This is no fan letter

From ‘Swifties’ to ‘Trekkies’, ‘Potterheads’ to ‘Twihards’, fans of popular culture often proclaim their fandom with pride. But the idea of fandom still seems to make the classical music world uncomfortable. 

In this episode, we ask: what’s so bad about being a fan of classical music?! 

We take a deep dive into the history of the fandom to find out where the word ‘fan’ comes from. We explore how the popular music industry, Beatlemania and television made it controversial to be a fan of classical music. And we investigate how fans connected with celebrities in an age before social media.

From Leonard Bernstein's archive, we discuss letters from a young woman who lost her fiancé in the Holocaust, a teenager who is determined to prove he’s different from Bernstein’s other fans, and a secretary who felt rather embarrassed about her decision to write.

Visit www.dearmaestro.org for bonus content, including letters read-out and discussed by their writers.

Email us at hello@dearmaestro.org - we'd love to hear from you!

Producers: Rowan Bishop and Kate Guthrie

Hosts: Flora Willson and Kate Guthrie

With thanks to: Cheryl Melody Baskin, Michael Ellison, Cassandra Fenton, Mark Keedwell, Melanie Shaffer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Talley and Justin Williams. 

Funded by: the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Transcript

[Music]

Kate Guthrie: Hi, I’m Dr. Kate Guthrie.

Flora Willson: And I’m Dr. Flora Willson.

Kate: And this is Dear Maestro, the podcast where we explore the untold stories of classical music fandom throughout the 20th century. We’ll discover how classical music lovers and pop music super fans maybe aren’t so different after all.

Flora: In this season, we’re focusing on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his audience, using an incredible archive of his fan mail, which we dissect and discuss in relation to a different topic for each episode. In the last episode, we introduced the series, and in this episode, we’re exploring a fundamental question. What’s so bad about being a fan of classical music?

Kate: We’ll be asking why fandom often has a bad press and whether classical music fandom is actually any different from popular music fandom.

[applause]

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein. Believe me, this is no fan letter. I just want to congratulate on New York Philharmonic in Japan.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I shall not lead you on. This is quite unashamedly a fan letter.

Actress: Leonard Bernstein, this is my first fan letter. I am only 43 years old.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I know that you are deluged with the evil, as many performers are, of fan mail. Whether this letter is ever read or not, I will feel a lot better after I’ve written it.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, blame it on my youth, not chronologically, but spiritually or what have you. But at this phase of my life, even at the risk of being termed that horror of all horrors a fan, ah’d be mighty proud to have an autograph photograph of yourself.

Flora: The evil of fan mail. Oh, God, Kate, the stakes are high here, aren’t they? There’s a lot of people worrying about whether or not they’re ‘fans’.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s fascinating how many of the fan writers begin their letter with a statement either very boldly saying, ‘Yes, I’m a fan writer!’ Or, ‘I’m definitely not a fan writer!’ It's something that people are really self-conscious about.

Flora: You can’t just be a fan. You don’t just get on with it. You don’t just get in touch, saying, ‘Hi, I love your work!’ There’s this real thematization in these letters.

Kate: Yeah, and a sense of kind of vulnerability in that – this, you know, ‘I don’t know whether this is okay, what I’m doing’.

Flora: I love that. The vulnerability thing – that seems central to what we’re all about in this episode, doesn’t it? I mean, there seems to be a lot at stake in classical music, specifically of fandom, because these days, it’s something we think of much more in relation to pop music. I’m thinking of, like, Taylor Swift – Swifties. I mean, you said last time that your sister is a Swifty, so you’ve got one in the family! But this is much more familiar in pop music.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I think, even in the pop music world, though, being a fan is something that can be quite a problematic category. I was thinking about the track that Eminem released in 2000 called ‘Stan’. It’s basically Eminem responding to his experience of receiving fan mail. And, you know, the track is about this fictional fan, but, you know, kind of based on a real character called Stan, who is so desperate to get in touch with Eminem and so aggrieved about the fact that he’s not getting the responses he wants, that eventually he, you know, takes things, you know, really to quite extreme circumstances. So I think, you know, I mean, it catches the kind of pathologizing of fandom, which I think was very much a thing in the middle of the 20th century; but it has carried on, you know, and is still something that’s a facet to fan culture today.

Flora: Because I guess it’s anything to do with obsession, isn’t it? And I guess fans … we’re obsessed with whatever we’re a fan of. And so I guess obsession can always tip into something a bit too extreme, can’t it?

Kate: Absolutely. And if the obsession that somebody else holds is not an obsession that you share, I think all the things that are weird and wonderful about it, you know, you’re much more likely to pick up on.

Flora: So then the big question here is, what is the issue that classical music specifically has with fandom? Because it still seems to be more acceptable, so far as I see it, to be a fan in the pop music world – or to be a fan in all sorts of other worlds, like, you know, Star Treks’ Trekkies or whatever, than it is in classical music, where there’s something kind of serious and a little bit poe-faced about it from the outside, at least.

Kate: So I think historically, the word fan was much more strongly associated with popular music than it was with classical music. The word fan enters the vernacular in an era where the classical music world is really trying to define itself against the popular music world. You know, there’s this massively commercialised, massively expanding popular music industry that young people are flocking to buy the albums – the records, obviously, in that day and age. And the classical music world is kind of going, ‘Ah, we don’t know quite how to deal with this’. And so you get this kind of active distancing. And, you know, where fans comes into this, I think, is, you know, right in that pressure point of, like, the writers are clearly aware that the way they relate to Bernstein – the way they relate to the classical music – is fan-ish. And yet they’re kind of also self-conscious about the fact it’s not really okay to be a ‘fan’ of classical music. 

Flora: Yeah, it doesn’t feel like proper behaviour in that context.

Kate: No, not at all. 

Flora: Do we know anything about where this term fan actually comes from?

Kate: Yeah, so the term ‘fan’ has a long, long history that, you know, predates the 20th century. People think that it’s connected to this idea of ‘fanatic’ and particularly actually in its original use, that even fanatic having kind of religious connotations to it. So almost like your, like, obsessional evangelical preacher or your hermit – somebody who’s taken their religious faith to an absolute extreme.

Flora: Ah wow, so fans are actually like hermits! That’s incredible. 

Kate: But with this, like, yeah, that kind of obsessive and like spiritual devotion to something, you know, but bordering on the, like, slightly mad. 

Flora: I guess that might explain why there are all these quite weird-sounding categories of kind of like subcategories of fans. You know, this is a kind of sidebar, I guess, but really, it seems worth touching on just how weird some of the names are for fans of different things. I mean, you know, I went to a Ring Cycle – this is Wagner’s big, like, four-opera boxset, effectively – in San Francisco. A few years ago, and I came away with a badge that said I’d survived the Ring Cycle that the opera house had actually made. And that makes a lot more sense now I learn, according to the internet, that apparently there’s a technical term for people who are big fans of the Ring Cycle, which is that you’re ‘ring nuts’, which is … I’m not sure what I feel about being a ‘ring nut’.

Kate: But I mean, you know, it makes me think of doughnuts.

Flora: Exactly. Yeah. ‘Potter Heads’ for Harry Potter, of course; ‘Twihards’ – I’d never heard of that before – for people who really love the Twilight series. Incredible. ‘Blinks’ – people who are massively into the South Korean pop band, Korean pop band, Black Pink. I mean, this is, yeah, all these categories: they just proliferate.

Kate: I guess what the names really capture as well is the sense of community that people build around, like, the object of their fandom, right? It’s not just something that is a singular act – you and this one person – but also that you’re part of this community of people. And I think, again, you know, that question about the dynamic between the fans themselves and the object of their fandom, and how people perceive them from outside, you know, if you’re outside that community, you look in and you’re like, ‘What are all these crazy people doing?’

Flora: I don’t know what we’d call the people who are fans of Bernstein?

Kate: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, they’d probably like to be known as ‘classical music appreciators’. Yes. But, I think something on the Lenny theme … one of the kind of common themes that comes out is, you know, people who feel like they know Leonard Bernstein, you know, ‘My friends call me Lenny’ / ‘His friends call him Lenny’. So maybe like a Lennster or a Lenny-ite?

Flora: I like Lennster. I think that could take off. It’s probably a bit late, I guess. We were talking about last time … a lot of the people who wrote these letters aren’t with us anymore, but still, ‘Lennsters’. Alright, let’s bear that in mind. 

[music]

Flora: We were talking last time, Kate, about the ways that the television as a media format was really important to this whole birth of a particular kind of fan culture around Bernstein. Were fans themselves part of this kind of new TV world? Were they being represented in that?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got a clip from the man who was known at the time as ‘Mr. Television’ himself – Milton Berle – who was a Vaudeville comedian who had had, like, a reasonably successful career on the stage, but went massively big when it came to TV. He was one of the earliest stars. And there’s this wonderful skit where he’s satirising an interaction with a fan.

Milton Berle: [...] Why did you start a fan club for me? If you had trouble getting members, why didn’t you start a fan club for somebody like Sinatra or Bob Holt? 

Fan: I hate crowds.

Berle: I was… you hate crowds. So you wanna fight this out alone, huh? Well, that’s very, very good. You’re brave. You must have … you must have liked me in motion pictures? 

Fan: Meh.

Berle: You must have liked me on the radio?

Fan: Meh.

Berle: Then you must have liked me in television?

Fan: Mm. 

Berle: Well, if you didn’t like me, why did you start a fan club?

Fan: Oh, call it madness. Listen, MB, I’m your number one fan. I never call it quits.

Berle: You don’t?

Fan: I know how we can get more members.

Berle: Yeah? 

Fan: You mind if I make a little suggestion? What you need is a big publicity stunt.

Berle: Publicity stunt?

Fan: Yeah, a big one. Somethin’ that’ll get your name on the front page of all the papers.

Berle: Yeah. Like what? 

Fan: Like what? Why not kill yourself?

Berle: Kill myself?

Fan: Not dead, just bleeding.

Berle: Who sent you – Ed Sullivan? Look, I’ve got a go …

Flora: There’s a lot going on there, isn’t there? It’s just a wonderful clip.

Kate: Yeah, I love the exchange between the two of them! I think the real thing this captures is this idea of the fan as completely mad, though, right? You know, and in this instance, obviously, you know, it’s a comedic sketch taken to the extreme – she seemingly doesn’t even know anything about the object of her affection.

Flora: The fan doesn’t even like the object! 

Kate: No, doesn't like them. You know? And then, you know, they go on, don’t they, to talk about putting on this massive publicity stunt. And I think, you know, that idea of fans as a) being mad and b) really superficial in their interests and their objects of affection doesn't reflect the experience that, you know, most fans have of being a fan; but absolutely captures the negative stereotype of the fan as somebody who is superficially devoted and, you know, when the next fad comes along, they’ll switch to that and be mad about that instead.

Flora: Well, I guess, when you think of that, again, in the mid-20th century, there’re things like that kind of Beatlemania phenomenon – those screaming crowds of girls, the idea that there’s something kind of slightly hysterical in the fully gendered sense…

Kate: Yeah!

Flora: …in this kind of position in relation to a star or a figure 

Kate: Absolutely. I mean, fandom is massively gendered as female with all the negative connotations of overly emotional, you know, not particularly intelligent…

Flora: What about the ways that social media has changed fandom more recently? Is that something you’re kind of considering as well? Because I guess the kind of level of engagement that you can get today between you as a fan at home in your bedroom and then some star who also has a social media account on the same platform – that really changes things.

Kate: And the possibility of connecting with the wider community as well. You know, I think again about my sister going to Taylor Swift concerts, and before they go, they all make loads of bracelets; and then you exchange bracelets with people. But you can also, follow the people, you know, you've exchanged bracelets with. So, you know, that possibility of connecting with other fans that is even beyond your community. And I think, particularly for young people who are fans, that is a massive game-changer. A lot of the people I spoke to in connection with the Bernstein fan mail actually had an experience of fandom that’s still more common with classical music – of it being quite isolating. You know, you are the person at your school who is enthusiastic about classical music, and you’re kind of a bit of a freak because of that.

Flora: We’ve both … we’ve been there.

Kate: We’ve both been there! That’s exactly what I was just thinking! You know, whereas that possibility of connecting with people over social media – it helps you to realise that actually, you know, this is fairly normal.

[music]

Flora: So I guess the kind of the mid-20th century equivalent of social media is actually the postal system, isn’t it? I mean, that is how people are communicating with Bernstein in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Kate: Absolutely. When you want to reach out to the icon of your affection, and you want to try and get that sense of a more personal collection, what do you do? You pick up pen and paper and you send them a letter.

Flora: So how are they actually getting to Bernstein? I mean, how do they know his address?

Kate: I mean, this I find absolutely fascinating and also, like, mind-blowing … baffling. So people write things like ‘Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic, New York’, on the envelope.

Flora: Oh my God! It’s like writing to Father Christmas.

Kate: I mean, literally like writing to Father Christmas. And they put it in the post box, and lo and behold, it ends up somehow miraculously with Leonard Bernstein on his desk in New York.

Flora: That is a beautiful thing. And then in that mail sack and then in his living room.

Kate: Well, indeed. I mean, I think there is something about that sense of time passing and practises that seemed normal at the time that seem quite alien now. I mean, some of … hearing some of his correspondents reflect on this – that, you know, well, obviously, you were just going to write ‘Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic’ on the envelope. That was just what you were going to do. I think, yeah, there’s a sort of faith in the postal service. And it is, I mean, really, as you say, it's acting like social media in providing that possibility of an intimate connection just in kind of snail mail form.

[music]

Flora: Okay, let’s get into some of these letters then in today’s episode. What have we got to look at today?

Kate: One of the most moving letters I’ve come across is a letter from a young woman who lost her fiancé during the Holocaust.

Actress: Mr. Bernstein, Please, will you accept those flowers, read this note and excuse my English. I wish I had the courage to offer them to you myself, but being just one out of thousands of people all over the world, trying to tell you how really beautiful you let us hear your music, I really don’t want to bother you by it, as you must be rather tired of all those strangers annoying you. Please don’t be annoyed by this note. I’m only sending it to you because I want to tell you how much last night’s concert meant to me and did to me. The first one I heard after the liberation. If my fiancé wouldn’t have committed the crime of being Jewish, he would still have been alive. Ever since I couldn’t understand music, real music, anymore. I am so glad I went to hear you. I can hear it again and even feel happier by it. It does not mean anything to you, of course, but I only like to tell you that you help people the way you let us hear you, how you bring music to life. Please don’t laugh at this written by a silly girl. It is meant seriously and not to flatter you.

Flora: It’s kind of heartbreaking, isn’t it, this? It’s really, really moving.

Kate: It is really moving. And I think interesting, you know, the emotional content of it is so intense. And yet, there’s this real sense of vulnerability – the anxiety, ‘Please don’t laugh at this written by a silly little girl’. You know, again, that kind of characterization of the fan as female, as stupid, you know, not serious enough. And yet, you know, this is on the tail of some really, really personal and deeply affective, you know, subject matter; 

Flora: Yeah, and for all that it’s a kind of negative take on it, it clearly shows just how important this woman’s connection to music is, as well. It’s really showing what’s at stake there. But she seems really aware of how she’s just one of many fans. There’s something kind of … almost generic about her position.

Kate: Yes, I guess almost a worry that Bernstein, you know, won’t take her seriously won’t hold this emotional handful that she’s given him effectively. You know, I think, you know, obviously, what she wasn’t aware of was that actually Bernstein himself was somebody who was really, really passionate about people. There’s this wonderful quote him from the BBC radio documentary Bernstein and Me:

Bernstein: What I love about the world and about life is people. I like them as much as I like music, if not more. 

Kate: And that sense, you know, I mean, think how famously passionate Bernstein is about music that actually people for him, you know, are an even bigger thing. So, you know, in that sense, it was, you know, she was in safe hands here. 

Flora: But her vulnerability is really obvious to go back to where we started today. You know, clearly, she’s writing from a place of rawness, basically, and it’s just trusting that he’s or hoping that he’s going to treat that well.

Kate: I think it’s something that you often hear today still about how the objects of people’s fandom can be a source something life giving for them, right? And they can bring hope and they can see them through difficult times. And you have a sense of the star really being there and being present in those difficult times for them. And in a very powerful way, you know, that is the thing that this letter captures, isn’t it? That she couldn’t listen to music, and then somehow Bernstein has come into her life and all of that has changed again.

Flora: They’re not all like this, of course, because some of these letters are actually at a very different point on the spectrum: where this woman obviously felt really worried that she was so generic, but then there are the letter writers who feel as though they’re writing from a place of real exceptionalism.

Kate: Yeah, like this one, where the writer goes to great lengths to emphasise that they are absolutely an exceptional fan.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, you might throw just about every letter you get away, but please don’t throw this one away because this is not an ordinary letter. I have never missed any of your concerts on television. I saw your show last night and I didn’t take my eyes off. I take piano lessons and have been taking for three years. I love the piano, and someday I hope I can play the violin and the whole violin family. When I grow up, I hope I can know as much about music as you do. Please send me back a little note telling me that you got my letter. Please answer me. P.S., I really like your accent on words.

Flora: This is adorable. Do we know how old this child is?

Kate: Middle school age, so early teens.

Flora: Okay, that’s so cute. He’s so … I’m assuming it’s a boy for some reason … he’s so eager to please.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, there’s something very wonderfully naive and childish about the way he describes his enthusiasm. You know, ‘I didn’t even take my eyes off the TV’. 

Flora: Not for a second. 

Kate: And you can imagine, you know, maybe in the background, there’s a parent who’s saying, ‘now, you know, make sure you’re watching Mr. Bernstein very attentively’. And, you know, they’ve picked up this idea that this is how to be serious about this. And, you know, now as a child, with a kind of adult lens, they’re performing that.

Flora: But even this child is aware that his letter might just become ephemera because it’s fan mail and fan mail gets chucked. And there’s something kind of actually slightly knowing about that. 

Kate: And his request then back, you know, ‘please send me a little note’. It’s like, you know, it’s not a big ask, just a little note, but I just really need to know that you've got my letter. 

Flora: Because, again, it’s this idea of connection, I guess, isn’t it? That sort of proves that the initial letter wasn’t a waste of time, that it wasn’t embarrassing that no one’s overstepped a line.

Kate: Absolutely. And that what you’ve got out of it is the thing you were seeking, which was that connection that’s just a little bit more personal, just a little bit more intimate.

[music]

Flora: Presumably, the letters vary a lot in tone that you’ve been looking at, Kate? I mean, obviously, that was a child writing with a very particular angle, but are there more formal ones as well? 

Kate: Absolutely. Including, you know, written on formal headed ‘I’m writing from this teachers’ College Union’ on formal headed paper, type-written and signed off, you know, by so and so with grand titles after their names – like this next one that we’re going to hear.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, It has taken me quite some time to reach the decision that I might take the liberty of writing to you. Doubtless you receive many letters from strangers, but it is a bit difficult for me to overcome a feeling of intrusion by so doing. It was my very great pleasure some weeks ago to see you perform over the television. I was completely captivated by your performance. Having studied piano myself on a very small scale, I assure you, it is naturally of great interest to me to watch and hear a great artist play. Your playing was brilliant. You seem to draw from the keys the degree of tone and feeling and to put into the music so much expression. Perhaps it is that you gave of your own delightful personality, which was so apparent over television. There’s no point in taking your valuable time to repeat what so many of your admirers must have told you countless times before, but I do want to add my few words to tell you how much I enjoyed seeing and hearing you on that particular occasion. It is my sincere hope that I shall have the pleasure often in the future. Perhaps I’m definitely out of line by the request I am making, but I would be most pleased to have your picture. If you can grant the request, be assured I shall be most grateful to you.

Flora: Most grateful. Wow, this is quite formal, isn’t it? And, I mean, this person is really concerned that Bernstein doesn’t end up feeling like they’ve overstepped the mark. I mean, this idea of taking the liberty of writing, that this is a really bold move for this person. 

Kate: I mean, you get a very strong sense that there’s a boundary here that may have been crossed. I mean, the thing that’s fascinating for me is that they’re totally unsure about whether they’ve crossed it or not. 

Flora: Yeah!

Kate: And it comes out, doesn’t it, in the kind of ‘I don’t want to repeat what everybody’s told you, but I am writing this letter anyway’, you know – the kind of self-awareness of this vulnerable space that they’re occupying.

Flora: Well, again, that sense of kind of oh, is this just a very generic and embarrassing thing to do, or am I speaking about my own unique experience of your wonderful performance, and therefore, you might want to hear about it – that real ambivalence. 

Kate: Probably one of the reasons for that is that the person who wrote this letter was a secretary to the president of a college. 

Flora: Oh wow.

Kate: So this is somebody who’s coming from a more professional background and clearly one in which, you know – you think about a college environment, there is a strong sense of hierarchy embedded. The really interesting thing is the sense in which Bernstein is disrupting that hierarchy. They don’t know where he fits. You know, this is somebody they feel an intimate connection with, and yet they’re also very conscious that they don’t know him. They don’t even know him well enough to know how to pitch a letter to him.

Flora: Well, it’s almost like the television, as they mention, is this kind of … this trickery – that because they’re watching on television, it seems like Bernstein is literally giving some of his own personality away. He’s so open to the television, and then that means he’s in their living room or whatever. But what are they then going to do with that?

Kate: Absolutely. And actually, a lot of the way TV was marketed in its very early days was as a kind of, like, fireside object. So, you know, it’s presented in the adverts … you know, you see the TV taking the place of the fireplace, which was traditionally the space the family would huddle around. Now there’s a TV in it. So that actual medium is right in the heart of the family home. And I think, you know, the way that positions Bernstein, then, as somebody who’s in the home as part of family life; and yet he’s also miles away in a studio and they don’t know him. It’s a weird space to inhabit.

Flora: Well, the power dynamics really tricky there, isn’t it? Because on the one hand, this person obviously felt that she could write to him. But on the other, it is basically a one-way channel of communication because this is coming straight from the TV. She’s like, ‘Oh, wow, your piano playing is amazing’. It’s not going back the other way. He can’t hear her reactions in her living room.

Kate: One of the things that I think is a bit sad, you know: we talked about the fact that Bernstein was very proactive in engaging with and responding to his fan base. But from the conversations I’ve had with people, it seems that a lot of those answers never got through.

Flora: Oh wow! 

Kate: So this is the sort of letter that would absolutely have had a response from Helen Coates, who was Bernstein’s personal secretary. And that response would have been a wonderful thing for the writer to receive. It would have been affirming, you know, reassured her that it was okay that she had written, that they were grateful for her support for Bernstein. But whether that response ever got through, of course, we don’t know.

[music]

Flora: Alright, Kate, I think we've got time for one more letter today. So what have you got for us?

Kate: So this last letter, I picked out because it really self-consciously reflects on the act of letter-writing itself, but not in, like, the previous letter, where there’s this kind of grand form of prose that comes out of it; the result here is something quite different.

Actress: Dear Mr. Leonard Bernstein, I was so impressed with your wonderful programme in Japan that I just had to write and tell you of my appreciation. To be truthful, I have to admit that I’ve never written to a stranger before. This is the second draft. I had to throw the first letter away because it was so phoney. I wrote it with the wrong attitude. I was so self-conscious, and I felt you would never read my letter, but just in case I was trying very hard to appear very sophisticated. I used every big word I had at my command. It was a very insincere letter and didn’t carry my true message – that is, I think that yours was the best show I’ve seen in a long, long time. Thank you.

Flora: I love that. The rush at the end of actually finally saying the thing after all that concern about, like, yeah, how phoney this was to start with in its first draft.

Kate: An awful lot of set-up, and then you get the sense that actually words just aren’t gonna cut it. She just blurt it out. ‘This is how it is. You’re the best thing’. 

Flora: Should have sent a telegram!

Kate: One of the things, I think, you know, that’s fascinating about this, though, is that it really showcases how the negative connotations of fans themselves also get transplanted onto letters as a genre of writing, right? So she talks about the fact, you know, my first letter seemed phoney. You know, there’s this idea of pretence I was trying very hard to appear sophisticated. The result was something that was insincere. So, you know, all of those kind of characteristics of fans as being, like, overly emotive, superficial, not really interested. You know, she’s basically talking about the way that’s come out in the letter that she herself had written. And yet, ultimately, you know, what she ends up saying is something that’s almost so pithy, it feels, like, how can that possibly communicate the profound meaning that she is trying to communicate?

Flora: That’s the really interesting thing here, though, isn’t it? Because these people are so often writing about musical experiences they’ve had that feel so profound. They’re so deeply important to them. And so they are … it is like they’re kind of scrambling around with words which are always going to fail. Somehow, they’re never going to match up to the experience, but they want to say something that seems better than saying nothing.

Kate: I mean it’s that age old problem, isn’t it, when you have a really profound emotional experience or encounter in your life, you know, one of those moments that makes you feel so deeply alive that how can you possibly begin to articulate that? And yet there’s a very, very human urge to turn that experience somehow into words so you can communicate it and know that somebody else has shared that with you.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, it’s back to that vulnerability we started with, again, isn’t it, that you know, you kind of … that sort of musical experience can leave you feeling really raw. And then you want to share that. And maybe if you’re a certain kind of fan, you’re going to want to share that with the person responsible for the experience. 

Kate: And yet you … because the reality is you don’t really know the person responsible, you know, that vulnerable space gets opened up. 

Flora: ‘Cause it’s a risk. 

Kate: It is a risk. You know, you have no idea how they’re going to greet you. And certainly, not all composers and conductors and musicians have been as devoted to their fans as Bernstein was. You know, one of his contemporaries, Arthur Fiedler, who conducted the Boston Pops, used to encourage audiences to write in with requests. But, you know, behind the scenes, he was slagging them off and, you know, was really rude about them.

Flora: Despite the fact the Boston Pops were aimed at a mass crowd, again…

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Flora: … it was supposed to be classical music for the mass. 

Kate: So you know, in a sense, that concern about that vulnerable space is valid. It’s justified because you don’t really know who the person on the other side of this intense relationship is. 

[music]

Flora: So what we’re saying, basically, is that classical music fandom is quite like any other kind of fandom. Is that right? Is it actually … it’s closer than we might imagine? It isn’t so different from, you know, Beatlemania or the Swifties or anything else?

Kate: Absolutely. At core, I think classical music fandom is exactly the same as popular music fandom. This is about people forming intense emotional attachments to pieces of music and to the people who make them. I think what’s different is just the way that that expresses itself. So in the same way that, like, a goth is not going to dress like a swifty, you know, so your classical music fan has a set of behaviours that are associated with that world. You know, you turn up to your concert, you sit quietly, you applaud – definitely not in between the movements. God forbid!

Flora: Or else!

Kate: And you certainly wouldn’t go to something where they weren’t playing the entire work. You know? There’s all these, you know, the kind of conventions, and we’ll be talking about some of these a bit more in the next episode when we’re dealing with this question of elitism. In the next episode, we’ll be talking about classical music’s reputation for being elitist. Why does it have that reputation, and does it help or hinder its fan base? In the meantime, if you’re a fan of classical music or of Leonard Bernstein – if you yourself are a Lennster – and you have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can drop us an email at hello@dearmastro.org or pick up a pen and paper and find the postal address on our website, dearmaestro.org.

Flora: Remember to subscribe in your podcast app to be notified of new episodes landing. And for extra bonus content, including letters read out and discussed by their authors, head to dearmaestro.org. 

Kate: This episode of Dear Maestro was produced by Rowan Bishop and me, Kate Guthrie, with thanks to my co-host Flora Willson and to my colleagues and the fan writers who recorded the letters for this series, including Cheryl Melody Baskin, Michael Ellison, Cassandra Fenton, Mark Keedwell, Melanie Shaffer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Tally, and Justin Williams. Music courtesy of the University of Bristol. Archive courtesy of the BBC and NBC.