A fascinating piece from The American Scholar.org on a previously unpublished speech by Leonard Bernstein [musical legend] showing that things don't really change all that much:
"Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990, is in the news this fall with a series of events and concerts that mark both his 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic. Meanwhile, a young conductor named Alan Gilbert is poised to follow in Bernstein’s footsteps by becoming the Philharmonic’s second American-born music director. Quite unexpectedly, Gilbert turns up in events surrounding a speech Bernstein gave in 1986 on the occasion of Harvard’s 350th anniversary. Published here for the first time (although never edited by Bernstein for publication), the speech feels eerily current. It serves as a potent reminder that ours is not the only era bedeviled by terror and fear and the reaction (or over-reaction) to it."
Read on here.
"Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990, is in the news this fall with a series of events and concerts that mark both his 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic. Meanwhile, a young conductor named Alan Gilbert is poised to follow in Bernstein’s footsteps by becoming the Philharmonic’s second American-born music director. Quite unexpectedly, Gilbert turns up in events surrounding a speech Bernstein gave in 1986 on the occasion of Harvard’s 350th anniversary. Published here for the first time (although never edited by Bernstein for publication), the speech feels eerily current. It serves as a potent reminder that ours is not the only era bedeviled by terror and fear and the reaction (or over-reaction) to it."
Read on here.
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