{"id":54629,"date":"2018-06-16T11:15:09","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T15:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=54629"},"modified":"2018-06-16T11:15:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-16T15:15:09","slug":"guide-the-ludwig-van-guide-to-summer-reading-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2018\/06\/16\/guide-the-ludwig-van-guide-to-summer-reading-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"GUIDE | The Ludwig Van Guide To Summer Reading Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Famous
Summer Reading:\u00a0 Books About Leonard Bernstein: Famous Father Girl:\u00a0 A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein by Jamie Bernstein, Harper Collins Publishers, 2018\u00a0 Hardcover, $35.99; and Critical Lives:\u00a0 Leonard Bernstein by Paul R. Laird, Reaktion Books Limited 2018\u00a0 $25.00<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Summer Reading:\u00a0 Books About Bernstein<\/h2>\n

This summer, being the middle of a two-year global celebration of the 100th-anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein (on August 25, 1918), it\u2019s the ideal time to read newly released and previously published books about the charismatic conductor and composer.\u00a0 This will give you lots of background for when you hear his works performed here, there and everywhere.<\/p>\n

This year, I\u2019ve already enjoyed two different versions of Candide, and<\/em> this week the TSO performed<\/a> Three Dances from Fancy Free.\u00a0 <\/em>In July I\u2018m looking forward to the performance of Bernstein\u2019s first published composition, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, <\/em>at the Toronto Summer Music Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before conducting Fancy Free<\/em> last week, Peter Oundjian<\/a> recounted his experience performing \u201cNew York New York\u201d for Leonard Bernstein when he was a Julliard student in Manhattan.\u00a0 Shortly after, he received a hand-written note from the Maestro, who has remained an inspiration to Oundjian ever since.\u00a0 This anecdote echoed nicely with the stories shared by Bernstein\u2019s daughter Jamie, in her highly readable memoir Famous Father Girl:\u00a0 A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, <\/em>released a day before the concert.<\/p>\n

Bernstein fille\u00a0 <\/em>(henceforth Jamie) offers vivid memories of her father\u2019s mega-talented friends and collaborators Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who helped transform Fancy Free<\/em>, a ballet about three soldiers on leave in New York City into a Broadway musical called On The Town.\u00a0 \u201cAdolph knew everything \u2014 by heart and all by ear \u2014 and could sing anything (including) a virtuosic, tongue-twisting rendition of \u201cFlight of the Bumblebee\u201d [\u2026] Lenny and Adolph became friends at that deep, mysterious level where humour, intellect, and aesthetic instinct all meet [\u2026] From my listening post in bed at night, I could hear how often Betty\u2019s voice generated gales of grownup laughter.\u00a0 She could play word games with Steve Sondheim, and not quaver [\u2026] quote Shakespeare and Ibsen and Bugs Bunny\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

These colourful vignettes about Bernstein family life at the epicentre of the mid-Century culture provide juicy back-stories to the Centenary events and are particularly appealing to Baby Boomers whose formative musical experiences included West Side Story <\/em>and Young People\u2019s Concerts.<\/em>\u00a0 As an account of being a child of this complex, insatiable, prodigious man, it provides minimal insight.\u00a0 It was the lot of this father and daughter to live through the dramatic period when homosexual men who had once been in the closet were able to emerge; putting both of them in an explosive situation that Bernstein pere (<\/em>henceforth Lenny) did not handle sensitively.\u00a0 When Jamie reported unsettling stories of her father\u2019s homosexual liaisons to him, he attributed them to envious people who had \u201cmade up wicked stories to jeopardize his career\u201d even though he knew them to be both true and common knowledge.\u00a0 This left Jamie in a complete reality warp as Lenny\u2019s homosexual behaviour became increasingly public.\u00a0 \u00a0When he arrived at Harvard to give the Norton Lectures, (about which I\u2019ll write more in Part Two) during her junior year there, he brought with him a young male assistant with whom he was clearly besotted.\u00a0 Jamie was plunged into a state she \u201ccouldn\u2019t begin to figure out, or even dare to wonder, how I myself felt about any of it. \u201c<\/p>\n

\"\"
Jamie Bernstein (Photo: Steve J. Sherman)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jamie frankly describes her strategies to avoid concluding that her father had lied to her \u2014 intense unsuitable romances, copious amounts of pot \u2014 and the prolonged wreckage of the young adulthood that unfolded in the aftermath, but offers no reflection on how or when she restored her equilibrium.\u00a0 \u00a0As the book ends, it seems as if her view of her father has changed little since his death in 1990.\u00a0 What makes a memoir about a problematic childhood compelling is a powerful sense of hard-won resolution.\u00a0 (An outstanding example is Louise Kehoe\u2019s In This Dark House<\/em> about<\/em> her father, the prominent architect Berthold Lubetkin.)\u00a0 Famous Father Girl <\/em>does not deliver this.<\/p>\n

Bernstein\u2019s descriptions of her family\u2019s response to her father\u2019s compositions to as they were premiered, suggests how deeply involved they were with his musical process.\u00a0 Other books that provide more detailed and critical appraisal of Bernstein\u2019s oeuvre, in biographical and compositional context have come out in time for the Centenary.\u00a0 Musicologist Paul R Laird of the University of Kansas School of Music has contributed Leonard Bernstein <\/em>to the Critical Lives Series from Reaktion Books.\u00a0 Following Bernstein from the beginning of his musical life in childhood until his death, Laird\u2019s knowledgeable descriptions and appraisals of the musical features of each composition are particularly useful, and a helpful expansion on Jamie Bernstein\u2019s personal takes on the same works.\u00a0 Laird deals with every manner of Bernstein\u2019s diverse output, from film scores to symphonies.\u00a0 For example, his assessment of the score for On the Waterfront, <\/em>draws attention to details that many film viewers might have missed:\u00a0 \u201cHe wrote 27 cues that total 42 minutes of music\u2026of the first rank, from the soaring love theme to wild cues underscoring the violence encouraged by corrupt leaders of the longshoremen\u2019s union [\u2026] The main title is a Coplandesque melody for solo horn with a delicious blue note on a c\u2019, a line that embodies the sadness (of) the main character.\u201d<\/p>\n

The explanations of the musical influence of Bernstein\u2019s key mentors, especially Aaron Copland and Serge Koussevitzky are quite enlightening.\u00a0 It\u2019s mildly off-putting, however, that Laird\u00a0avoids\u00a0making critical statements or being precise by using the convenient word \u201cperhaps\u201d.\u00a0 Of\u00a0Mass<\/em>, he writes: \u201cThe piece perhaps<\/em> never should have worked [\u2026] mocking what is perhaps <\/em>the rote nature of such creeds [\u2026] the work\u2019s conclusion then comes perhaps<\/em> too quickly.\u201d (Italics mine). Tiresome as this is when applied to Bernstein\u2019s oeuvre, it\u2019s even more puzzling when Laird is evasive about his own feelings towards the maestro.\u00a0 The book culminates with Laird\u2019s most personal speculation\u00a0 about his private encounter with Bernstein in a hotel suite when he was a young man: “It might have been<\/em> an attempted seduction\u2026\u201d Laird\u2019s revelation, on the very last page of his book, that his three-decade \u201cobsession\u201d with Bernstein stems from that event is unsettling, especially in today\u2019s\u00a0 #metoo<\/em> climate.<\/p>\n

In addition to these and other new books that have been released for the Centenary, there is a wealth of previously published material that will keep you absorbed all summer long.\u00a0 I\u2019ll touch on some of those works in part two of this feature. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mini-reviews of several of the best books on Bernstein, released for the Centenary and also from years prior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":54634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14761,7,4967,20834],"tags":[18397,1939,20835],"yst_prominent_words":[8856,20830,20833,20825,20820,20819,20824,20826,20823,20827,20822,20828,17927,17926,9118,20829,20821,20831,20846,20844],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/06\/LV-guide-books-Bernstein.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-ed7","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54629"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54638,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54629\/revisions\/54638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54629"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=54629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}