An Open Letter to Leonard

The recently televised documentary "Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note, An 'American Masters' Special," the release of a remastered original Broadway cast recording of West Side Story, an article in The New Yorker, and the eighth anniversary of his death set me thinking large about Leonard Bernstein. Here's an open letter. (In truth, I don't really have great expectations of receiving a reply.)

Dear Mr. Bernstein:

I grew up into a Leonard Bernstein world and was spoiled by it. At the time to call you ubiquitous would be practically understatement: appearances on television in programs and concerts, in your books, in the newspapers and magazines, your work and works on and for the stage and in the concert hall -- it was as if there could be no serious music without Lenny.

Underlying all your efforts was the passion to educate. Through your Young People's Concerts, Omibus programs, "LB and the New York Philharmonic," and other intentionally educational appearances, a cross-generational mass audience was taught how to be open and to listen, and was enlightened to possibilities about which they would not have dreamed but for your intercedance.

We were taught to be open about the attempts of contemporary writers to expand the borders of what was considered "listenable." We were invited to explore the works of forgotten masters, and rediscover the masterpieces of the heroes of music. We were tricked into blindly accepting the fugues, pan-tonality, compound metricality -- the undisguised, yet nonetheless palatable complexity of your writing for the commercial theatre!

You taught, cajoled, tricked, teased, invited. By whatever means you could find you got us to expect a continuing growth, onward and upward into a glorious and urbane musical future.

But you lied to us, Lenny. There was an implied promise that the music in our lives would continue to be enlightened and enriched by intelligence (I don't mean just "intellect"), that we could forever expect to be challenged by the concert world and the musical theatre. But it hasn't turned out that way. When not laboring at deliberate alienation, the "serious" music scene continues to fail in finding ways to appeal to the general public, while the musical theatre's obsequiousness to profit has led to pandering to the lowest common denominator. The new "corporate" theatre's quest for more bang for the buck squeezes out any sign of intelligent life. Other than an occasional radar blip from Stephen Sondheim, what happened to the world you promised, the one that makes room for and, yes!, celebrates shows by writers willing to challenge us, the likes of Ricky Ian Gordon, Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Leonard Bernstein? Instead, ninety

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