January Read: Bernstein, A Musical Hero
Stephanie Zi Yi Yang
Leonard Bernstein dedicated his entire life to saving every forgotten great man, convincing the public to appreciate the works that were worthy of their attention. Let’s commemorate this musical hero.
If you live next door to a great man, how can you bear his invisibility to the world? "Vincent”, the Don McLean song - this tribute to Van Gogh has a subtle transition, from "perhaps they'll listen now" to "perhaps they never will” - the shift from a content sigh to a sorrowful sigh. It has the same effect as the lamenting third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31. It is better to fight against a great man’s invisibility than to play and sing in an unpopulated street?
I invite you to pay high tributes to the musician Leonard Bernstein, who dedicated his entire life to saving every forgotten great man, convincing the public to appreciate the works that were worthy of their attention. Let’s commemorate this musical hero.
In the 1960s and 70s, at Carnegie Hall in New York, hundreds of children entered in file, looking forward to the start of Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts. “What will he teach us today, what interesting music will he introduce?” Bernstein explained the theory of music in the most accessible of terms, and opened up the various parts of the symphony to guide a closer listening; not only that, he boldly introduced to children to composers such as Mahler and Shostakovich, allowing these unfamiliar names to become more familiar to the public. Without his promotion, the world would only know Mahler as a famous conductor, not as a great composer.
Bernstein explained the theory of music in the most accessible of terms, and opened up the various parts of the symphony to guide a closer listening; not only that, he boldly introduced to children to composers such as Mahler and Shostakovich.
The 1960s and 1970s were a beautiful era of contention, a time when various types of bands and musical genres blossomed. Bernstein did not want classical music to be classified as a product of the old world, so he launched a field project to show its vitality, playing The Beatles before Mozart. In “The Unanswered Question” lecture that he gave at Harvard University, Bernstein explored deeper connotations. Starting from the first sounds made by human beings, he laid out a history of musical development, pointing to a big question: “Where is music taking us?”
Introducing Arnold Schoenberg at the end of the lecture, Bernstein points out that although non-tonal music wants to go in a new direction, it still has to return to tonality after all. No matter how new music is, it cannot be separated from the fundamental twelve-pitch scale. However, Bernstein did not expect that the history of music would face an even bigger friend and foe, computers: automated production attempts to replace human contemplation.
Why can we still hear new things in Beethoven's works today? This is a clue. Think about when the road from the old to the new comes to an end. In fact, the answer is always in the past, yet hidden in the torrent.
I enjoy watching Leonard Bernstein talk about music at random in front of the piano, and I have read his articles on music from time to time. Yet, why do I return back to his thoughts, again and again? I think this is the mystery of aesthetics. By repeatedly gazing at the perfect person, people are sublimated and satisfied. The same is true for bringing these late great composers back.