deeply moving and often hilarious, Bernstein’s beautifully written memoir is great American story about one of the greatest Americans of the modern age.

Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story

Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story PDF Author: Nigel Simeone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351560387
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
One of the Broadway musicals that can genuinely claim to have transformed the genre, West Side Story has been featured in many books on Broadway, but it has yet to be the focus of a scholarly monograph. Nigel Simeone begins by exploring the long process of creating West Side Story, including a discussion of Bernstein's sketches, early drafts of the score and script, as well as cut songs. The core of the book is a commentary on the music itself. West Side Story is one of the very few Broadway musicals for which there is a complete published orchestral score, as well as two different editions of the piano-vocal score. The survival of the original copied orchestral score, and the reminiscences of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, reveal details of the orchestration process, and the extent to which Bernstein was involved in this. Simeone's commentary considers: musical characteristics and compositional techniques used to mirror the drama (for example, the various uses of the tritone), motivic development, the use and reinvention of Broadway and other conventions, the creation of dramatic continuity in the score through the use of motifs and other devices, the unusual degree of dissonance and rhythmic complexity (at least for the time), and the integration of Latin-American dance forms (Mambo, Huapango and so on). Simeone also considers the reception of West Side Story in the contemporary press. The stir the show caused included the response that it was the angular, edgy score that made it a remarkable achievement. Not all reviews were uncritical. Finally, the book looks in detail at the making of the original Broadway cast recording, made in just one day, included on the accompanying downloadable resources.

Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler

Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler PDF Author: Matthew Mugmon
Publisher: Eastman Studies in Music
ISBN: 1580469647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book

Book Description
Reveals how Aaron Copland's complex relationship with the music of Gustav Mahler shaped his vision for American music in the twentieth century.

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein PDF Author: Meryle Secrest
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780679737575
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book

Book Description
The most insightful and engrossing work we have had from the widely admired biographer of Frank Lloyd Wright ("Captivating ... The reader comes away with an understanding of Wright as a man as well as an architect" -- Washington Post Book World ... "Spellbinding" -- Boston Globe), of Bernard Berenson ("Authoritative and fascinating" -- Philip Toynbee, The Observer ... "A memorable opus" -- Sir Harold Acton), and of Kenneth Clark ("Splendid, enthralling" -- Wall Street Journal). Here is Leonard Bernstein, full scale and fully alive -- the child prodigy, the man, the composer, the teacher, the hugely charismatic personality, the lover, the American folk hero. Everything is here: the child growing up in a Hasidic family in Massachusetts, his father a rabbi's son; his first piano at age nine ("I remember touching it ... It was my contact with life, with God"); his reluctant, brilliant, argumentative years at Harvard; the rocky but exhilarating start of his career (scant jobs, no money, but friendships with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Judy Holliday, Comden and Green, et al.); his spectacular debut (understudy into a star!) as substitute conductor at the New York Philharmonic; the great career over the years as a composer in classical music (the Kaddish Symphony, Chichester Psalms, Songfest), and in musical theater (On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story, Mass, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue). We see Bernstein: the good father to his three children, the man who adored his wife, Felicia Montealegre, the man who adored men, the brilliant and generous mentor, the temperamental artist, the hypochondriac, the politician, the businessman, the Pied Piper ... His life, hismusic, the great international cultural world in which he traveled, are richly and vividly portrayed in this magnificent biography, alive with music -- and with life. "From the Hardcover edition.