Bernstein, Leonard, 1918-1990

Leonard Bernstein (/ˈbɜːrnstaɪn/ BURN-styne;[1] August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Among the most important conductors of his time, he was also the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history".[2] Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards,[3] two Tony Awards,[4] sixteen Grammy Awards,[5] including the Lifetime Achievement, and the Kennedy Center Honor.[6]

As a composer he wrote in many styles, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical West Side Story, which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (1961 and 2021) feature films. His works include three symphonies, Chichester Psalms, Serenade after Plato's "Symposium", the original score for the film On the Waterfront, and theater works including On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide, and his MASS.

Bernstein was the first American-born conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra.[7] He was music director of the New York Philharmonic and conducted the world's major orchestras, generating a significant legacy of audio and video recordings.[8] He was also a critical figure in the modern revival of the music of Gustav Mahler, in whose music he was most passionately interested.[9] A skilled pianist,[10] he often conducted piano concertos from the keyboard. He was the first conductor to share and explore music on television with a mass audience. Through dozens of national and international broadcasts, including the Emmy Award–winning Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, he made even the most rigorous elements of classical music an adventure in which everyone could join. Through his educational efforts, including several books and the creation of two major international music festivals, he influenced several generations of young musicians.

A lifelong humanitarian, Bernstein worked in support of civil rights;[11] protested against the Vietnam War;[12] advocated for nuclear disarmament; raised money for HIV/AIDS research and awareness; and engaged in multiple international initiatives for human rights and world peace. Near the end of his life, he conducted a historic performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The concert was televised live, worldwide, on Christmas Day, 1989.[13]

Born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he was the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Jennie (née Resnick) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, both of whom immigrated to the United States from Rovno (now Ukraine).[14][15][16] His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. He legally changed his name to Leonard when he was eighteen, shortly after his grandmother's death.[17] To his friends and many others he was simply known as "Lenny".[18]

His father was the owner of The Samuel Bernstein Hair and Beauty Supply Company. It held the New England franchise for the Frederick's Permanent Wave Machine, whose immense popularity helped Sam get his family through The Great Depression.[19]

In Leonard's early youth, his only exposure to music was the household radio and music on Friday nights at Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Roxbury, Massachusetts. When Leonard was ten years old, Samuel's sister Clara deposited her upright piano at her brother's house. Bernstein began teaching himself piano and music theory and was soon clamoring for lessons. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates, who later became his secretary. In the summers, the Bernstein family would go to their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts, where young Leonard conscripted all the neighborhood children to put on shows ranging from Bizet's Carmen to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. He would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with his younger sister Shirley.[citation needed]

Leonard's youngest sibling Burton was born in 1932, thirteen years after Leonard.[20] Despite the large span in age, the three siblings remained close their entire lives.

Sam was initially opposed to young Leonard's interest in music and attempted to discourage his son's interest by refusing to pay for his piano lessons. Leonard then took to giving lessons to young people in his neighborhood. One of his students, Sid Ramin, became Bernstein's most frequent orchestrator and lifelong beloved friend.

Sam took his son to orchestral concerts in his teenage years and eventually supported his music education. In May 1932, Leonard attended his first orchestral concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Bernstein recalled, “To me, in those days, the Pops was heaven itself ... I thought ... it was the supreme achievement of the human race.”[21] It was at this concert that Bernstein first heard Ravel's Boléro, which made a tremendous impression on him.[22]

Another strong musical influence was George Gershwin. Bernstein was a counselor at a summer camp when news came over the radio of Gershwin's death. In the mess hall, a shaken Bernstein demanded a moment of silence, and then played Gershwin's second Prelude as a memorial.

On March 30, 1932, Bernstein played Brahms's Rhapsody in G Minor at his first public piano performance in Susan Williams's studio recital at the New England Conservatory. Two years later, he made his solo debut with orchestra in Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor with the Boston Public School Orchestra.

In 1935, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard University, where he studied music with, among others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston. His first extant composition, Psalm 148 set for voice and piano, is dated in 1935. He majored in music with a final year thesis titled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music" (1939; reproduced in his book Findings). One of Bernstein's intellectual influences at Harvard was the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts inspired Bernstein for the rest of his life.

One of his friends at Harvard was future philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom Bernstein played piano duets. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds, performed in the original Greek. Bernstein recycled some of this music in future works.

While a student, he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club as well as an unpaid pianist for Harvard Film Society's silent film presentations.[25]

Bernstein mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the infamous premiere. Blitzstein, who attended the performance, subsequently became a close friend and mentor to Bernstein.[26]

As a sophomore at Harvard, Bernstein met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician were major influences on Bernstein's eventual decision to become a conductor.[27] Mitropoulos invited Bernstein to come to Minneapolis for the 1940–41 season to be his assistant, but the plan fell through due to union issues.[28]

Bernstein met Aaron Copland on the latter's birthday in 1937; the elder composer was sitting next to Bernstein at a dance recital at Town Hall in New York City. Copland invited Bernstein to his birthday party afterwards, where Bernstein impressed the guests by playing Copland's challenging Piano Variations, a work Bernstein loved. Although he was never a formal student of Copland's, Bernstein would regularly seek his advice, often citing him as his "only real composition teacher".[29]

Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1939 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude.

After graduating from Harvard, Bernstein enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. At Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner (who anecdotally is said to have given Bernstein the only "A" grade he ever awarded); piano with Isabelle Vengerova; orchestration with Randall Thompson; counterpoint with Richard Stöhr; and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.[30]

Soon after he left Curtis, Bernstein moved to New York City where he lived in various apartments in Manhattan. Bernstein supported himself by coaching singers and playing the piano for dance classes in Carnegie Hall. He found work with Harms-Witmark, transcribing jazz and pop music and publishing his work under the pseudonym “Lenny Amber.” (Bernstein means "Amber" in German.)[35]

On April 21, 1942, Bernstein performed the premiere of his first published work, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, with clarinetist David Glazer at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston.

On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor to Artur Rodziński of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein made his major conducting debut at short notice—and without any rehearsal—after guest conductor Bruno Walter came down with the flu.[36] The challenging program included works by Robert Schumann, Miklós Rózsa, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

The 1950s comprised among the most fertile years of Bernstein's career. He harnessed the power of television to expand his educational reach; he created five new works for the Broadway stage; he composed several symphonic works and an iconic film score; he toured the world with numerous orchestras including concerts behind the Iron Curtain; and he married and started a family.

In 1950, Bernstein composed incidental music for a Broadway production of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan.[51] The production, which opened on Broadway on April 24, 1950, starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan and Boris Karloff in the dual roles of George Darling and Captain Hook. The show ran for 321 performances.[52]

Trouble in Tahiti
In 1951, Bernstein composed Trouble in Tahiti, a one-act opera in seven scenes with an English libretto by the composer. The opera portrays the troubled marriage of a couple whose idyllic suburban post-war environment belies their inner turmoil.[53] Ironically, Bernstein wrote most of the opera while on his honeymoon in Mexico with his wife, Felicia Montealegre.

Trouble in Tahiti premiered at the Brandeis's Festival of the Creative Arts on June 12, 1952. The NBC Opera Theatre subsequently presented the opera on television in November 1952. Three decades later, Bernstein wrote a second opera, A Quiet Place, which picked up the story and characters of Trouble in Tahiti in a later period.

Wonderful Town
In 1953, Bernstein wrote the score for the musical Wonderful Town on very short notice, with a book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The musical tells the story of two sisters from Ohio who move to New York City and seek success from their squalid basement apartment in Greenwich Village.

Wonderful Town opened on Broadway on February 25, 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre, starring Rosalind Russell in the role of Ruth Sherwood, Edie Adams as Eileen Sherwood, and George Gaynes as Robert Baker. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress.[54]

Candide
In the three years leading up to Bernstein's appointment as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein was simultaneously working on the scores for two Broadway shows. The first of the two was the operetta-style musical Candide. Lillian Hellman originally brought Bernstein her idea of adapting Voltaire's novella.[55] The original collaborators on the show were book writer John Latouche and lyricist Richard Wilbur.

Candide opened on Broadway on December 1, 1956 at the Martin Beck Theatre, in a production directed by Tyrone Guthrie. Anxious about the parallels Hellman had deliberately drawn between Voltaire's story and the ongoing hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, Guthrie persuaded the collaborators to cut their most incendiary sections prior to opening night.[56]

While the production was a box office disaster, running only two months for a total of 73 performances,[57] the cast album became a cult classic, which kept Bernstein's score alive. The elements of the music that have remained best known and performed over the decades are the Overture, which quickly became one of the most frequently performed orchestral compositions by a 20th century American composer; the coloratura aria "Glitter and Be Gay", which Barbara Cook sang in the original production; and the grand finale "Make Our Garden Grow".

West Side Story
The other musical Bernstein was writing simultaneously with Candide was West Side Story. Bernstein collaborated with director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, book writer Arthur Laurents, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. [58]

The story is an updated retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, set in the mid-1950s in the slums of New York City's Upper West Side. The Romeo character, Tony, is affiliated with the Jets gang, who are of white Northern European descent. The Juliet character is Maria, who is connected to the Sharks gang, recently arrived immigrants from Puerto Rico. [59]

The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957, and ran 732 performances. Robbins won the Tony Award for Best Choreographer, and Oliver Smith won the Tony for Best Scenic Designer.[60]

Bernstein's score for West Side Story blends "jazz, Latin rhythms, symphonic sweep and musical-comedy conventions in groundbreaking ways for Broadway".[61] It was orchestrated by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal following detailed instructions from Bernstein. The dark theme, sophisticated music, extended dance scenes, and focus on social problems marked a turning point in musical theatre.

In 1960, Bernstein prepared a suite of orchestral music from the show, titled Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story," which continues to be popular with orchestras worldwide.[62]

A 1961 United Artists film adaptation, directed by Robert Wise and starred Natalie Wood as Maria, and Richard Beymer as Tony. The film won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture and a ground-breaking Best Supporting Actress award for Puerto Rican-born Rita Moreno playing the role of Anita.[63]

A new film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg will open in theaters on December 10, 2021.[64]

Charles Ives
Throughout his career, Bernstein often talked about the music of Charles Ives, who died in 1954. In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of Ives' Symphony No. 2, which was written around half a century earlier. The composer, old and frail, was unable (some reports say unwilling) to attend the concert, but his wife did. Ives reportedly listened to a broadcast of it on a radio in his kitchen some days later.

First American to conduct at La Scala
In 1953 he was the first American conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting Maria Callas in Cherubini's Medea directed by Luchino Visconti. This opera had been virtually abandoned by performers, and he learned it in a week.[citation needed] It was to prove a fruitful collaboration, and Callas and Bernstein went on to perform in Bellini's La sonnambula in 1955.



Bernstein was named the music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957, replacing Dimitri Mitropoulos. He began his tenure in that position in 1958, having held the post jointly with Mitropoulos from 1957 to 1958. In 1958, Bernstein and Mitropoulos took the New York Philharmonic on tour to South America. In his first season in sole charge, Bernstein included a season-long survey of American classical music.[65] Themed programming of this sort was fairly novel at that time compared to the present day. Bernstein held the music directorship until 1969 (with a sabbatical in 1965) although he continued to conduct and make recordings with the orchestra for the rest of his life and was appointed "laureate conductor".


In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by CBS Television. A highlight of the tour was Bernstein's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, in the presence of the composer, who came on stage at the end to congratulate Bernstein and the musicians. In October, when Bernstein and the orchestra returned to the U.S., they recorded the symphony for Columbia. He recorded it for a second time with the orchestra on tour in Japan in 1979. Bernstein seems to have limited himself to only conducting certain Shostakovich symphonies, namely the numbers 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 14. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony (No. 7), one with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another recorded live in 1988 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (one of the few recordings he made with them, also including the Symphony No. 1).

In 1962 the New York Philharmonic moved from Carnegie Hall to Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) in the new Lincoln Center. The move was not without controversy because of acoustic problems with the new hall. Bernstein conducted the gala opening concert featuring vocal works by Mahler, Beethoven and Vaughan Williams, and the premiere of Aaron Copland's Connotations, a serial-work that was merely politely received. During the intermission Bernstein kissed the cheek of the President's wife Jacqueline Kennedy, a break with protocol that was commented on at the time.

The Kennedys
In 1961 Bernstein had conducted at President John F. Kennedy's pre-inaugural gala, and he was an occasional guest in the White House. Years later he conducted at the funeral mass in 1968 for President Kennedy's brother Robert F. Kennedy, featuring the Adagietto from Mahler's 5th Symphony. Jackie Kennedy famously wrote to Bernstein after the event: When your Mahler started to fill (but that is the wrong word — because it was more this sensitive trembling) the Cathedral today — I thought it the most beautiful music I had ever heard.[69]


On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Schola Cantorum of New York in a nationally televised memorial featuring the "Resurrection Symphony" by Gustav Mahler. This was the first televised performance of the complete symphony. Mahler's music had never been performed for such an event, and since the tribute to JFK, Mahler symphonies have become part of the Philharmonic's standard repertoire for national mourning.[70]

After stepping down from the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continued to appear with them in most years until his death, and he toured with them to Europe in 1976 and to Asia in 1979. He also strengthened his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic—he conducted all nine completed Mahler symphonies with them (plus the Adagio from the 10th) in the period from 1967 to 1976. All of these were filmed for Unitel with the exception of the 1967 Mahler 2nd, which instead Bernstein filmed with the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the late 1970s Bernstein conducted a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic, and cycles of Brahms and Schumann were to follow in the 1980s. Other orchestras he conducted on numerous occasions in the 1970s include the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Bernstein's major compositions during the 1970s were his Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers; his score for the ballet Dybbuk; his orchestral vocal work Songfest; and his U.S. bicentenary musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue written with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner which was his first real theatrical flop, and last original Broadway show.

Bernstein received the Kennedy Center Honors award in 1980. For the rest of the 1980s he continued to conduct, teach, compose, and produce the occasional TV documentary. His most significant compositions of the decade were probably his opera A Quiet Place, which he wrote with Stephen Wadsworth and which premiered, in its original version, in Houston in 1983; his Divertimento for Orchestra; his Ḥalil for flute and orchestra; his Concerto for Orchestra "Jubilee Games"; and his song cycle Arias and Barcarolles, which was named after a comment President Dwight D. Eisenhower had made to him in 1960.

Bernstein conducted his last concert on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. The program consisted of Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.[85] He suffered a coughing fit during the third movement of the Beethoven symphony, but continued to conduct the piece until its conclusion, leaving the stage during the ovation, appearing exhausted and in pain.[86] The concert was later issued in edited form on CD as Leonard Bernstein – The Final Concert by Deutsche Grammophon.[87] Also included was Bernstein's own Arias and Barcarolles in an orchestration by Bright Sheng. However, poor health prevented Bernstein from performing it. Carl St. Clair was engaged to conduct it in his stead.[88]

After much personal struggle and a turbulent on-off engagement, Bernstein married actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre on September 10, 1951. One suggestion is that he chose to marry partly to dispel rumors about his private life to help secure a major conducting appointment, following advice from his mentor Dimitri Mitropoulos about the conservative nature of orchestra boards.[79] In a book released in October 2013, The Leonard Bernstein Letters, his wife acknowledges his homosexuality. Felicia writes: "You are a homosexual and may never change—you don't admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?" Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in West Side Story) said that Bernstein was "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay."[89] Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally".[90] But the early years of his marriage seem to have been happy, and no one has suggested Bernstein and his wife did not love each other. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.[91] There are reports, though, that Bernstein did sometimes have brief extramarital liaisons with young men, which several family friends have said his wife knew about.[90]

A major period of upheaval in Bernstein's personal life began in 1976 when he decided that he could no longer conceal his homosexuality and he left his wife Felicia for a period to live with the musical director of the classical music radio station KKHI in San Francisco, Tom Cothran.[92] The next year Felicia was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until she died on June 16, 1978.[79] Bernstein is reported to have often spoken of his terrible guilt over his wife's death.[79] Most biographies of Bernstein state that his lifestyle became more excessive and his personal behavior sometimes more reckless and crude after her death. However, his public standing and many of his close friendships appear to have remained unaffected, and he resumed his busy schedule of musical activity.

His affairs with men included a ten-year relationship with Kunihiko Hashimoto, a Tokyo insurance employee. The two met when the New York Philharmonic was performing in Tokyo. Hashimoto went backstage and they ended up spending the night together. It was a long distance affair, but according to letters, they both cared about each other deeply. Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro by Mari Yoshihara (Oxford University Press, 2019) goes into detail about their letters and relationship including interviews with Hashimoto. The book also includes other letters Bernstein received from Japanese fans.[93]

Bernstein had asthma, which kept him from serving in the military during World War II.[94]
Bernstein announced his retirement from conducting on October 9, 1990[95] and died five days later, in his New York apartment at The Dakota, of a heart attack brought on by mesothelioma.[96] He was 72 years old.[2] A longtime heavy smoker, he had had emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, calling out "Goodbye, Lenny".[97] Bernstein is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York,[98] next to his wife and with a copy of Mahler's Fifth Symphony opened to the famous Adagietto lying across his heart.[99] On August 25, 2018 (his 100th birthday), he was honored with a Google Doodle.[100] Also for his centennial, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles created an exhibition titled Leonard Bernstein at 100.[101][102] [103]