The composer Harold Shapero, who lived a few doors away from Bernstein in Newton and was a year behind him at Harvard, also noted Bernstein’s cavalier approach to counterpoint studies. “Lenny didn’t come to class at all. I was a dutiful little student. I did my Palestrina stuff and I got an ‘A.’ . . . Lenny showed up around the end of the first term and put a piece up on the piano. It was some kind of wild chorus, rather ugly and painful . . . . It had nothing to do with sixteenth-century counterpoint. In typical stentorian Harvard style, Merritt1 said, ‘Well, Leonard, this is not exactly what we’re doing in class,’ and Lenny took his first and smashed it down and said, ‘I like it!’ I was astonished. . . . It showed the power of conviction that he had about his own music.”
(1) Professor Arthur Tillman Merritt
H. Burton, Leonard Bernstein, London, Faber & Faber Ltd, 2017, pp. 82-83.
Bernstein as a counterpoint student at Harvard
by
Tags:
Featured Content
Performance practice issues in Russian Piano Music
ABSTRACT The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the rapid growth of musical culture in Russia. This resulted in a large repertoire of piano music — ranging from miniatures to virtuosic etudes and sonatas. Growing out of the nineteenth century romantic tradition, and highly influenced by the social conditions of the time, Russian composers developed a distinctive style which […]
The decentralization (or de-hallification) of classical musicFor generations, the main places to hear contemporary classical music have been the big institutions, primarily at downtown and university concert halls and opera houses, and sometimes in churches and other rather formal settings. That’s all changing. Young composers today are increasingly finding — or creating — outlets for their music in rock and jazz […]
Lord, Send Our Your Spirit – Psalm 103 (104)Title: Lord, send out your spirit Text: Psalm 103 (104):1. 24. 29-31. 34. R.v.30 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SA and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Site mapA duet under the bedIt was in the eventful year, then, of 1813—the year of “Il Figlio per Azzardo”, with its obbligato accompaniment for lamp-shades of “Tancredi” and of “L’Italiana in Algeri”—that Rossini was writing one morning in bed, when the duet on which he was engaged fell from his hands. “Nothing easier”, an ordinary composer would say, “than […]
Abstraction IXTitle: Abstraction IX Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Brass quintet (2 trumpets in B-flat, Horn in F, trombone, bass trombone) Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLE:
Trust yourselfAll this, my friend, will time provide, And of itself, itself will give; Soon as you in yourself confide, You know the way to live! — Mephistopheles to Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, translated by Lewis Filmore, (London: William Smith, 1847), p. 79. First published in the German as Faust: eine Tragödie, […]
Form and content“I think that one way toward a more intelligent and involved appraisal is through a connection with the pieces, and that one way to develop that connection is to talk about what the pieces mean to people who have spent a lot of time with them: the content, if you will. This approach can also […]
Beyond the comfort zoneI believe one shouldn’t be too comfortable when listening to really great music. To appreciate good music, one must be mentally alert, and emotionally receptive. You can’t be that when you are sitting at home with your feet on a chair. No, listening to music is more strenuous than that. Music is like the poetry; […]
Blue FlemingoTitle: Blue Flemingo Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE: