The complete idiot's guide to classical music (45 page)

For all his years in France, Thomson’s roots remained firmly planted in America. “I wrote music in Paris that was always, in one way or another, about Kansas City,” he said. “I wanted Paris to know Kansas City, to understand the way we think and feel on the banks of the Missouri.” Hymn tunes remembered from childhood, folk songs learned as a teenager, music that echoed the independent, sometimes eccentric spirit of America, this was Thomson’s tonal road. “His music,” said Thomson’s Parisian friend and fellow-composer Erik Satie, “is as simple, as straightforward, as devastating, as the remarks of a child. To the uninitiated, they may sound trifling. To those who love them, they are fresh and beautiful and firmly right.”

For 15 years, starting upon his return to the U.S. in 1940, Thomson took on a new role, that of music critic for the
New York Herald Tribune
. He was far more than a reviewer, though; He was a keen observer of the American cultural scene and an ardent champion of new music and its composers. His comments could be highly personal (some would say prejudiced), but his articles combined musical erudition, literary wit, and an abiding love for the art to which he devoted his life.

One of Thomson’s unique contributions was the musical portrait. Many composers have translated landscapes or paintings into sound, but Thomson literally worked from life. The subject would be there in his studio, while Thomson sketched out a piece suggested by his or her features, personality or other distinguishing traits. He wrote almost 150 of these portraits from life, many are piano miniatures, others are more substantial works for orchestra, all are fascinating.

Even easier to assimilate are Thomson’s folk-inspired pieces, including his scores to the documentary films
The River, The Plow That Broke the Plains,
and
Louisiana Story
(the last sometimes listed as
Acadian Songs and Dances
). The two Gertrude Stein operas are more of an acquired taste, but the “Symphony on Hymn Tunes” is immediately accessible, as is his “Autumn Concertino” for harp, strings, and percussion.

William Schuman reached greatness in several fields. Born and bred in New York City (1910–1992), he was drafted into playing the double bass (because George Washington High School didn’t have a player), then went on to form Billy Schuman and his Alamo Society Orchestra, a modified jazz band that played local weddings and bar mitzvahs.

The earliest of his works in current circulation is his 1939 “American Festival Overture,” after which the masterpieces flowed forward without cease.
The New Yorker
proclaimed Schuman “the composer of the hour by virtue of the popular and critical success of his Third Symphony,” and when the first Pulitzer Prize for music was given out in 1943, it went to William Schuman.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
One of Schuman’s buddies was the great theatre lyricst-composer-to-be, Frank Loesser, and Loesser’s first published song, “In Love with the Memory of You,” had a music credit for Bill Schuman. In his 20th year, attending a New York Philharmonic concert changed Schuman’s life. “I was astounded at seeing the sea of stringed instruments, and everybody bowing together,” he recalled years later. “The visual thing alone was astonishing. But the sound! I was overwhelmed. I had never heard anything like it. The very next day, I decided to become a composer.”

In the quarter century following World War II, America stepped forward as an international catalyst of the arts. With no need to rebuild cities or recalculate borders, the economic strength of the U.S. allowed us to lead the world in re-establishing the arts as a cornerstone of civilized society. Through his energy, initiative, and good business sense, Schuman became one the leading figures in this modern musical renaissance. As President of the Juilliard School and then the fledgling Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Schuman was instrumental in shaping how America perceived and supported music, dance and drama in the second half of the 20th century.

 
Important Things to Know
Students from every land vie for entrance to this most famous music conservatory in the world, but few of the singers, players, dancers and actors who crowd its practice rooms and performance studios know who Mr. Juilliard actually was. Perhaps that’s because Augustus D. Juilliard (1836–1919) was not a musician at all, but a music-loving industrialist who willed much of his large estate to a foundation designed to help worthy students gain a musical education. The Juilliard Graduate School opened its doors in 1924, then merged with the older Institute of Musical Arts (founded in 1905) to become the Juilliard School. In 1968, it became one of the constituent organizations of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

It was Schuman who struck down the color barrier at Juilliard—an action directly responsible for Leontyne Price’s debut at the Met—and it was he who raised the banner of Mostly Mozart, sparking a host of similar summer festivals all over the country. It was also during his time at Lincoln Center that the Juilliard String Quartet was born and the new Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors.

All the while, Schuman was producing pieces that reflected the highest standards of American achievement. “The composer’s job is to be faithful to his gifts by composing the best music of which he is capable,” Schuman said. “The continuing flow of the art of music through the centuries, and the possibility, however modest, that his music may enter the stream, is sufficient reward.”

As with Copland, the best introduction to William Schuman’s output is through the scores that make imaginative use of American themes and rhythms. “New England Triptych” is high on that list, its finale a stirring setting of “Chester,” the anthem by William Billings that became a rallying cry of the American Revolution. The
American Festival
Overture is highly notable, and since you can’t get more American than baseball, take a swing with
The Mighty Casey,
an operatic retelling of
Casey at the Bat
. Schuman’s orchestration of Ives’ “Variations on America” is also so fresh and cleverly appealing that it almost qualifies as an original piece. Of his ten symphonies, the Third Symphony is probably the most striking, and his Piano and Violin Concertos will reward serious listening as well.

Where do we start? Here was a man of such gargantuan and multifaceted talents that he stood alone in the musical life of America, and indeed the world. As fellow composer Ned Rorem put it so eloquently, Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) is “the epitome of glamour combined with quality, and thank heaven for him. His books and lectures have reshaped the way America listens. His mastery of keyboard and podium has defined the notion of American performance. While the scope of his programs spans centuries, it italicized his homeland, bringing into relief our sense of American craft.”

Whatever he touched, Bernstein illumined. His Young People’s TV broadcasts introduced millions of listeners to the joys of classical music. His podium mastery gave us new understanding of symphonies from Beethoven to Mahler, and his charismatic energy gave wings to any number of American compositions. As a composer himself, Bernstein wrote music that reflects many faiths, covers many stylistic bases; it sparkles with equal luster at the ballet, in the concert hall, and on the Broadway stage.

The public loved the first two Bernstein shows. The familiar “New York, New York” theme from
On the Town
has been used countless times to introduce film scenes and radio or TV shows set in the Big Apple;
Wonderful Town
made a musical comedy star out of Rosalind Russell, its initial Broadway run racking up more than 500 performances.
Candide
didn’t do too well the first time around (a mere 73 performances), but has led a charmed life in numerous revivals since then. Let’s not talk about
1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue,
which flopped in less than a week (though leaving us a superb song that has become something of an American anthem: “Take Care of This House”); instead, let’s hail
West Side Story,
which had a nearly 1,000-performance stay on Broadway, ran even longer in London, and then made it to the movies. The soundtracks became best-sellers, and the show has seen countless revivals.

It was to Broadway that Bernstein brought a unique combination of rhythmic drive, melodic warmth and intellectual honesty. First came
Fancy Free
, Jerome Robbins’ ballet about three sailors on shore leave in New York City, and its musical comedy offspring,
On the Town,
which wedded his music to the brilliant book and lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The long-running show also became (four years later) a hit movie starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly.

Wonderful Town
was next, in 1952, followed by
Candide
four years later, during which interval Bernstein made his one and only foray into film scoring. His dramatic music helping Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy (“I coulda been a contenda instead of a bum”) take on the corrupt union bosses
On the Waterfront
. Then, in 1957, came
West Side Story,
a shattering updating of the Romeo and Juliet story that has gone around the world on stage and screen. The libretto has been printed in German, Norwegian, and Bulgarian; the show has been sung in Swedish, Czech, Danish, Japanese, and Serbo-Croatian. Pop and rock versions have been issued, and a set of Symphonic Dances from
West Side Story
has become a concert hall staple.

Bernstein’s keen theatrical sense pervades many of his classical pieces as well, including the following:

 

• Jeremiah
  Symphony (1943), with its Biblical texts;
  
 

• “Age of Anxiety” (1949), a musical translation of the long poem by W.H. Auden;
  
 

• the Third or
  Kaddish
  Symphony (1961–63), dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy;
  
 

• the poignant Chichester Psalms (1965), celebrating the rebuilt Chichester Cathedral in England;
  
 

• and
  Mass
  an ecumenical theatre piece that opened the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in 1971.
  

Bernstein was sometimes criticized for spreading himself too thin, but his enthusiasms and creative spirit were far too compelling to be curtailed, let alone cubby-holed. True, he could have composed more had he conducted less (or vice versa), but Bernstein chose his own paths. He was unique in his ability to bridge the artificial chasm that so often exists between classical and popular idioms, passionate in his desire to guide all of us along the path Candide sought to “the best of all possible worlds.”

“Any composer’s writing is the sum of himself, of all his roots and influences,” Bernstein said. “I have deep roots, each different from one another. They are American, Jewish, and cosmic in the sense they come from the great tradition of all music. I have been as influenced by Handel and Haydn as by jazz, folksongs, Hassidic melodies, or prayers I heard as a child. My music is not one or the other but a mixture of all. I can only hope it adds up to something you could call universal.”

As we were saying, where do we start? Maybe with
West Side Story,
a magical show with a power and beauty that is indeed universal, and while you’re browsing in the Broadway bin, take out
Candide
and
Wonderful Town.
Then try the ballet music from the film
On the Town
(“New York, New York, it’s a wonderful town . . .”) and the Symphonic Suite from
On the Waterfront.
For a more restful listening experience, try the exquisite “Chichester Psalms,” and if you’re ready to pull out all the dramatic stops, there’s no topping
Mass,
which Bernstein himself referred to as a “theatre piece for singers, players, and dancers.”