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Leonard Bernstein 1918 - 1990

Leonard Bernstein of New York, New York County, NY was born on August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts USA, and died at age 72 years old on October 14, 1990 in New York, NY. Leonard Bernstein was buried in October 1990 at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Leonard Bernstein

Louis Borenstein

New York, New York County, NY 10019

August 25, 1918

Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA

October 14, 1990

New York, New York, USA

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Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)

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Leonard Bernstein's History: 1918 - 1990

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Introduction

The future Renaissance man of American music was born in Lawrence, Mass., on Aug. 25, 1918, the son of Samuel and Jennie Resnick Bernstein. His father, a beauty-supplies jobber who had come to the United States from Russia as a boy, wanted Leonard to take over the business when he grew up. For many years the father resisted his son's intention to be a musician. The stories of how he discovered music became encrusted with legend over the years, but all sources agree he was a prodigy. Mr. Bernstein's own version was that when he was 10 years old his Aunt Clara, who was in the middle of divorce proceedings, sent her upright piano to the Bernstein home to be stored. The child looked at it, hit the keys and cried: ''Ma, I want lessons!'' Until he was 16, by his own testimony, he had never heard a live symphony orchestra, a late start for any musician, let alone a future musical director of the Philharmonic. Virgil Thomson, while music critic of The New York Herald Tribune in the 1940's, commented on this: ''Whether Bernstein will become in time a traditional conductor or a highly personal one is not easy to prophesy. He is a consecrated character, and his culture is considerable. It might just come about, though, that, having to learn the classic repertory the hard way, which is to say after 15, he would throw his cultural beginnings away and build toward success on a sheer talent for animation and personal projection. I must say he worries us all a little bit.'' These themes - the concern over Mr. Bernstein's ''talent for animation'' and over his penchant for ''personal projection'' - were to haunt the musician through much of his career. Economy of Motion Not His Virtue As for ''animation,'' that theme tended to dominate much of the criticism of Mr. Bernstein as a conductor, particularly in his youthful days. Although he studied conducting in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, whose precise but tiny beat was a trademark of his work, Mr. Bernstein's own exuberant podium style seemed modeled more on that of Serge Koussevitzky, the Boston Symphony's music director. The neophyte maestro churned his arms about in accordance with some inner message, largely ignoring the clear semaphoric techniques described in textbooks. Often, in moments of excitement, he would leave the podium entirely, rising like a rocket, arms flung aloft in indication of triumphal climax. So animated, in fact, was Mr. Bernstein's conducting style at this point in his career that it could cause problems. At his first rehearsal for a guest appearance with the St. Louis Symphony, his initial downbeat so startled the musicians that they simply looked in amazement and made no sound. Like another prodigally gifted American artist, George Gershwin, Mr. Bernstein divided his affections between the ''serious'' European tradition of concert music and the ''popular'' American brand. Like Gershwin, he was at home in jazz, boogie-woogie and the cliches of Tin Pan Alley, but he far outstripped his predecessor in general musical culture. In many aspects of his life and career, Mr. Bernstein was an embracer of diversity. The son of Jewish immigrants, he retained a lifelong respect for Hebrew and Jewish culture. His ''Jeremiah'' and ''Kaddish'' symphonies and several other works were founded on the Old Testament. But he also acquired a deep respect for Roman Catholicism, which was reflected in his ''Mass,'' the 1971 work he wrote for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. A similar catholicity was reflected throughout his music. His choral compositions include not only songs in Hebrew but also ''Harvard Songs: Dedication and Lonely Men of Harvard.'' He was graduated in 1939 from Harvard, where he had studied composition with Walter Piston and Edward Burlingame Hill. A sense of his origins, however, remained strong. Koussevitzky proclaimed him a genius and probable future musical director of the Boston Symphony - ''The boy is a new Koussevitzky, a reincarnation!'' - but the older conductor urged Mr. Bernstein to improve his chances for success by changing his name. The young musician replied: ''I'll do it as Bernstein or not at all!'' He pronounced the name in the German way, as BERN-stine, and could no more abide the pronunciation BERN-steen than he could enjoy being called ''Lenny'' by casual acquaintances. In addition to his children, who all live in New York City, and his mother, of Brookline, Mass., Mr. Bernstein is survived by a sister, Shirley Bernstein of New York City, and a brother, Burton, of Bridgewater, Conn. Mr. Bernstein and his wife began a ''trial separation'' after 25 years of marriage. They continued, however, to appear together in concerts, one such occasion being a program in tribute to Alice Tully at Alice Tully Hall, where Mr. Bernstein conducted Sir William Walton's ''Facade'' with his wife as one of the two narrators. Mrs. Bernstein died in 1978 after a long illness. During Mr. Bernstein's Philharmonic decade, the orchestra engaged its first black member, the violinist Sanford Allen. But Broadway had changed by the time Mr. Bernstein's final theatrical score reached the Mark Hellinger Theater in March 1976. The long-awaited work that he and Alan Jay Lerner had composed, ''1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,'' closed after seven performances.
08/25

1918

Birthday

August 25, 1918

Birthdate

Lawrence, Massachusetts USA

Birthplace

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Early Life & Education

Harvard played an important part in Mr. Bernstein's rise, providing a pinch of Brahminism. The boy whose bar mitzvah was at Temple Mishkan Tefila had gone on to the elite Boston Latin School, and graduated cum laude from Harvard with a B.A. During his last semester at Harvard, he organized and led a performance of Marc Blitzstein's ''Cradle Will Rock,'' a left-wing musical that had been banned in Massachusetts, but that could not be proscribed within the academic walls. It was not his first fling as a producer. At age 16 he had starred in his own production of ''Carmen'' at a summer camp, playing the title role alluringly in wig and black gown. It was as a result of another schoolboy production, at Camp Onota in the Berkshires, that he met Adolph Green, with whom he later collaborated in several Broadway musicals. Mr. Bernstein was a camp counselor and theater director and Mr. Green was in ''The Pirates of Penzance.''At that point, Mr. Bernstein ''didn't know a baton from a tree trunk,'' as he later put it. Nevertheless, he had made up his mind. Because he had applied at the wrong time of the year and was turned down by the Juilliard School, he went to Philadelphia to audition for Reiner's conducting class at the Curtis Institute. The Hungarian maestro opened a score in the middle, put it on the piano and told Mr. Bernstein to play until he could recognize the piece. At Curtis, he studied conducting with Reiner and piano with Isabella Vengerova. His earlier piano teachers included a neighbor, Freida Karp, Helen Coates and Heinrich Gebhard. In 1940 he went to Tanglewood, where he studied at the Berkshire Music Center with Koussevitzky, who quickly adopted Mr. Bernstein and called him Lenyushka. In later years, Mr. Bernstein prided himself on having retained the respect and friendship of both Koussevitzky and Reiner, who held virtually opposing ideas about what a conductor should do and how he should do it. But the story as the famously irascible Reiner told it to acquaintances was different: ''He didn't leave me for Koussevitzky - I threw him out.''
Professional Career

Composer-Conductor While he was music director of the Philharmonic from 1959 to 1969, some friends and critics urged him to quit and compose theater music full time. Many regarded him as potentially the savior of the American musical, to which he contributed scores for ''On the Town,'' ''Wonderful Town,'' ''Candide'' and ''West Side Story.'' Determining His Focus At the same time, others were deploring his continued activity in such fields, contending that to be a successful leader of a major orchestra he would have to focus on conducting. Still other observers of the Bernstein phenomenon wished he would concentrate on the ballet, for which he had shown an affinity (''Fancy Free,'' ''Facsimile''), or on opera and operetta (''Trouble in Tahiti,'' ''Candide''). Or on musical education. His television programs on such subjects as conducting, symphonic music and jazz fascinated millions when he appeared on ''Omnibus,'' the cultural series, and later as star of the Philharmonic's televised Young People's Concerts. And still others, a loyal few, counseled Mr. Bernstein to throw it all over and compose more serious symphonic scores. His gifts along this line were apparent in such works as his Symphony No. 1 (''Jeremiah'') of 1942, Symphony No. 2 (''The Age of Anxiety'') of 1949 and Symphony No. 3 (''Kaddish'') of 1963. He played the piano well enough to have made a separate career as a virtuoso. He was a facile poet. He wrote several books, including the popular ''The Joy of Music'' (1959). He was a teacher of rare communicative talent, as television audiences discovered.
10/14

1990

Death

October 14, 1990

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

New York, New York USA
Death location

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10/dd

1990

Gravesite & Burial

October 1990

Funeral date
Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York U.S.A.
Burial location
Obituary

October 15, 1990 OBITUARY Leonard Bernstein, 72, Music's Monarch, Dies By DONAL HENAHAN Leonard Bernstein, one of the most prodigally talented and successful musicians in American history, died yesterday evening at his apartment at the Dakota on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 72 years old. Mr. Bernstein's spokeswoman, Margaret Carson, said he died of a heart attack caused by progressive lung failure. His death followed by five days the announcement that Mr. Bernstein would retire from performing because of health problems. A heavy smoker for most of his life, he had been suffering from emphysema, pulmonary infections and a pleural tumor. In recent months, Mr. Bernstein had cancelled concerts in Japan and in Charleston, S.C., and a tour of Europe. He conducted his final performance at Tanglewood on Aug. 19, when he led the Boston Symphony in Britten's ''Four Sea Interludes'' and the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. 'Fated for Success' Long before Mr. Bernstein became, at the age of 40, the youngest music director ever engaged by the New York Philharmonic, the drama critic Harold Clurman sized up the flamboyant musician's future: ''Lenny is hopelessly fated for success.'' It was Mr. Bernstein's fate to be far more than routinely successful, however. His fast-burning energies, his bewildering versatility and his profuse gifts for both music and theater coalesced to make him a high-profile figure in a dozen fields, among them symphonic music, Broadway musicals, the ballet, films and television. Still, his hydra-headed success did not please all his critics. But Mr. Bernstein resolutely resisted pressure to restrict his activities. During his decade as the Philharmonic's musical director, he grew steadily as an interpreter and as a technician. His performances of Mahler's symphonies were almost universally conceded to be of the highest quality, and his recordings for Columbia Records of the complete set not only constituted the first such integral collection but also continue to be regarded as among the most idiomatic Mahler performances available. His obsession with that composer, in fact, has been credited with generating the Mahler boom in America. His conducting of works by Classical composers like Mozart and Haydn, often derided in his earlier days, attracted more and more praise as his career unfolded and he could relax a little. ''There is nothing Lenny can't do supremely well,'' an acquaintance remarked several years ago, ''if he doesn't try too hard.'' In a sense, he was in lifelong flight from Lenny Bernstein, from being treated as the raffish ''ordinary guy'' that the nickname seemed to suggest. Although some elder members of the New York Philharmonic never stopped calling him Lenny, Mr. Bernstein lived down the nickname, and in his late years heard himself addressed almost reverentially as ''Maestro'' in the world's music capitals. The man who had been patronized in print for many years as ''Glamourpuss'' or ''Wunderkind of the Western World'' became a favorite of Vienna both as conductor and as accompanist for such lieder specialists as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Christa Ludwig. Fame brought the usual honorary degrees, and honors far beyond the usual. He not only conducted at La Scala in Milan, at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Staatsoper in Vienna, but he was also invited by Harvard in 1973 to lecture, as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of History, on linguistics as applied to musical analysis. The distinction had previously been conferred on Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith. Typically, Mr. Bernstein's Harvard performance was greeted with a mingling of critical raves and boos. An Unlikely Start For a Conductor Subsequently, when Mr. Bernstein was out of a job in New York City, he looked up Mr. Green, moved in with him in his East Ninth Street apartment in Greenwich Village, and began playing the piano at the Village Vanguard for a group called the Revuers. The ensemble included, besides Mr. Green, his musical comedy collaborator Betty Comden and the actress Judy Holliday. Mr. Bernstein met Aaron Copland at Harvard in 1937, and through him came to know two other aspiring composers, Roy Harris and William Schuman. Admiring his intuitive grasp of modern music and his phenomenal skill at playing complex orchestral scores on the piano, the composers agreed that Mr. Bernstein should become a conductor. Dimitri Mitropoulos, the New York Philharmonic's music director, met Mr. Bernstein in 1938 and added to the consensus. The aspiring conductor, who was having difficulty seeing the music because he was suffering from an allergic reaction to Copland's cat, nevertheless discerned that the work was the ''Academic Festival'' Overture of Brahms. He was accepted. In truth, not all of Mr. Bernstein's associations with elder colleagues were warm and collegial. In John Gruen's biographical ''The Private World of Leonard Bernstein,'' published in 1968, Mr. Bernstein asserted that Artur Rodzinski had once pinned him against the wall of a dressing room, trying to choke him because of jealousy over the young assistant's flair for publicity. But according to Mr. Bernstein, Rodzinski had by this time become somewhat peculiar: he always carried a gun in his back pocket, for instance, for psychological support when he faced the orchestra. In 1953 Mr. Bernstein became the first American-born conductor to be engaged by La Scala in Milan, Italy's foremost opera house, leading a performance of Cherubini's ''Medea'' with Maria Callas in the title role. During the six-year tenure of Mitropoulos as music director of the Philharmonic, beginning in the 1951-52 season, Mr. Bernstein was a frequent guest conductor. In 1957-58, the two worked jointly as principal conductors of the orchestra. A year later, Mr. Bernstein was named music director. The New York appointment would have been a severe test of any conductor. The orchestra's quality had gone downhill, its repertory had stagnated and audiences had fallen off. Orchestra morale was low and still sinking. Mr. Bernstein leaped in with his customary brio and showmanship and his willingness to try new ideas. Throughout his Philharmonic years, he kept his ties with Broadway and the show-business friends he had made before he became an internationally adulated maestro. He had already written music for the musical version of ''Peter Pan'' (1950) and ''The Lark,'' a play starring Julie Harris (1955). For Hollywood, he wrote the score to ''On the Waterfront'' (1954). Musical successes on the stage followed: ''On the Town'' (1944), ''Wonderful Town'' (1953), ''Candide'' (1956) and ''West Side Story'' (1957). Several of the stage works continue to thrive: in 1985 Mr. Bernstein conducted a quasi-operatic version of ''West Side Story'' (the cast included Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras) that pleased him immensely and introduced the work to a new generation of listeners. Then there were the ballets ''Fancy Free'' (1944) and ''Facsimile'' (1946); the song cycles ''I Hate Music'' and ''La Bonne Cuisine''; the ''Jeremiah'' and ''Age of Anxiety'' symphonies; the one-act opera ''Trouble in Tahiti''; Serenade for violin and string orchestra with percussion; the Symphony No. 3 (''Kaddish''), and the ''Chichester Psalms.'' Laurel wreaths continued to shower on him in his last decades. Elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1982, he was awarded the Academy's Gold Medal three years later. The city of Milan, home of La Scala, also gave him its Gold Medal. Mr. Bernstein's private life, long the subject of rumors in the musical world, became an open book in 1987 when his homosexuality was brought to wide public attention by Joan Peyser's ''Bernstein: A Biography.'' Late in his extraordinarily restless and fruitful life, Mr. Bernstein defended his early decision to spread himself over as many fields of endeavor as he could master. ''I don't want to spend my life, as Toscanini did, studying and restudying the same 50 pieces of music,'' he wrote in The Times. ''It would,'' he continued, ''bore me to death. I want to conduct. I want to play the piano. I want to write for Hollywood. I want to write symphonic music. I want to keep on trying to be, in the full sense of that wonderful word, a musician. I also want to teach. I want to write books and poetry. And I think I can still do justice to them all.''

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