
Leonard Bernstein in 1971.
Leonard Bernstein ( , ; August 25, 1918 – October
14, 1990) was an American
conductor,
composer, author, music
lecturer and
pianist. He was
among the first conductors born and educated in the United States
of America to receive worldwide acclaim. He was probably best known
to the public as the longtime
music
director of the New York Philharmonic, for conducting concerts
by many of the world's leading orchestras, and for writing the
music for
West Side Story,
Candide, and
On the Town.
Bernstein was the first
classical
music conductor to make numerous television appearances,
perhaps more than any other classical conductor, all between 1954
and 1989. He had a formidable piano technique and as a composer
wrote many types of music from Broadway shows to symphonies.
According to the
New York Times, he
was "one of the most prodigally talented and successful musicians
in American history."
Biography
Early life
Leonard
Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts
, in 1918, to a Russian Jewish
family. (He was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein.) His family spent their
summers at their vacation home in Sharon, MA
. His grandmother insisted that his first
name be
Louis, but his
parents always called him
Leonard, because they liked the name
more. He had his name changed to
Leonard officially when
he was fifteen. His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and
owner of a bookstore in downtown Lawrence; it is still standing
today on the corners of Amesbury and Essex Streets. Sam 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 listened to 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
.
After
graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended
Harvard
University
, where he studied music with Walter Piston, the author of many harmony and
counterpoint textbooks, and was briefly associated with the
Harvard Glee Club. One of
his friends at Harvard was
Donald Davidson, considered
one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, with whom he
played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical
score for the production that 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 at 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, orchestration with
Randall Thompson, counterpoint with
Richard Stöhr, and score reading
with Renée Longy Miquelle.
Early career
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
Minneapolis
Symphony Orchestra and Bernstein's mentor, advised him that
marrying would help counter the gossip about him and appease the
conservative
BSO
board.
Leonard and Felicia had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.
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 June 16, 1978.
It has been suggested that Bernstein was actually
bisexual—an assertion supported by comments that
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."
Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein's, said that she
thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally."
1940–1950

200
_-_1944_-_foto_van_Vechten2.jpg/200px-Bernstein,_Leonard_(1918-1990)_-_1944_-_foto_van_Vechten2.jpg)
Bernstein in 1944
In 1940,
Bernstein began his study at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer
institute, Tanglewood
, under the orchestra's conductor, Serge Koussevitzky. Bernstein
later became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant. He would later
dedicate his
Symphony
No. 2
to Koussevitzky.
On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant
conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he made his
conducting debut on last-minute notification—and without any
rehearsal—after
Bruno Walter came down
with the flu. The next day,
The New York Times editorial
remarked, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly
triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air
waves." He was an immediate success and became instantly famous
because the concert was nationally broadcast. The soloist on that
historic day was
Joseph Schuster,
solo cellist of the New York Philharmonic, who played
Richard Strauss's
Don Quixote. Because Bernstein had
never conducted the work before, Bruno Walter coached him on it
prior to the concert. It is possible to hear this remarkable event
thanks to a transcription recording made from the CBS radio
broadcast that has since been issued on CD.
After World War II, Bernstein's career on the international stage
began to flourish. In 1946, he conducted his first opera, the
American première of
Benjamin
Britten's
Peter Grimes,
which had been a Koussevitzky commission. In 1949, he conducted the
world première of the
Turangalîla-Symphonie by
Olivier Messiaen, and when
Koussevitzky died two years later, Bernstein became head of the
orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, holding this
position for many years.
1951–1959
In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world
première of the
Symphony
No. 2 of
Charles Ives. The composer, old and
frail, was unable to attend the concert, but listened to the
broadcast on the radio with his wife, Harmony. Both of them
marveled at the enthusiastic reception of his music, which had
actually been written between 1897 and 1901, but had never been
performed. Throughout his career, Bernstein did much to promote the
music of this American composer. Ives died in 1954.
Bernstein was also a
visiting music professor in the early 1950s and was the
founder/head of the Creative Arts Festivals at Brandeis
University
from 1952 onward. The festival was named
after him in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the
Creative Arts.
Bernstein was named the principal conductor of the New York
Philharmonic in 1957, replacing
Dimitri Mitropoulos, and began his
tenure in that position in 1958, a post he held until 1969,
although he continued to conduct and make recordings with that
orchestra for the rest of his life. He became a well-known figure
in the United States through his series of fifty-three televised
Young People's Concerts for
CBS, which grew out of his
Omnibus
programs that CBS aired in the early 1950s. His first Young
People's Concert was televised only a few weeks after his tenure as
principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic began. He became
as famous for his educational work in those concerts as for his
conducting. The Bernstein Young People's Concerts were the first,
and still are, the most successful series of music appreciation
programs ever done on television, and were highly acclaimed by
critics. Some of Bernstein's music lectures were released on
records, with several of these albums winning
Grammy awards.
To this day, the
Young People's Concerts series remains
the longest-running single group of classical music programs ever
shown on commercial television. They ran from 1958 to 1972, and
none of the programs were repeated on television during the series'
original run (there would usually be four programs per year). More
than thirty years later, twenty-five of them were rebroadcast on
the now-defunct cable channel
Trio
and were released on
DVD.
In 1947,
Bernstein conducted in Tel
Aviv
for the first time, beginning a life-long
association with Israel
.
In 1957,
he conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann
Auditorium
in Tel Aviv;
he subsequently made many recordings there. In 1967, he conducted
a concert on Mt.
Scopus
to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem
. During the 1970s, Bernstein recorded most
of his own symphonic music with the
Israel Philharmonic.

Bernstein at the piano, making
annotations to a musical score
1949 marked the beginning of a collaborative project with the
choreographer
Jerome Robbins and the
writer
Arthur Laurents, later joined
by
Stephen Sondheim, that after
years of intermittent work resulted, in 1957, in the Broadway
premiere of
West Side Story, the
phenomenally successful musical that was to prove Bernstein's most
enduring and beloved work.
In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and
the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by
CBS. A major highlight of the tour was Bernstein's
performance of
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 New York, they recorded the
symphony for Columbia. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's
Leningrad Symphony, one
with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another one in 1988
with the
Chicago Symphony
Orchestra, the only recording he ever made with them (along
with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, also recorded live in concerts
at Orchestra Hall in Chicago at that time).
1960–1969
In 1960, Bernstein began the first complete cycle of recordings in
stereo of all nine completed symphonies by
Gustav Mahler, with the blessings of the
composer's widow,
Alma. The
success of these recordings, along with Bernstein's concert
performances, greatly revived interest in Mahler, who had briefly
been music director of the New York Philharmonic late in his
life.That same year, Bernstein conducted an LP of his own score for
the 1944 musical
On The
Town, in stereo, the first such recording of the score
ever made, for
Columbia
Masterworks Records. Unlike his later recordings of his own
musicals, this was originally issued as a single LP rather than a
2-record set. It was later issued on CD. The recording featured
several members of the original Broadway cast, including
Betty Comden and
Adolph
Green.
In one storied incident, in April 1962, Bernstein appeared on stage
before a performance of the
Brahms
D Minor Concerto, Op.
15. The soloist was
the legendary pianist
Glenn Gould.
During rehearsals, Gould had argued for tempi much broader than
normal, which did not reflect Bernstein's concept of the music.
Bernstein gave a brief address to the audience stating,
Don't be frightened; Mr. Gould is here (audience laughter).
He will appear in a moment.
I'm not—um—as you know in the habit of speaking on any concert
except the Thursday-night previews, but a curious situation has
arisen, which merits, I think, a word or two.
You are about to hear a rather, shall we say, unorthodox
performance of the Brahms D Minor Concerto, a performance
distinctly different from any I've ever heard, or even dreamt of
for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent
departures from Brahms' dynamic indications.
I cannot say I am in total agreement with Mr. Gould's
conception, and this raises the interesting question: "What am I
doing conducting it?"
(mild laughter from the audience).
I'm conducting it because Mr. Gould is so valid and serious an
artist that I must take seriously anything he conceives in good
faith, and his conception is interesting enough that I feel you
should hear it, too.
But the age old question still remains: "In a concerto, who is
the boss (audience laughter)—the soloist or the conductor?"
(Audience laughter grows louder).
The answer is, of course, sometimes the one and sometimes the
other, depending on the people involved.
But almost always, the two manage to get together by persuasion
or charm or even threats (audience laughs) to achieve a unified
performance.
I have only once before in my life had to submit to a soloist's
wholly new and incompatible concept and that was the last time I
accompanied Mr. Gould (audience laughs loudly).
But, but this time, the discrepancies between our views
are so great that I feel I must make this small disclaimer.
Then why, to repeat the question, am I conducting it?
Why do I not make a minor scandal—get a substitute soloist, or
let an assistant conduct it?
Because I am fascinated, glad to have the chance for a
new look at this much-played work; because, what's more, there are
moments in Mr. Gould's performance that emerge with astonishing
freshness and conviction.
Thirdly, because we can all learn something from this
extraordinary artist who is a thinking performer, and
finally because there is in music what Dimitri Mitropoulos used to
call "the sportive element" (mild audience laughter) —that
factor of curiosity, adventure, experiment—and I can assure you
that it has been an adventure this week (audience
laughter) collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto, and
it's in this spirit of adventure that we now present it to you.
This speech was subsequently interpreted by
Harold C. Schonberg, music critic for the
New
York Times, as abdication of personal responsibility and an
attack on Gould, whose performance Schonberg went on to criticize
heavily. Bernstein always denied that this had been his intent and
has stated that he made these remarks with Gould's blessing.
Throughout his life, he professed enormous admiration and personal
friendship for Gould.
During his New York Philharmonic directorship, Bernstein was also
responsible for introducing the symphonies of the Danish composer
Carl Nielsen to American audiences,
leading to a revival of interest in this composer whose reputation
had previously been mostly regional. Bernstein recorded three of
Nielsen's symphonies (Nos. 2, 4, and 5) with the Philharmonic, and
he recorded the composer's 3rd Symphony with a Danish orchestra
after a critically acclaimed public performance in Denmark.
In 1966,
he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera
conducting Luchino
Visconti's production of Verdi's
Falstaff, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as
Falstaff. In 1970, he returned to the State Opera for
Otto Schenk's production of Beethoven's
Fidelio. Sixteen years later, at
the State Opera, Bernstein conducted his sequel to
Trouble in
Tahiti, A Quiet Place. Bernstein's final farewell to
the State Opera happened accidentally in 1989: Following a
performance of
Modest Mussorgsky's
Khovanshchina, he
unexpectedly entered the stage and embraced conductor
Claudio Abbado in front of a stunned, but
cheering, audience.
1970–1979
Beginning in 1970, Bernstein conducted the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
with which he re-recorded many of the pieces that he had previously
taped with the
New York
Philharmonic, including sets of the complete symphonies of
Beethoven,
Brahms, and
Schumann. Some of the Mahler symphony
recordings from Bernstein's second cycle for Deutsche Grammophon
were also made with the Vienna Philharmonic.
Later
that year, Bernstein wrote and narrated a ninety-minute program
filmed on location in and around Vienna
, featuring
the Vienna Philharmonic with such artists as Plácido Domingo, who in his first
television appearance performed as the tenor soloist in
Beethoven's Ninth.
The program, first telecast in 1970 on Austrian and British
television, and then on CBS on
Christmas
Eve 1971, was intended as a celebration of Beethoven's 200th
birthday. The show made extensive use of the rehearsals and
finished performance of the Otto Schenk production of
Fidelio. Originally entitled
Beethoven's
Birthday: A Celebration in Vienna, the show, which won an
Emmy, was telecast only once on U.S. commercial television, and it
remained in CBS's vaults, until it resurfaced on
A&E shortly after Bernstein's
death—under the new title
Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration
in Vienna. It was immediately issued on
VHS
under that title, and in 2005 it was issued on
DVD.
September
8, 1971 saw the world premiere of MASS:
A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, commissioned
by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts
in Washington, D.C. Intended in part as an
anti-war statement, and hastily written in places, the work
represented a fusion not only of different religious traditions
(its texts juxtapose the Latin liturgy with Hebrew prayer and
plenty of contemporary English lyrics) but of different musical
styles, making it a target of criticism from the Catholic Church on
the one hand, and contemporary music critics who objected to its
Broadway/populist elements on the other. Mass, however, has since
been embraced by the church - it was performed at Vatican City in
2000 - and, slowly but surely, into the canon.
In 1972, he recorded a performance of
Bizet's
Carmen,
with
Marilyn Horne in the title role
and
James McCracken as Don Jose,
after leading several stage performances of the opera. The
recording was one of the first in stereo to use the original spoken
dialogue between the sung portions of the opera, rather than the
musical
recitatives that were composed by
Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's
death.
Bernstein was invited in 1973 to the
Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor
of Poetry at his alma mater, Harvard University, to deliver a
series of six lectures on music. Borrowing the title from a Charles
Ives work, he called the series "The Unanswered Question"; it is a
set of interdisciplinary lectures in which he borrows terminology
from contemporary linguistics to analyze and compare musical
construction to language. Three years later, in 1976, the entire
series of videotaped lectures was telecast on PBS. The lectures
survive in both book and DVD form today.
Noam Chomsky wrote in 2007 on the Znet forums
about the linguistic aspects of the lecture:
I spent some time
with Bernstein during the preparation and performance of the
lectures. My feeling was that he was onto something, but I
couldn't really judge how significant it was.
In 1978, the Otto Schenk
Fidelio, with Bernstein still
conducting, but featuring a different cast, was filmed by Unitel.
Like the program
Bernstein on Beethoven, it also was shown
on A&E after his death and subsequently issued on VHS. Although
the video has since long been out of print, it was released for the
first time on DVD by
Deutsche
Grammophon in late 2006.
In May 1978, the Israel Philharmonic played two U.S. concerts under
his direction to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of
the Orchestra under that name.
On consecutive nights, the Orchestra
performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms at the Kennedy
Center
in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall
in NYC.
In 1979, Bernstein conducted the
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
for the first and only time, in two charity concerts. The
performance, of Mahler's
Ninth
Symphony, was broadcast on radio and was posthumously released
on CD.
1980–1990
Bernstein received the
Kennedy
Center Honors award in 1980.
On
PBS in the 1980s, he was the conductor and
commentator for a special series on Beethoven's music, which
featured the Vienna Philharmonic playing all nine Beethoven
symphonies, several of his overtures, one of the string quartets
arranged for the full string section of the Vienna Philharmonic,
and the
Missa Solemnis.
Actor
Maximilian Schell was also
featured on the program, reading from Beethoven's letters. This
series has since been released on DVD.
In 1982, he and Ernest Fleischmann founded the
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Institute, where he served as Artistic Director through
1984.
Leonard
Bernstein was a regular guest conductor of The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
in Amsterdam
. In the 1980s, he recorded, among other
pieces, Mahler's First, Second, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies with
them.
In 1985, he conducted a complete recording of his score for
West Side Story for the first and only time. The
recording, much criticized for featuring what critics felt were
miscast opera singers such as
Kiri te
Kanawa,
José Carreras, and
Tatiana Troyanos in the leading
roles, was nevertheless a national bestseller.
In 1989, Bernstein again conducted and recorded another complete
performance of one of his musicals, again featuring opera singers
rather than Broadway stars. This time it was
Candide, and
because the show was always intended to be an
operetta, the recording made from it was much more
warmly received. The performance was released posthumously on CD
(in 1991). It starred
Jerry Hadley,
June Anderson,
Adolph Green, and
Christa Ludwig in the leading roles. The
Candide recording, unlike the
West Side Story
one, also included previously discarded numbers from the
show.
A TV documentary of the
West Side Story recording sessions
was made in 1985, and the
Candide recording was made live,
in concert. This concert was eventually telecast
posthumously.
On Christmas Day, December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted the
Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin's Schauspielhaus
(Playhouse) as part of a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall
. The concert was broadcast live in more than
twenty countries to an estimated audience of 100 million people.
For the occasion, Bernstein reworded
Friedrich Schiller's text of the
Ode to Joy, substituting the
word
Freiheit (freedom) for
Freude (joy).
Bernstein, in the introduction to the program, said that they had
"taken the liberty" of doing this because of a "most likely phony"
story, apparently believed in some quarters, that Schiller wrote an
"Ode to Freedom" that is now presumed lost. Bernstein's comment
was, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his
blessing."
Bernstein
conducted his final performance at Tanglewood
on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony
playing Benjamin Britten's "Four
Sea Interludes" and Beethoven's
Seventh Symphony.
He suffered a coughing fit in the middle of the Beethoven
performance which almost caused the concert to break down. The
concert was later issued on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.
He died of
pneumonia and a pleural tumor
just five days after retiring. A longtime heavy smoker, he had
battled
emphysema from his mid-50s. On the
day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan,
construction workers removed their hats and waved, yelling
"Goodbye, Lenny."
Bernstein is buried in Green-Wood
Cemetery
, Brooklyn, New York
.
Influence
Bernstein was highly regarded as a conductor among many musicians,
including the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
evidenced by his honorary membership; the
London Symphony Orchestra, of
which he was President; and the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra,
with which he appeared regularly as guest conductor. He was
considered especially accomplished with the works of
Gustav Mahler; with his own compositions; and
with American composers
Aaron Copland,
Charles Ives,
William Schuman, and
George Gershwin. His recordings of
Rhapsody in Blue (full-orchestra version)
and
An American in Paris with
the Philharmonic, released in 1959, are considered definitive by
many, although, for reasons unknown, Bernstein would always cut the
Rhapsody slightly. Unfortunately, he never conducted a
performance of Gershwin's
Piano
Concerto in F, nor did he ever conduct
Porgy and Bess. However, he did discuss
Porgy in his article,
Why Don't You Run Upstairs and
Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?, originally published in the
New York Times and later reprinted in
his 1959 book
The Joy of Music.
He had a gift for rehearsing an entire Mahler symphony by acting
out every phrase for the orchestra to convey the precise meaning
and by emitting a vocal manifestation of the effect required, with
a subtly professional ear that missed nothing.
Other than being an incredibly talented composer, Bernstein was a
character of a conductor. He strayed far from classic conducting
techniques, using his whole body to coax the best out of his
orchestra, while having fun doing it.
Bernstein influenced many conductors who are performing now, such
as
Marin Alsop,
Alexander Frey,
John
Mauceri,
Seiji Ozawa,
Carl St.Clair, and
Michael Tilson Thomas. Ozawa made his
first network television debut as the guest conductor on one of the
Young People's Concerts.
Recordings
Bernstein recorded extensively from the 1950s until just a few
months before his death. Aside from a few early recordings in the
mid-1940s for
RCA Victor, Bernstein
recorded primarily for
Columbia Masterworks Records,
especially when he was music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Many of these performances have been digitally remastered and
reissued by
Sony as part of the "Royal Edition"
and "Bernstein Century" series. His later recordings (1976 onwards)
were mostly made for
Deutsche
Grammophon, though he would occasionally return to the Columbia
Masterworks label. Notable exceptions include recordings of
Gustav Mahler's
Song of the Earth and
Mozart's
15th piano concerto and
"Linz" symphony with the
Vienna Philharmonic
Orchestra for
Decca Records
(1966);
Berlioz'
Symphonie Fantastique (1976) for
EMI; and
Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde
(1981) for
Philips Records, a label
joint with Deutsche Grammophon as
PolyGram
at that time.
In August 2008,
Sony BMG
Masterworks released a 10-disc set of Bernstein's recordings of
his own works as a composer,
The Original Jacket Collection:
Bernstein Conducts Bernstein, which heralds
the Bernstein
Festival and
the Bernstein Mass Project.
Carnegie Hall
and the New York
Philharmonic's three-month program of events, entitled
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, pays tribute
to each aspect of Bernstein's legacy with 50 concerts and education
events. 2008 also marked the 65th anniversary of Bernstein's
historic Carnegie Hall debut.
Works
Stage works
- Fancy Free (ballet),
1944
- On The Town
(musical), 1944
- Facsimile (ballet), 1946
- Peter Pan
(songs, incidental music), 1950
- Trouble in Tahiti
(opera in one act), 1952
- Wonderful Town
(musical), 1953
- On the Waterfront
(film score), 1954
- The Lark
(incidental music), 1955
- Candide (operetta),
1956 (new libretto in 1973, operetta revised in 1989)
- West Side Story
(musical), 1957
- The Firstborn (incidental
music), 1958
- Mass (theatre piece for
singers, players and dancers), 1971
- Dybbuk (ballet),
1974
- 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue (musical), 1976
- The Madwoman
of Central Park West (songs), 1979
- A Quiet Place (opera in
two acts), 1983
- The Race to Urga
(musical), 1987
Orchestral
- Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah, 1942
- Fancy Free and Three Dance Variations from "Fancy
Free,", concert premiere 1946
- Three Dance Episodes from "On the Town," concert
premiere 1947
- Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety,
(after W. H.
Auden) for Piano and Orchestra, 1949
(revised in 1965)
-
Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion ,
1954
- Prelude, Fugue, and
Riffs for Solo Clarinet and Jazz Ensemble, 1949
- Symphonic Suite from "On the Waterfront", 1955
- Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story", 1961
- Symphony No. 3, Kaddish, for Orchestra, Mixed Chorus, Boys'
Choir, Speaker and Soprano Solo, 1963 (revised in 1977)
- Dybbuk, Suites No. 1 and 2 for Orchestra, concert
premieres 1975
-
Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and
Orchestra, 1977
- Three Meditations from "Mass" for Violoncello and
Orchestra, 1977
- Slava!
A Political Overture
for Orchestra, 1977
- Divertimento for Orchestra, 1980
- Halil, nocturne for
Solo Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute, Percussion, Harp and Strings,
1981
- Concerto for Orchestra, 1989 (Originally Jubilee
Games from 1986, revised in 1989)
Overture to Candide
Choral
- Hashkiveinu for Cantor
(tenor), Mixed Chorus and Organ, 1945
- Missa Brevis for Mixed Chorus and Countertenor Solo,
with Percussion, 1988
- Chichester Psalms for
Boy Soprano (or Countertenor), Mixed
Chorus, and Orchestra, 1965 (Reduced version for Organ, Harp and
Percussion)
Chamber music
Vocal music
- I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kids Songs for Soprano and
Piano, 1943
- La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano,
1948
- Arias and Barcarolles for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone and
Piano four-hands, 1988
- Two Love Songs, 1960
- So Pretty, 1968
- Piccola Serenata, 1988
- Silhouette (Galilee), 1951
- Big Stuff, sung by Billie
Holiday
Piano Music
- 7 Anniversaries, 1944
- 4 Anniversaries, 1948
- 5 Anniversaries, 1951
- 13 Anniversaries, 1988
- Piano Sonata, 1938
- Touches, 1981
- Music for Two Pianos, 1937
- Bridal Suite, 1960
- Moby Diptych, 1981 (republished as Anniversaries nos.
1 and 2 in Thirteen Anniversaries
Other music
- Other occasional works, written as gifts and other forms of
memorial and tribute
- "The Skin of Our Teeth": An aborted work from which Bernstein
took material to use in his "Chichester Psalms"
- "Simhu Na" (arrangement of traditional song)
- "Waltz for Mippy" for Tuba and Piano
- "Elegy for Mippy II" for Trombone and Piano
- "Elegy for Mippy I" for Trombone and Piano
Bibliography
Videography
- The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. West
Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. VHS ISBN 1561275700. DVD
ISBN 0769715702. (videotape of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
given at Harvard in 1973.)
- Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New
York Philharmonic. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video.
DVD ISBN 0769715036.
- Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna/Beethoven:
Piano Concerto No. 1. West Long Branch, Kultur Video.
DVD ASIN: B000E3LCVY
Awards
Notes
References
External links
- Leonard Bernstein official site
- Discography
- The Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of
Congress Music Division

- Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks
- Bernstein's Boston, a Harvard University
research project
- Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts
- Gay Great - Leonard Bernstein
- Radical Chic, a book by Tom
Wolfe describing a gathering at Bernstein's apartment of New
York's social elite and the Black
Panther Party.
- Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace of Music,
written by Peter
Gutmann, music journalist.
- Arias and
Barcarolles, The Leonard Bernstein Pages
- Leonard Bernstein's maximum card from Israel
- Obituary, New York Times, October 15,
1990
- Candide: Overture listen track on
Magazzini-Sonori
- Leonard Bernstein: American Original
(HarperCollins, 2008) Chapters by Alan
Rich, Paul Boyer, Carol J. Oja,
Tim Page, Burton Bernstein,
Jonathan Rosenberg, Joseph Horowitz,
Bill McGlaughlin, James M. Keller,
John Adams