Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz

by Katherine Baber

Overview

Leonard Bernstein's gifts for drama and connecting with popular audiences made him a central figure in twentieth century American music. Though a Bernstein work might reference anything from modernism to cartoon ditties, jazz permeated every part of his musical identity as a performer, educator, and intellectual. Katherine Baber investigates how jazz in its many styles served Bernstein as a flexible, indeed protean, musical idea. As she shows, Bernstein used jazz to signify American identity with all its tensions and contradictions and to articulate community and conflict, irony and parody, and timely issues of race and gender. Baber provides a thoughtful look at how Bernstein's use of jazz grew out of his belief in the primacy of tonality, music's value as a unique form of human communication, and the formation of national identity in music. She also offers in-depth analyses of On the Town, West Side Story, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and other works to explore fascinating links between Bernstein's art and issues like eclecticism, music's relationship to social engagement, black-Jewish relations, and his own musical identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252084164
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	03/16/2019
Series:	Music in American Life
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Katherine Baber is an associate professor of music history at the University of Redlands.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Bernstein's Philosophy and the Language of Jazz 11

2 Trading Fours: Bernstein, Copland, Gershwin, and Jazz 45

3 A Jazz-Shaped America: Swing Styles in Fancy Free and On the Town 75

4 Jazz as a Rhetoric of Conflict in Symphony no. 2: The Age of Anxiety 116

5 West Side Story, Modern Jazz, and Musical Commitment 155

6 "Red, White and Blues": Bernstein's Blues and the American Soul 185

Conclusion 217

Notes 225

Bibliography 247

Index 259

Editorial Reviews

"Katherine Baber is to be commended for her careful research and deep analysis in Leonard Bernstein and the Language of Jazz . . . the patient and careful reader will discover that the challenge is a satisfying and rewarding one." —Jazz and Culture


"Remarkable . . . Baber's work is a unique and important contribution to Bernstein scholarship, and can serve as a model for how to approach musical signification through style in a nuanced and thorough manner that considers wider cultural phenomena." —Music Reference Services Quarterly

​"While jazz has been discussed as a component in Bernstein's musical style before, Baber's focus is more on the potential meanings of Bernstein's use of that jazz, both in what it might have meant for Bernstein and for the audiences listening to the music. A strong contribution to the field."—Paul Laird, author of Leonard Bernstein: A Guide to Research

​"Baber offers compelling evidence of the composer's integration of jazz and blues into his wide-ranging work." —Library Journal

"Recommended." —Choice

"Greatly impressive." —Booklist

"Baber's discussions of Bernstein's music are well-researched, cogent, and thoughtful. . . . A firm foundaton on which to further investigate Bernstein's music and from a variety of angles." —Arts Fuse

From the Publisher

03/01/2019

Baber (music history, Univ. of Redlands, CA) shows how composer, conductor, and civil rights activist Leonard Bernstein included the vernacular music of jazz and blues in an eclectic compositional mixture that represented the diverse American identity. The author describes the influence on Bernstein of jazz-tinged works by Aaron Copeland (Piano Concerto) and George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue). She locates the jazz and blues elements in Bernstein's score to Jerome Robbins's ballet Fancy Free (1944), the musical On the Town (1944), and Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety (1948–49), which set the W.H. Auden poem "Age of Anxiety" to music and contrasted improvisational, lightning fast bebop with the big band swing that Bernstein most admired. The author demonstrates Bernstein's use of bop in the depiction of youth violence in the integrationist West Side Story (1957) and outlines the blues aspects of the John F. Kennedy tribute Mass (1971) and his indictment of the presidency, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976). VERDICT Though acknowledging that Bernstein never played or approached improvisational jazz, Baber offers compelling evidence of the composer's integration of jazz and blues into his wide-ranging work; for academic-minded music fans.—David P. Szatmary, formerly with Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Library Journal