My friends snigger

The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols … the soundtracks of teenage self-discovery are many. Rarely do we think to include classical music on such a list – but Bernstein’s young fans show that it should be. 

In this episode, we ask: how does being a fan of something help us build our identities?

We share our memories of childhood books that enabled us to explore our sense of self. We consider what Swifties can teach us about becoming and being a fan. We explore what classical music fandom looked like in Bernstein’s day, and why celebrities are such useful figures in our search for ourselves.

From Bernstein’s archive, we meet three angsty teenagers: one aspiring to be Beethoven, another whose musical tastes have left her excluded by her peers, and a third in crisis, writing to thank Bernstein for “practically saving her life.”

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 Wilson.

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. You might remember that in the last episode we talked about how some Bernstein fans use their letters to explore their sexuality. We’re going to pick up the theme of self-discovery again today as we ask why and how people use fandom to build their own sense of identity.

Kate: We’ll be exploring the different kinds of identities that classical music has helped listeners forge and why celebrities are such useful figures in our search for ourselves.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, boarding at college preparatory high schools, one’s especially aware of the need for musical guidance. 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.

Actress: You have an understanding and a warmth that make friendships for those who have no friends. I’ve read your biography, and I feel that same friendship, warmth and understanding that you have for life and people. It makes me proud to know you.

Actor: To me, the best music is classical. My friends at school snigger behind my back when they find out that I listen to classical music. But let them snigger. I don’t care. I enjoy the type of music I listen to. In fact, I enjoy it very, very much.

Actress: I feel I should tell you something, dear friend. I am binded by destiny to become something in music. LB, the initials of Ludwig Beethoven from Bonn. Leonard Bernstein from Boston. Lisa Bailey from Boscawen.

Flora: Ah, we all wanted to be Lisa Bailey from Boscawen! How amazing! Kate, I guess we’re both sitting here precisely because classical music is so important to both of our identities. But I wonder, have you found other aspects of fandom have shaped who you are over the years?

Kate: Yeah, I was reflecting on this when I was, you know, we were putting together the plans for this episode, and I was reminded of one of the experiences I had as a child in the Harry Potter phase.

Flora: Ah!

Kate: It was the release … I can't remember which book it was, I mean, I think it happened for several of the books, but they decided to open our local Waterstones it probably was … it doesn’t exist anymore, but at midnight, on the day of the release so that the ‘true’ fans could all turn up to the store. And we took it very seriously as a family. I remember my parents getting out their old university gowns for us to wear.

Flora: Oh wow, ideal. 

Kate: I know! They were perfect attire. My little sister had her cuddly toy owl, and I think we even fashioned her a broomstick out of some wood from the garden. You know, yeah, there was this real sense of going and being part of something, right? And, you know, we stood in the queue for, you know, from 10:30 in the evening for an hour and a half or so and waited and then, you know, filed forward with everybody in turn to purchase our copy of the book. And then there was a big family debate about who was going to get to read it first because I have lots of siblings. And I think I was deemed a fourth place, ultimately, after three of my other siblings who’d expressed stronger preferences than I had. I guess this experience for me captured the strongly social aspect of fandom. So this idea that you’re going to a place and you’re gathering. And there’s a sense of communal identity, right, that’s being formed around that.

Flora: I was going to say, it sounded as though actually it was a really important experience for your family as well – that it was kind of something you could all bond over that maybe bonded with your siblings over as well?

Kate: Yeah, that sense of kind of coming together and that you, in that moment of communing around a common interest, you have a sense of yourselves as a group right, as well as being part of this much bigger thing. I think there was also something that was quite key about the timing in terms of my own life as well, because at this point, I must have been sort of 13 / 14 – on the cusp of, you know, teenager years… 

Flora: Yeah, this was how I was just too old. 

Kate: But, yeah, you know, and it’s that moment, isn’t it, where you’re suddenly starting to become more aware of yourself as an independent person in the world – that you have an identity that you can fashion and that you can shape, and, you know, the possibility of actually, you know, rather than just being the thing you are, that you’re actually starting to reflect more critically on, ‘Well, who do I want to be? What will that look like? How will I practise this?’ 

Flora: Mm.

Kate: You know, I think this is something that comes out, you know, the montage of letters we heard at the start as well, right? You know, the very first one, this child who's at boarding college, you know, and he said, ‘Oh, you know, rock ‘n ‘roll is fine, but by one’s teens, I think it’s time to do something else’. You know, you have that sense of actually really proactively creating your own identity and the classical music can be a really useful tool in that. 

Flora: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re looking at the world as a set of options. Like, which would you like to pick? What do you want to be a part of? Who do you want to be?

Kate: Yeah, and there’s something very fundamentally human in that, isn’t there? You know, this kind of existential question about who are you as a person and what is your place in the world.

Flora: Yeah, and I suppose my own experience of this was actually a lot less to do with the communal and a lot more to do with me and my own sense of identity. I was a bit younger when this happened, but I think I’ve already mentioned I was a huge fan of the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome. Which are from another era – they were not new out when I was little. So I had this kind of phase of wanting to be a sort of child pirate, basically. And I was actually called by a different name by my friends and indeed by their parents for a couple of years when I was about nine or ten, because Nancy and Peggy, the two pirate names in the books, had already been taken by two of my friends. So I had to invent a new one. And it was an androgynous name. And that was really important to me. I didn’t want it to be a kind of girly name. And actually looking back on it, I wasn’t at all aware of this at the time, but that was such an important moment for me of kind of experimenting with my own sense of gender, essentially. And it was kind of a first, very early step towards kind of coming out, essentially, as I would do, much, much later on. And yeah, so that kind of very basic kind of fandom, actually looking back on it, was sort of vital to who I’ve ended up becoming as an adult, which is funny when I think of myself roaring around parks and, you know, causing trouble in small boats. 

[music]

Flora: I think it’s really important that we both picked books, actually, because clearly, there are certain kinds of children and young people where books, the kind of fictional worlds presented by them will be part of that selection from which you might make your identity. That actually can be really important. But clearly for other people, it might be celebrities. It might be other sorts of role models that they’re looking at.

Kate: And I think there is something about the celebrity, isn’t there? You know, if you’re really successful in that role, that you project a set of qualities, a lifestyle, things that people want to aspire to, right? That might be wealth, it might be success. In Bernstein’s case, it was obviously this phenomenal musical ability. And yet, at the same time as, you know, people have this kind of image of you – they’re like, ‘Oh, this is an amazing thing I’d like to be like that’ – there’s a very limited knowledge of actually who that person is. And I guess that’s where, you know, there’s a similarity with the books in the sense that there’s a kind of fictional space around that figure into which you can then project your own sense of, ‘This is who I want that person to be because it’s useful for me understanding who I am in the world’. 

Flora: Yeah, absolutely. Though I guess these days, because of … thanks to social media, we do at least have the impression of knowing more about some celebrities; and that those social media platforms become a kind of space in which knowledge can be, you know, exchanged about how to be the ideal, I don’t know, like Swifty or something.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And actually, it’s funny you alight on Swifties, because I found this wonderful clip on TikTok that I think really captures a lot of this … where that sense of, like, ‘This is what it means to be a Swiftie and this is how you can do it’ is laid out really clearly.

@mccallmirabella: We’re Swifties. We don’t set ten-minute timers. We just play ‘All too long’. We’re Swifties. We cry when our favourite surprise song is played. We’re Swifties. We have post notifications on for Taylor. We’re Swifties. Most of our closet is Taylor themed.  We’re Swifties. We can’t choose between Folklore and Evermore because they’re sister albums. Duh!  We’re Swifties. We have Taylor Swift catches. We’re Swifties. We’re devastated The Eras Tour was taken off of Netflix. We’re Swifties. We’ve tried to write songs, too.

Flora: Interesting there, a kind of set of instructions, in a sense. If you wanted to learn how to be a Swiftie, you could do worse than starting there.

Kate: Yeah, some quite clear guidelines on how to behave, which tracks you have to listen to, how to respond to those, how you should style your wardrobe, you know, think about having tattoos even, you know, kind of imprinted on your body. And yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because this is social media, so clearly this is very much taking place in a kind of communal public sphere. But it’s also … there’s a very strong sense of crafting and identity here. ‘If you want to be a Swifty, these are the kinds of things that you can do in order to achieve’. 

Flora: Yeah. And clearly, this has roots in Taylor Swift’s music, but it’s not only about responses to music. And I suppose that’s really interesting here – that fandom can kind of create its own world, where actually the kind of the social life of fans is its own separate phenomenon. 

Kate: Yeah, outside of the kind of musical performance. Sure, and, you know, you get that sense, don’t you, of people finding points of connection with other fans, and then those points of connection becoming kind of meaningful just, you know, by virtue of that shared interest that you have. 

Flora: And I guess one of the things that’s really vital about this whole issue of crafting your own identity is … I guess there are moments in our lives when that seems particularly important. And we’ve already talked about being children and teenagers, and that seems like the first major moment in most of our lives when you’re really self-conscious about actually trying to work out who you are. But there maybe are other moments later. I wonder, thinking about that from a more historical perspective, kind of taking us towards Bernstein’s world, what was going on in the kind of 1950s in the US in relation to identity? I mean, was this a time when there were particularly acute questions about, you know, who Americans were, for instance? 

Kate: Oh, certainly! And I think that, you know, so what you see on the one hand in this period is some very strong ideals being promoted by the government and, you know, high profile institutions. I mean, we touched on some of these in the sexuality episode, you know – like ideas about what it meant to be a good woman and that you had, you know, being a housewife, you had to perform that in certain ways. So on the one hand, these, yeah, kind of quite prescriptive identities that are being put out into the world. But at the same time, you know, you’re kind of on the cusp of a decade of counterculture and, you know, yeah, where this whole idea of, like, who you are as a person and that this is something you can develop and explore is really becoming a discussion point for the first time. 

Flora: And I think you’ve already mentioned as well in earlier episodes about how, in a sense, teenagers kind of came into being at this time, as well that … kind of as a distinct identity of its own.

Kate: Yeah, well, and even actually, the idea of identity, as we would now term it, that is starting to take shape in this period. Yeah, so, you know, you’ve got, you know, this new demographic of young people. You know, from a commercial point of view, there’s the idea that they are an audience that can be sold to. You know, there’s money to make in that right. But also within that, you know, all the kind of splintering that begins to occur as you get different subgroups of teenagers, each of which can be marketed to specifically. And then, of course, for the teenagers themselves, there’s the question of, like, well, which of these many identities do I want to pick or which combination of things?

[music]

Flora: Okay, so where does Bernstein fit in this? Like, how does Bernstein’s own fandom kind of play out around these issues?

Kate: Yeah, so I think it’s fascinating that there’s definitely a very strong sense of a hub around Bernstein in New York. And a lot of this, I guess, has to do with how people are accessing him and information about him, right? So if you live in New York or in the areas surrounding New York, you know, you have the possibility of going to concerts. You might get along to join an autograph queue at the end of concert to actually meet him. You might know somebody who knows somebody, who knows somebody. And so, you know, there’s this kind of hubbub in New York that gives this sense of proximity to him. I think that as you begin to spread out geographically from that, the ways in which people are able to know him become far more, you know, limited. I’ve been really interested, you know, in the number of letters I’ve encountered in the archive where people are writing to Bernstein, saying, ‘Oh, I’ve heard that you’ve made this record’ or ‘you’ve done this … written this book’ or ‘done this performance, but I can’t get any, you know, information about that where I live. Can you tell me where I could buy this?’ So yeah, just even that sense that actually finding out about Bernstein becomes, you know, harder the further outside from New York you are.

Flora: Yeah, and it’s so hard for us to kind of grasp that, you know …

Kate: In the internet age … 

Flora: … we’ve got information just at our fingertips all the time. And yet, yeah, the US is obviously an enormous place, but also the distance between a fan and Bernstein could be absolutely unfathomable at that time.

Kate: And I think, you know, there’s a kind of possibility in that because it opens up this fictional space around the artist, where, you know, in a sense, there’s more room to project your own ideals of them. But it also, I guess, creates problems because fans are kind of aware in many cases of the fact they actually don’t know that much about him. And then it’s like, how do you navigate this relationship you’re imagining with this person who you sort of feel like you know really well, and yet you actually don’t really know very much about them at all.

Flora: Yeah, and no doubt that plays out in the letters you’ve been looking at. Presumably, that’s also where Bernstein’s television appearances come in, in that that could bring Bernstein … we’ve touched on this before, but it could bring Bernstein literally into your home.

Kate: Yeah. And that whole, you know, the whole discussion around the kind of intimacy of early television viewing and that sense that, you know, he becomes part of your domestic family environment. It reminds me, actually, of a couple of photos that I came across where people had photographed their children watching Bernstein on television and sent in with actually quite colloquial, informal, you know, sort of chatty letters – almost like Bernstein was a member of the family. 

Flora: That’s so sweet! So they were actually sending their family snaps to Bernstein because he might like to see their kids watch…

Kate: …watching him in their sitting room at home.

Flora: That’s amazing. That’s so interesting, in fact, isn’t it? Because it kind of closes the feedback loop. It’s, you know, sending it back to Bernstein so he can see himself being adored in the domestic environment.

Kate: Yeah. But I think also, you know, just in terms of this question about building your own sense of identity, I guess it’s put Bernstein into that family context in a very sort of explicit way, right? And yet there’s also this kind of funny remove because he’s on the TV and not really there.

Flora: Yeah, yeah, of course. Alright, I think it’s time for some letters. I know we’ve got some corkers today. So tell us about the first one we’re going to hear.

Kate: Yeah, so this first letter is from a young person who’s clearly trying to find themselves through classical music and is looking to Bernstein as a kind of model for how to do that.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I wrote to you earlier this year and was answered by your secretary. Thank you for having my letter answered. Even if it wasn’t a personal letter, it meant a great deal to me. I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner to thank you, but I’ve been rather busy at school. We had a week off between semesters and I had to get out of my system the desire to compose something. So I sat down and ripped off quite a few pages of music. I spent the whole week, and some nights I didn’t get to bed until one or two in the morning. Not that it was any good, but I really enjoyed doing it. I felt like Beethoven. I worked out quite a few themes and variations and intend to use them as sketches for a symphony of sorts that I should like to put together this summer. This is merely for posterity, mind you, but it would give me a good feeling of accomplishment and would make me feel kind of immortal. That’ll be the day! What I’m getting around to is orchestration. I’ve thought about it several times, and to me, it seems like a monumental task. Exactly how do you go about it? How do you lay out your music and indicate the entrance of various instruments? I would sincerely appreciate any advice you would give me. By the way, my pages of music look like ‘a bloody record of tremendous inner battle’ – Omnibus, Columbia Records, Leonard Bernstein on Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor Opus 67. A very apt simile. I have that record almost completely memorised. It taught me a lot. I have a picture of you framed and hung on my wall. I cut it out of a Columbia Records advertisement. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to send me a personally autographed picture? Thank you for your time and trouble.

Flora: Wow, there’s a lot going on there, isn’t there, Kate? 

Kate: There is, indeed. I find it quite funny as well that, you know, you get this sense that this person doesn’t actually know that much about writing music. You know, I mean, I’m just thinking back to myself as a teenager. ‘How do you lay out your music and indicate the entrance to various instruments?’ I mean, that’s basically like, ‘how do you notate music?’ So it’s this kind of funny disconnect between on the one hand, imagining themselves …

Flora: As Beethoven!

Kate: Yeah, as Beethoven, quite literally. And on the other hand, you know, this sense that actually they don’t really know very much about what they’re doing at all. 

Flora: Yeah, and they’re turning to Bernstein, you know, for help and kind of, I don’t know, for a sense of community, for a sense of conversation about what they’re trying to do. Really interesting.

Kate: Yeah, I also think, you know, that this letter really encapsulates the kind of fictional space that you can get around composers and celebrities, right? He talks about, doesn’t he, ‘What I’ve done looks like a bloody record of a tremendous inner battle’, which was a quote from one of Bernstein’s records that was out at this time – this record of Beethoven Symphony No. 5. I think it’d be worth us just hearing that now.

Bernstein: You see a lot of us assume when we hear the symphony today that it must have spilled out of Beethoven in one steady gush clear and right from the beginning, but not at all. Beethoven left pages and pages of discarded material in his own writing – enough to fill a whole book. The man rejected, rewrote, scratched out, tore up, and sometimes altered a passage as many as 20 times. Beethoven’s manuscript looks like a bloody record of a tremendous inner battle. 

Flora: I mean, Bernstein has such a way with words, doesn’t he? But I guess the actual … what he’s describing here is not a new idea. You know, this image of the romantic genius as kind of tortured, kind of maybe wild eyed, angry, etc., all the things we now associate with Beethoven. But it clearly captured this young man’s imagination.

Kate: In a very powerful way! And you get the sense, don’t you, you know … he says, ‘Oh, I had to get out of my system the desire to compose something’. Yeah. You know, 

Flora: As though it was gonna gosh out of him.

Kate: Yeah, for sure. 

Flora: Like Bernstein says.

Kate: Right. And, you know, he’s looked to this sort of image of Beethoven crafted by Bernstein, I guess, to help him create that feeling of being a musician or composer himself. 

Flora: Interesting that for this, I guess, teenager, it is classical music that’s providing some kind of means of expression. I mean, have you come across that in other letters as well?

Kate: Yeah, it’s been one of the things that’s really fascinated me, actually. I think that often when we think about teen subculture, we think about popular music and sort of niche underground movements or kinds of music that are associated with pushing against the status quo. You know, definitely the stuff your parents didn’t want to listen to and didn’t want to have at home. That said, you know, within the fan letters, you do get a sense that there are quite a number of young people for whom classical music is starting to fulfil that function. Almost, yeah, like, the reaction is happening kind of more against their peers than against their parents. But they’re, you know, looking to classical music basically as this kind of other way of defining themselves. So we can hear an example of this now.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, In my opinion, the only kind of music that will be played and remembered down through the ages to follow will be the music of our great masters. To me, the best music is classical. My friends at school snigger behind my back when they find out that I listen to classical music, but let them snigger. I don’t care. I enjoy the type of music I listen to. In fact, I enjoy it very, very much. I didn’t just choose classical music because I wanted to be different from all the other kids, but because I think the kind of music I listen to shows the great feelings and emotions the composers poured into these works. Now, when you turn on the radio and listen to some song, you can certainly tell that whoever thought up piece of junk had no emotion or feeling because it sounds like he was sick when he wrote it. I certainly enjoyed your concerts for young people on TV this past year, and hope you have more for I missed the first one of the new season. I have just read the article on you in TV Guide. It certainly shows that your life is very hectic. If by chance, a moment of your time you have open, write and tell me if you agree with what I have said.

Flora: This is amazing. And I don’t know … This writer seems to give away something about themselves when they say they didn’t only choose classical music because it would make them different from their peers. 

Kate: Yeah, that sense of choosing right is like, you know, they’ve made a very intentional decision that this is the thing they’re going to listen to and be interested in. Yeah, that they’ve cultivated this interest quite intentionally. 

Flora: Yeah, I don't know … do you remember that? I mean, I certainly remember taking some kind of perverse satisfaction in the fact that, yes, I was the weirdo who liked classical music when I was at secondary school. But equally, I kind of … I did like the fact that this was part of the set of things assumed to be part of me by other people and that I was going to own it, damn it!

Kate: Yeah, no, definitely. You know, I guess it’s one of the reasons actually that these letters had really jumped out to me precisely because of that personal connection, right? Like, I remember being the weird kid at school, who wanted to practise while everybody else was going shopping. I also think conversely, there can be something quite isolating in that. You know, I was remembering the first time that I went on an orchestra course in a holiday, the National Youth Chamber Orchestra. And I mean, it was just incredible. You know, we had 9 hours a day of rehearsal, and I played! I played my violin all day and all the people around me played all day. And that was totally normal. Everybody was really happy doing that. And I just think that sense of becoming part of something. Yeah. You know, and it’s clearly what this young person is looking to Bernstein for. You know, ‘if by chance, a moment of your time you have opened, write and tell me if you agree’ …  it's like ‘I’m actually looking for some community around this’.

Flora: Yeah, exactly. It is the classical music subculture that you were obviously part of as I was and this kid wants to be, as well. I suppose the interesting thing is that he ends up coming across as quite snobby. I mean, he’s pretty dismissive about non classical-music. 

Kate: I guess that becoming well versed in the language of classical music allows you to belong. But obviously, for people who are outside of that world, you know, it can come across as quite snobby. And I think, you know, the way the sort of disparaging comments about popular music as being ‘junk’, you know … that’s a description we've come across a few times as well. You know, a real sense of yeah, sort of superiority over, you know, their peers. I guess it’s hard to tell how much of that is a reactionary thing – like, ‘They are mocking me, so I’m going to mock them in return’; and how much of it’s about actually, ‘I’ve learned the language that I need to be part of this, and so I’m going to use it’. I was reminded, actually, of one of the interviews that I’ve conducted as well with a man called Rolf Norgaard who, I guess, like me and like you, was massively involved in the classical music world as a young person, but in a way that was quite sort of … set him apart from his peers. And I was really interested … I think for him, the television itself, and particularly the showing of a live audience on the television of young people, I guess, opened his mind to that idea of community. That sitting at home, watching Bernstein on TV with an audience of young people, made him realise that there was a world of other young people out there who did like classical music. And so even though he was, you know, in where he was living, he was kind of an isolated classical music fan, that there was this bigger thing that he had the possibility of being part of.

Flora: Gosh, that’s actually really poignant, isn’t it? And a good reminder that, of course, these television appearances … it wasn’t just Bernstein and an orchestra being filmed. It was also a studio audience. You’re being shown this world of fans around Bernstein. 

Kate: And you get all the shots of, you know, the kids sitting in the rows, some of them paying a lot of attention, some of them not really concentrating. But the audience viewing Bernstein is very much part of what is being shown in those TV programmes.

Flora: Okay, we’ve talked a bit about classical music as a kind of unexpected subculture for younger people, perhaps, at this time. Have you found any evidence of classical music via Bernstein ending up being a kind of rebellion against kids’ parents, for instance? 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And I think I mean, this comes back, doesn’t it, to this question about class and status to some extent, right? The classical music at this time is very much associated with middle-class aspiration. For some young people whose parents were not aspirational in that sense, actually their own interest in middle class could provide a kind of touchstone for pushing back against their parents.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein. Excuse paper, and for that matter, excuse pencil. I’m writing to tell you how you practically saved my life or at least my mind. About a month ago, I gave up music. Until that time, I had fanatically wanted to be a symphony conductor and a composer. I knew that, despite all the obstacles, and there are many, I could do it. Well, a month ago I gave up my life’s ambition ’cause I thought I should be a minister. That week was the worst week of my life. To make things worse, if things could be worse, my best friend and confidant was away that week. Then it happened. At the end of that week, I was listening to radio as I ate breakfast with my mother. I heard ‘Tonight’ – you know, you wrote it. For some reason, I don’t know what, but for some reason, I lit up. And that day, I went back to music. I am superbly and completely happy. Know what, Mr. Bernstein? I feel like I’ve known you all my life and that you know me, too. Funny. But I feel as though hardly anyone knows you but me. My parents are lowbrow and don’t let me watch all your shows, but, well, I’ve read Joy of Music eight times (first chapter 13 times), Biography for Young People on you. Saw a few televised concerts of yours. I’m an adolescent, and I have a few good friends. I’m also an only child and get awfully bored, so I became an intellectual, taught myself Spanish, German, French (but I’ve forgotten Spanish and German), read all Shakespeare’s plays, learned chemistry, astronomy, psycho analysis, theology, etc., all before high school. This didn’t exactly win friends, but some people seem to like me. Gosh, you’re a genius and still have friends. Oh, I’m not griping. I don’t want to be the belle of the ball, not by a long shot. Just be able to control my emotions and temper. I worship Beethoven, Ludwig von Beethoven. And I feel I should tell you something, dear friend. I am binded by destiny to become something in music. LB, the initials of Ludwig Beethoven from Bonn, Leonard Bernstein from Boston, Lisa Bailey from Boscawen. I hope you don’t think me conceited because I’m not. I just had to pour a fraction of my story out to someone, and I trust and feel closer to you than to most people I know. Send me your autograph so I can have something to look at the next time I despair. PS., don’t let anyone know I wrote this. I’ll get skinned. Please write to me in case of my friend. I need encouragement.

Flora: This is a really sad letter. 

Kate: Yeah.

Flora: She sounds tremendously kind of unhappy, doesn’t she?

Kate: Yeah, there’s a lot of teenage grief in this, isn’t there? A real struggle to, yeah, work out who she is in the world. And, you know, you get a sense that there’s some quite significant tensions with her parents, as well. I think that description of them as ‘lowbrow’ … I mean it’s … 

Flora: Painful! 

Kate: It’s below the belt, that is! But it’s also very revealing, isn’t it? Because, you know, you’ve got, there right in that moment, that sense of a kind of cultural hierarchy. 

Flora: And that she’s aware of it, even at this relatively young age, however old exactly that she is. She has that sense that they’re lowbrow, she evidently wants to be something else. 

Kate: Yeah, the aspiration, you know, desire to rise above that. I also think her comments, you know, detailed description of how she’s covered The Joy of Music, you know, eight times, and ‘I’ve read this bit this many times and this bit and this bit’. You know, there’s a real sense of kind of devotion too. And again, this active cultivation and interest in Bernstein. 

Flora: Yeah, and I mean laying out all her other kind of qualifications as an intellectual, but, you know, she clearly would love to be respected by him, for instance, as a kind of validation of all these efforts to turn herself into something else.

Kate: Yeah, well, and you get that don’t you cause actually, by the end of the letter, she started to refer to him as a friend. You know, ‘You’re someone I trust, someone I feel close to’. And, it’s funny: it’s almost like there's been a kind of process of, like, ‘This is a mini CV’, you know … or ‘This is my problem’ at the beginning, ‘This is my mini CV, and now I've told you those things, you know, you’ve got my credentials, I’ve demonstrated that we share these interests, you know, I can imagine us being on the same page as one another’.

Flora: It occurs to me that this letter has almost nothing to do with Bernstein. This is entirely a letter entirely focused on its writer. And I don’t know that just typical of a certain kind of this fan mail at least?

Kate: Yeah, one of the fascinating things about the fan mail is that the more I’ve read it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t actually tell us very much about Bernstein at all.

Flora: Right. 

Kate: I mean, you get the odd person writing in who’s, I guess, emulating music criticism in a way where they’re trying to engage more with Bernstein as a musician and artist, you know, that arguably is kind of closer to that classical music culture. But actually, a lot of the letters are much more personal than that and are really about the writers expressing themselves. You know, I think there’s something particularly important for women in this as well, right, because women are not allowed generally at this time to be part of public discourse. You know, they can’t write critical reviews. Letters are this much more intimate genre of writing, but also a space where women are allowed to express themselves. So, I think you’re right: I mean, this letter doesn’t really tell us anything about Bernstein at all. It tells us an awful lot about this young girl, about the struggles in her life, about who she imagines herself to be, about this image of Bernstein that she’s crafting. But none of that is really actually to do with Bernstein, per se.

[music]

Kate: One of the things I find really interesting about these letters is that I think fundamentally in them, we see classical music functioning just like any other sort of music as a vehicle for self-exploration, for self-identification. And yeah, I mean, I think this is interesting. We’ve talked about the fact that popular music is often imagined as the kind of ‘other’ you know … there’s like this other sphere as, you know, the subculture that teenagers flock to. But actually, you know, here, classical music is fulfilling that very similar set of social functions.

Flora: And it’s really whatever music does it for you, I suppose, really, that people are drawn to particular kinds of music, but they can actually use it in much the same ways.

Kate: In very similar ways, for sure. And all that sense of vulnerability, as well, you know, that kind of not knowing who I am and trying to figure that out in dialogue with the celebrity, who you don’t know how they’re going to respond to you, you know – all of those same vulnerabilities that you see in the popular music sphere that are coming out here as well. And also, you know, that sense in which the limited amount that people know about Bernstein opens up this kind of creative space that can be really productive for imagining yourself in, right? There’s a kind of two-way process there. It’s you in dialogue with this other person. But because the other person is a kind of fiction in your mind, there’s a lot of space to be creative around imagining who they are and how you relate to them.

Flora: And I guess that raises the big question of, ‘Okay, so what’s going on from the other point of view?’ – and that’s what we’re coming to next week.

Kate: So yeah, in the next episode, we’ll be talking about authenticity and celebrity and what it means to be for real in the classical music world. 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 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.

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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 Talley and Justin Williams. Music Courtesy of the University of Bristol. Archive courtesy of McCall Mirabella on TikTok and Sony Music Entertainment.