"Life without music is unthinkable." Leonard Bernstein

The anniversary of the death of Leonard Bernstein on October 14 has me thinking about what made him great as a musician and a man.  I admire him as a teacher, composer, performer, conductor, and a man who tried to use music to bring people together.

Bernstein was one of Marin Alsop's mentors.  Here she talks about the first time she met him.



I must admit that I'm a bit jealous of Marin Alsop because she attended the live performances of Leonard Bernstein's Young Peoples Concerts even before she met him personally.  I loved watching those programs on TV when I was a kid.  Now I have a collection of 10 DVDs from that series, and I watch them over and over.  Recently I discovered that some of these videos have been posted on Youtube, and I enthusiastically recommend them to people of all ages.


Bernstein said that he loves words in addition to music, and most of his compositions include singing.  His well known "West Side Story" is a Romeo and Juliet type play/opera set in a slum in New York City.  Here is a beautiful duet sung by the star crossed lovers.





I saw the film as a teenager, and some of my friends saw it three or four times.  Even now, the song brings tears to my eyes.


Bernstein was an outstanding jazz pianist.  In this clip, he plays piano and conducts an orchestra simultaneously for a beautiful, lively performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."



I find this performance spellbinding.  I just can't walk away from it.


I first realized what a great conductor Bernstein was when I attended a concert in which he conducted Elgar's Enigma Variations, a piece that I didn't particularly like.  However, when Bernstein conducted it, I loved it.  That says a lot about him.  I love so many performances that Bernstein conducted that It's very hard to choose one to include here.  I decided to focus on his conducting the final movement of Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony for several reasons.  Bernstein was responsible for a comeback of Mahler's music, which had been neglected for years.  I had a long lived antipathy to Mahler's music, derived in part from my experience playing second violin in his Symphony #1 (a dismal part to play) and, more strongly, my perception that Mahler's music was just too big for me to relate to.  Once again, Bernstein made me love this music by conducting it and talking about it.  The following video clip shows him conducting and explaining the very end of Mahler's Ninth.





That was quite a journey  -- walking with a tortured man to his death.  I would be scared to take that walk by myself, but Bernstein helps me by showing me the surrender and peace at the end of life.


Bernstein conducted with his whole body and his whole being.  To watch him conduct is to see the music embodied.  He becomes the music he conducts.



It takes a special talent to laugh and make others laugh about one's personal, artistic predicament.  Bernstein once had a real predicament when he conducted a piano concerto in which the pianist was the notoriously eccentric Glenn Gould.  Bernstein preceded the performance with a disclaimer in which he spoke about his need to "submit to a soloist's totally new and incompatible concept."




Leonard Bernstein revealed himself and his thoughts on music vividly in his writing.  Here are some quotes from him that I particularly like.

"Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."

"Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep.  We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillnessevery human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel." 

"To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both."

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

I'll end as I began, with a clip of Marin Alsop talking about her mentor, Bernstein.  She speaks of his greatness as a musician and a human being.

Happy New Year in September

September is the start of a new year for Jewish people, teachers, and people associated with annual concert series.  That includes me.

August is a very slow month for me as a violin / fiddle teacher because most of my students are away.  Some of them, mostly beginners, will not come back to me for violin lessons because they lose their momentum during the summer.  I'm writing emails to them.  I believe that some of them will resume lessons when they know more about their school and after school schedules.  One of my new students is someone I taught several years ago, when she was six years old.  She had so much fun at her lessons that she didn't want to leave, but her parents could not get her to practice at home.  Now she is in middle school and is more motivated.  She has been placed in a violin class at school with kids who have been playing violin for two years.  Her mother decided that she needed private lessons, and she remembered that her daughter and I had a good relationship, so she called me.  That made me so happy.  She is my first "reclaimed student."  I have a few other new students, both adults and children, and beginning to learn to play the fiddle is exciting.  Violin shopping is fun, and I did that with one of my new adult students.  Some of my adult students have returned from summer vacations, and it's fun to be with them again.  I love teaching as a way of helping others to enjoy the experience of playing music, and I also love it because it enriches me.  I have learned so much about music and have become a better musician since I started teaching.  My students are of different ages, ethnicities, lifestyles, and cultural backgrounds, but music brings us all closer to each other.


Annual series of concerts begin in September.  I just got the tickets I ordered earlier.  Overall, the prices are up compared to last year.  Perhaps I splurged, but I feel good just thinking about the concerts I'll attend.  I'll hear two of the greatest violinists around:  Hilary Hahn and Joshua Bell.  I'll also hear two of my favorite pianists, Andras Schiff and Yevgeny Kissin, and the incomparable musician Yo-Yo Ma.  I've only begun to appreciate chamber music recently, so I bought a ticket to hear the Tokyo String Quartet.


I do volunteer work for the Institute of Musical Traditions, which puts on a great series of concerts of many kinds of folk music each year.  (See their Youtube channel for high quality clips of previous concerts.)  It's very hard to keep a series of good concerts like this afloat financially.  A lot of people work hard as volunteers because they love folk music and want to sustain live performances.  Some of them are extremely talented and knowledgeable about both electronics and music, and they work the sound system.  I help by doing PR work on the Internet, a good task for me because I don't have a car.  I don't attend every concert because I have a schedule conflict, but I go there as a volunteer any time I can.  I always feel welcome there.  The volunteers are a great group of people.  I bake something and bring it to sell during intermission.  I do a lot of grunt work, too, like helping to set up and tear down stuff for the concert. I attended the first concert I could this week, and it was fantastic.  The performers, the Claire Lynch Bluegrass Band, had an awesome fiddler.  I could tell by his posture the instant I saw him that he had been classically trained.  In one song, he played solo backing up the singer, and his classical training obviously helped him a great deal with that.  He had a wonderful vibrato.  After the concert and the cleaning up, someone gave me a ride home.  I left feeling really good.


Happy musical new year to everyone.