I don't know much about Berstein, but in my little reading I appreciated learning that he marched in Selma, brought black conductors to Tanglewood, and helped integrate the philharmonic. This post paints a much clearer picture that relates to a bigger issue outside of music — Black Americans (specifically DOS) are welcome in white spaces, but are never given the same playing field, have ownership, or get more power. Berstein's disregard for ADOS music being the root of American music speaks volumes. Thank you for this insight.
Jecorey, I think you're onto something here. Terrance McKnight has a great radio documentary called "Leonard Bernstein's Black America" where he gets into Bernstein's activism, which was real. (https://www.wqxr.org/story/leonard-bernsteins-black-america/?tab=summary) But there's something about the dismissal of the spirituals that doesn't sit well with me. Is he suggesting that a Black American composer who bases classical music on the spirituals (of which there are many, like Florence Price) is not writing American music? In these documents, at least, he seemed to say that jazz was the main Black contribution to American music and that's it. What about in the future? McKnight highlights a conversation between Bernstein and Ellington that scratches the surface, so I'm even more curious about how Bernstein approached the variety of music by Black composers.
Hey Doug, I really appreciate your careful attention to presenting quite a bit of "American music" history alla Bernstein. As a composer "Americanizing" classical European techniques (mainly Romantic-era), I have to point out that the nationalist identities we tend to associate with the historical "successful" composers included not only bits of their country's folk music DNA (often in imitation rather than actual), but also that of neighboring countries. Consider how much Hungarian DNA turns up in Verdi's Requiem and his operas, or Brahms' symphonies. Consider also how Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Debussy and Ibert borrowed often from Spain. Performing these in a major orchestra over two decades, I began discovering these influences as I was turning into a composer.
So I suggest that even if jazz influence in classical music does or doesn't really make classical music written in the US American, borrowing folk traditions of nearby countries (Mexico, Cuba, South America, Canada, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hawaii) is not unprecedented. One hand washes the other and the contrast seems to helped define (paradoxically) nationalist styles. I suppose this muddies the water, but these composers didn't live in vacuums. Even "I Got Rhythm" seems to derive from the pentatonic scale that China was so fond of.
I can't wait to read more from you, and hopefully read your thoughts on how American is the music of Barber, Gershwin, WG Still and/or Copland.
Thanks, Rick! I think you're exactly right about how people throughout history have had borrowed or played with one source or another.
What I'm wondering about Bernstein is to what extent someone can borrow from jazz and then make it "not-jazz" in a concrete way. It's the music-theoretical precision that gets me, because as you pointed out, small musical fragments can belong to many different cultural heritages. I used the metaphor of eugenics (for a specific reason), but one could also say a baking recipe or chemical experiment. Bernstein talks about "naturalizing" this expression somehow but then the way he talks about the compositional process is very clinical. I'm still trying to figure it all out.
I believe I've done as much, "naturalizing" what I consider to be a recurrent Cuban phrase (equal notes: AAECED) for my composition "Gitcha Groove On!" in the fugato section. I doubt if many people would consciously register it as Cubano tho, but it is quite authentic in context and organic to the drama's intensification. It would be more recognizable played high on the piano. I suppose I prefer a term like "universalizing," applying a culturally-specific music in other contexts; sometimes as a cultural signifier and other times not. In another piece ("City of Trees") I use pseudo hip-hop music as a signifier of black-Detroit, and universally people seem to recognize it as such. A composer can or must choose how apparent to make each reference.
Personally, I understand that culture is quite fluid: we/they/everyone borrows/steals what they like and mold it into what they need to create "new" cultural products. Yes, it's unfair when some can make money from this while the originators starve, but so-called "cultural appropriation" is how culture works and grows. Some believe that as a black person, playing classical music is culturally inappropriate for me (Oprah, least among them). So perhaps I feel the need to justify "borrowing" classical music to create my own ways and perhaps make it speak to my people. But isn't that exactly what I've been told my entire career, to play classical and draw my family and black friends to concerts or at least to the music? People will vote with their pocketbooks regardless.
Over on Twitter, musicologist Naomi Graber kindly pointed out that Bernstein's ideas should be read and analyzed in the context of Jewish thought about race and nation. A point that will hopefully come out in future posts is that *musical eugenics* as a way of describing stylistic evolution had become so normalized by the 1930s that it cut across several different intellectual backgrounds.
I don't know much about Berstein, but in my little reading I appreciated learning that he marched in Selma, brought black conductors to Tanglewood, and helped integrate the philharmonic. This post paints a much clearer picture that relates to a bigger issue outside of music — Black Americans (specifically DOS) are welcome in white spaces, but are never given the same playing field, have ownership, or get more power. Berstein's disregard for ADOS music being the root of American music speaks volumes. Thank you for this insight.
Jecorey, I think you're onto something here. Terrance McKnight has a great radio documentary called "Leonard Bernstein's Black America" where he gets into Bernstein's activism, which was real. (https://www.wqxr.org/story/leonard-bernsteins-black-america/?tab=summary) But there's something about the dismissal of the spirituals that doesn't sit well with me. Is he suggesting that a Black American composer who bases classical music on the spirituals (of which there are many, like Florence Price) is not writing American music? In these documents, at least, he seemed to say that jazz was the main Black contribution to American music and that's it. What about in the future? McKnight highlights a conversation between Bernstein and Ellington that scratches the surface, so I'm even more curious about how Bernstein approached the variety of music by Black composers.
Hey Doug, I really appreciate your careful attention to presenting quite a bit of "American music" history alla Bernstein. As a composer "Americanizing" classical European techniques (mainly Romantic-era), I have to point out that the nationalist identities we tend to associate with the historical "successful" composers included not only bits of their country's folk music DNA (often in imitation rather than actual), but also that of neighboring countries. Consider how much Hungarian DNA turns up in Verdi's Requiem and his operas, or Brahms' symphonies. Consider also how Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Debussy and Ibert borrowed often from Spain. Performing these in a major orchestra over two decades, I began discovering these influences as I was turning into a composer.
So I suggest that even if jazz influence in classical music does or doesn't really make classical music written in the US American, borrowing folk traditions of nearby countries (Mexico, Cuba, South America, Canada, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hawaii) is not unprecedented. One hand washes the other and the contrast seems to helped define (paradoxically) nationalist styles. I suppose this muddies the water, but these composers didn't live in vacuums. Even "I Got Rhythm" seems to derive from the pentatonic scale that China was so fond of.
I can't wait to read more from you, and hopefully read your thoughts on how American is the music of Barber, Gershwin, WG Still and/or Copland.
Thanks, Rick! I think you're exactly right about how people throughout history have had borrowed or played with one source or another.
What I'm wondering about Bernstein is to what extent someone can borrow from jazz and then make it "not-jazz" in a concrete way. It's the music-theoretical precision that gets me, because as you pointed out, small musical fragments can belong to many different cultural heritages. I used the metaphor of eugenics (for a specific reason), but one could also say a baking recipe or chemical experiment. Bernstein talks about "naturalizing" this expression somehow but then the way he talks about the compositional process is very clinical. I'm still trying to figure it all out.
I believe I've done as much, "naturalizing" what I consider to be a recurrent Cuban phrase (equal notes: AAECED) for my composition "Gitcha Groove On!" in the fugato section. I doubt if many people would consciously register it as Cubano tho, but it is quite authentic in context and organic to the drama's intensification. It would be more recognizable played high on the piano. I suppose I prefer a term like "universalizing," applying a culturally-specific music in other contexts; sometimes as a cultural signifier and other times not. In another piece ("City of Trees") I use pseudo hip-hop music as a signifier of black-Detroit, and universally people seem to recognize it as such. A composer can or must choose how apparent to make each reference.
Personally, I understand that culture is quite fluid: we/they/everyone borrows/steals what they like and mold it into what they need to create "new" cultural products. Yes, it's unfair when some can make money from this while the originators starve, but so-called "cultural appropriation" is how culture works and grows. Some believe that as a black person, playing classical music is culturally inappropriate for me (Oprah, least among them). So perhaps I feel the need to justify "borrowing" classical music to create my own ways and perhaps make it speak to my people. But isn't that exactly what I've been told my entire career, to play classical and draw my family and black friends to concerts or at least to the music? People will vote with their pocketbooks regardless.
Damn! That ending! Mike drop, and you are out!
Over on Twitter, musicologist Naomi Graber kindly pointed out that Bernstein's ideas should be read and analyzed in the context of Jewish thought about race and nation. A point that will hopefully come out in future posts is that *musical eugenics* as a way of describing stylistic evolution had become so normalized by the 1930s that it cut across several different intellectual backgrounds.