Longhair music

For decades, critics have been slamming the classical music world for its elitism. Meanwhile, fans insist that classical music is for everyone. What’s all the fuss about?

In this episode, we ask: why is classical music’s elitist reputation so contentious? 

We explore how in the 1950s and 1960s - when Bernstein was at the height of his celebrity - the USA’s rapidly expanding middle class embraced classical music as a cultural equivalent of the white picket fence. We discuss musicians from Bernstein to Nigel Kennedy who have flouted the rules. And we reflect on how, in pushing the boundaries, they helped some fans to feel a sense of belonging, while others found themselves feeling excluded.

From Bernstein's archive, we meet a father who wants his children to learn “proper conduct,” a woman enraged by Bernstein’s “lunatic” conducting, and a couple of writers who are grateful for his performances of “longhair music.”

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, and interviews with people who wrote to him. In the last episode, we discussed how classical music fandom compares to pop music fandom. This episode’s big question is: does classical music’s elitist reputation help or hinder its fan base?

Kate: We’ll be exploring how classical music got this reputation in the first place and why its elitist status is still so hotly contested.

[applause]

Actress: The music is simply beautiful, and you make it so easy to understand each movement that the boys don’t even mind that they can’t twist to it. But seriously, I think the concerts are adding much to our young people’s enjoyment and appreciation of really good music.

Actor: I listen to your music like other kids my age, listen to the junk called rock ‘n’ roll.

Actress: Your children’s concerts and other programmes are the best thing that’s happened to television since the antenna. They introduced me, and who knows how many others to the wonder and joy that are to be found in music. PS, if you are ever touring the country, do stop by Washington. If it’s cultural, we need it.

Actress: A real good cultural and educational programme is what our TV and radio audiences need. Through your finer music, you are bringing this to us throughout America.

Actor: You continue to astound me, not with your musical ability, but with your utter disregard of musical propriety. Let me add at this point that I am an accomplished musician within my own right, and I am not speaking as one who tried and failed because I had other interests, and music is an avocation with me.

Actress: Rock ‘n’ roll is fine, but by one’s teens, I think it’s time to become acquainted with other types of music as well. Musical knowledge is necessary to being a well-rounded person, and as I think you’re proving through your television series, it can be tremendous fun.

[music]

Flora: Kate, it’s great to be back in the studio with you. And I love this topic. It feels so close to home, to be honest. I mean, I’m sure I care about elitism and classical music as an issue. I’m sure you do, too. And I guess these things go back to childhood as well, don’t they? 

Kate: Absolutely. I think it’s really about that sense of being able to belong to a community. And I think you know, it’s why it’s something that is still such a hotly contested topic. I was reflecting back on my own sort of indoctrination into the world of classical music, and I had a very strong memory of a concert that I went to. I must have been maybe nine or ten – so this is a couple of years after I started playing the violin. And the violinist Nigel Kennedy was playing at our local concert hall in Bristol, and my mum got tickets. I had no idea who he was before we went. And I remember – I still remember – sitting in the audience and just being absolutely blown away by this phenomenal virtuosity. And particularly, I mean, there was one point at which he got off the stage – he was playing the Monti Czardas, which has a very fast [sings] …

Flora: Incredibly virtuosic stuff.

Kate: …yeah, I mean, he’s walking around the audience, sitting on people’s laps while playing this. And I think, you know, this sort of little star struck 10-year-old me, I mean, I just thought this was amazing. After we’d been to see this concert, I went back to school and was chatting to my music teachers about it, and I still remember their just completely disparaging faces. I mean, there was no level on which they were prepared to share in the excitement of this. 

Flora: Ah that’s such a shame. But I mean, he was the self-styled bad boy of classical music back then, wasn’t he?

Kate: Absolutely. And, you know, now, you know, as somebody who’s studied the history of classical music and been very much part of that world, it’s kind of obvious all the reasons why they reacted in that way. But I also, you know, I think it was quite a defining moment for me in becoming emotionally aware of the fact that there was a kind of in-crowd and there was an ‘in’ way of doing things, and there were things it was okay to approve of and things it was not okay to approve of. And part of feeling that you could be accepted in that world was that you had to, you know, get those things right. And obviously, with Nigel Kennedy, I didn’t get it right.

Flora: Yeah, it’s interesting. And who gets to say what’s right and what’s wrong with this? I mean, I think I didn’t have any experiences quite like that. I think I was a bit more self-taught with classical music for quite a lot longer, which actually meant I really had no idea that there were supposed to be boundaries at all between different kinds of music. My parents will tell anyone who’ll listen – it’s so embarrassing – we went on holiday to the Czech Republic when I was really quite little, though perhaps not little enough for this to be okay. There was a town band playing, and apparently, I just danced in front of everybody. I was about five or six, and I was just dancing around, and they were sort of charmed by this small British child going completely wild. But I also used to dance around my bedroom to any classical music: I had some tapes, and that was my preferred way of interacting with this music – was just to dance. Thank goodness, there was no one watching. And no, I have not become a dancer, funnily enough. But as far as I was concerned, that just felt completely natural to me. But the idea that actually, no, classical music’s music where you’re supposed to very serious and you sit still and you’re quiet – that I only kind of learnt later when I first started going to concerts. But I mean, I guess I’ve never really bought it. Actually, if I’m completely honest, I’ve never quite adhered. I mean, I don’t disrupt concerts when I go to them these days. I go quite regularly, so it’s a good thing. But, you know, I still feel like, no, if I’m enjoying music, I react in particular ways. It doesn’t matter what kind of music it is. But I’m very aware that that is not a sentiment shared by lots of other people, and that there are – like those letters we’ve just heard – there are still huge numbers of people out there who feel that classical music does something very special and very particular that other kinds of music don’t.

Kate: It’s interesting you talking about that experience of dancing around your bedroom at home compared to going to the concert hall, because I also think there’s something about where we listen to classical music, right, that is really key to how this sort of ‘normal’ behaviour is policed and promoted. Because when you’re at home, you can do what you want. But I guess when we think about classical music, we usually think about the grand concert halls; and when you go to the grand concert halls, you definitely can’t do whatever you want.

Flora: Yeah, exactly. And there’s a really interesting history. The 19th century is the moment at which there’s a kind of institutionalisation of classical music like that … where you get a new paying public, having access to concert halls and opera houses for the first time. And this effectively new middle-class opera- / concert-going audience, they’re really obsessed with the idea that this is music that’s going to kind of improve them. That’s part of their aspirations in the world – that listening to this sort of high-class music, as they see it, is going to turn them into more socially elite people. They’re aspiring to being more like the aristocrats who used to own this music before. And that stayed with us in really interesting ways, I think, and it explains a lot about how we’ve ended up today with this world where we’re really … we’re so hung up on this question of elitism.

Kate: And it is that thing, isn’t it, about knowing you know: if you know what you’re supposed to do when you go to the concert hall, you are able to perform your, you know, in the correct way that you can perform, that you are part of that social group, you know what you’re supposed to do. And certainly, I think, you know, people can find a real comfort in that. But I guess conversely, you know, if you’re on the outside of it, or you don’t get things quite right, it can make you feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Flora: Yes. And it’s interesting that so far we’ve talked only about audiences, but actually, some of this applies to performers, as well, doesn’t it? I mean, there are really quite strict conventions, actually, that are still with us today – but were certainly strict in Bernstein’s time – about how performers might behave.

Kate: Absolutely. And this is something that will come out … we’ll pick up on in some of the letters that we’re going to discuss today. You know, one of the things about Bernstein as a conductor was that he flouted many of the sort of conventions around conducting – what was kind of deemed acceptable by the public. And I think, you know, the sort of dynamism with which he moved his body was something that really inspired audiences, and particularly people who weren’t part of that classical music world to start with, you know, it was … yeah, provided a kind of point of connection. But obviously, for the people who are already in the know, it’s a bit like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what are you doing?’

Flora: It’s like Nigel Kennedy sitting on somebody’s lap. 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. 

Flora: And then, I mean, even just thinking about dress, like costuming of performers. I mean, to be honest, actually, when I think of Bernstein, in my mind, I do think of him in the kind of, you know, white tie and tails, eyes closed, looking like, you know, a musical genius. But I don’t know – how did he fit in at the time next to some of these other conductors whose images were everywhere in the mid-20th century?

Kate: I think one of the most standout things about him was his age. So people were really used to … or people associated conductors with old men.

Flora: They were authority figures basically. 

Kate: Yeah, old, white – white-skinned, white-haired men, you know – probably the not-moving-around-too-much maybe was, you know, part of that image as well. Whereas Bernstein is young, dynamic, you know, he has … his hair is very flamboyant, and there’s a lot of it, as well.

Flora: And he was seen as attractive as we’re going to talk about in a later episode. 

Kate: Absolutely. So he’s got this, I mean, this sort of whole image of him is a conductor that is yes, you know, conforming to some extent to what was expected, but is also pushing up against some of those conventions in a way that I think is key to his popularity, but also made him quite contentious at times.

Flora: And I guess so much of this conversation about elitism in classical music right the way back to Bernstein’s day, has been actually focused on one particular form of classical music, as you’ve said already, that it is classical music as performed and consumed in concert halls, for instance, in those public settings, not in any of the other places that we might actually come into contact with it.

Kate: We’ve talked a bit, haven’t we, about the 19th century history and the, I guess, importance of the concert hall as a site for consuming and listening to classical music in that era. What changes in the 20th century is that, you know, the advent of radio and gramophone and, you know, in particular – and obviously later on CDs – means that people can start listening to music at home, and that precipitates a whole new set of anxieties in the music world about how they’re going to keep those boundaries in place – you know, the rules that have been concert hall etiquette that’s been agreed. How are you going to ensure that people are still doing that at home? And all of these other listening contexts outside of the concert hall, you know – whether that’s flicking on the radio while you’re doing your washing up as a 1950s housewife, or whether it’s, you know, putting on a bit of a gramophone record before your children come home from school, you know: they’re all threatening to disrupt that because the control for how that music is being presented is out of the hands of the music…

Flora: The cultural gatekeeper!

Kate: Yeah, well exactly, the cultural gatekeepers, and it’s in the hands of the people. 

Flora: And I guess that ultimately, that’s what’s at stake here, isn’t it? That’s why we’ve already talked so much in this episode – because, again, it’s really personal. It’s like, are we part of a democratising process, and that’s great and to be celebrated? Or are we the gatekeepers in a different way, because we love this kind of music that excludes other people? And I guess that's what makes this so tricky, but also so interesting.

Kate: I guess there is something very uncomfortable, isn’t there, about the idea that the thing you’re really passionate about might make other people perceive you as a snob. Because ultimately it is, you know, to some degree, this is about snobbery, as well, you know.

[music]

Flora: Let’s take a more historical view on this. We’ve talked about ourselves and this kind of whole set of issues as they play out today. But let’s actually zoom in now to think about Bernstein’s time specifically. How is this playing out in mid-century, mid-20th century I should say, American culture, specifically?

Kate: So this is a period where America is seeing a massive expansion of its middle class, particularly, you know, the wartime production drive during the Second World War that has helped to end the economic depression of the 1930s. So people are starting to have more disposable income than they’ve had for a while. This, you know, fuels this kind of boom in consumer culture and this emphasis on kind of acquiring middle class goods that is something that’s both seen as a kind of patriotic act – you know, that you’re supporting, you know, the American economy – but also becomes bound up with this idea of a kind of aspirational good life. And there’re all sorts of, you know, government schemes to try and promote the building of affordable housing. So more and more people are moving out to the suburbs and being able to own their own homes for the first time. And, you know, you need all the goods to fill those homes. So, you know, it’s really a time where, you know, there’s a kind of aspirational consumer culture that is central to how Americans are building and understanding their lives.

Flora: And I suppose, in a world full of stuff like that, where, you know, the white picket fence takes on such amazing symbolism, I guess, culture does something very specific.

Kate: Yeah, it’s a form of cultural capital. You know, it’s a way of showing that you are sophisticated and that, on the social front, you’ve risen to a level that is commensurate with your newly acquired economic status.

Flora: You found us an amazing clip that really encapsulates some of this. Let’s listen to it now. 

Jeff Reed: Thanks for breakfast, Mum. Gotta go.

Donna Reed: Well, Jeff, don’t forget we’re going to visit the art museum this afternoon.

Jeff Reed: Oh, I can’t. I got to stay late for a student council meeting.

Donna: But you were so anxious to see the Picasso exhibit.

Jeff: Well, I am, but this is a very important meeting. We’re gonna vote money for the new ping pong paddles.

Alex Reed: Oh, that sounds important. 

Jeff: Oh, it is. Geralda Schultz, the leader of the opposition is trying to table the motion, and I’ve got to stop her. See you later. 

Alex: So long, Jeff!

Donna: You know, Alex, somewhere along the line, I think we failed, Jeff. 

Alex: Really?

Donna: Trading Pablo Picasso for ping pong paddles.

Flora: That cracked me up. First time I watched it, I was laughing so much. Kate, tell us what this is that we’ve just been listening to.

Kate: So this is from an episode of the Donna Reed Show, which was a TV family sitcom that aired from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s. And the show was really focused around the mother character, Donna Reed. And it’s basically about middle class family life. You know, in the clip we’ve just listened to, you see this family, you know, the mum and the dad and the son sitting around their breakfast table and, you know, having this discussion about their day. Just I mean, I think it captures so succinctly and so clearly all the … the role that culture is playing in terms of giving people social credibility, right? Because they say don’t they, you know, the son’s got to stay for this council meeting. And you think, initially, oh, well, you know, this is like children doing politics. It’s probably good…

Flora: Taking responsibility…

Kate: Absolutely. They’ve tabled a motion. They’ve got all the correct language, you know, they know how to talk about this stuff. And then you find out that the motion is to do with ping pong paddles. And at this point, you know, the mother’s face that’s just like crestfallen: how can you possibly be more interested in a ping pong paddle than in Pablo Picasso, the great artist …?

Flora: So it’s really this stark contrast between those two things and that idea ‘we failed, Jeff’. It’s sort of devastating. And so, I guess, yeah, to put music back in there, do you … have you found evidence of people thinking along very similar lines in musical terms?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, what you see in the music sphere is that classical music becomes very strongly associated with this idea of good music. I mean, people talk a lot in this era about ‘good music’. It comes up in critical reviews. It comes up in books about music. It comes up in the letters that people are writing to Bernstein. And when they say ‘good music’, they always mean ‘classical music’. So you’ve got, again, that sense that there’s a kind of popular music other, which is less good. You know, it’s inferior in terms of its artistic quality. It’s not going to last so long. The people writing it are not as eminent geniuses. And, you know, that’s the kind of bad side; and then you have the good stuff, which is the classical music stuff. And I think, you know, also in the clips that we heard right at the start of this, you know, the sense ‘I listen to your music like other kids my age listen to the junk called rock ‘n’ roll’ – you know, you see these kind of boundaries being drawn.

Flora: But what’s so interesting there is that obviously, around Bernstein, there’s this effectively … this community of letter writers who are kind of united in their snobbery. You know, they’re there for the ‘good music’, for the most part. And yet, they have it in common. You know, it is … it’s a different kind of community. Let’s listen to one of the letters that actually encapsulates this.

Chuck Talley: January 14, 1961. Dear Mr. Bernstein, Last week, while attending a hockey game at RPI, we became aware of the Young People’s Concert, which will be presented on February 17. We purchased our tickets and have made plans to bring our two children, ages six and eight. We have enjoyed a number of your television programmes and have also taken our children to attend a number of Saturday morning rehearsals at Tanglewood over the past four years. My purpose in writing is to ask your consideration of an idea which comes to us from one of the children’s plays, which has been arranged through the Schenectady branch of AAUW, in which my wife has been quite active. Before the play began, the director explained good audience manners to the children, who, in this case, ranged from third to fifth grade. It occurs to me that, in a programme of the nature of your Young People’s Concert, such a short explanation of concert audience manners might also be apropos. It would, I know, from experience, be a delightful way to learn proper conduct, and coming from a person of recognised authority, leave a lasting impression. This type of programming may already be in your thinking. If not, I submit it for your considerations. In any event, we look forward to a delightful Saturday morning in February. Best regards, Vincent C. Talley.

Flora: Oh, Vincent. Wow. Okay, ‘proper conduct’, Kate.

Kate: Yeah, this letter really intrigued me when I found it because it seemed on the surface to demonstrate the kind of elitist attitudes for which classical music fans get slated, right? You know, he talks about this idea of ‘proper conduct’ – there is a correct way to behave. We ought to be teaching our children how to do this. Bernstein is an authoritative figure. You know, he’s going to be the man for that. And I think, you know, it also captures actually one of the really central functions that Bernstein’s television shows played within his, you know, historical moment, which was precisely this idea of trying to teach people how they ought to be engaging with classical music. We’re going to pick up on some of those themes a bit more in the next episode, particularly around, you know, different ways of listening and responding to music. So yeah, so having read this letter and initially responded to it in that way, I was quite interested when I spoke to Vincent’s children – his daughter Lynne, and his son Chuck – who threw a rather different light on his, you know, ostensibly elitist attitude.

Lynne Talley: He was the kind of guy you could get irritated. And so you don’t talk during a performance, you don’t get your little candies out and start, you know, unwrapping them like you learn when to clap, so you do it at the right time. That’s important in classical music. It’s mostly the, you know, showing up on time, getting in your seat. Same thing in church. We were in church every Sunday. You just you do it all according to, you know, what you’re supposed to do. And I think he always had a real deep lack of self confi… always trying to do things right, and maybe it was a struggle to do things right all the time. So it was really important to him to have rules … I’m going to say a little bit on the spectrum here. So, you know, you don’t naturally know what the social rules are, so you learn them really, really well. And then it really bothers you when other people don’t follow them.

Flora: This is so interesting because this reminds me of the ways people sometimes talk about classical music today, Kate - that actually it will help children develop discipline, say. And actually, that’s celebrated as a really good thing. It’s not put in terms of you must sit quietly and do your thing. But actually, it’s seen as kind of a necessary thing for children to learn, for instance, as they become adults in society.

Kate: Absolutely. And I think also that sense of, like, wanting to know where you stand in terms of, you know, in relation to everybody else around you. I found the comparison to church that Lynne made really interesting. You know, you do, right? You know, if you’re a churchgoer, it’s exactly the same. You turn up, you have, you know, place you usually sit. There are certain rules that you’re supposed to follow. And I guess, you know, some people can experience those rules as oppressive, but I guess they can also be … like enabling for people, right? Because you know what you’re supposed to do. And if you know what you're supposed to do, that allows you to feel comfortable and gives you the possibility, the space to enjoy that experience rather than worrying about, ‘Oh, is the person behind me going to think that I haven’t got this right?’ And, you know, what if I annoy somebody by accident?

Flora: And we should say, those things did happen. And actually, we’ve got letters for this, too, haven’t we? Of when the etiquette has been broken in some way.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, My husband and I have travelled 100 miles to Tanglewood to hear the music. We left the shed at the end of the concert, and I know I was so enraged and furious that words simply failed me. Are the antics, which I tried my best to avoid seeing called conducting? I’m sure it has some name, but the name ‘conducting’ is hardly the appropriate term for it. I am positive that you are quite sincere and every gesture of yours was well studied for effect. But the effect upon me, a listener, could be best described in the words of Mark Twain in The Traveller Abroad: ‘It reminded me of the time the lunatic asylum burned down’. My criticism is not of the music the orchestra was playing, but of the personal display you put on. I always had a conception that true art was an economy of motions, not a bacchanalia of them. The same carrying on would be quite proper in a nightclub and is simply undignified, to say the least, in a concert hall. In conclusion, I wish to point out that a musical sound driven beyond intensity carries the name of noise. It therefore becomes neither beautiful nor ugly. It’s just pandemonium.

Flora: I mean, this barely counts as a fan letter. Surely, this is a kind of anti-fan letter, Kate?

Kate: I mean, it clearly is, isn’t it? This is obviously a very irate viewer. And you get that sense, right, ‘We’ve travelled 100 miles. We’ve made all this effort to get there, and then what have you done? You’ve gone and ruined the performance for us…

Flora: Your personal antics, yeah!

Kate: … by cavorting around on the podium.

Flora: Was that something Bernstein was known for?

Kate: Absolutely. And it’s something that I think helps to build his popularity among a very broad spectrum of the American public. I mean, you watch the videos of him. He has such a presence in the auditorium and the dynamism – the way he moves his body, you know, his arms going all over the place, his facial expressions, which obviously, you know, by this time, you can also be captured in close up on camera if you’re watching from home. So, you know, he’s a very powerful communicator with his body. But also in ways that are not within the kind of strict conventions of what was expected of a conductor.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, if you expect your conductor to stand still and be in front of a whole orchestra of musicians also sort of contained physically, then I guess Bernstein must have come as a real shock, as indeed, he clearly did for these people here.

Kate: Sure, and, you know, on the TV performances, you know, you notice things like he really opens his mouth a lot; and when he opens it, he opens it very wide, in a way that other conductors, you know, they’re much more tight lipped. And, you know, his eyebrows go up and down. He throws his head back with a sort of drama. And he obviously had this huge head of hair, you know, which adds to the kind of rhetorical effect of that movement. So he really is theatrical on the podium, but clearly in a way that was, you know, some people found was distracting them from listening to the music.

Flora: And actually, kind of the beautiful thing here as ever, it’s this range of experiences and range of opinions. And so we do, also … I know you’ve also found letters where there is a real sense of, I guess, what we’d call synergy – where actually that kind of movement, what Bernstein is doing, is actually coming together with the musical experience that someone is having to really positive effect.

Kate: Absolutely. And we can hear one of those now.

Actress: Dear Maestro, Your concert in Boston just ended. I’m under a spell and cannot help telling you how moved I feel. Your interpretation profound, scintillating, soul stirring. I followed Beethoven’s second with the score. You rendered it not only technically matchless, but the beauty of the phrasing sounded simply ethereal. Tonight, you transcended yourself, and that unequalled body of artists responded con devoto amore to your exquisite sensitivity, like one man. 

Flora: That’s an incredible idea, isn’t it – that he transcended himself? It’s got this really kind of cosmic vibe in this letter.

Kate: And you get this spiritual language of transcendence coming up a lot in this era, and it’s something, you know, I think musicologists have, for very good reasons, spent a lot of time recently sort of critiquing that idea. You know, clearly, music isn’t transcendent. Clearly, they’re sitting in a concert hall, you know, and that you can deconstruct all those elements of the performance. But I think, you know, when you read letters like this, you get that sense that actually what the person has experienced on an emotional level is somehow greater than sitting in a concert hall listening to a piece of music. And it is, you know … for this listener, this has been kind of almost transcendent. They’ve gone somewhere else. So in the previous letter, the outraged writer was complaining about Bernstein detracting from the music. What you get here is much more a sense that Bernstein has kind of been part of the whole performance, right? The music is not a separate thing from him, but the music is Bernstein. It is the orchestra, and it is synergy, the kind of wholeness that comes together in all of those things. 

Flora: And it’s really striking that this letter writer has gone with their score. I mean, they are kind of an old-style consumer of classical music with the text in front of them. And yet, clearly, there’s this sense of this kind of whole coherent experience that is to do with the bodies in the space as well.

Kate: I mean one of the things I was thinking about with this letter is also all the kind of concert hall etiquette that can, in some contexts, be labelled as elitist can also actually play a part in helping people to experience music in this kind of transcendent, other worldly way. You know, you were mentioning right back at the start about being fixated on this experience of sitting in the dark. You know, there is something really unusual, isn’t there, about going to a room you sit in silence surrounded by loads and loads of other people? All the lights are off. That is not a normal experience. 

Flora: Well, let’s be clear: it’s a ritual, isn’t it? And then once you put it in that kind of spectrum on the spectrum of rituals, then it gains this sort of specialness, and it’s not necessarily exclusive, after all. It does something different for us.

Kate: Yeah, a way of sort of transcending the moment. 

Flora: Yeah, I suppose the really big question, then, is how that ends up translating to music consumption beyond the concert hall, beyond the live, at a time when that’s beginning to be more available. And of course, Bernstein’s really central to that.

Kate: The thing about classical music on television is that you have two different cultural spheres colliding, right? There’s a set of conventions around TV presentation. There’s a set of conventions around classical music, performance, and listening. And he brings these two things together in a way that’s dynamic and exciting, but also problematic at times for people.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, this is more than just a fan letter. I guess I am older than you, yet still impulsive and impetuous enough to feel that you ought to be told how loved and respected you are for the popularisation of music, though in depth. My son, very bright, but supposedly a hater of longhair music does not miss one of your TV programmes and loved your presentation of Carmen. We’ve dragged him protesting to the Met. He thinks the Met ought to like you. I am a lover of good music, but with a limited education in it. Your demonstrations and discussions have been avidly followed in my house. Please, as long as you’re physically, emotionally, etc., able to do so, continue with your educating us musically.

Flora: Ooh, there’s a lot going on here, isn't there? 

Kate: There is. You get a sense of all the different tensions really coming to the fore. And I think it does … I mean, it also captures, right, the possibilities that arise when you take classical music out of the concert hall and put it into this other domestic environment, right? This is the son who will not go to the Met. He’s absolutely not going to see the opera, you know, not interested at all. But Bernstein on TV is a whole other thing. You know, it’s opened up this world of classical music to him in a way that the father has clearly been, you know, appreciative of.

Flora: Yeah, I thought the mention of long hair music is just hilarious here. Also, because these days, I mean, long hair music that made me think of, I don’t know, Led Zeppelins and Ozzy Osbournes and these kind of rockers with their long hair, not classical music. And the idea that actually, in the mid-20th century, it might have been a way of referring to classical music and its world is so funny.

Kate: Yeah, it certainly comes up in other letters in a classical context as well. And I think it is associated with a sort of aesthete, you know, the highly educated, sophisticated…

Flora: slightly Bohemian, maybe?

Kate: Exactly. But not entirely flattering, either.

Flora: No, no, absolutely. But yeah, I suppose a reminder again, that these ideas all have histories, as well as the fact that television does bring its own sets of conventions and assumptions. And as you say, there’s that really interesting collision in Bernstein and his broadcasting between these two different worlds.

[music]

Flora: I mean, we’re coming to the end of the show, Kate, and this is … we’ve still got this enormous knot of big ideas here. Like, where have we got to? We were never going to solve the issue of classical music and elitism today. We probably won’t solve this in the future, either – just a quick spoiler alert there for our listeners. But, I mean, what do we learn from Bernstein’s example here?

Kate: So, I think that Bernstein’s success as an artist really hinged on treading a path between endorsing and reinforcing all the kind of elitist aspects of classical music, on the one hand. And then, on the other hand, at the same time, he’s actively defying them, you know, in the media that he’s working with, in the way that he’s conducting. Even, you know, as we’ll see in the next episode, in the way that he’s encouraging people to listen to music. So I think yeah, I mean, you get that sense that there is a path between the kind of elitist perspective and something that is more open minded, and Bernstein manages to find a route between those.

[music]

Flora: What is amazing about how live this debate still feels about elitism and classical music is that … just how much people still care. Because for as long as we all still care about this, we also still care about classical music. It’s the point at which the debate goes dead that we need to worry that actually – as long as there are people who are angry about feeling excluded, that’s fantastic. That means they’re beating down the door, and actually they’re kind of continuing that tradition that Bernstein was in.

Kate: Yeah, for sure. And I think the sense of it being a kind of very live debate that does have this long history, I mean, it really comes back to our own personal stories, doesn’t it? And our own emotional investments in this musical world – and the fact, you know, we’re all trying to navigate our space within it.

Flora: And it’s not just us. It is something we’re a part of as a community and that brings us together as humans.

Kate: In the next episode, we’ll be talking about whether there’s a right way to listen to classical music. In the meantime, if you’re a fan of classical music or of Leonard Bernstein and you have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can drop us an email at hello@dearmaestro.org, or if you’re a stickler for doing things properly, 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.

[music]

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 ABC.