Manuscript/Mixed Material Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad paper with emendation in red pencil]
-
Image 1 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … YP - TV - 2 "What Is American Music?" [¿Quien Sabe?] ORCH: American in Paris [Now] I don't think there's anyone in this hall, or anywhere in the country watching this program,…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 2 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … When a nation has its own kind of music we call it "nationalistic" music.
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 3 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 2 (Kids Respond) Right. Spanish. You couldn't mistake that rhythm in a million years (Show) or the sound of those castanets (ILL) and tambourine (ILL). Now what country does this music make…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 4 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … To Piano It's Russian because it's got a Russian folk song in it - an old Russian tune that all Russians know and have sung since they were kids. It's called "The…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 5 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 3 different kinds of forefathers. Mine were Jewish, & his (Congliano) were Italian and his (Varga) were Hungarian and his (Chambers) were Scotch and his (McGinnis) were Irish. And what about yours?…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 6 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … We might call this the kindergarten period of American music; our composers were happy & innocent little kids in kindergarten
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 7 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 4 [studied music in Europe? (Hands) Not so many. But in the old days, they had to go to Europe, because that's where culture was.] But around the beginning of this century,…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 8 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 5 was American - and he wrote a whole "New World Symphony" out of those themes. But the trouble is that [it's not] his symphony doesn't sound American at all; it sounds…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 9 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … Doesn't sound American to me. Does it to you?
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 10 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 6 [This was the begin] Why? Because you can't just decide to be American; you can't just sit down & say "I'm going to write American music, even if it kills me";…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 11 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 7 fine music indeed; but it’s hard for us Americans to feel it’s our music, as Russians feel about Chaikovsky’s music. In fact, those Indian & Negro themes sound a little strange…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 12 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 8 And any serious composer growing up in America couldn't [help s] keep jazz out of his ears or out of his musical brain. It was part of him - it was…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 13 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 9 Certainly the [most important] composer who used jazz most was Gershwin. He came from the other side of the tracks, so to speak; he wasn’t a serious composer to begin with,…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 14 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 10 It’s sort of like being told you have to brush your teeth to keep them clean; so you brush them on purpose, and it’s a bother and a drag, & maybe…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 15 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 11 there are going to sock their drums in [all the] a Charleston rhythm, in the wrong places, between the beats we’re doing. OK? Here goes (ILL). Did you hear all that…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 16 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … Just like words in a language are special & peculiar when they are first made up - like Kleenex, for instance, or television. But now Kleenex & television are natural, everyday words,…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 17 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 12 a sort of religious idea about it, & yet it’s full of syncopation. Now that’s the last place in the world where you’d expect to find jazzy accents. But there they…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 18 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 13 For instance, I wrote a symphony about 15 years ago called “Jeremiah”; and the second movement of this piece is the kind of music that couldn’t ever have been written if…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 19 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 14 different sides of the American personality. One of the main personality [ha] traits in our music is the one of youth - loud, strong, and wildly optimistic. William Schuman is a…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 20 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 15 the notes are spaced out very far apart, like the wide open spaces that our huge country is full of. Take this part of Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid”; this section…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 21 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 16 There are so many qualities in our music that it would take much too long to list them; there are as many [qualities] sides to American music as there are in…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958
-
Image 22 of Young People's Concerts Scripts: What is American Music? [pencil on yellow legal pad … 17 of Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony - which has almost all of these qualities we’ve been talking about - jazz rhythms, and optimism, and wide open spaces, the simplicity, the sentimentality, and…
- Contributor: Bernstein, Leonard
- Date: 1958