Experiencing Leonard Bernstein

Kenneth LaFave, former music critic for the Arizona Republic and the Kansas City Star, composes, teaches, and writes about music. The Phoenix Symphony, the Chicago String Quartet, and the Kansas City Chorale have commissioned scores from him, and his essays and reviews have appeared in NewMusicBox.org, Opera News, and Dance magazine. LaFave was a pit musician for the workshop production of Leonard Bernstein’s last (unfinished) musical, The Race to Urga.

• Series Editor ForewordAcknowledgmentsTimelineIntroductionChapter 1: Father, Son, and MusicChapter 2: CelebrityChapter 3: Age of AnxietyChapter 4: Trouble In Tahiti and Wonderful TownChapter 5: On The Waterfront and Serenade After Plato’s SymposiumChapter 6: CandideChapter 7: West Side StoryChapter 8: Kaddish and Chichester PsalmsChapter 9: Mass and the Norton LecturesChapter 10: Last Works And LegacySelected ReadingSelected ListeningIndexAbout the Author

On the next-to-last page of his survey of Leonard Bernstein’s compositions, LaFave says, 'I fully expected Bernstein the composer to shrink' as the book burgeoned. The reverse occurred. Bernstein’s music revealed more and more structural glories, such as the informing use of the tritone in West Side Story, as well as an overall profile at once traditional and avant-garde. Bernstein clung to tonality and argued against atonal and 12-tone composition per se while exemplifying how to use 12-tone rows within tonal works. He leaped into the orchestral percussion revolution that led to minimalism, and he pioneered injecting pop-music styles, performance techniques, and instruments (electric guitar, Hammond organ) into otherwise classical orchestral and singing ensembles to produce the sui generis Mass, 'the best-selling multiple-disc classical recording in the industry’s history.' LaFave’s greater-than-anticipated enthusiasm for his subject shows in the liveliness of his engrossing readings of Bernstein’s scores, which include thorough plot précis of the composer’s dramatic works, including the musicals, the movie On theWaterfront, Mass, and even the violin concerto Serenade after Plato’s Symposium (based on a drama of sorts, after all). Reading his descriptive analyses seems the next-best thing to attending actual performances—quite an achievement for a series book.