Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.classica
Titolo: l'arte e la politica: il Lenny

Questa sarebbe la vera causa per cui il Lenny non ha mai scritto "That
one important piece"?
--
Leonard Bernstein
A political life
May 28th 2009
From The Economist print edition
IN AN article he wrote for the New York Times in October 1988 Leonard
Bernstein, then America’s most famous conductor-composer, unleashed a
stinging attack on his countrymen. He castigated American voters and
their leaders for what he saw as a wholesale betrayal of the values on
which the union was founded. At a time when “liberal” had become a
dirty word, he rounded on his fellow citizens for allowing themselves
to be duped by cold-war mythology into sacrificing social and culture
budgets for dubious military gain. Bernstein died two years later, his
lifelong wish to complete “That One Important Piece”, as he described
it in his final letter to his business manager, left as unfulfilled as
his longing to see liberal democracy flourish in America.
Why did the popular, powerful and prodigiously gifted Bernstein never
compose that masterpiece? This is the central question Barry Seldes
asks in his new political biography. The usual answer turns on the
suggestion that Bernstein’s talents were overstretched by his heavy
conducting, recording and publicity schedules. Critics also like to
carp, pointing out that, although he was a brilliant musician,
Bernstein somehow lacked the depth of thought and vision necessary to
produce a genuine masterpiece.
Mr Seldes’s answer is different. Bernstein, he says, never wrote “That
One Important Piece” because the only audience for which he could have
written it—an American citizenry united by progressive liberalism—
failed to materialise.
A close friend of President John Kennedy and his wife, Bernstein made
no secret of his general affiliation with the progressive strain of
American political life. Indeed he was mildly notorious for his
“radical chic”, as Tom Wolfe put it, and for lending his popularity to
whichever “nice liberal cause” happened to come along. Unfortunately
for Bernstein, one of the more prominent causes for which he organised
a fund-raising reception was that of the Black Panthers. Accused of
being a revolutionary, or at best a naif, Bernstein never recovered
from the damage this did to his reputation.
Mr Seldes argues that this was unfair. Not only were Bernstein’s
politics entirely sincere, they were wholly of a piece with his
artistic aims. Nurtured in the atmosphere of committed liberalism
generated by the New Deal, and by such musicians as Aaron Copland, for
whom artistic progress and the formation of an authentically American
artistic identity were inseparable from ideas of social change,
Bernstein developed quickly into an able spokesman for American
cosmopolitan progressivism’s short-lived ascendancy. However, he was
continually followed by the FBI and eventually blacklisted by the
State Department. His directorship of the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra and his lucrative recording contract with Columbia Records
survived only because he signed a humiliating affidavit in which he
renounced the full range of his extensive civil-rights and left-wing
commitments.
Mr Seldes’s book is a masterpiece of concision, romping through
background accounts of the machinations of the House Committee on Un-
American Activities and the collapse of post-war efforts to revive the
liberal political philosophies of the New Deal generation. He turns
with equally efficient grace to interpretations of Bernstein’s more
enigmatic compositions, such as his theatrical setting of the “Mass”
and his disillusioned follow-up to “Trouble in Tahiti” with an opera,
“A Quiet Place”. The book’s greatest value, however, lies not simply
in shedding new and more nuanced light on the story of “Our Lenny”,
but in its consistent demonstration—in accordance with Bernstein’s own
ideas—that any attempt to separate the musical sphere from the moral
and political comes at an unconscionably high price.
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13726549


Buona sera.
Che stranezza: secondo quanto leggo in qualche modo sembra che
Bernstein abbia pagato di più in termini di espressione della propria
creatività di quanto sia accaduto a un musicista come Shostakovic in
condizioni ben peggiori.
A me pare che la risposta di Seldes sia un po' superficiale e
schematica. Se Bernstein non ha composto o completato l'opera cui
aspirò per tutta la vita i motivi - se pure abbia un senso andarli a
cercare - possono esser più profondi e complessi.
Graszie per la segnalazione
Saluti
Josef K.

 cercare - possono esser più profondi e complessi.
Cosi' sembra anche a me.  Ho sempre pensato generalmente che il genio
di Bernstein il compositore fosse inferiore di quello di Bernstein il
direttore, eppure, non si dovrebbe credrere che sia sempre cosi'
semplice, e che il genio DEBBA manifestarsi, qualsiasi siano le
circostanze in cui la persona si trovi.  Anche se le persone brillanti
spesso superano ostacoli e difficolta' apparentemente insuperabili,
certo e' che almeno a volte il genio si sbaglia, non si sviluppa, a
causa della mancanza di opportunita'.