Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician

by Barry Seldes

From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly. In this fresh and revealing biography of Bernstein's political life, Barry Seldes examines Bernstein's career against the backdrop of cold war America―blacklisting by the State Department in 1950, voluntary exile from the New York Philharmonic in 1951 for fear that he might be blacklisted, signing a humiliating affidavit to regain his passport―and the factors that by the mid-1950s allowed his triumphant return to the New York Philharmonic. Seldes for the first time links Bernstein's great concert-hall and musical-theatrical achievements and his real and perceived artistic setbacks to his involvement with progressive political causes. Making extensive use of previously untapped FBI files as well as overlooked materials in the Library of Congress's Bernstein archive, Seldes illuminates the ways in which Bernstein's career intersected with the twentieth century's most momentous events. This broadly accessible and impressively documented account of the celebrity-maestro's life deepens our understanding of an entire era as it reveals important and often ignored intersections of American culture and political power.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Politics

300 pages, Hardcover

First published April 26, 2009

Reviews

[de Barros]

Sempre senti uma afinidade para com Leonard Bernstein. Assim que comecei a reconhecer as caras do mundo da música eurdita, a de Berstein nunca me escapava. A forma como regia a orquestra encantava-me, não só pela maneira como conduzia os músicos pelos compassos, mas pela sua sensibilidade e agilidade, parecia que para ele as notas eram palpáveis. Talvez o momento mais memorável foi quando vi o documentário de Bernstein com Christa Ludwig em Das Lied von der Erde, em que a mezzo-soprano se queixa do tempo, ou seja, não consegue cantar sem tropeçar nas próprias palavras, ao que Bernstein responde “Não tem problema, também ninguém consegue entender a letra.”. Ou a sequência de intereações com o tenor José Carreras durante as gravações de West Side Story.

Quando Barry Seldes, um professor de ciências políticas, examinou os ficheiros do FBI sobre Leonard Bernstein, a vida política do músico foi vista como a chave para compreender a vida e carreira do renomado compositor e maestro. O livro de Seldes é rico em novos detalhes sobre o envolvimento político de Bernstein, muito por conta do acesso aos ficheiros do FBI, até então não examinados.

O autor documenta os valores, atitudes e actividades de Bernstein desde o início da década de 1940 com o apogeu do nazi-fascismo e do Holocausto; no início da década de 1950 com as listas negras de cidadãos americados ligados à esquerda, mas, principalmente, homossexuais; até aos longos anos 1960 com a Guerra do Vietname e o despoletar de novos movimentos sociais e sensibilidades.

Barry Seldes concentrou o seu estudo na intersecção da vida musical, social e política de Leonard Bernstein neste novo volume, explicando os valores e actividades liberais/progressivas do maestro desde o New Deal FDR até à Presidência Reagan.

As principais composições de Bernstein são tecidas através do tecido da política liberal. Bernstein não é apenas, como alguns podem crer, o compositor de west Side Story e outros musicais, Menos bem documentada é a sua vida social, embora os principais amigos liberais e queer sejam discutidos à medida que o seu progressivismo interage com Bernstein. O autor conclui que o maestro é, de facto, um animal político, sendo a sua obra indissociável da conjuntura sociopolitica em que viveu.

(O escritor utiliza frequentemente uma linguagem que pode ser considerada como neo-Marxista, falando por exemplo sobre a Guerra do Vietname como um meio "para assegurar o livre fluxo de capital global".)

[Mark Merz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book for a while and finally decided to read it as a prelude to seeing Maestro, the Bernstein film with Bradley Cooper. Seldes subtitles the book in a way that might help a reader understand that they should look elsewhere for celebrity gossip, but I think the author's goals are much more ambitious than the subtitle suggests. I'll get to that in a minute.

First let me say that my awareness of "Lenny" was limited. My high school years were the late 70s, so I mostly experienced him as a conductor of major orchestras playing masterworks on one of the big labels--CBS or Deutsche Grammophon. I knew of "West Side Story" and had seen part of a Great Performances program with him in the pit conducting Beethoven's Fidelio. He was riveting! I never thought of his conducting as a form of exhibitionism; he merely seemed to embody, perfectly, my own extravagant feelings about all things Beethoven.

Seldes' book is definitely the biography of Bernstein's career, the career of an intelligent, musically gifted, energetic, and politically and socially engaged man. It begins mostly with his time at Harvard in the mid-1930s and proceeds chronologically, mostly decade by decade, through his life. It closes with a something like a retrospective analysis called "Understanding Bernstein."

I think it's too limiting to think of the book simply as a "political life." However, it shows Bernstein continually engaged with and reacting to socio-political causes and events. They impact his life, and they often charge and inspire his work as a composer and conductor. Just as interestingly, Seldes goes into depth explaining and contextualizing Bernstein's ambition to advance American music; he considers Bernstein's aesthetic convictions as they develop through his life and as he explained them himself in Harvard's Norton lectures.

I was a little skeptical while reading the author's lengthy exposition of Theodor Adorno's philosophical underpinning for atonal music, thinking that Seldes might be using it to pad the book. I had similar reservations about his extensive narrative at the end that recaps America's 20th Century. Ultimately, though, I think it was important that Seldes provided such context setting for Bernstein's career, one that was a product of that time, even while he was attempting to shape his era in so many liberal/progressive ways.

[Tarafa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that can exemplify how arts and artists might resonate in reaction to their concurrent history.

[Sophie Wieland · Rating 3 out of 5]

While extremely well written and framed for the first four chapters, Seldes gets overly philosophical and theoretical in the end of the book.

[Bill Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry Seldes focused his study on the intersection of Leonard Bernstein's musical life, social life, and political life in this new volume. Seldes explains a lot of liberl/progressive values and activities from the FDR New Deal to the Reagan Presidency. The author documents Bernstein's values, attitudes, and activities from the early 1940s, through blacklisting in the early 1950s, and to resurgency during the late 1960s. Bernstein's major cOmpositions are weaved through the fabric of liberal politics. Less well documented is his social life, although key liberal and gay friends are discussed as their progressivism interacts with Bernstein.

I found the book an interesting listen, and Dick Hill does a very good job of narating. Only occasionally did my eyes roll back into my head when the political talk got too intense. I kept trying to place Hill's eastern accent, maybe someone can help me out here.

[Karlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two of my favorite topics: music and lefty politics. Basically, the author uses Bernstein's life as a metaphor for the decline of progressive liberalism in the United States in the twentieth century. It works well as both biography and a historical survey, only getting slightly bogged down in theory in the last chapter.

[K C · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seriously written, to prove this poli sci's professor point that Leonard Bernstein was a political animal. Since I didn't care one way or the other, I didn't find it very interesting and since I am not a Bernstein scholar I have no idea if the author's arguments are valid or not.