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Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician

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Bernstein cut a swath across the US arts scene for some forty years. Here was a world class, multi-talented, media friendly figure who although working in the field of classical music at a time when atonalism was the norm amongst composers, wrote works that were largely melodic and accesible. Several of his compositions are still in the general orchestral repertoire. Yet as Seldes points out, within this brilliant, sometimes facile, at times elusive man were a number of less-known interests including his life-long pursuit of liberal political causes which led to his acculumating a large FBI file and having his passport cancelled. To re-launch his career Bernstein made a little known, humiliating mea culpa, a confession of his left wing errors which perhaps says more about the heated atmosphere of 1950s anti-communism that it does of the man. Nevertheless, it is painful to read. Seldes is in command of his political material and writes in an engaging fashion keeping the text itself to less than 200 pages. His socio-political explanation of why Bernstein never wrote his final "great work" is less convincing. It is true that life, times and talent interact in the creation of art but I suspect the real reason the great work did no emerge was as much due to the fact that the production of great works was not Bernstein's primary gift as any other explanation. Bernstein wrote the music he loved for audiences he loved for the times he lived in. I suspect the same could be said of his conducting: he loved to perform and audiences loved to love him on the podium. Perhaps we should embrace the man as he was, rather than what he was not.

Professor Barry Seldes has written a book about Leonard Bernstein. Is it a complete biography or an analysis of Bernstein's musical career? No, not at all. But the book succeeds brilliantly at what it sets out to do, which is to review in depth Bernstein's political views and associations. Most of the material discussed in this book has never been presented before. Dr. Seldes has thoroughly reviewed Bernstein's FBI files and he sets the record straight on many issues, including Bernstein's blacklisting in the 1950s. Also discussed are Bernstein's accomplishments as a composer, conductor and performer and how his political views affected what Bernstein composed.

Professor Seldes' narrative is written clearly and concisely and holds one's interest from beginning to end. As a new gloss of Bernstein's career, it is absolutely essential.

Leonard Bernstein was one of the most politically engaged musicians of the twentieth century, with a long history of support for liberal causes dating from the New Deal. Inevitably, this led him into conflict during the postwar period and the McCarthy witch hunts. Even readers who know he was a target of Nixon's "enemies" list and the condescension of Tom Wolfe may not be aware of how close he came to losing his career and livelihood in the early 1950s. It was Bernstein's good fortune that the State Department needed him to serve as a "cultural ambassador" for the US during the Cold War, or he might have been forced to leave the country like many others. This book details the struggles that he and other artists endured to work in their chosen fields and maintain their personal integrity during a dark time in American political life. The end notes are particularly detailed and illuminating, although I would have liked to see the infamous affidavit which Bernstein was forced to sign in 1951 to obtain a passport, a document which was held over his head for years but never made public.

Like so many books published nowadays, unfortunately, this needed a good editing job to weed out obvious errors (FDR did not die in 1944) and some repetitious writing. Nevertheless, it is a valuable addition to our knowledge of this brilliant and conflicted artist. Mr. Seldes is particularly good on the 1973 Norton Lectures which Bernstein delivered at Harvard, in which he attempted to link tonal music with Noam Chomsky's linguistic theory. Not surprisingly, this too reflected the political and spiritual concerns of this self-described "rabbi," teacher. There is nobody like Lenny in our cultural life today, and the more we learn about him, the better.

"Leonard Bernstein" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Seldes's book interview ran here as cover feature on October 7, 2009.

A fine book as an interdisciplinary tool . It covers a rich and complicated era in America and touches on the lives of not only Lennie Bernstein but some of the biggest names in the creative arts community.