Bernstein Music Quotes

Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.

Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared to the real thing. There is a fearlessness about him. Watching him at Wembley Stadium with 70,000 people, he looks as comfortable as if he were in his own living room.

Bernstein observed that the composer was “born in the spring and died in the spring. In a sense, he lived his whole life in a springtime of creativity. All his music is springlike, newly budding, rooted in the familiar past, yet fresh and sharp, with that stinging, paradoxical combination of the inevitable and the unexpected.

1962 performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1 by Glenn Gould with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.

Being in union with the energy of the Universe is like an awesome dance where you trust your partner so much that you just surrender to the beat of the music.

We arrived and we thought, 'This is our time. This is our generation. We have a responsibility.' " @garyjkemp of Spandau Ballet in "Mad World: An Oral History of the New Wave Artists and Songs That Defined the 1980s

things were created by God and for God, no exceptions. Every note of music. Every color on the palette. Every flavor that tingles the taste buds. Arnold Summerfield, the German physicist and pianist, observed that a single hydrogen atom, which emits one hundred frequencies, is more musical than a grand piano, which only emits eighty-eight frequencies. Every single atom is a unique expression of God’s creative genius. And that means every atom is a unique expression of worship. According to composer Leonard Bernstein, the best translation of Genesis 1:3 and several other verses in Genesis 1 is not “and God said.” He believed a better translation is “and God sang.” The Almighty sang every atom into existence, and every atom echoes that original melody sung in three-part harmony by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Did you know that the electron shell of the carbon atom produces the same harmonic scale as the Gregorian chant? Or that whale songs can travel thousands of miles underwater? Or that meadowlarks have a range of three hundred notes? But the songs we can hear audibly are only one instrument in the symphony orchestra called creation. Research in the field of bioacoustics has revealed that we are surrounded by millions of ultrasonic songs. Supersensitive sound instruments have discovered that even earthworms make faint staccato sounds! Lewis Thomas put it this way: “If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants [singing] of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani [drumming] of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges [flies] hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.” Someday the sound will lift us off our feet. Glorified eardrums will reveal millions of songs previously inaudible to the human ear.

As for my unrestrained podium comportment: to this I will answer that that the one and only purpose my gestures serve is a musical one. I do not consciously set out to perform histrionics on the podium. If I did, it would immediately show up in the music. Phony gestures produce phony sounds. For myself, I approach what I play not from a conductor’s point of view, but from a composer’s point of view. When I conduct the 'Eroica', as I recently have with the (New York) Philharmonic, I feel as though I’m actually writing the piece.

...music has intrinsic meanings of its own, which are not to be confused with specific feelings or moods, and certainly not with pictorial impressions or stories. These intrinsic musical meanings are generated by a constant stream of metaphors, all of which are forms of poetic transformations.

Robert Kapilow is a born teacher, an enthusiast who can think on his feet, a 110 percent believer in the project at hand ... It’s a cheering thought that this kind of missionary enterprise did not pass from this earth with Leonard Bernstein. Robert Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him.

Miért kevésbé közvetlen Bach zenéje, mint – mondjuk – Brahmsé vagy Csajkovszkijé? Talán a fő ok az, hogy zenéje nem nyilvánvalóan drámai. Olyannyira elkényeztettek bennünket a Bach után írt zeneművekkel, melyek alapvetően drámai természetűek, hogy már drámát várunk mindenfajta zenétől, és csalódunk és unatkozunk, ha ezt nélkülöznünk kell.

Aaron Copland, whom Bernstein had met when he was in his junior year at Harvard and who would become a lifelong friend and mentor, wrote him encouraging letters. “Don’t expect miracles,” Copland advised the young man, “and don’t get depressed if nothing happens for a while. That’s NY.” But on August 25, 1943, his twenty-fifth birthday, Bernstein got his first professional break when Artur Rodzinski, then the music director of the New York Philharmonic, chose him to become his conducting assistant. “I have gone through all the conductors I know of in my mind,” Rodzinski explained to his new assistant, “and I finally asked God whom I should take, and God said, ‘Take Bernstein.

While the universality of the creative process has been noticed, it has not been noticed universally. Not enough people recognize the preverbal, pre-mathematical elements of the creative process. Not enough recognize the cross-disciplinary nature of intuitive tools for thinking. Such a myopic view of cognition is shared not only by philosophers and psychologists but, in consequence, by educators, too. Just look at how the curriculum, at every educational level from kindergarten to graduate school, is divided into disciplines defined by products rather than processes. From the outset, students are given separate classes in literature, in mathematics, in science, in history, in music, in art, as if each of these disciplines were distinct and exclusive. Despite the current lip service paid to “integrating the curriculum,” truly interdisciplinary courses are rare, and transdisciplinary curricula that span the breadth of human knowledge are almost unknown. Moreover, at the level of creative process, where it really counts, the intuitive tools for thinking that tie one discipline to another are entirely ignored. Mathematicians are supposed to think only “in mathematics,” writers only “in words,” musicians only “in notes,” and so forth. Our schools and universities insist on cooking with only half the necessary ingredients. By half-understanding the nature of thinking, teachers only half-understand how to teach, and students only half-understand how to learn.

Úgy érzem, meg kell védenem a dzsesszt azokkal szemben, akik alacsonyrendűnek tartják. Ami azt illeti, minden zene „alacsony" származású, mivel a népzenéből is sarjad, ez pedig szükségszerűen mindig földszagú. Végül is Haydn menüettjei csupán egyszerű rusztikus német népi táncok kifinomult változatai, akárcsak a beethoveni scherzók. Egy Verdi-operaária is igen gyakran visszavezethető a legegyszerűbb nápolyi halászokhoz. Emellett a zene s különösen a zenészek körül mindig ott lebegett a lenézés bizonyos árnyéka.

Tudjuk, a világ zenei központja Wagnerról és az általa képviselt egész túlvirágzott német romantikus mozgalomról áttolódott Párizsba. Egy kis csoport volt kialakulóban Erik Satie úttörő személyisége körül, aki úgy reagált a fenti mozgalomra, hogy egyszerűen elutasította az effajta „nagyságot". Ő csak a legegyszerűbb kicsiny zeneműveket írta, kis dallamot kis kísérettel, mint amilyen például a ma is játszott és kedvelt, higgadt Gymnopédie (…) Milyen frissen hangozhatott ez a zene 1888-ban, a súlyos német háttérrel összevetve! Satie így őrizte meg a tonalitást. A századforduló táján Satie erős hatással volt Debussyre, Ravelra, Milhaud-ra és más nagy francia zeneszerzőkre, akik tőle tanulták meg ezt az új egyszerűséget és objektivitást.

Az Eroica szimfóniáról több szót hordtak össze, mint amennyi hangjegyből áll; és úgy hiszem, ha valaki ennek pontosan utánaszámolna, elképesztő eredményre jutna. És mégis, vajon sikerült-e bárkinek is „megmagyarázni" az Eroicát? Egyáltalán visszaadható-e merő prózában az a csoda, ahogy a hangok követik egymást vagy együtt hangzanak, olyan érzést keltve, hogy mindez így és csakis így lehetséges? Természetesen nem. Bármennyire is racionalistának valljuk magunkat, e rejtélyes terület határán megtorpanunk. Egyáltalában nem túlzunk, amikor rejtélyességet vagy varázst emlegetünk: egyetlen művészetrajongó sem lehet „agnosztikus", amikor döntésre kerül a sor. Aki szereti a zenét, annak, bárhogyan csűrjük-csavarjuk is, bizonyos értelemben hívőnek – művészethívőnek – kell lennie.

We are now face to face with the truly Ultimate Ambiguity which is the human spirit. This is the most fascinating ambiguity of all: that as each of us grows up, the mark of our maturity is that we accept our mortality; and yet we persist in our search for immortality. We may believe it's all transient, even that it's all over; yet we believe a future. We believe. We emerge from a cinema after three hours of the most abject degeneracy in a film such as ''La Dolce Vita,'' and we emerge on wings, from the sheer creativity of it; we can fly on, to a future. And the same is true after witnessing the hopelessness of ''Godot'' in the theater, or after the aggressive violence of ''The Rite of Spring'' in the concert hall. Or even after listening to the bittersweet young cynicism of an album called ''Revolver,'' we have wings to fly on.

(…) Vagy fél évszada a publikum már nem tekint örömteli várakozással valamely szimfonikus mű vagy opera bemutatása elé. Ha ez a kijelentés túl erősnek látszik, lőjenek vissza, és emlékeztessenek a ragyogó kivételekre, mint amilyen a Porgy és Bess (vajon show-dallamokból születhet-e opera?); Sosztakovics 7. szimfóniája (a háborús lelkesedést szinte a hisztériáig szította a rádióállomások vetélkedője); a Mahagonny (e helyi, szinte politikai jelenség)… Folytathatnánk, ám e művek kivételek, és az elragadtatás oka többnyire nem zenei eredetű. Megmarad az a visszataszító tény, hogy a zeneszerzőt és közönségét valóságos óceán választja el egymástól, és így van ez mintegy fél évszázad óta. Tudnak-e a reneszánsz óta eltelt bármely ötvenéves időszakról, amikor hasonló helyzet állt volna elő? Én nem. És ha ez igaz, drámai minőségi változást jelez zenei társadalmunkban, nevezetesen azt, hogy először élünk olyan zenei életet, amely nem alapszik a kortárs zenén. Ez tisztára XX. századi jelenség, korábban sohasem volt így.

Murakami: Had you been listening to Mahler before Bernstein got you started? Ozawa: No, not at all. […] It was a huge shock for me – until then I never even knew music like that existed. I mean, here at Tanglewood, playing Tchaikovsky and Debussy, and meanwhile there’s this guy putting all his energy into studying Mahler. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I had to order my own copies right then and there. After that, I started reading Mahler like crazy – the First, the Second, the Fifth. Murakami: Did you enjoy just reading the scores? Ozawa: Oh, tremendously. I mean, it was the first time in my life I had ever seen anything like them. To think there were scores like this! Murakami: Was it a completely different world from the music you had been playing until then? Ozawa: First of all, I was amazed that there was someone who knew how to use an orchestra so well. It was extreme – his marvelous ability to put every component of the orchestra to use. And from the orchestra’s point of view, the Mahler symphonies are the most challenging pieces ever.

Fanatikus zenerajongó vagyok. Életem egyetlen napja sem múlhat el a zene hallgatása, játszása, tanulmányozása vagy a róla való gondolkodás nélkül. És mindezt nem hivatásos muzsikusként teszem. Rajongó vagyok, a zenekedvelők táborának egyik elkötelezett tagja. És ebben a szerepben (ami, feltételezem, nem sokban különbözik a tisztelt Olvasóétól), az egyszerű zenekedvelő szerepében, önként, bár boldogtalanul, be kell vallanom, hogy e pillanatban, vagyis amikor ezt írom, isten bocsássa meg, de sokkal több örömöm telik Simon és Garfunkel zenei kalandjaiban vagy a The Association által előadott Along Comes Maryben, mint az avantgarde zeneszerzők ma készülő műveinek legtöbbjében… Lehetséges, hogy egy év múlva, vagy esetleg már akkor, amikor ezek a szavak nyomtatásban megjelennek, nem állítom ugyanezt, de ebben a pillanatban, 1966. június 21-én, így érzem. A popzene tetszik az egyetlen területnek, ahol rendületlen maradt az életerő, az invenció öröme, a friss levegő érzeté. Minden más – az elektronikus zene, szerializmus, aleatorikus zene – hirtelen elavultnak látszik, belőlük máris az akadémizmus dohos szaga árad. Úgy tetszik, még a dzsessz is sajnálatosan megrekedt. A tonális zene is bizonytalan állapotban van, téli álmát alussza.

(…) Dalok, táncok, szvitek, partiták, szonáták, tokkáták, prelúdiumok, fúgák, kantáták, oratóriumok, misék, passiók, fantáziák, versenyművek, korálok, variációk, motetták, passacagliák – ötven év szakadatlan munkálkodásának fehéren izzó termékei. És mi az, ami mindezt összetartja, ami vitathatatlanul egyetlen ember alkotásává teszi? A vallásos szellem. Bach számára minden zene vallás, a komponálás a hit megnyilvánulása, a zene előadása pedig egyfajta istentisztelet volt. Minden hangjegyét egyedül Istennek ajánlotta. És ez mindegyik művére áll, legyen az egyébként bármilyen világi célzatú is. A zenekarra írt hat Brandenburgi versenyt formailag a brandenburgi őrgrófnak dedikálta, de a hangokkal istenét dicsőíti és nem az őrgrófot. Bármelyik csellószvitben vagy hegedűszonátában, a Wohltemperiertes Klavier valamennyi prelúdiumában és fúgájában istenét dicsőíti. A Bach-életmű gerince: az egyszerű hit. Máskülönben oly sok egyidejű tevékenység közepette és határidőkre hogy hozta volna napfényre, hogyan rendezte volna el mindezt a fenséges anyagot? Orgonált, kórust vezetett, iskolában tanított, gyermekei hadát nevelte, részt vett hivatalos találkozókon, szemmel tartotta a jövedelmezőbb állásokat. Bach végül is ember volt, és nem isten, de istenének embere, és jámborsága elejétől végéig áthatja zenéjét.

Every once in a while during the preparation of these lectures, I find myself asking — and others asking me — what's the relevance of all this musico-linguistics? Can it lead us to an answer of Charles Ives' Unanswered Question — whither music? — and even if it eventually can, does it matter? The world totters, governments crumble, and we are poring over musical phonology, and now syntax. Isn't it a flagrant case of elitism? Well, in a way it is; certainly not elitism of class — economic, social, or ethnic — but of curiosity, that special, inquiring quality of the intelligence. And it was ever thus. But these days, the search for meaning-through-beauty and vice versa becomes even more important as each day mediocrity and art-mongering increasingly uglify our lives; and the day when this search for John Keats' truth-beauty ideal becomes irrelevant, then we can all shut up and go back to our caves. Meanwhile, to use that unfortunate word again, it is thoroughly relevant; and I as a musician feel that there has to be a way of speaking about music with intelligent but nonprofessional music lovers who don't know a stretto from a diminished fifth; and the best way I have found so far is by setting up a working analogy with language, since language is something everyone shares and uses and knows about.

It's evident that with Beethoven the Romantic Revolution had already begun, bringing with it the new Artist, the artist as Priest and Prophet. This new creator had a new self-image: he felt himself possessed of divine rights, of almost Napoleonic powers and liberties — especially the liberty to break rules and make new ones, to invent new forms and concepts, all in the name of greater expressivity. His mission was to lead the way to a new aesthetic world, confident that history would follow his inspirational leadership. And so there exploded onto the scene Byron, Jean Paul, Delacroix, Victor Hugo, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz — all proclaiming new freedoms. Where music was concerned, the new freedoms affected formal structures, harmonic procedures, instrumental color, melody, rhythm — all of these were part of a new expanding universe, at the center of which lay the artist's personal passions. From the purely phonological point of view, the most striking of these freedoms was the new chromaticism, now employing a vastly enriched palette, and bringing with it the concomitant enrichment of ambiguity. The air was now filled with volcanic, chromatic sparks. More and more the upper partials of the harmonic series were taking on an independence of their own, playing hide-and-seek with their sober diatonic elders, like defiant youngsters in the heyday of revolt.

Azt halljuk, hogy a művészet elkerülhetetlenül művészetkommentálássá vált; félünk attól, hogy a technika elnyeli azt, ami egykoron tartalomként volt ismeretes. Minderről azt mondják, siralmas dolog, gyenge látvány, szomorú állapot. És mégis, nézzük csak meg, hány a fentiekhez hasonló módon fogant művészi alkotás virágzik, talál lelkes követésre, és indít meg mélyen bennünket. Kell valami jónak is lennie mind e negatívumokban. És van is. Ezek a művek állandóan a jelentőségteljesség mind költőibb területei felé tartanak. Legyünk konkrétabbak: a Godot-ra várva rendkívül megindító és részvétteli antidráma. Az ürességgel és cifrasággal foglalkozó Az édes élet furcsa módon éltető, sőt ösztönző film. Nabokov antiregénye, a Sápadt tűz (Pale Fire) szenzációs mestermű, hőse, Charles Kinbote valódi antihős. Balanchine legabsztraktabb, legelvontabb balettjai bombasikerek. De Konoing képei csodálatosan dekoratívak, szuggesztívek, serkentőek és rendkívül drágák. Ez valóban igen hosszú lista lehet, ám egyvalamit nem foglalhatnék bele – valamely komoly antizene-darabot. A zene nem boldogulhat mint anti-művészet, mivel gyökerében és radikálisan absztrakt, míg a többi művészet mind alapvetően a valóság képével foglalkozik – szavakkal, formákkal, történetekkel, az emberi testtel. És amikor egy kiváló művész a valóság képét absztrahálja, vagy másik, látszatra nem odaillő képpel kapcsolja össze, vagy illogikus módon vegyíti – ez a költői formába öntés. Ebben az értelemben Joyce poétikusabb, mint Zola, Balanchine, mint Petipa, Nakobov, mint Tolsztoj, Fellini, mint Griffith. De John Cage nem költőibb Mahlernál, s Boulez sem Debussynél.

Felötlött bennem: elképzelhető, hogy valamikor, egy távoli napon a zene végül a tonalitástól elkülönítetten is létezhet. Nem tudok magam elé idézni ilyen zenét, de el akarom ismerni ennek a lehetőségét. Csak éppen ezt a távoli napot alapvető változásoknak kell megelőzniük fizikai törvényeinkben, esetleg az embernek a földgolyótól való elszakadásával. Mindez már elkezdődött az űrkutatással, az Új Öntudat, az Omega pont felé vezető hosszú úttal. Talán egyszer megszabadulunk az idő zsarnokságától, a zene harmonikus sorainak diktatúrájától. De addig valószínűleg még mindig földhöz kötöttek, földhöz ragadtak maradunk, messze az Omega ponttól, belesüppedve az olyan régimódi dolgokba, mint amilyenek az emberi kapcsolatok, ideológiai, nemzetközi és fajok közötti viszályok. Még a legvadabb képzelettel sem tudunk elszabadulni égitestünktől, a világegyetemmel foglalkozó tudósaink vágyálmai ellenére sem. Hogyan beszélhetünk az Omega pontról, amíg olyan kicsinyes „játékot" űzünk, mint amilyen Vietnam Nem, még mindig földi lények vagyunk, még mindig szükségünk van az emberi melegségre és az egymás közti kommunikációra, hála a Magasságos Égnek! És mindaddig, amíg kinyújthatjuk egymás felé a kezünket, gyógyírként fog hatni ránk a tonalitás. Nem lehet puszta véletlen, hogy fél évszázad radikális kísérletei után a legjobb és legkedveltebb atonális vagy tizenkét hangú, vagy szeriális stílusú művek azok, amelyek minden furcsaságuk ellenére megőriztek valamit a tonális háttérből; azok a művek, melyek tonális jellege a legerősebb. Gondolok itt kapásból Schönberg 3. vonósnégyesére, Hegedűversenyére, két Kamaraszimfóniájára, Berg csaknem mindegyik kompozíciójára, Sztravinszkij Agonjára vagy a Threnire, sőt Webern Szimfóniájára, vagy második Kantátájára – mindezekben a darabokban a tonalitás állandó és magabiztos szelleme kísérti a hallgatót. Minél többször hallgatjuk, annál jobban kísért. És a kísértésben megérezzük a tonalitás utáni gyötrő vágyat, az attól való, erőszakos elszakadást és a visszaszerzése iránti vak igyekezetet. És vissza is fogjuk szerezni. Éppen az átmeneti időszakunk, válságunk értelme. De új viszonyban kerülünk hozzá vissza: haláltusánk katarzisa által megújultan. A válságból, ha szerencsések vagyunk, új és szabadabb – talán személyesebb vagy esetleg kevésbé személyes: ki tudná megmondani? – fogalmakkal szabadulunk, mindenesetre a tonalitás új eszményével. És a zene mindent túlél, fennmarad.

Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself. And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.

When did it happen? When did a form mocked as insipid, bland ‘family entertainment’ come to be associated with homosexuality? There are no statistics for these things, but, on the basis of my own unscientific research, I would say that, of the longest-running shows of the 1940s, some two-thirds had a homosexual contribution in the writing/staging/ producing department. By the 1960s, the proportion of long-runners with a major homosexual contribution was up to about 90 per cent. Certainly, it’s hard to take issue with Leonard Bernstein, who once told a friend: ‘To be a successful composer of musicals, you either have to be Jewish or gay. And I’m both.

Music can dampen pain. Consequently, it is, therefore, already used therapeutically in medicine in a wide variety of areas. It is particularly useful in psychiatry and pain therapy. However, it can also be a valuable aid in the rehabilitation of stroke patients and geriatrics, because making music can be like a fountain of youth for the brain because it creates new nerve connections.

If I cannot see evidence of incarnation in a painting of a bridge in the rain by Hokusai, a book by Chaim Potok or Isaac Bashevis Singer, music by Bloch or Bernstein, then I will miss its significance in an Annunciation by Franciabigio, the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, the words of a sermon by John Donne.

Music was simply a way to teach them how to understand how to learn, and the key was kan, a difficult-to-translate Japanese term meaning something akin to a combination of empathizing and kinesthetic thinking—becoming one with the music and the instrument producing it. A well-known westernized and modernized version of this philosophy can be found in Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a guide to understanding not just people but things through an empathic approach.

Recent studies have found that the best predictor of career success in any field is not IQ, grades, or standardized test scores but participation in one or more mentally intensive leisuretime activities or hobbies—anything from painting, composing music, or writing poetry to programming computers, creating videos, or playing around with scientific ideas or mathematics. This is true for professionals of all kinds; it is true for business entrepreneurs and CEOs; it is true for artists, academics, and entertainers.

In the three decades after World War II, we saw a movement to elevate culture for the masses. The middlebrow consensus, we could say, tracked with the upheaval of the modern movement in art, architecture, literature, and music. It meant publication of paperbacks of classic novels, the Great Books push, Leonard Bernstein on television, Thelonious Monk on the cover of Time, an expanding English major in colleges and universities, and so on. These days, it all seems like ancient history. Do we have a new, fruitful way to think about culture that goes beyond midcentury middlebrow? 2. If, as children, people don’t learn to love fiction, music of a

Pontius Pilate’s soldiers cast lots for Christ’s robe as He suffered on the cross. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was regularly accompanied by his personal croupier. The Earl of Sandwich invented the snack that bears his name so that he could avoid leaving the gaming table in order to eat. George Washington hosted games in his tent during the American Revolution.4 Gambling is synonymous with the Wild West. And “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” is one of the most memorable numbers in Guys and Dolls, a musical about a compulsive gambler and his floating crap game.

Bernstein poured his unfulfilled ambition into stupefying powerful performances of the Mahler symphonies, freighting them with the themes that he should or would have addressed in his own music if only he had the time or the energy or whatever it was that he ultimately lacked: “It is only after fifty, sixty, seventy years of world holocausts, of the simultaneous advance of democracy with our increasing inability to stop making war, of the simultaneous magnification of national pieties with the intensification of our active resistance to social equality—only after we have experienced all this through the smoking ovens of Auschwitz, the frantically bombed jungles of Vietnam, through Hungary, Suez, the Bay of Pigs, the farce-trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, the refueling of the Nazi machine, the murder in Dallas, the arrogance of South Africa, the Hiss-Chambers travesty, the Trotskyite purges, Black Power, Red Guards, the Arab encirclement of Israel, the plague of McCarthyism, the Tweedledum armaments race—only after all this can we finally listen to Mahler's music and understand that it foretold all. And that in the foretelling it showered a rain of beauty on this world that has not been equaled since.” Bernstein's enthusiasm for Mahler was infectious, but his claims were exaggerated. In twentieth-century music, through all the darkness, guilt, misery, and oblivion, the rain of beauty never ended.

Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace

He’d asked one of his employees, an Ecuadoran named José Maria, to go to town and buy him an iPod and load it up with a playlist he’d entitled “Ranch Music.” It consisted largely of film scores. Cuts from Ennio Morricone like “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” the theme from A Fistful of Dollars, “L’Estasi Dell’oro (The Ecstasy of Gold),” and “La Resa dei Conti (For a Few Dollars More),” Elmer Bernstein’s theme from The Magnificent Seven, “The Journey,” and “Calvera’s Return,” and Jerome Moross’ theme from The Big Country. Big, wonderful, rousing, swelling, sweeping, triumphalist music from another era. It was music that simply wasn’t made anymore. The pieces were about tough (but fair) men under big skies on horseback, their women waiting for them at home, and bad guys—usually Mexicans—to be vanquished. In

she also thought it would be helpful to send Bernstein a copy of a book of conversations I had done with the pianist Glenn Gould, who, it turned out, was one of Bernstein’s musical heroes, as well as a close and adored friend. It was a long wait, but at last, in September of 1989, Maggie telephoned to give me the good news that I had passed Harry Kraut’s audition, that Bernstein had read my book, and that he had not only agreed to give me an interview but had also suggested that we do so over dinner at his country home in Connecticut on November 20.

Cuts from Ennio Morricone like “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” “Theme from A Fistful of Dollars,” “L’estasi dell’oro (The Ecstasy of Gold),” “La resa dei conti (For a Few Dollars More)”; Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magnificent Seven Theme,” “The Journey,” and “Calvera’s Return”; and Jerome Moross’s “Theme from The Big Country.” Big, wonderful, rousing, swelling, sweeping, triumphalist music from another era. It was music that simply wasn’t made anymore. The pieces were about tough (but fair) men under big skies on horseback, their women waiting for them at home, and bad guys—usually Mexicans—to be vanquished.

Most important, in late 1980, Yip joined Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Sheldon Harnick at a news conference announcing the creation of a new musical theater program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, a program that has gained international renown.