![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Musical Theatre
Book Review: Leonard Bernstein - An American Musician, by Allen Shawn
Back to the set of books I picked up on discount at Libreria at the start of the year. This was just a pick out of curiosity; for me, Bernstein means a master of leisurely tempi as a conductor, and something of a fusion composer. For the first couple of chapters, the book mirrors that easy-going style; a generally comfortable childhood in a Massachusetts family descended from Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. As the book moves on through student years and into a professional career, it becomes more technical. The discussions of Bernstein's compositions - which cover a variety of forms - requires some level of technical musical knowledge, and the discussion of his conducting career reads somewhat like a catalogue. I had not previously considered the religious influence on his music. The commercial and technical challenges in writing for Broadway seem obvious but it's interesting to read also about so many abandoned projects, with music sometimes repurposed elsewhere. The lucky breaks in his life are perhaps self-fulfilling. The writing about his personal life is quite dry - initially awkward, but perhaps becoming more comfortable or overt with his bisexuality after the death of his wife. Most interesting for me was the writing about his political side - particularly his difficulties in the McCarthy era, and clashes with the Reagan / Bush administrations later in the 1980s, in the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The portrayal is of someone ambitious and supremely self-confident, yet also eager to share knowledge and teach others.
Back to the set of books I picked up on discount at Libreria at the start of the year. This was just a pick out of curiosity; for me, Bernstein means a master of leisurely tempi as a conductor, and something of a fusion composer. For the first couple of chapters, the book mirrors that easy-going style; a generally comfortable childhood in a Massachusetts family descended from Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. As the book moves on through student years and into a professional career, it becomes more technical. The discussions of Bernstein's compositions - which cover a variety of forms - requires some level of technical musical knowledge, and the discussion of his conducting career reads somewhat like a catalogue. I had not previously considered the religious influence on his music. The commercial and technical challenges in writing for Broadway seem obvious but it's interesting to read also about so many abandoned projects, with music sometimes repurposed elsewhere. The lucky breaks in his life are perhaps self-fulfilling. The writing about his personal life is quite dry - initially awkward, but perhaps becoming more comfortable or overt with his bisexuality after the death of his wife. Most interesting for me was the writing about his political side - particularly his difficulties in the McCarthy era, and clashes with the Reagan / Bush administrations later in the 1980s, in the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The portrayal is of someone ambitious and supremely self-confident, yet also eager to share knowledge and teach others.