Leonard Bernstein: I Hate Music! A Cycle of Five Kid Songs and its Cultural Context Danielle Hickey
121
Known to many as the composer of the ground-breaking musical West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein began his career in classical music. Though Bernstein arguably achieved more success with his compositions for the Broadway stage, his classical music is often performed in concert hall settings. A scholar, and a composer, Bernstein’s works often encompass underlying commentary on society. In his I Hate Music! song cycle, Bernstein cleverly displays the development of a young girl in America during the mid-1940’s. This realization can be achieved by studying Leonard Bernstein’s life, the composition of the song cycle, and the historical context from which this piece was composed. On August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, future pianist, conductor, composer and educator, Leonard Bernstein, was born to Russian Jewish immigrants Sam and Jennie Bernstein. He would later benefit from the births of two younger siblings, a sister named Shirley, and brother, Burton. Compared to most musical masters, Leonard is considered to have had a late introduction to music. With the death of an Aunt Clara, the Bernstein family was willed a piano (Secrest 3). Leonard was nine years old at the time, and was immediately fascinated with the instrument. Leonard Bernstein himself recalled, “I remember touching it…and that was it. That was my contract with life, with God” (Secrest 15). He pleaded with his father for piano lessons. Though Sam and the Bernstein family had the means to pay the fee for lessons, Sam refused, not wanting his son to follow a musical path. Defying his father, Leonard taught himself the basics, being an obviously gifted child, and soon began teaching lessons to neighborhood kids, using the money he earned to pay for his own lessons (Peyser 4). Leonard was enrolled at Boston Latin School, one of the country’s most prestigious college preparatory schools. Its alumni include such notable past figures from Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and John Hancock to Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Secrest 15). He went on to attend Harvard University. There he was also introduced to composers David Diamond and Aaron Copland, one of Bernstein’s heroes (Secrest 43). Before graduating from Harvard in 1939, Bernstein went on to play for Marc Blitzstein’s controversial leftist musical, The Cradle Will Rock. After graduation, Bernstein headed to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying piano with Isabella Vengerova, conducting with Fritz Reiner, and orchestration with Randall Thompson (Briggs 21). The following year in 1940, Bernstein attended the newly created Tanglewood Music Festival sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and met renowned conductor Serge Koussevitzky, later becoming his conducting assistant (Gradenwitz 31).
aegis 2007
“Life without music is unthinkable. Music without life is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.” Leonard Bernstein
