In 1939, Bernstein put on Blitzstein’s musical "The Cradle Will Rock," a pro-union, pro-communist show that caused a sensation when it premiered in New York two years earlier.
"He was 20, 21-years-old, and he produces this major, controversial, infamous, performance," says Oja.
Bernstein even found time to write a new arrangement of Gershwin’s legendary "Rhapsody in Blue." The piece will have its world premiere at the festival.
"He was an active, thriving musician, growing, changing, exploring while at Harvard," Oja says.
He could also become combative about his taste for musical experimentation.
During one seminar on 16th-century counterpoint, a professor chastised Bernstein for playing a nontraditional and dissonant composition. According to Shapero, who was also in the class, "Lenny took his fist and went BANG, like that," playing the piece despite the protestations.
Defying a powerful musical trend among musicians of his generation, Bernstein doggedly stuck to the doctrine of tonality—which centers a piece of music around major and minor chords based on a single key—as opposed to the 12-tone scale, which was being popularized by composer Arnold Schoenberg.
"It was very controversial at the time, because serious musicians were not supposed to write tonal music," says his daughter, Jamie A. M. Bernstein ’74.
"He wished to have been taken more seriously as a composer, but he refused to go atonal," says Bernstein’s other daughter, Nina M. Bernstein ’84.
Bernstein epically defended tonality when he was invited to deliver a series of Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, given in 1973, after a year’s residency in Eliot house.
The return to campus for the lectures also gave Bernstein a chance to return to his youth. "He was having the time of his life, staying up all night, hanging out with young people," Jamie Bernstein recalls.
WILD, WILD LIFE
Bernstein’s relationship with the Kroks lasted for the rest of his years, and the group would periodically visit him in New York, such as in April 1983 when they visited Bernstein at his apartment in the Dakota in New York City.
Kroks alum George E. Overholser ’82 writes in an e-mail about the decadent scene with "Emperor Bernstein" that ensued.
"He sat there in his satin robe, flanked by two ‘pretty boys,’ whom he ignored entirely, except for when he reached his hand out to the left (without looking at it) so a cigarette would be lit and, three minutes later, reached his other hand to the right (again still looking straight at me) to receive a small flask," Overholser writes.
The entire session was recorded on tape, and Bernstein later sent it along to the Kroks with a note saying, "The enclosed tape is rapidly becoming one of my cherished possessions," and signing it, "Twelve big hugs, LB."
The recording catches the clink of ice in tumblers, as well as Bernstein’s candidly expressive language. After the Kroks sang a song he’d written for them, Bernstein gave the young musicians an analogy they were bound to remember: "You know what you understand, what very few jazz people understand, except the good ones, is that every beat is a downbeat, and no beat is a downbeat," he says on the tape.
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