I picked up Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician, by Barry Seldes, with high hopes. I don’t know much about twentieth century music, but I do know a little bit about twentieth century politics, and, you know, it’s an interesting idea, to look at Leonard Bernstein’s music in terms of his politics.
Evidently, most of the people who have written about Mr. Bernstein’s music have essentially dismissed his political activism as a blip in his career, a distraction or an irrelevance. This seems obviously stupid to me, enough so that I wonder if it is an accurate description. Leonard Bernstein was politically active from very early, suffered the blacklist (briefly, and not really admirably), was a very public gay man in a very homophobic era, and was (it seems to me) as passionate about communication as he was about music itself.
Furthermore, as it seems to have been his goal to write the Great American Symphony (for varying definitions of symphony), clearly his idea of what America is would play into that. And would play into it musically, I would think.
Ah, well. I think that (a) I don’t know enough about symphonic music to follow an argument about how all of that really would play out musically, and (2) this book clearly does not make that argument. Frankly, it’s just a political biography of Mr. Bernstein, without a great deal of insight, and with a few noticeable errors in minor matters that I know something about, I don’t trust Mr. Seldes in the major matters I don’t know something about.
A shame, really. If any of you were looking for a book to write, this is a topic that still could really use a good one.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.