Leonard Bernstein at 100

Lectures/Scripts/WritingsTelevision ScriptsYoung People's Concerts

• About Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic stand among his greatest achievements. These televised programs introduced an entire generation to the joys of classical music. Read More
• What Does Music Mean? Music is never about anything. Music just is. Music is notes, beautiful notes and sounds put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them, and that's all there is to it. Read more
• What is American Music? In fact, there are so many different qualities in our music that it would take much too long to list them; there are as many sides to American music as there are to the American people—our great, varied, many-sided democracy. Read more
• What is Orchestration? Today we're going to talk about a part of music that's really exciting and really fun — orchestration. Now, this big word means a lot of different things to a lot of different people; and we're going to try and clear up what it really means. Read more
• What Makes Music Symphonic? You see, development is really the main thing in life, just as it is in music; because development means change, growing, blossoming out; and these things are life itself. Read more
• What is Classical Music? Now the question before the house today is: "What is Classical Music?" Now anybody knows that that piece of Handel we just played is classical music, for instance. Right? Right. So what's the problem - why are we asking this question? Read more
• Humor in Music Humor was part of that 18th century elegance and fun we were talking about. Now since that program we've had so many letters and requests for more about the subject of humor in music that I've decided to spend a whole program on it. Read more
• What is a Concerto? Well, in music the word "concert" means the "togetherness" of musicians, who come together to play or to sing in a group. So ever since music began to be written for audiences like yourselves, composers have used the word Concerto to name their pieces. Read more
• Who is Gustav Mahler? They say that anyway a conductor's head is too full of everyone else's music, so how can he write original stuff of his own? Naturally I don't agree with these people at all; I think Mahler's music is terrific, and very original, too, as I'm sure you'll agree when you hear it. Read more
• Young Performers No. 1 "Peter and the Wolf" Featuring: cellist Daniel Domb, conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn, violinist Barry Finclair, conductor Stefan Mengelberg, and actress Alexandra Wager. Read more
• Unusual Instruments of the Past, Present, Future n fact, how does he get the orchestra to sound so peculiar in general-so new and different from the way the same orchestra sounds when it plays Beethoven or Brahms? Well let's see... Read more
• The Second Hurricane We are giving over the whole hour to one piece - an opera written by the great American composer Aaron Copland. But this opera, called The Second Hurricane, is different from most operas in two ways Read more
• Overtures and Preludes But why a program of just Overtures? Well, I'll tell you. When I was a boy, first discovering music, the biggest kicks I got always seemed to come from Overtures. Read more
• Aaron Copland Birthday Party oday, we're going to have a 60th birthday party for another composer, our own loved and admired Aaron Copland, and this time we're going to meet him in person later in the program. Read more
• Folk Music in the Concert Hall Folk-songs and folk-dances are really the heart of all music, the very beginning of music; and you'd be amazed at how much of the big, complicated concert music we hear grows right out of them. Read more
• What Is Impressionism? Because this sea-piece by Debussy is what is called an impressionistic piece of music: that is, it tells you no facts, it is not a realistic description, but instead it's all color and movement and suggestion. Read more
• Road to Paris Musicians from all over the world were drawn to Paris as if to a magnet, especially by the fascinating new personality of Debussy. Read more
• Happy Birthday, Igor Stravinsky When we say "Happy Birthday" to Igor Stravinsky, as we are doing on this program, we are not only giving him our congratulations and our wishes for many more healthy productive years. We are also paying tribute, with all our respect and admiration and devotion, to the greatest composer in the world today. Read more
• The Sound of a Hall The thing we're most concerned about in this hall -- unlike an ordinary house -- is how it sounds. Read more
• What is Melody? So today we're going to make up for lost time, and talk about the real meat and potatoes of music -- the main course: which is melody. Read more
• The Latin American Spirit But we mustn't begin to think that all Latin American music is only cha-cha-cha-cha dance music—not by a long shot. Our Latin neighbors have produced an impressive number of serious symphonic composers, who have succeeded in preserving the folk flavor of their own countries, while at the same time expanding their music into what we think of as universal art—music that has not only a nationalistic spirit but the spirit of all mankind. Read more
• A Tribute to Teachers And so today we are going to praise teachers. And the best way I can think of for me to do this is by paying tribute to some of my own teachers, who, over the last 30 years, have given me so much musical joy and inspiration. Read more
• The Genius of Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith was a true master in the great German tradition, a master of melody, of harmony and counterpoint and rhythm and form and orchestration and everything that has to do with music, and he wrote beautiful music. Read more
• Jazz in the Concert Hall Now that's about the last sound in the world you'd expect to hear in Philharmonic Hall, isn't it? Sounds more like your next-door neighbor's radio, or the Newport Jazz Festival. And yet, that's a sound that's been coming more and more often into our American concert halls, ever since American composers began trying, about forty years ago, to get some of the excitement and natural American feeling of jazz into their symphonic music. Read more
• What is Sonata Form? We're going to dig into that terrifying old thing called sonata form. I've avoided this subject for years, not so much because it's difficult, but because so many words have already been spilled about it in so many music appreciation classes, where sonata form often winds up sounding like a road map with a lot of strange names like "exposition" and "recapitulation," and what not. Read more
• Farewell to Nationalism It's what is called nationalistic music - that is, music that reflects the character of a particular nation, whether that nation be Russia, or France, or Peru, or the Navajo Indian. Read more
• A Tribute to Sibelius We join the whole world in honoring the memory of the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Read more
• Musical Atoms: A Study of Interval One simple note all by itself is not music — not even a single molecule of music, not even an atom. It's more like a proton or an electron, which, as you know, is meaningless all by itself; you need at least one of each — at least two atomic particles — to create an atom. Read more
• The Sound of an Orchestra So you think that's beautiful—what you've just been listening to? Huh? Rich, luscious, expressive orchestral playing? Full of emotion? Great arching phrases? Singing silken strings? Throbbing oboes and flutes? Mighty brass and drums? You find it beautiful? Read more
• A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich He's a genius—a real, authentic genius. And there aren't too many of those around anymore. That's why I want to make this personal birthday toast to him. Read more
• What Is a Mode? What is a mode? Well, for one thing, musical modes have nothing to do with neckties, or dresses, or even with fashions of a musical kind. Modes are simply scales, though not perhaps those very scales you practice on your piano. Read more
• Charles Ives: American Pioneer Just imagine: in those early 1900's what was called "crazy modern music" consisted of Debussy, Ravel, and Richard Strauss — all composers we think of today as pretty stodgy old-timers. And yet, in those very same years, this Connecticut Yankee named Ives was already madly pursuing his own off beat ideas, writing music that no one could decipher, no one could play, and no one cared to hear. Read more
• A Toast to Vienna in 3/4 Time What exactly is Viennese music? Well, it's a number of things... Read more
• Forever Beethoven He still has the market cornered. An all Beethoven concert is an every-day occurrence, isn't it. And what is the main piece on every piano recital? A Beethoven sonata. Read more
• Quiz-Concert: How Musical Are You? This is the first time in all our eleven years of Young People's programs that we are running a music quiz of any kind - and, I believe, it's the first time anybody has in the history of television. Read more
• Fantastic Variations What makes Strauss' Don Quixote so remarkable is the way he has succeeded in catching the literary and pictorial elements of the novel in all their wit and variety. Read more
• Berlioz Takes a Trip Those sounds you're hearing come from the first psychedelic symphony in history, the first musical description ever made of a trip, written one hundred thirty odd years before the Beatles, way back in 1830 by the brilliant French composer Hector Berlioz Read more
• Bach Transmogrified Have you heard the news? Johann Sebastian Bach has made the cover of a national news magazine! I'm not saying which one, but he's right up there along with Presidents, astronauts and Joe Namath—imagine, Bach, old Bach, over 200 years dead! And why? Read more
• Two Ballet Birds Now who says ballet music is not good without the ballet? Well, many people say so, which, I suppose, is why ballet music rarely gets played on symphony programs. But after all, I ask myself, why not? Read more
• Fidelio: A Celebration of Life Now those famous bars proclaim the opening of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio—one of his greatest works, containing some of the most glorious music ever conceived by a mortal, one of the most cherished and revered of all operas, a timeless monument to love, life, and liberty, a celebration of human rights, of freedom to speak out, to dissent. Read more
• The Anatomy of a Symphony Orchestra Now there's a sound for you, that's a sound- and-a-half- the familiar, full-throated, incomparable sound of the modern symphony orchestra. It is probably the grandest sound on earth — at least among man-made noises. Read more
• A Copland Celebration Copland has often been called the "Dean of American Composers" - whatever that means. I suppose it means that he's the oldest, but he isn't the oldest, he's just unique. He has led American music through paths both pleasant and thorny for half a century, and he has never ceased fighting for the cause of new music, especially new American music. Read more
• Thus Spake Richard Strauss It's the in-joke of the film-world: the music of the future, of the Space-Age, theme-song of the Milky Way. But what is it? Well, it's the opening minute or so of a remarkable tone-poem by Richard Strauss, called Thus Spake Zarathustra. Read more
• Liszt and the Devil Now there's a terrific hunk of music. And I'll bet very few, if any, of you know what it is. And yet it's by one of the most famous composers of all time, Franz Liszt. Read more
• Holst: The Planets On this program we're going to be playing around in outer space. And I mean playing — not only in the sense of playing notes on musical instruments, but also of playing as fun, as we play games, for the sheer enjoyment of it. Read more