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It’s fun to explore
Bernstein’s
songwriting
because you can
see where he’s
going later with his
theater music
.
–Kevin Murphy
“
Pianist Kevin Murphy (left), director of the RSMI Program for Singers, toured with a quartet of recent alumni, including soprano Cadie Jordan (right), to the
Tucson Desert Song Festival this winter presenting a program mixing Leonard Bernstein’s concert and theater songs as well as works by Bernstein passions
Mahler, Ives, and Copland, providing a preview of his two-year traversal of Bernstein’s complete songs with RSMI during Ravinia’s summer season.
touching this thing the day it arrived, just stroking it and going
mad. I knew, from that moment, that music was ‘it.’ There was
no question in my mind that my life was to be about music.”
And his life truly was about music. Before time claimed
him in 1990, he’d achieved greatness as a composer, conductor,
pianist, and educator. He left us with numerous masterpieces
for the stage—
West Side Story
,
On the Town
,
Wonderful Town
,
and
Candide
, as well as three major ballets,
Fancy Free
,
Facsim-
ile
, and
Dybbuk
—and several symphonic works, among them
three titled symphonies: “Jeremiah,” “The Age of Anxiety,” and
“Kaddish.” He was the winner of numerous Emmy Awards as
an educator who could explain “sonata-allegro form” to school-
children and have them understand it. He was also the music
director of the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969.
“Bernstein is synonymous with American music,” says
Kevin Murphy, director of the Program for Singers at RSMI.
“He’s part of our nation’s musical fabric.” Indeed, he is. How
many Americans haven’t listened to
West Side Story
or at least
hummed the tunes “Maria” and “Tonight”?
While Bernstein left us with several widely acknowledged
masterpieces, there are still more. “I think we sometimes
neglect his other music—music besides what he wrote for the
theater and his more famous orchestral pieces,” Murphy says.
“It’s a lot of fun in this centennial year to explore the music that
people aren’t used to hearing. I’m excited for this opportunity
to dig into his repertoire. I knew
I Hate Music
early in my ca-
reer, but I didn’t really know that many other Bernstein songs.”
I Hate Music
is a cycle of five songs composed in 1942, when
Bernstein shared a flat with artist Edys Merrill. The quirky,
ironic title was inspired by Merrill, who often walked around
the apartment with her hands over her ears, shouting “I hate
music” while Bernstein coached opera singers.
Bernstein based the cycle on five short children’s poems that
he wrote himself. With the music, he published a cautionary
statement for the singers: “In the performance of these songs,
coyness is to be assiduously avoided. The natural, unforced
sweetness of child expressions can never be successfully gilded;
rather will it come through the music in proportion to the dig-
nity and sophisticated understanding of the singer.” [Few have
achieved this delicate balance as well as Barbra Streisand, who
used the cycle’s first song as the title piece of her 1965 televi-
sion special and album,
My Name is Barbra
(transposed from
the original “Barbara”). Bernstein and Streisand subsequently
reconnected over the song “So Pretty,” written for the 1968
“Broadway for Peace” concert.]
Years before writing
I Hate Music
, Bernstein applied himself
to
Psalm 148.
“It’s the earliest song of his I could find, from 1935,”
says Murphy. “It’s for voice and piano—a serious song. You can
hear the deep qualities of his expression that you know from his
later music, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it was Bernstein.”
The young Bernstein wrote
Psalm 148
at the beginning of his fi-
nal year at Boston Latin School. It sounds Robert Schumannish,
with some Wagner harmonies, “and I think you can hear some
threads of Mahler in some of his earlier songs,” says Murphy.
Although the young Bernstein pored over classical piano
pieces, his knowledge of American jazz and popular music
came to rival that of Gershwin, that quintessential crossover
artist. He grew up during the golden age of radio and heard
plenty of American popular song, but it was his playing in jazz
bands that made him so fluent in American idioms. His father
PATRICK GIPSON/RAVINIA
RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE
39