Leonard Bernstein Biography

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| My Favorite Mr. B in Music | Pamila Besaw | | Music Appreciation 1101 | Monday/Wednesday 9:30 | Dr. Clayton Turner, Instructor | My Favorite Mr. B in Music A musician that joined the ages, Leonard Bernstein’s talent spanned centuries, from the Classical Period, to Romantic Period, to Twentieth Century and Beyond. He started his musical journey with very little encouragement from his family. Through his intense drive for learning music, he became one of the most talented musicians of the 20th Century. Bernstein loved classical music and wrote many classical pieces, but he truly thrived and excelled in his romantic feel of music. “He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive…show more content…
His parent’s names were Samuel and Jennie Bernstein. His grandmother named him Louis, but his parents always called him Leonard. He legally changed his name to Leonard when he was 15 after his grandmother died, but his friends always called him Lenny. He had little support for his musical love as a child. His dad was a businessman, a bookstore owner and did not encourage Leonard’s music passion, but still he took Leonard to orchestra concerts when he was a teenager. Later Samuel fully supported his son by getting him formally trained in music. Leonard loved music ever since he was young, especially the piano, and started teaching himself on a hand me down piano from his cousin. At a young age for his sister, he “would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies” (Leonard Berstein, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). At age seventeen, he started studying music at Harvard University where he published his first known musical score for the play “The Birds” by Aristophanes (Leonard Berstein, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). While at Harvard, Leonard met Dimitri Mitropoulos who greatly influenced Leonard, helping him to become a great conductor. At a party, Leonard met another great musician Aaron Copland while playing Copland’s own “Piano Variations.” He had no idea that Copland was there until Copland introduced himself to Leonard, they hit it off, and Copland became another one of…show more content…
His "Prelude, Fugue and Riffs" was a jazzy piece with a solo for the clarinet. Then came the infamous 1957 “West Side Story” that was a “modern version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set in the slums of New York” (Kamien). “West Side Story” was a Latin translation of forbidden love. A couple from different sides of the streets fell in love, Tony, an American, and Maria, a Puerto Rican, were kept from each other by their families feuding. The story is based on a gang war between “the Jets, native-born Americans led by Riff; and the Sharks, Puerto Ricans led by Bernado” (Kamien). Philip Brophy, in literary terms, calls West Side Story a Lyrical drama, in musical society its form falls into the category of musical. Brophy said, “The soundtrack of WEST SIDE STORY illustrates how the melodic and symphonic construction of the score describe, reveal, suggest, imply, and basically narrate the plot action in operatic form” (Brophy). Meaning that the musical could make you see everything that was happening not only through the acting, written composition, screen, costumes, but through the music played. You could feel the hatred of both races. There was comedy in the way the women mocked the leader in lyrics by imitating what he was saying and finishing his sentences for him, you could hear the mocking nature of the women in the composition as it was played. My favorite piece was the song “Cool.” Stephen Sondheim, lyricist, and

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