Emotional summits

Ask any classical music boffin, and they’ll tell you that you can’t just listen to classical music. It’s a skill that you have to learn. But what about our gut response to music – where does that come into it? 

In this episode, we ask: is there a correct way to listen to classical music? 

We recount our own experiences of being taught how to listen at school and university. We discuss what Bernstein thought the Beatles had in common with Schumann – and why drawing this comparison was controversial. And we explore how his broadcasts encouraged both emotional and intellectual responses to classical music in a way that was deeply countercultural.

From Bernstein’s archive, we meet a classical music educator eager to convert “lay listeners,” a high school senior for whom Bernstein became an emotional guide, and a young person whose concert viewing has made old before his time. 

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 letters and interviews with people who wrote to him. In the last episode, we discussed whether classical music’s reputation for being elitist helps or hinders its fan base. The big question for this episode is: is there a correct way to listen to classical music?

Kate: We’ll be talking about different ways of listening and why these caused tensions between classical music fans.

[applause]

Actress: Wozzeck continually gives my spine the cold shivers, whereas Carmen gives one of the feelings of gaiety, gypsy, or free life, as you so aptly put it, until that death the music, which always makes me ill at the stomach. Sorry. 

Actor: Last Sunday’s analysis of Carmen convinced me once more of your excellent gift of expressing yourself in a manner understood by the common viewer and music lover. This is a rare gift.

Actor: Somewhere long ago, I read that when Berlioz conducted the Rakoczy March for the first time in Poland, the audience exploded, shouted, jumped around in ecstasy, and carried on, overcome with the dramatic intensity of the climax. This emotional summit I have never experienced, and I await the time when I can hear it given by you with all the sparkle and flame and splendid noise which it contains and which Berlioz wanted us to enjoy.

Actress: Thank you for bringing all of us up to the level of the music instead of the other way around.

Actress: Last year, I heard Carvalho of Brazil conduct the Detroit Symphony in Schoenberg's Kammersymphony. It was an extraordinary feat. Carvalho inspired the orchestra to unprecedented heights, and the intellectualism of the piece vanished into emotion.

Actor: In one of your concerts, I learned that religious music does not have to be sombre and serious to praise God. In your recent concert on French music and the difference between it and other music, I learned a great deal about the French way of composing.

You have taught me a great deal about music, and I am now a lover of it.

Flora: Wow. What an opening montage, Kate. I mean these … these are big issues again. This kind of reminds me of the conversation we had last time about elitism. But this issue of how we ought to listen to classical music … I mean, how do you listen to classical music?

Kate: How do I listen to classical music? Well, in some ways, I’m probably quite traditional. I do prefer generally to listen to, like, whole complete works rather than movements. I mostly like listening to chamber music which I’ve played, and I like to have it on ideally loud enough that you can really feel the music in your body whilst you’re listening.

Flora: Okay, so you like that experience of kind of mocking up the live concert-going experience. If you’re not actually in a concert hall, you’d like to feel as though it’s that kind of…

Kate: …feel as though you are. Yeah, absolutely. But actually, you know, I was thinking back to my childhood and, you know, the phase when I was being taught how one ought to listen. And I remembered, you know, at school, you know, we did all the classic, you know, you learn to identify the instrument, you have to recognise the style of the music, you have to put a date on its period, you know. And as a teenager, I dutifully took my score of Mahler symphonies, you know, to the concerts I went to so that I could follow along, you know, and see how my analysis that I’d been working on at home, you know, played out in real life. So yeah, I mean, I’ve definitely had, you know, that experience of having been taught to listen to music the kind of ‘proper’ intellectual way. But I think, you know, honestly, for me, when I listen to it, I’d really like to try and park the intellectual stuff and just have that space yeah, to, like, feel that just rush of emotion and sensation in your body. I guess you must have been on a bit of a journey with your listening, Flora, ‘cause you’ve obviously had lots of different hats on, haven’t you of, you know, person growing up, you’ve had academic, you’ve had the music critic…

Flora: Yeah. I mean, listening as a music critic is a very peculiar business, but, of course, I remain a human when I’m a music critic. So actually, I think to write music criticism, to write reviews that actually are at all interesting to read and that convey anything meaningful about whatever it is I’m reviewing, you sort of owe it to your reader to continue to have an emotional response – to actually tune in to however you’re feeling in that moment in that concert hall or opera house or wherever you are; because ultimately, most people reading your review won’t have been there kind of by definition. And so you’re not writing a report on what exactly happened, and you’re certainly … I mean, what on earth would be the points of writing about real details of musical performance for a load of people who missed it? Like, it’s happened. It’s gone. That’s it. Forever. Whereas if you can capture a sense of atmosphere and what it felt like to be in that room … and, you know, some of the most special moments I’ve ever experienced as a listener of any kind, but I guess, often as a critic is, you know, those moments where the silence falls and you feel a whole auditorium with, you know, some thousands of people in it just sitting there waiting for something to happen. And it is absolutely magical. Like, those are the moments that you remember forever. And if you can capture something of that, that can be just as important as anything that actually gets played, I think. So to me, I mean, yeah, certainly speaking as a critic, it’s all about your capacity to kind of capture the intellectual and the emotional all bound up together. And yeah, if there’s no emotion there, then why bother? You know, we should all just go home. 

Kate: But I do think, I mean I guess I wonder whether your experience of being educated in music has anything in common with mine – that actually in kind of academic circles and I mean, even school music classrooms, that you know, spaces for talking about how music makes you feel just aren’t really there?

Flora: No, I think it’s one of the saddest things, actually, to be honest about my own music education at times. Mostly, it’s got to be said, at university rather than at school, but it felt like often we were talking about music without talking about the thing we cared about most. We were sort of cutting round it. And I’d learned some really interesting things. And to be clear, like, you know, I learned really interesting things about history as well, which … that’s not quite the same thing … but somehow the ways we talked about music, like the actual music, it was so much about talking about scores, really, you know – the printed music on the page – and it had almost nothing to do with how you experience it when you’re hearing it. And that just seems like a huge shame. You’re kind of missing a trick there if you’re not being led by what you hear.

Kate: Yeah, and I think a lot of sort of music education materials that are currently on YouTube really pick up on this trend as well, you know, you know … there is this idea that there are certain intellectual things you have to get right in your listening, and, you know, you can learn to analyse the shape of a melody … tonality is, like, you know, a bit more advanced. Can you work out what the key is and what the relationship between the chords is? And then the kind of pinnacle, you know, all analysts are devoted to say, you know, the form of the music, the great structure of the musical work.

Flora: Well, as though the rest of us who have had the benefits of certain kinds of music education are really genuinely sitting there sort of waiting for the big structural moments. I mean, you know, in lots of ways, you’re not even though you perhaps theoretically could. That’s not the pleasure of it most of the time.

Kate: So yeah, I guess it’s interesting to think about where these ideas come from, isn’t it? Because the things that I was taught at school, the things that I was taught 15 -20 years later at university, actually have an even longer history that goes, you know, right back to probably even the 19th century. But certainly, you know, within the context of the 20th century, and when you have the emergence of popular music that actually, you know, debates about how classical music ‘ought to be listened to’ really take on this new kind of urgency. 

Flora: Yeah, and I guess there’s this not exactly new, but very important sense of whether you’ve understood the music or not. And the key to understanding seems to be music theory, as I guess you’d call it, especially in the States, you know, that analytical language of keys and chords and knowing the kind of technical details of how it’s working, even though you could have a really great emotional experience without knowing any of those words. It’s really striking that, as far as I’ve ever come across, there is not an equivalent conversation going on around pop music Kate. That this is a classical music problem that you need to understand it, you need to know the lingo, that there's a sense that it's kind of harder to … well, there is something to understand, and it’s harder to get to grips with.

Kate: Yeah, I think, you know, in the earlier part of the 20th century, when the pop music industry is really expanding rapidly, you know, one of the critiques that comes up very early on is, like, how simple popular music is on some level, right? You know, that it has these very kind of simple phrase structures. It has, you know, your verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, maybe have a key change. But, you know, there’s a sense in which the kind of smallness of the music, you know – these are like three- / four-minute tracks rather than 40- / 50-minute symphonic works – yeah, that the smallness of the music is part of this kind of simplicity, as well. You know, I think in terms of people listening, that can be a great thing, right? And, you know, also the emphasis on catchy tunes that just get stuck in your head and you can’t get them out, all of which helps to make these popular music genres highly accessible. But I guess these things are also seen around this early 20th-century period as a real threat to the classical music world, because actually what, you know, you see is that popular music was building an audience much, much bigger than classical music at a much faster rate. And there’s a real anxiety among classical music critics and educators that those ‘simple’ ways of listening to popular music are going to be transported into the classical music sphere as well.

Flora: Obviously we’ve got an entire episode to explore this, but where, just in general terms, where does Bernstein fit into this debate?

Kate: Yeah, so again, this is another one of these areas where he is so intriguing because he seems … I guess his place is really ambiguous. He seems to sit really unclearly between all these different things. As we know, and, you know, as a composer, he was writing music that was in some sense, more popular – like West Side Story is his absolute biggest hit, probably of all time. So, you know, he has that interest in popular idioms in the music that he’s writing. And he also, actually, interestingly, was quite openminded about some of the rock ‘n’ roll music and pop music that was coming out in his day. There’s this wonderful clip from a documentary that he was involved in making called Inside Pop, where he basically takes the kinds of music and analytical tools that he usually applies to classical music and experiments with putting them onto popular music.

Leonard Bernstein: Well, this new music is much more primitive in its harmonic language. Relies more on the simple triad – basic harmony of folk music. Never forget that this music employs a highly limited musical vocabulary, limited harmonically, rhythmically and melodically. But within that restricted language, all these new adventures are simply extraordinary. Only think of the sheer originality of a Beatles tune, like this one, which, again, uses only the elementary resources of pop music. [sings:] ‘I was alone. I took a ride. I didn’t know what I would find there’. Well, that could almost be by Schumann – it’s so expansive and romantic. And notice how the range of the melody has been expanded. Most pop tunes have in the past, been restricted to the range of an octave or so, owing to the limitations of pop singers vocal ranges, but not so anymore. Our pop generation reaches and spreads itself, grasping at the unattainable. And this is one of the things I like most about it, the straining tenderness of those high, untrained young voices.

Flora: Oh, Lenny, I mean, He’s not a fifth Beatle, is he? On the other hand, I love the way he’s talking with such kind of genuine fondness and respect, actually, as well, for this music. The idea that you could make a comparison between that Beatles tune and Schumann, which, yeah, I think is really persuasive … but the idea that he’d even think of doing that is really beautiful, actually. 

Kate: Yeah, and I think, you know, for particularly young viewers around this time, having somebody as respected as Leonard Bernstein and, you know, respected, you know, for their parents, right? This is like the guy who is leading the most prestigious orchestral institution in the United States of America – for him to stand up and say, actually, ‘Look, some of this popular music is really good’ was a massively empowering and positive thing for them. I think, you know, the thing that’s fascinating about it, though, isn’t it? – and again, this is this. this aspect of Bernstein where he’s sort of sitting quite unclearly, ambiguously between all these different perspectives – is that, you know, he spends the first bit of this clip highlighting really explicitly all the things that are primitive about popular music. You know, it has simple harmonic language. Its, you know, melodic range is constricted. You know, it’s not … it doesn’t have complex structures. And yet he goes on out of that to say, well, actually, that might be the case, but in some instances, we can look at those take those same parameters, you know, like harmony and melody, and demonstrate that there is something more … more musically sophisticated going on. And all those, you know, the words that are always used to celebrate classical music at its pinnacle – originality, complexity – you know, they all come out here in his analysis of this track.

Flora: Yeah, and I mean we’ve talked before, and I’m sure we’ll talk again, about the kind of the long history of some of this. So many of those ideas kind of go back to the 19th century, if not even earlier. But thinking specifically about this mid-20th century moment that Bernstein’s living through, what’s going on that’s specific to that, do you think? I know you’ve written about this a huge amount.

Kate: I think, you know, as we touched on in the last episode, you see this real rift emerging between the popular music world and the classical music world. And it’s very much I mean, in terms of how people are talking about these things, it’s as if they are qualitatively different spheres, you know? And I think, you know, within that, you get this question about how … ‘is there a correct way to listen to music?’, that, you know, the way people engage with popular music is associated with these kind of effeminate, emotional, you know, overly embodied experiences.

Flora: So it becomes about who you are.

Kate: Absolutely!

Flora: I guess, boiled down to its basics, this is about identity. 

Kate: Yeah, whereas if you’re the kind of serious classical music lover, you know, you’re more emotionally contained, and that allows you to engage the sort of sophisticated intellectual part of your brain and listen in a way that reflects that. But, fundamentally, absolutely, it’s about people expressing who they are and using music to explore those parts of … different parts of their identity. 

Flora: That, I suppose, is a really positive way of seeing this potential rift, these kind of two different ways of engaging with music. Is there a dark side as well here?

Kate: Yeah, for sure, there’s a dark side. And I think it comes down to this question of cultural gatekeeping, doesn’t it – that when the way that people listen to music is used to draw a line and exclude some people and include other people, I think that can be really problematic. You know, if you’re kind of an ‘emotional listener’, you know, that puts you outside of the ‘proper’ classical music sphere. If you listen intellectually and you can analyse the form and the structure, then, you know, you’ve done it ‘properly’.

Flora: And I suppose the tricky thing for people like us, where we’ve had the kind of privilege of being educated in particular ways in music, and yet, that means we now can proclaim our emotional connection to the music … we’re not necessarily the right people, actually, to be saying, ‘Well, no one needs the education’ because we’ve had it. You know, we’ve had that benefit. And I guess there are people as well who really love to learn about things and who will feel a new degree of confidence to go out there and, you know, buy tickets for things and explore, if they felt that they have the language to go with it.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. So it can be an incredibly enabling and permissive thing. And certainly, I think, you know, this is one of the spheres where you see Bernstein as a character having a really positive influence on the American public. Because he assumes the role of a kind of national music educator, but he’s doing that in a way that is accessible. He’s using accessible mediums, you know – the television, gramophone records, the radio. And he’s talking about music in a way that feels inclusive and openminded for people.

Flora: Okay, it’s time to think about our fans and specifically our fan letters. How does this then play out with the letters, do you think? What have you found in terms of people responding to Bernstein’s, kind of that, as you said, that really ambiguous line he’s treading between the intellectual and the emotional?

Kate: Fan mail is different from what you read in critical reviews in a really interesting way in that people are generally a lot more willing to talk about their emotions – what they feel about, you know, a piece of music, a performance. There’s often an element of the kind of intellectual, in thanking Bernstein for the way that he’s educated them. But fundamentally, you know, people are … far more of these letter writers are starting from a place of, ‘This is what the music made me feel. This is how you enabled me to feel that’.

Flora: ‘Cause I guess it’s more of that emotional connection that they’re seeking from him, apart from anything else? 

Kate: Yeah. So there’s probably something about fan mail as a genre that’s part of this, as well – that it’s a kind of intimate letter-writing sphere, and that that idea of having a kind of personal, intimate connection with somebody encourages you to think about and reflect on, you know, this kind of yeah, the emotional experiences you’ve had yourself. But I think it’s also got a lot to do with Bernstein, you know, as a figure and how he presented himself. Certainly, his fans seem to have experienced him as a permissive kind of person. You know, there was something about the way he talked about and engaged with music that made people feel it was okay to have feelings about music and not just to have those feelings, but also to talk about them.

[music]

Flora: Let’s bring in some of our letter writers. So, what have we got today? Tell us about this first letter that you’ve picked out.

Kate: Yeah, we’ve got a selection of letters that, I guess, show listeners responding to these different aspects of Bernstein’s appeal as an educator, you know, engaging positively with the kind of intellectual stuff and some others for whom the emotional stuff was much more important. So this first letter is from a fan who really feels that Bernstein has enabled him to learn something new about music. 

Actor: Dear colleagues in the cause of music, I salute you and express profound appreciation for the marvellous programme ‘study of Bizet’s operatic masterpiece’, Carmen, on March 11. It was a triumph, not only musically and educationally, but for converting lay listeners to real enjoyment and understanding of opera. I felt it was one of the finest television programmes of all time.

Kate: This letter was written by somebody who was a music educator. And, you know, on the sort of paperwork around this, they explicitly identify themselves as a fellow music educator. So they’re really, you know, imagining themselves as kind of being on a page with Bernstein here. You know, ‘We’re both committed to, you know, elevating public taste, and I’m writing in my official capacity to commend you for having done so’. 

Flora: And he’s, you know, he’s stacking up the masterpieces, too. We’ve got the programme that names Carmen as a masterpiece as an opera, but also Bernstein’s then created ‘one of the greatest television programmes of all time’, kind of a masterpiece of televisual art in itself.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I also think this phrase, you know, ‘converting lay listeners’ is really interesting, isn’t it? I mean, it’s almost like evangelical, you know? This idea of a kind of, you know, religious conversion and the language of the lay person, as well, you know, that is very much part of that religious sphere. So you get the sense that not only is Bernstein producing masterpieces, but that also, you know, these masterpieces are fulfilling a kind of almost religious function within society.

Flora: Yeah, this isn’t just any old appreciation. This is, this is profound appreciation, as the letter writer has it – that, you know, they really … it’s gone very deep.

Kate: Well, and they talk, don’t they about this idea of ‘real’ enjoyment. I find that phrase very interesting. I mean, what’s the opposite of real enjoyment? You know, this idea that you might be just having some performative or superficial enjoyment. But actually, what Bernstein is enabling is ‘real’. You know, this is the ‘true’, the ‘real’ thing.

Flora: Yeah. I wonder, does ‘real’ enjoyment happen when you can be emotional as well as intellectual? Is there something going on there, I wonder? 

Kate: I would have thought so. But I think for this particular listener or viewer, it’s clearly all about the study, the analytical study, isn’t it?

Flora: Yeah, I guess so. And not only for that letter writer: I think your next letter that you’ve picked out is also sort of along these lines, but from a very different kind of writer.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I am glad to see that there is someone left in the world who is willing to take the time and effort to put culture into American homes. Two years ago, I was introduced to your Young People’s Concerts by my stepbrothers. At that time, I was 12 and all and out fan of rock ‘n’ roll. Because of your concerts, I’m now listening to the classics and other music along that line with great joy. I’m at present, listening to your recording of the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. I think that it is a fine symphony. It is well conducted and played in this recording. I like to hear the poco sostenuto vivace movement ring out. The part that I dearly love most to hear is the allegretto movement. I love to hear the theme cry out from the various sections of the orchestra. I enjoyed your concert at which you talked about bitonality. The cellist was excellent. Frank Jones, our best cellist in the school orchestra, raved about her playing all the next day. The thing I enjoy about your programmes most is the fact that I always learn something. Everything I have learned so far has been very helpful to me. I sincerely hope that your concerts will be on for many years to come. My only regret is that they are not on more often. I would rather listen to them any day than watch shoot 'em up Westerns.

Flora: This is brilliant! So this is a letter from a young teenager. Is that right?

Kate: Well, 12-year-old, so not even quite a teenager. 

Flora: Okay. And yet this is someone whose voice is kind of partially adult at times in the things they’re coming out with.

Kate: I know, it’s so amusing, isn’t it? Very endearing, as well. I mean, I think you can almost hear, can’t you, you know, they’ve sat down and watched Bernstein on TV; they’ve heard him use certain bits of technical vocabulary. So they’ve understood that when you’re doing it ‘properly’, you have to have, you know, like the poco sostenuto and the vivace movement.

Flora: Yeah, you use all the words. 

Kate: It’s almost like she’s writing a kind of school assignment in this letter to Bernstein. So really embracing that kind of educational aspect, but in a way that you can see is bringing her great pleasure. 

Flora: Presumably, you found a real range of responses from fans, as Bernstein’s fans just keep serving up different things for us? What about those who really found the emotional element more important?

Kate: So one of the most memorable letters and actually conversations I’ve had in relation to this sort of question of emotional engagement was with a lady called Melody Baskin. Her letter, which we’ll hear in a moment, doesn’t talk about the emotion in such an explicit way. But when you read it alongside the discussion that we had in her interview, some of which we'll also be able to listen to, you really get a sense of the emotional impact that Bernstein made on her as a young person.

Cheryl Melody Baskin: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I know you must be very busy, but I am still secretly hoping that you might perhaps write a reply to me when convenient. I am a senior in high school and an avid cello student. Although I’ve taken lessons only two years, I have advanced quite rapidly with the help of a very gifted and wonderful teacher, friend, and woman. I’ve been encouraged by many wonderful musicians to continue in the field of music. And although I like English, French, history, etc., and probably would make more money in those fields, I find I’m most happy surrounded by music, and I feel I would like to breathe in music every day for the rest of my life. I love cello more than anything else in the world. And maybe, as the saying goes, with no conceit, I was born to play the big, awkward, beautiful instrument. But as I was listening to the beautiful sounding New York Philharmonic on the Young People’s Concert, I noticed that there was not one woman in the entire orchestra. If a woman can show that she is every bit as good as a male player, why can’t she too, be given the honour of playing in the top orchestras? Why must her sex be the predominant factor in judging what she may do in her life? If her hands can do the job better than a man, and she feels the music from the bottom of her soul, as well as any man, why is she still limited in her career? You probably are thinking I am just a confused teenager trying to change the world. Well, I am confused and perhaps I am trying to be another Dorothea Dix, or maybe I just want assurance that all the earnest practising I’ll be doing in the next ten years will not be in vain, for my goal, as you may have guessed already, is to play under you in your orchestras as an artist. Is this goal too unrealistic? Thank you for reading this letter. And no matter what your answer, thank you for giving young teenagers like me a deeper appreciation and love for all music by your devotion to the musical field. Sincerely, Cheryl Melody, Baskin. PS, I still like boys.

Flora: This is an incredible letter! 

Kate: Yeah, I mean, there’s so much in it, isn’t there? You know, this sense of women as being kind of second-class citizens really is part of this debate about emotional and intellectual ways of listening, as well. You know, the kind of emotional sphere is very much associated with women, with domesticity, with sentiment, you know … these kinds of … yeah, things that have a sort of dubious cultural worth as far as the male critics are concerned.

Flora: Presumably, I mean, in a sense, it’s stating the obvious, but Bernstein could only talk about the emotional qualities of performance and things as a man? Otherwise, there’s no way he could have done this. I mean, arguably, there’s no way he … a woman wouldn’t have ended up as the conductor of the New York Phil. at this time anyway, but it was so important that he was speaking as a male authority figure. 

Kate: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, not just, you know, it’s not just being a man, but, you know, being the head of this very prestigious national institution – he’s starting from a point of profound credibility. And yeah, you’re absolutely right that, you know, it’s only because of that that actually he’s able to open up these questions about music’s emotion. And people take him seriously.

Flora: I’ve got to ask. Did Melody become a cellist?

Kate: She didn’t become a cellist, no, but she did become a musician of sorts. If you’d like to hear a bit more about that, you can listen to a longer version of my interview with her on our website, dearmaestro.org. For now, we’ve got an excerpt from that interview where Melody is reflecting on the emotional impact that Bernstein made on her and how this has informed her life as a musician subsequently.

Melody: Leonard Bernstein really was … he was like a guide toward feeling the emotion of music more than anyone else I had. And even though it was through the television in my high school years watching Young People’s Concert, he had a way of making classical music understandable. And emotional. And I would understand the emotion behind the phrases by his lively expressions in his face, in the way he used his arms, the way he explained everything so clearly. And the way one of the things I loved, and I know it was dramatic was, you know, the way he would move his hair while he would be conducting. And so I actually … I picked up the emotion behind the music more than … I’m not a great rhythm person, and I have a difficult time, I’ve always had a difficult time with metronomes and, you know. But I do feel life with my heart and music, you know, with my heart. And so I love to glean the emotion from what I’m singing or playing. And I remember in high school, I was in the New England … I forget what the full name is … but certain people were selected to be in the orchestra from New England. And I was way in the back, and the judges were looking at all of us to see who they would put further and further up, right? I wasn’t that good, but I did feel the music, and I did what I call a ‘Leonard Bernstein’ where I you know, I swayed with the music. I moved my head, and all of a sudden, I got a tap on the shoulder, and I was told to go to first chair, which was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. But I think, you know, when you’re expressing music, all of you, you know, you don’t want to seem like you’re a robot, and it’s only rhythm. And it needs to be the whole thing, but the emotion is what opens people’s hearts.

[music]

Flora: We’ve got time for one more letter today. What have you picked out for us this time?

Kate: Yeah, so I think that, you know, we’ve seen some people responding very positively to the kind of intellectual side of Bernstein. And we’ve obviously just talked about Melody, as well, who was much more inspired by the emotional connection that he was able to build. And, I mean, I think that, you know, between these two things, we start to see that some of Bernstein’s success as an educator and in reaching a broad public really hinges on finding this kind of middle ground between the intellectual and emotional. And the last letter we’ve got today captures that kind of synergy of emotional and intellectual.

Actor: Dear Sir, I have long admired you, Sir, as an interesting person and a brilliant performer. Your appearances on television have brought great pleasure into our household. We have long enjoyed the world of the old masters, but when you conduct them, they’re all the more enjoyable. I also appreciate your explanations of the music you conduct. Carmen is now my favourite opera. I’ve seen all of the programmes which you have presented and have been enriched by everyone. During the school term, I have not time to study the music to which I listen. Your explanations bring added interest to the classics. Mr. Bernstein, the teenager of today, uses rock ‘n’ roll as a means of self-impression primitive though it may be. You give us a chance to use serious music as an outlet for our emotions. Your work is valuable to all music loving people, and I pray you will continue your presentations on television. Sir, if it were possible, I would be honoured if I could have a picture of you. It would be hung with pride in my room. In my 15 years, next to my father, I have never admired a man more.

Flora: Wow! That was a plot twist. I did not expect this to be written by a teenager when it started.

Kate: No, I mean, the language at the beginning is very elevated, isn’t it? ‘Dear, sir’, you know … ‘your appearances on television’ … you know, ‘we’ve long enjoyed the world of the Old Masters’. I mean, this is really a teenager who is, like, mimicking adult rhetoric and language, isn’t it? And yes, right at the end, you discover, actually, this is a young person. I think, though, you know, the thing that really jumped out at me about this letter is this sentence, you know, ‘you give us a chance to use serious music as an outlet for our emotions’. I mean, you cannot say it any more clearly than that, can you? Just right there, bang, label on the tin, you know, ‘This is what you do’. You’ve taken in music. And, you know, they recognise this is serious music. It’s not rock n roll. It’s got that kind of elevated prestige value, you know, still there within the way it's being conceptualised. But fundamentally, you know, Bernstein’s value for this person is in allowing the teenager to, you know, connect with their emotions through that.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, it’s … well the word we’d use today, I fear, is relatable. Like, he’s making this music relatable for people who might otherwise be drawn to other kinds of music.

Kate: But I think it's interesting, isn’t it? Because at the same time, you know, the first part of the letter that’s really focused on the kind of, you know, more intellectual things – you know, ‘I’ve seen all of your programmes’. You know, there’s the real sense of commitment to learning and to Bernstein and, you know, this idea of enrichment that, you know, you’ve somehow been made a better person through this. Yeah, so I guess whether they’re inspired by the intellectual content sort of genuinely or whether they’ve just recognised that they ought to be, you know, you still have that sense, don’t you of, you know, there’s a value in the intellectual stuff? But also the emotional stuff that’s really important for them.

[music]

Flora: You know, in lots of ways, this really reminds me of the conversation we had last time about elitism and the fact that, you know, actually we kind of can’t solve these big issues. And indeed, Bernstein didn’t either. But he seems to have really … I mean, to go back to the idea of him dancing, he sort of danced this really delicate line between the extremes.

Kate: For sure, and I think, you know, that is what makes him so successful – that somehow he manages to pull in those people in the audience who want to feel like they’ve had an intellectual educational experience. He manages to pull in the other bit of the audience – the Melodies of this world – who find this profound emotional connection. And, you know, yeah, there’s that kind of permissiveness that everybody feels that the way, you know, their preferred way of listening is legitimated by this really important cultural figure.

Flora: So essentially, for all of Bernstein’s fans, there’s kind of space for however you feel drawn to music to be okay. You know, he’s saying, ‘Yes, that’s possible. It is valid’. And that means you’re given a space to be a fan – essentially, Bernstein anoints you either way.

Kate: Yeah: ‘Who you are in your fandom is great: be that person’.

[music]

Kate: In the next episode, we’ll be talking about why Bernstein’s audience found him so sexy. 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 emotional email at hello@dearmaestro.org or pick up a pen and write an intellectual letter 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 Shafer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Talley and Justin Williams. Music courtesy of the University of Bristol. Archive Courtesy of CBS.