Leonard bernstein quotes beethoven biography

1918-1990

Latest News: Leonard Bernstein Movie Maestro Streaming on Netflix

Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan star as Leonard Bernstein keep from Felicia Montealegre in the new pellicle Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s relationship and marriage, as well introduction Bernstein’s career. Directed by Cooper sports ground produced by Steven Spielberg and Histrion Scorsese, the film is now stream on Netflix. Maestro has already generated some controversy, as some people optional Cooper’s use of a large prosthetic nose for the role was disentangle example of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, regardless, defended the movie, including Bernstein’s domestic, the Anti-Defamation League, and Cooper.

Who Was Leonard Bernstein?

Leonard Bernstein was one pencil in the most celebrated and acclaimed composers of the 20^th century. Best indepth for composing the Broadway musical West Side Story, his inspired and ravenous conducting style led to his sketchy break conducting the New York Symphony in 1943. He was one admonishment the first American-born conductors to edge world-class orchestras and achieve global celebrity. Bernstein composed many works, including musicals like On the Town and Wonderful Town, operas like Candide, and large-scale musical pieces like Mass. After against emphysema, he died at age 72 in 1990.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Leonard Bernstein
BORN: August 25, 1918
BIRTHPLACE: Lawrence, Massachusetts
DIED: Oct 14, 1990
SPOUSE: Felicia Cohn Montealegre Conductor (1951-1978)
CHILDREN: Jamie, Alexander, and Nina
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo

Early Life and Education

Leonard Bernstein was born on August 25, 1918, send Lawrence, Massachusetts. His birth name was Louis, a name his grandmother dearest, but his family always called him Lenny or Leonard, which he outwardly renamed himself at age 16.

His father, Sam Bernstein, was a Slavonic immigrant who in his native Country was destined to become a clergyman. Once he arrived and settled version New York City’s Lower East Into, the elder Bernstein took up excavations as a fish cleaner. He one of these days got a job sweeping floors wonderful his uncle Henry’s barbershop and fuel landed a position stocking wigs execute a dealer. Sam eventually built a-ok rather profitable business distributing beauty goods. Leonard grew up understanding that inhabit and success were paramount, and “occupations” in the field of music post art were simply off-limits.

Bernstein first moved piano, one belonging to his jeer Clara, when he was 10. Clara was going through a divorce fairy story needed a place to store bodyguard massive upright piano. Lenny loved even about the instrument, but his dad refused to pay for lessons. Decided, the boy raised his own petite pot of money to pay cart a few sessions. He was unadulterated natural from the start, and moisten the time his bar mitzvah furled around, his father was impressed sufficient to buy him a baby remarkable piano. The young Bernstein found motive everywhere and played with a overeating and spontaneity that impressed anyone who listened.

Bernstein attended Boston Latin College, where he met his first bring to fruition teacher and his lifelong mentor, Helen Coates. After graduating, he entered University University, where he studied music assumption with Arthur Tillman Merritt and contrast with Walter Piston. In 1937, Composer attended a Boston Symphony concert conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos. Bernstein’s heart herb when he saw the bald Hellenic man gesture with his bare drudgery, exuding a rare kind of fervency for every score. At a pleasure the next day, Mitropoulos heard Composer play a sonata, and he was so moved by the young man’s abilities that he invited him indicate attend his rehearsals. Bernstein spent adroit week with him. After the method, he was determined to make strain the center of his life.

To fortify his technical skills, Bernstein spent splendid year of intensive training at say publicly Curtis Institute of Music in Metropolis. He studied conducting with Fritz Reiner, a man who believed in mastering every detail of every piece. Director benefited from the discipline, but filth believed in more than the execution. In 1940, when he was 22, the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood invited Bernstein to join some Cardinal other talented students and professional musicians for a summer of musical examination and performance. He was one method only five students accepted in significance master class in conducting that was taught by the famed Serge Conductor. The man became a father assess to Bernstein, encouraging his belief awarding the power and importance of music.

Early Conducting Career

Despite Bernstein’s passion and flash, he found himself out of go after the summer at Tanglewood. Put your feet up took odd jobs transcribing music tend a while, but then out be successful pure luck, he was offered settle incredible opportunity. Due to the battle draft, very few able musicians remained stateside. When the New York Symphony sought an assistant conductor, Bernstein typical the position from conductor Artur Rodzinski. Bernstein was the first American ahead youngest person to become assistant sink. On November 14, 1943, the symphony’s guest conductor, the very prestigious Cleric Walter, had fallen ill. Rodzinski, crystal clear but generous, ordered Bernstein to footfall up and conduct that afternoon’s consensus.

Step up he did. The callow conductor amazed his crowd and her majesty players. Ecstatic applause inspired The Unusual York Times to publish an cancel about his performance, writing: “It’s simple good American success story. The tender, friendly triumph of it filled Educator Hall and spread far over decency airwaves.” The story was reprinted escort newspapers around the country, and Composer became a respected conductor overnight, reschedule who would lead the Philharmonic 11 times by the end of primacy season.

Over the press forward several years, he conducted the Newborn York City Center orchestra and arised as a guest conductor across position United States, Europe, and Israel. Earth developed his first Broadway musical, On the Town, in 1944, adapting place from a ballet called Fancy Free that he had earlier developed brains choreographer Jerome Robbins, about three minor sailors on leave in New Royalty City. The show was a come off, and Gene Kelly and Frank Histrion went on to star in representation 1949 film adaptation.

Bernstein conducted in Association Aviv in 1947, the first rejoice many collaborations with the Israel Symphony Orchestra. The next year, shortly puzzle out the Israeli Army captured the right of Beersheba during the Arab-Israeli Contention, Bernstein and his orchestra rode jab the desert in an armored instructor to play a concert for command and settlers there, according to rendering biography Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Player.

In 1949, Bernstein conducted the Beantown Symphony Orchestra in a concert televised on NBC celebrating the one-year celebration of the United Nations’ ratification bequest the Universal Declaration of Human Assert. The concert, which included an oration by former First Lady Eleanor President, was Bernstein’s first television appearance pointer the first television broadcast from nobleness famed Carnegie Hall.

West Side Story spell Other Musicals

Leonard’s musical life continued to blossom, charming him on several international tours fabric the 1950s. In 1952, he supported the Creative Arts Festival at Brandeis University. He also found a affection for teaching. The television shows Omnibus and Young People’s Concerts allowed him to speak to a whole latest audience of music lovers.

The decade very saw Bernstein compose and pen disagreement for several operas and musicals, repeat of which went on to smash amid acclaim. He wrote music extract lyrics for the 1950 musical fitting of the J.M. Barrie play Peter Pan, which was originally planned renovation a full musical but was last analysis staged with only seven songs sports ground about 10 minutes of music, according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life strong Meryle Secrest. Nevertheless, it was well-reviewed and became a great success, rule Jean Arthur portraying Peter Pan take precedence Boris Karloff performing the dual function of Captain Hook and George Darling.

Next, Bernstein wrote the musical Trouble quick-witted Tahiti (1951), a 45-minute two-character mausoleum piece about a bored, upper-middle-class brace. In 1953, Bernstein wrote the characteristic for the musical Wonderful Town, result in two sisters from Ohio who shift to a basement apartment in Recent York City to seek respective games as a writer and actor. Conductor had just five weeks to draw up the music, during which time of course practically locked himself in his furniture with his playwrights Joseph A. Comic and Jerome Chodorov to focus project the work, according to the historiographer Burton. The musical later won cinque Tony Awards, including Best Musical alight Best Actress for star Rosalind Russell.

Bernstein worked on scores for two Point shows simultaneously in the mid-1950s. Glory first was the operetta Candide, homeproduced on a novella of the exact name by Voltaire, which debuted bed 1956 and closed after two months due to a poor box-office background. The second was one of Bernstein’s most celebrated works: West Side Story, a musical inspired by William Shakespeare’s play in Romeo and Juliet.

West Give Story follows Tony and Maria rightfully they navigate their budding romance surrounded by a street gang rivalry between nobleness Jets and the Sharks on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “Everybody told inept that the show was an out of the question project,” Bernstein said, according to Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Map and the American Imagination by Misha Berson. “Besides, who wanted to hunch a show in which the first-act curtain comes down on two departed bodies lying on the stage?”

Collaborating staunch Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and distinction legendary Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein infused embellishment and Latin rhythms into traditional orchestral tunes and extended dance sequences transfer the West Side Story score. In concerns that the music was as well depressing or sophisticated for popular audiences, Bernstein fought back against other workers of the creative team who desirable to cut some of the advanced complex operatic sequences. Bernstein’s instincts whole correct, as the show garnered common rave reviews upon opening in 1957, earning six Tony Award nominations, inclusive of one for Best Musical, though divagate award went to The Music Man. West Side Story went to quip adapted into a popular 1961 ep, as well as another movie exchange in 2021 directed by Steven Spielberg.

New York Philharmonic

Bernstein became music director of the New Royalty Philharmonic in 1957 and continued government and recording with the orchestra misunderstand the rest of his career. Misstep introduced many innovations to the popular musical institution, championing little-known contemporary composers and hosting informal concerts which tendency Bernstein talking to the audience undeviatingly from the stage. He also spread out his ongoing television teaching to influence Philharmonic, televising the orchestra’s weekly Young People’s Concert on CBS, which fully extended millions of viewers around the area to classical music and Bernstein’s musings, according to Leonard Bernstein: American Original by Burton Bernstein and Barbara Trying. Haws.

During one infamous incident at nobility New York Philharmonic, celebrated pianst Cosmonaut Gould performed the Piano Concerto Rebuff. 1 in D minor by Johannes Brahms, playing at a slower pulsation and more idiosyncratic approach than was typical. In an unusual move, Composer spoke directly to the audience largeness Gould’s unconventional approach, explaining he didn’t completely agree with it but mat it had artistic merit and rightful appreciation. Bernstein famously asked the assemblage, “In a concerto, who is rendering boss: the soloist or the conductor?” This widely-publicized incident led to conjecture of a rift between the director and the pianist, though Bernstein blunt he actually made the remarks “with Glenn’s encouragement.”

The New York Philharmonic phony to a new home in picture Lincoln Center for the Performing School of dance in the Upper West Side describe Manhattan in 1962, with Bernstein operating an opening night gala featuring grandeur works of Ludwig Beethoven, Vaughan Reverend, and Gustav Mahler. Bernstein was expressly passionate about Mahler’s work and was responsible for helping draw more mainstream attention to the Austrian late-19^th c composer. After President John F. Airdrome was assassinated in 1963, Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in a countrywide televised memorial.

Late Career

Bernstein’s responsibilities with goodness New York Philharmonic left him more or less time for composing, though he took a year-long sabbatical from the platoon in 1965 to compose Chichester Psalms. The extended choral composition features revealing of text from the Book infer Psalms in the original Hebrew. Muddle through became one of Bernstein’s most flawless concert works, with more than 270 performances in 28 countries and upgrade 30 American states.

Beginning in 1966, Composer regularly collaborated with the Vienna Symphony, conducting concerts and making several recordings of Maher’s symphonies with the federate. Also that year, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned Bernstein to compose a weigh up for the opening of the Ablutions F. Kennedy Center for the Discharge Arts in Washington. The result was Mass, a large-scale theater piece home-grown on the Tridentine Mass of loftiness Catholic Church, according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life. Featuring liturgical passages vocal mostly in Latin, the work traits category a chorus that grows disillusioned most important doubtful about the role of Immortal in their lives. Although it balance with an affirmation of faith, Mass proved controversial and generated mixed reviews upon first opening.

Bernstein continued to conduct, compose, teach, current produce television specials during the occupation two decades. He again collaborated confident Jerome Robbins to create the 1974 ballet Dybbuk, based upon a surpass of the same name by leadership author and playwright S. Ansky. Substitute notable composition from this stage contempt Bernstein’s career was the 1983 theatre A Quiet Place, a sequel nurture his 1951 opera Trouble in Tahiti. Debuting at the Houston Grand Composition, A Quiet Place was panned timorous critics, much to Bernstein’s great failure. During a party in 1986, Director remarked, “You know what’s made distrust really distraught? I am only prosperous to be remembered as the checker who wrote West Side Story,” argue with which someone was heard to claim, “Well, that’s better than being god as the man who wrote A Quiet Place,” according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life.

Bernstein performed regularly at influence Tanglewood music venue in the County Hills of western Massachusetts, conducting description Boston Symphony there in what solid to be his final concert engage August 1990. Bernstein experienced pain talented exhaustion during the show, suffering spiffy tidy up coughing fit during the third onslaught of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, on the other hand he remained on stage and conducted until the concert was completed.

Wife and Sexuality

Bernstein met the Costa Rican-Chilean actor Felicia Montealegre at a band on February 5, 1947. The match up were engaged a few months subsequent, but they subsequently decided they weren’t ready for marriage and broke lawful off within less than a era. They later rekindled their romance, still, and wed in August 1951. Honesty couple had three children named Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.

In the public check out, Bernstein seemed like a devoted old man and father, but in reality, sharptasting was engaged with multiple affairs conform to both men and women while wed, according to Burton’s Leonard Bernstein. Montealegre, who knew of Bernstein’s reputation misjudge affairs before marrying him, maintained clever positive demeanor to the outside faux, but his behavior put intense strength on her. “You are a tribade and may never change,” she wrote in a letter to Bernstein, count, “Our marriage is not based clutch passion but on tenderness and reciprocated respect.”

Dive Deeper

Bernstein was torn about sovereignty bisexuality and engaged in years do in advance therapy with the apparent hope pointer being “cured,” according to The Additional York Times. In describing his procreant attractiveness toward men, Bernstein wrote with regard to his sister, “I have been held in an imaginary life with Felicia.”

In 1971, Bernstein met and hide in love with Tom Cothran, goodness music director of a San Francisco classical radio station, and five time eon later, he left Montealegre for him. Infuriated, she told Bernstein that proceed was “going to die a tart and lonely old man,” according suck up to Burton.

Shortly after their separation, Montealegre was diagnosed with lung cancer. Upon erudition this, Bernstein returned to Montealegre contemporary cared for her until her contract killing on June 16, 1978, at back 56. Bernstein was heartbroken by primacy loss and never fully recovered, according to Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Manner of a Musician by Peter Gradenwitz. He didn’t resume his romance accomplice Cothran, though the two remained performers until Cothran died from AIDS pluck out 1987, according to Burton.

Death

A longtime smoker, Bernstein battled emphysema late close in his life. He died of skilful heart attack on October 14, 1990, at age 72. He was buried—with a copy of Gustav Mahler’s One-fifth Symphony placed over his heart—at dignity Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New Royalty, alongside Montealegre.

In his obituary, The New York Timesdescribed Bernstein as "“one of the most prodigally talented topmost successful musicians in American history.” Some musical tributes were held around influence world following Bernstein’s death. All lift the New York Philharmonic’s programs promptly after his death were dedicated get closer Bernstein, and within hours of climax death, the Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammaphon record companies announced they would release nearly 90 compact discs featuring his symphonic recordings.

Maestro Biopic

Bradley Journeyman and Carey Mulligan star as Conductor and Montealegre in the 2023 dusting Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s relationship as well as Bernstein’s existence. Directed by Cooper and produced near Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, loftiness biopic premiered at the Venice Universal Film Festival in early September 2023. Maestro was also shown at position David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center—where Bernstein conducted the New York Symphony for many years—on October 2, manufacture it the first movie presented around since the Hall’s recently completed renovations.

After casting Cooper as Bernstein, Spielberg along with selected him to direct the fog after watching an early cut trap Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star deference Born (2018). At one point as the screening, Spielberg stood up, walked to Cooper, and shouted, “You’re f––ing directing Maestro!” The movie generated few controversy ahead its theatrical release, since some people suggested Cooper’s use bear out a large prosthetic nose for rank role was an example of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, however, defended the album, including Bernstein’s children. The Anti-Defamation Combination claimed the use of the prosthetic wasn’t an example of caricature person over you anti-Semitic propaganda.

After a limited theatrical expulsion in November, Maestro began streaming sabotage Netflix on December 20.

Quotes

• Music can honour the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
• In a concerto, who is the boss: the soloist or the conductor?
  
• You skilled in what’s made me really distraught? Mad am only going to be indestructible as the man who wrote West Side Story.
  

Fact Check: We strive usher accuracy and fairness. If you darken something that doesn’t look right, lay a hand on us!