Leonard Bernstein

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Biography

Childhood

Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918 to a Polish-Jewish family. His grandmother insisted his first name be Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard, as they liked the name better. He had his name changed to Leonard officially when he was fifteen.[3] His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman, and initially opposed young Leonard's interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein frequently took him to orchestra concerts. At a very young age, Bernstein heard a piano performance and was immediately captivated; he subsequently began learning the piano. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison School and Boston Latin School.[4]

 

University

After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1934 Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with Walter Piston and was briefly associated with the Harvard Glee Club.[5] One of his friends at Harvard was Donald Davidson, considered one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, with whom he played piano for four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production which Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds in the original Greek. Some of this music was later to be reused in Bernstein's ballet Fancy Free.

After completing his studies at Harvard he enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he received the only "A" grade Fritz Reiner ever awarded in his class on conducting. During his time at Curtis, Bernstein also studied piano with Isabella Vengerova,[6] orchestration with Randall Thompson, counterpoint with Richard Stöhr, and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle.[7]

 

Adult life

During his young adult years in New York City, Bernstein enjoyed an exuberant social life that included relationships with both men and women. After a long internal struggle and a turbulent on-and-off engagement, he married Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn on September 9, 1951, reportedly in order to increase his chances of obtaining the chief conducting position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Dimitri Mitropoulos, conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Bernstein's mentor, advised him that marrying would help counter the gossip about him and appease the conservative BSO board. [8]

Leonard and Felicia had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina. [9] During his married life, Bernstein tried to be as discreet as possible with his extramarital liaisons. But as he grew older, and as the Gay Liberation movement made great strides, Bernstein became more emboldened, eventually leaving Felicia to live with his lover Tom Cothran. Some time after, Bernstein learned that his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. Bernstein moved back in with his wife and cared for her until she died. [10]

It has been suggested that Bernstein was actually bisexual — an assertion supported by comments Bernstein himself made about not preferring any particular cuisine, musical genre, or form of sex — and it has been alleged that he was conflicted between his devotion to his family and his gay desires, but Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in West Side Story), said that Bernstein was simply "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay." [11] Shelly Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein’s, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally."

 

References

   1. ^ Karlin, Fred (1994). Listening to Movies 8) (recording), New York City: Schirmer, p. 264.  Bernstein's pronunciation of his own name as he introduces his Peter and the Wolf
   2. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0077086/awards
   3. ^ Peyser, Joan (1987). Bernstein, a biography. New York: Beech Tree Books, p. 22-23. ISBN 0-688-04918-4.
   4. ^ Peyser (1987), p. 34
   5. ^ Peyser (1987), p. 39-40
   6. ^ Peyser (1987), p. 38-9
   7. ^ "Bernstein Chronology".
   8. ^ Burton, Leonard Bernstein)
   9. ^ Peyser (1987), p. 196, 204, 322
  10. ^ Burton, Leonard Bernstein)
  11. ^ Charles Kaiser, “The Gay Metropolis, New York City: 1940-1996"
  12. ^ Meryle Secrest, “Leonard Bernstein: A Life”
  13. ^ "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers". Tomwolfe.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-22.
  14. ^ Donal Henahan (1990-10-15). "Leonard Bernstein, 72, Music's Monarch, Dies", The New York Times.
  15. ^ Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth (1999). "How to Behave Sensitively: Prescriptions for Interracial Conduct from the 1960s to the 1990s". Journal of Social History 33 (2): 409. doi:10.1353/jsh.1999.0064.
  16. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Time
  17. ^ "Cry Wolfe; The Purple Decades by Tom Wolfe.", Financial Times (1983-04-09).
  18. ^ "About Bernstein". Leonard Bernstein Official Site. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
  19. ^ "Leonard Bernstein - Biography". Sony Classical. Retrieved on 2007-01-15.
  20. ^ Deems Taylor, Pathétique, Music-Appreciation Records, 2007-07-25.
  21. ^ The Official Leonard Bernstein Web Site. http://www.leonardbernstein.com/about.php
  22. ^ Glenn Gould: Variations, Ed. John McGreevy
  23. ^ Naxos (2006). "Ode To Freedom - Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 (NTSC)". Naxos.com Classical Music Catalogue. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.
  24. ^ Garrison Keillor (25 August 2003). "The Writer's Almanac". American Public Media. Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
  25. ^ American Masters documentary, PBS
  26. ^ "Amazon Listing".

    * Chapin, Schuyler (1992). Leonard Bernstein: Notes from a friend. New York: Walker. ISBN 0802712169.
    * Rozen, Brian D. (1997). The contributions of Leonard Bernstein to music education: an analysis of his 53 Young people's concerts. Thesis (Ph. D.). Rochester, New York: University of Rochester. OCLC 48156751.