Just an act?

Autotune scandals, controversies about artists selling-out, disagreements over the “right” way to play Beethoven: if these tell you one thing, it’s that we expect artists to be authentic. But how do you judge authenticity? 

In this episode, we ask: what does it mean to be “for real” in the classical music world?

We explore why, for more than a century, commercial success and artistic integrity have often been considered mutually exclusive. We ask if the kind of person someone is should affect whether and how we listen to their music. And we discuss why we both love and hate celebrities disappointing us.

From Bernstein's archive, we meet a listener who is enchanted by Bernstein, another who is disbelieving, and a couple more wondering about the man behind the 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 letters and interviews with people who wrote to him. If you listened to the previous episode, you’ll have heard us discussing how fans use classical music to build their own sense of identity. Well, in this episode, we’re shining the spotlight the other way – onto celebrities themselves.

We’re going to dig deeper into why we care about the person behind the celebrity image and ask: what does it mean to be for real in the classical music world?

[music]

Actor: I’ve been backstage for your autograph. Please don’t take me for a Bobby-soxer. I went backstage mostly to see if you were anything like the person you seemed to be on the stage.

Actor: We feel that we have experienced through the influence of your great artistry, a placing of our hand and that of the great master Bach.

Actress: The way you feel your music when you conduct the orchestra, the way you play the piano, and you look alright. In fact, you seem to be an example of the perfect man.

Actress: Tell me, Mr. Bernstein, does your success make you dizzy? I mean, make you feel conceited. Frankly, I don’t believe much in complimenting men for their accomplishments. It makes them conceited, and I dislike conceited people.

Actor: I’m doubly grateful to you for giving us Beethoven with the rhythms and the tempi as written. For many of us, Beethoven, as is, is still greatest of all.

Actress: I sometimes wonder if your movements – they’re very graceful – are intrinsic or just an act. I honestly hope they’re from inside, not just for showmanship.

Flora: All these people asking about whether Bernstein’s kind of really the man they see when they watch him conduct.

Kate: Yeah, I think there’s something, you know, very significant about Bernstein as conductor here, right? Because I think as a classical music performer, you really have to be top of your game in order to make it, don’t you? You know, the reality is you stand up there with your instrument, you have to perform, and people will judge you based on that performance. I guess, as a conductor, you’re in a slightly different position because you haven’t got your own instrument. You’re sort of ‘playing the orchestra’. But there’s also that sense, you know, in that … in that actually like what it means to be a really good conductor – how you could, you know, fulfil that role really well – is a lot less clear.

Flora: Yeah. And it is all external, in that sense. Like, you know, all eyes on the conductor, and yet what you’re seeing is someone moving their arms around and literally performing as though they’re a dancer, for instance, and, you know, someone commented there on his grace. But, you know, this is all about the surface, as opposed to … then, well, the question is, like, what’s going on underneath?

Kate: Yeah, and I think there are two aspects to that, aren’t there? Because some of these writers are concerned with Bernstein as a person, right? There’s the sense that if you’re going to be a great musician, you probably need to be a great person too: ‘Are you conceited or are you not conceited?’ Conceit is not a respectable quality, you know? And there’s also, on the other hand, you know, this question about Bernstein and the music – him as a musician. You know, so the person who celebrates him for giving the tempi ‘as written’, you know, it’s like you’ve done the thing that you’re supposed to have done. You clearly know about this, you’ve shown some expertise in this area.

Flora: I suppose this does also place Bernstein in a longer and much more familiar history of celebrity, essentially. I mean, if you look at the front pages of celebrity magazines today or, you know, front covers of tabloid newspapers, there’s constant news stories about celebrities – famous people one way or another, in the public eye, who’ve done something that seems to let down all the people who care about them. All those fans that they have are disgusted, or, you know, they’re disgraced now these figures because they’ve, I don’t know, had an affair or they’ve been overheard saying something they shouldn’t have said, or there’re photos of them captured doing something they shouldn’t have done. It seems that we sort of both love and hate celebrities for disappointing us. You know, we love those lurid stories, but also we feel very deeply when someone lets us down.

Kate: And I think there is something specific about classical music here, too, isn’t there? Because of that, you know, long history of classical music being associated with kind of moral superiority that actually, when classical music composers fall short or classical music performers … you know, Wagner is the famous example of this, isn’t he, of course, you know, who’s, you know, massively anti-semitic. And what do you do? How do you square this kind of great artist who’s written music that people love and respect and that has profoundly changed the world with the reality of somebody being quite … actually not a very pleasant individual?

Flora: Yeah, especially given that really ever since the kind of the 19th century when Wagner was working, we have got used to the idea that classical music or music in general is some kind of expression of the creator, you know, that they’re pouring themselves into their music and that we have some sort of connection with them through that music. But then, well, what if you sort of think the creator might have been just an awful human? You know, it raises really big questions.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I’ve had, you know, personal experience of this as well. I remember when I was doing my PhD research going to an archive, discovering that a certain amount of this composer’s archive had been removed and destroyed by his secretary, and, you know, the reason that had happened was because there were sort of implications that he’d been involved in paedophilic activity. And, you know, that was a really uncomfortable moment for me. Was it still okay for me to be interested in and want to write about the music this person had written when there was this kind of allegation hanging over them implicitly in the archive, but not talked about, you know, kind of more widely, that he might have done these awful things?

Flora: I think these are they’re really tricky moments for us as scholars, but also, I think, over the last decade with things like the #metoo movement more broadly in culture, I mean, I think many of us are questioning, is it okay to love artworks of any kind produced by people whose ethics or behaviour we really don’t agree with at all and who might, in fact, actually have been taken to court, for instance, might have been found guilty? Where does that leave us? I have to say, there’s a really, really interesting book about this came out very recently called Monsters by a woman called Claire Dederer. I read this with such interest because it is about Wagner, for instance, as you’ve already mentioned, but also about figures like Woody Allen and Picasso and various … it’s not all men … but various different figures from the kind of late 19th century to the present day. People whose behaviour has been shown to be in whatever various different ways, absolutely not conforming to kind of 21st-century standards of behaviour, legal requirements, even. And then the question of, like, okay, but what do we do with their, you know, ‘great’ artworks? Now, what does it mean if you love paintings by a painter who, you know, behave terribly towards women or for that matter, a filmmaker, or anything else? You know, these are massive questions. And I think there are no straightforward answers at all. It really is tricky to know what to do there.

Kate: I think that these debates about authenticity play out on the level of the music itself, as well, don’t they? You know, I was thinking about, you know, back to my teenage years when there was all that drama over the autotune software coming out. 

Flora: Yes. 

Kate: You know, and this sort of shock horror that the singers we heard on the recordings might not be the singers in their real voice. And then the kind of shaming that went on in the public press after that, you know, as various … one singer after another was outed as having used this and ‘have you heard the awful recording of them when they didn’t have autotune?’ You know, I think, yeah, this kind of longing for there to be some sense of an authentic figure behind the art that is playing out both on the level of the person and their personal conduct and behaviour. But also, you know, in terms of how they create their music and their own claim to artistry. 

Flora: Yeah, I think in popular music, broadly conceived, this is really, really obvious, isn’t it? That on the one hand, you’ve got the kind of the rock / the indie end of things, where it’s all about authenticity of the artist and they do their own thing, and it’s kind of got a subcultural kind of quality to it in some way. And then there was the kind of pop that we grew up with – just that moment of, yeah, not only autotune, but bands being put together in this really self-consciously commercial way. In a sense, it wasn’t really about whether individual members could sing yet. It was about how they might look together and where they were likely to be a good commercial proposition. And that kind of … the literally pop music end of popular music as a spectrum seemed to really lose its own grip on that kind of authentic ideal for music making. 

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this comes back to our own sense of identity and how that gets formed as well, right? 

Flora: Yeah, ‘cause what does it mean to love ‘fake’ music?

Kate: Well, absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think there’s also a sense in which if, you know, We’re all performing our identities all the time, and yet we like to believe that somehow this is something that is innately fundamentally true about us as a person. You know, I think the things that get really uncomfortable for people are the things where that performance is so obvious that you can’t really buy into this delusional idea that actually you know this is really authentic and true to me – because it’s like, this is so blatantly performed.

Flora: Yeah!

Kate: You know. But actually, the reality is we’re all performing all of the time.

Flora: Yeah, of course. And I guess this is why it can cause such an issue when particular artists or bands end up being accused of, you know, ‘selling out’ because they’ve taken certain kinds of deals, commercially speaking, for instance. 

Kate: And I think that question about commercialism is so pertinent to all of the kind of discussions around music and authenticity as well, and particularly, in Bernstein’s day. You know, we’ve talked a bit previously, haven’t we, about the fact that this post war period sees this massive expansion in commercial culture in the United States – well, and you know, further afield, as well. I mean, it carries on a debate that has its roots way back 19th century, even earlier, you know. But this sense that on the one hand, you have commerce and on the other hand, you have art and that ‘true art’ is somehow above, beyond, you know, the commercial sphere. And yet the reality is that actually, by the 1950s, 1960s, you know, if you’re actually going to make any money as an artist, you know, have any sort of living, you have to be commercially viable.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, it's the alter… the minute that, you know, we’re not just talking about aristocrats writing music as a kind of hobby or alternatively, having an aristocratic patron. I mean, how else is a composer going to live or a conductor or a musician, you know? 

Kate: I think that in that reality of there being a need to sell concert tickets, to sell records, to generate income, that actually, you know, you get all these anxieties emerging about artists, you know, classical artists pandering to public taste, you know, that you have to give them what they want because that’s the thing that will generate money. But that in doing that, you’ve somehow lost your commitment to the ‘great art itself’. 

Flora: Which is presumably how you end up with this huge rise of the kind of the image of classical music precisely as a transcendent route to some kind of other world, a way of elevating yourself from your, you know, whatever your family background is … all these ideas of classical music, bettering yourself that, you know, we inherited from the Victorians. But they get such a lift through the 20th century.

Kate: Yeah, and are so clearly not true. You know, they’re not based in the reality of the classical music industry, you know. And yet, I guess it’s that very thing, isn’t it – because the classical music industry is so real, almost you have to go above and overboard to invest in the idea that actually it’s not. You know, it isn’t an industry. 

Flora: Yeah, the denial is massive. 

[music]

Kate: One of the amazing things I came across in the archive that … it wasn’t really a letter. It was more of a … I would describe it as a kind of spoof booklet that someone had sent to Bernstein that really succinctly captures all these anxieties around commercialism and classical music, and particularly where Bernstein fits within them.

Actor: My life story by Leonard Bernstein. Hello there. My name is Leonard Bernstein, but my friends call me Lenny. That’s because I’m so very nice. I like people and people like me. That’s because I use Dial soap. I have to use Dial soap because when I conduct, I get hot and bothered. I like to get hot and bothered because it makes the people think that I’m very arty. When they think that I’m arty, they don’t mind paying high prices just to see me wave my sweet little arms. I look very nice when I’m not hot and bothered. I have tonnes of dark, wavy hair that is greying at the temples. That makes me look even younger than I am. When people see me conduct, they say, ‘My, my, he is so young’. When they come backstage to see me, they say, ‘My, my, he is so young to know all those dirty words. But then he writes Broadway musicals’.

Flora: This is hilarious Kate! This is such a weird thing. Do you know anything about the writer here? Do we know how old they are roughly?

Kate: It’s a young person, a teenager. And the thing that prompts them to write this is a debate with their friend. There’s a kind of cover letter that comes with it where they explain this is not meant to be offensive or rude, but I was having this argument with my friend, and I wrote this sort of fictional piece in response to that. And you can see, I mean, it’s clearly playing into the, you know, kind of advertising industry of the day, right? You know, you sort of start off with this colloquized, ‘Oh, hi, my name’s Leonard Bernstein, and I use Dial soap’. Yeah. But drawing that very direct connection between the commercial advertising world and the way that Bernstein conducts and this kind of accusation implicitly that, you know, he’s being superficial because the superficiality is the thing that’s going to make people want to watch him and pay for the concert tickets.

Flora: Yeah, and I suppose what I couldn’t work out listening to the letter is, like, is there something angry here? I mean, this writer sounds sort of angry, and yet, if there’s a cover letter that makes it clear none of it’s supposed to be offensive, perhaps, it’s more of a joke? But it sounds like there’s quite a lot at stake, either way. Again, this idea that classical music, you need to keep classical music, you know, out of the gutter, and the gutter is where selling happens, you know, where dial soap belongs. It’s not where Bernstein belongs.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, based on the letter that went with this, I think this is very much meant as a kind of tongue in cheek, but you’re right that the stakes seem really high. And again, you know, I think there’s something particular about this moment, you know, in the history of classical music conductors, that’s significant here, too, right? Because, actually, it’s really useful for conductors to have a brand. If you have a kind of image, a ‘unique selling point’, as marketing spiel would have it these days, you’ve got something that sets you apart from other people, you know, that can help build a fan base that can be used to promote you. But there’s also the risk that comes with that, right, that the sort of fact that you are being marketed becomes so obvious that all the commercial, you know trappings of your image are completely undeniable. And that’s where you know, it starts to rub up against these kind of transcendental ideals of the classical music world.

[music]

Flora: To what extent have you found that Bernstein’s fans were actually kind of aware of some of these issues? Were they writing to him as a kind of paragon of authenticity? Have you found that?

Kate: So, you get a real spectrum. There are some people who are clearly very, very invested in this belief that Bernstein is authentic, that he has an authentic connection with the music. And that he can enable you as a listener to have that authentic kind of connection yourself. You also get the people who are aware that there’s this whole kind of charade around the celebrity. And we’ve got examples of both of these letters to look at today. 

 Flora: And there’s also, of course, the power that music has to cultivate a kind of image or a space for authenticity in the first place. So let’s start with that.

Actress: Please accept these few words of tribute, which a simple attendee of your concerts feels impelled to send you. I cannot tell you how tremendously moved I was while listening to your lovely renderings, especially of Schumann. Life in all its complexity of agony and joy, despair and ecstasy and prayer passed before my eyes, and I knew it was so that all these have their part in the accompaniment of the great and inspired theme, that which must find expression, the essential and ultimately triumphant notes of the song of life. God bless you, Leonard Bernstein. Remain true always to your own beautiful soul. Never been before superficiality. Have the courage to enter the depths and to be carried to the heights so that you can go on interpreting for us the meaning of life and the reality of God.

Flora: Wow! But the song of life is such a beautiful phrase here, isn’t it? I mean, this is clearly someone who’s been tremendously moved and is keen to reach out and make that point.

Kate: Yeah, and you get that sense, don’t you that they’re very invested in the belief that Bernstein is the real deal, that he is authentic. There’s absolutely no questioning of that at all. But you’re right that, you know, in choosing to take that leap of faith, as it were, that they’ve built this whole wonderful, spiritually enriching image around him as a person. I think, you know, we started off with music, didn’t we? And one of the things I love about this, as well, is I mean, even as a musician, I can imagine how this experience has come very much out of the music itself. You know, this description about life with all its agony, joy and despair, and ecstasy, I mean, I think about Schumann that I’ve played. And, you know, with all the shifts between the major and the minor, you know, I mean, it is literally what that music is like, isn’t it?

Flora: Yeah, yeah, a sort of huge orchestral kaleidoscope, for instance, if you’re thinking of the symphonies, you know, things that just keep shifting. And they’re pieces that do take you on a journey, and this person clearly has been on one. Really interesting that, yeah, as you say, they’re reading that kind of capacity for emotional expression into Bernstein himself, and that that must be a sign of kind of … his own beautiful soul, as they say.

Kate: Yeah, well, and she sets him up as a kind of conduit, doesn’t she almost? You know, that you’ve got this great composer, the great composer who is somehow connected to God. And then Bernstein, who is the conduit through which that kind of spiritual encounter is going to take place. 

Flora: And I suppose that function of being a kind of conduit, being the mediator between a composer who’s no longer alive and an audience member, that comes with responsibilities, doesn’t it? And I wonder, I guess, for some fans, presumably, that could then also cause problems? It’s not always such a straightforward thing. Bernstein’s role isn’t always a positive one. 

Kate: Yeah, you know, where people feel like Bernstein hasn’t got it completely right, as we’ll see in this next letter.

Actor: Dear Mr. Bernstein, you most probably know the Hebrew word chutzpah. And it is this which makes me write to you. Although I am not a professional musician and I only play the piano rather badly, I love music. And as there are a number of things in your interpretation which rather puzzle me, I should be very grateful to you if you could give me an explanation. 1. Your interpretation of Beethoven’s first piano concerto. In the third movement, you introduced rhythms which sounded to me like jazz. In my opinion, Beethoven is timeless and to be played nowadays just the same way as it was played when the music was written; or is the modern conception so that changing of the rhythm is desirable? 2. Your conducting in general. When you conduct, one does not pay attention to the musicians. One does not even hear the music properly. One just has to stare fascinated at you. Perhaps your greatness lies in that, and I do not doubt that you are a genius. But somehow I ask myself whether your gestures are not exaggerated to such an extent in order to draw all the attention to your own person. I never had the chance of hearing your great colleagues like Toscanini, Bruno Walter, etc. I only read about them, and you just do not conform to the opinion I held about the way of conducting. I hope you do not mind my frank, perhaps even rude way of expressing myself. It is not meant as criticism, but I should like to know. I am sure you are not going to tell me just, ‘if they do not like the way I’m conducting and playing, they are not obliged to hear my concerts’, but will explain to me the few points that I’m wondering about. 

Flora: Oh, there’re a lot of opinions here, aren’t there?

Kate: There are, yeah. Interestingly, actually, this letter wasn’t responded to. So despite the efforts at the end to say, you know, ‘I’m not trying to be rude’, I mean, you sense that perhaps it didn’t land terribly well. 

Flora: Really interesting, though, in terms of giving us a sense of what this listener felt they needed from the music and what they wanted from Bernstein. And he obviously wasn’t giving it.

Kate: No, and it's interesting, isn’t it? The way you know, right at the start, they put it on the table that they’re not a professional musician, and yet they lay this claim to being somebody who loves music. And so you really get a sense that they’re subtly questioning Bernstein’s authority, right? You know, ‘I am a lover of music. As a lover of music, I consider Beethoven timeless. The way you’ve performed it hasn’t ticked that box for me. And so now I’m going to basically question your expertise, your authenticity as a musician. Do you really know what you’re doing?’

Flora: Yeah, no, no, it is fascinating that, isn’t it? There’s something … the idea that you love this music, you have that aesthetic attachment, as you could call it quite grandly, that is its own form of authenticity. And you can lay that down there as the kind of counter argument to it doesn’t matter that he’s a professional conductor and tremendously famous. The fact that you love music means you get to push back.

Kate: I think I mean, this comes out as well, doesn’t it, in the second point, you know – this concern that Bernstein has put himself too much centre stage in a way that has sort of displaced the music. You know, clearly, for this person, the lover of music, it is all about the music. And they’re like, ‘Well, actually, Bernstein, when you’re conducting, no one’s listening to the music. They’re all just watching you. Is that okay?’ 

Flora: But the amazing thing is they make it Bernstein’s fault that like, you know, all one can do is stare fascinated. It’s like, hey, you don’t have to stare fascinated. You could listen to the music…, but, you know, this writer obviously thinks it’s Bernstein’s own … you know, this is impossible to resist. No one could possibly think about music while he’s there waving his arms.

Kate: And I think this is where all, you know, you get this very tangled web emerging, don’t you? Of the performer / conductor on the one hand, the music, the composer, and the listener. And, you know, actually where one ends and the other begins is really unclear because they’re all sort of muddled up in this ideal of some great artistic encounter. And, you know, obviously, for this person, Bernstein hasn’t quite managed to deliver that.

Flora: Okay, well, from Bernstein being on stage, centre stage, and his performance itself being under scrutiny, let’s think about a letter where it’s actually what’s going on backstage that the fan is concerned with.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein. This season, I’ve been to every concert you conducted. I’d never seen you before and was very impressed that first day I saw you at Carnegie. After that, I bought tickets for the concerts in Brooklyn, as well as in Carnegie. I’ve been backstage each time for your autograph. Please don’t take me for a Bobby-soxer. I’m 20-years-old and also a musician. I went backstage mostly to see if you are anything like the person you seem to be on the stage. I shan’t say you are as dynamic as the impression you gave conducting Stravinsky. But the short time I had to study you (I use study because I can’t think of another word), I really couldn’t base an opinion. Watching you on the stage, I sometimes wonder if your movements – they’re very graceful – are intrinsic or just an act. I honestly hope they’re from inside, not just for showmanship. You must be quite vain. I don’t blame you. I am also. But you conceal it quite well on the stage. You do make your entrance like a god, and I admire you for your poise and grace. PS, Tell your friends not to call you Lenny. Leonard suits you far better.

Flora: That tells him. Alright, Leonard Bernstein. Never Lenny. Um, yeah, this is really interesting. Someone really concerned with the level of reality that she’s able to detect in Bernstein or not.

Kate: And you get that sense, don’t you, you know? She’s gone to the concerts to try and get closer to him. And yet, actually that process of trying to get closer to him has in many ways just opened up her sense of a gap between them.

Flora: Yeah, it just raises more questions for her.

Kate: Yeah, the performance itself wasn’t enough, so she’s gone backstage. And now she’s gone backstage, she’s even less sure than she was when she was in the concert hall.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a kind of Hall of Mirrors experience for her, doesn’t it? It’s like, ‘Oh, God, when does the performance actually stop? Like, am I still seeing a performance?’ And the answer is, surely, yes. 

Kate: Always.

Flora: Always.

Kate: But interestingly, though, you know, she wants to believe that there isn’t a performance going on, right? You know, she says, ‘I honestly hope that these movements are from the inside and not just for showmanship’, as if there’s some line there, you know, between really authentically presenting yourself as a conductor and between just putting on a performance. Yeah, you know, I find the idea that you could, in theory, separate those two things out and do one of them and not the other I mean, is really fascinating because surely the reality is that actually there isn’t really a line at all.

Flora: No, in a way, it sounds like she does kind of know that. I mean, that extraordinary line where she says, ‘You do make your entrance like a god’. It’s like, well, is that a performance or not a performance in a man wearing a dinner jacket? I mean, you know, to be godlike … you know, she’s sort of playing with that. You’ve got to tell us what is a Bobby-soxer is?

Kate: Yeah, so this was a word that was used at the time to describe teenage women who followed popular trends in music and fashion. And the name came from the particular style of socks that was fashionable that they wore, which were, I guess, sort of ankle height and tended to have little frilly bits all around the tops. 

Flora: They’ve come back! Yep, okay, good. 

Kate: And yeah, I guess, you know, in musical terms, was usually associated with Frank Sinatra. So, you know, again, ‘Please don’t take me for a Bobby-soxer’ is like, ‘Don’t write me off as not being serious because I sound like I’m, you know, writing like a fan because I’ve been to all your concerts. You know, actually, I’m 20-years-old and I’m also a musician. So I’m really, you know, a serious person, even though I’m writing this fan letter to you, where I’m telling you that I’ve tried to get your autograph on multiple occasions.

Flora: Yeah, I think you found another letter, which is kind of similar in the fact that this is a writer who is negotiating that gap between themselves and Bernstein?

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, if a bombshell had exploded right next to me I wouldn't have been as surprised as I was to receive your photograph, which Miss Coates dutifully sent on to me. The photograph is delightful, and the more I keep looking at it, the more I like it. I guess all girls fall for good looking men, and, well, you’re not exactly ugly. Tell me, do you actually look that nice? I mean, is the shot a good likeness? Don’t laugh at me, please. After all, the only glimpses I had of you were your profile when conducting your Fancy Free and your back on another occasion. Well, to make it short, I wish to say that I appreciate your gesture most deeply. By the way, I do wish to apologise if in my letter of October 11, 1948, I asked you indiscreet questions concerning your character, etc., etc. I’m punished for my indiscretion by the fact that you did not even bother to reply. Still, I meant everything I asked and will not give up the hope that may be one day, you will sit down and write me a few lines – not typed – and satisfy my woman’s curiosity. Tell me, Mr. Bernstein, does your success make you feel dizzy? I mean, make you feel conceited? How silly of me to ask? You’d be entitled to it. Am I really beginning to pay you compliments just like everyone else? Frankly, I don’t believe much in complimenting men for their accomplishments. It makes them conceited, and I dislike conceited people. What apart from your music takes place in your life? Do you go out a lot? How come you aren’t yet married? Has no woman yet tried to hook you down? Pardon the crudeness of my expression. I guess I’m too curious. What do you like best after your music? Does sport come in at all in your activities? If yes, which? I myself am quite a sports fan, and I like to think that my friends and acquaintances feel the same way. Well, Mr. Bernstein, I guess there isn’t much more to add now. I’d be glad to hear from you anytime you feel like answering my questions. 

Flora: Wow. What made this one stand out for you, Kate? 

Kate: I find it fascinating that this writer is engaging with this question about authenticity on so many different levels, or through so many different lenses, right? You’ve got, you know, on kind of the most literal visual level at the start, like, ‘Is this actually what you look like?’

Flora: Yeah! ‘Did you just sending a photo of some other guy out?!’

Kate: Um, which, yeah, I guess, you know, I mean, it’s also … A bit of context: so this writer is based in Tel Aviv at this point in time.

Flora: Oh gosh!

Kate: So the comment about the bombshell is also particularly timely because Israel was at war at this point. But, you know, even more than writers from the United States, you know, the opportunities to actually see Bernstein in the flesh have been seriously limited. And so you sense this is a genuine question. Like, ‘I actually really haven’t had very many chances to see you. I can’t watch you on television. You know, I could maybe listen to you on a radio. But this concert was it, and I don’t know whether the thing that you’ve sent me is the real deal’. So there’s the kind of visual level. There’s also, you know, we’ve touched a bit on this with some of the other letters, this question about character. ‘Does your success make you feel dizzy?’ And, you know, that weird thing where they’re like, ‘Well, on the one hand, you’d kind of be entitled to it because you're clearly amazing at what you do. But also, I don’t really like conceited people, and I don’t think that's a very good characteristic’.

Flora: That moment where she’s like, ‘Am I really beginning to pay you compliments, just like everyone else?’ You’re like, oh gosh, right, okay … so concerns about just becoming yet another fan as well.

Kate: Absolutely. And then, you know, the thing that comes afterwards where there’re a whole load of questions about his life. You know, ‘Do you like sport? I like sports. I’d like to imagine that you like sport, too’. 

Flora: ‘We have so much in common’. 

Kate: Yeah, I guess that, you know, you really get a sense that she’s trying to get a deeper understanding of Bernstein as a person and of ‘who he really is’, right? And that, you know, there are so many different facets to this, you know – the visual thing, the character thing, the hobbies and interest thing. And I think, you know, in that, it really opens up that sense of a distance, as well, between the fan and the object of their fandom.

Flora: Yeah, and this letter makes it even clearer than maybe it was before to me that I mean, this person evidently feels that they’re kind of entitled to this information – that they feel it’s acceptable for them to write and ask what are basically really quite personal questions.

Kate: Yeah, and I think, you know, in its extreme forms, this is where that kind of parasocial dynamic can come in, isn’t it? Where actually fans become so fixated on the object of their fandom that all the kind of usual social boundaries just go out of the window. And yeah, I mean, I don’t think this writer is quite there. You know, there’s this kind of apology about, ‘Oh, maybe I asked questions that were indiscreet in my last letter’. Yet, despite acknowledging that, she goes on to bombard him with another series of really personal questions. I think one other thing that is really interesting about this letter as well is that often fans have this image of being sort of airheads or, you know, just like blindly following these, you know, people fads and trends, regardless of their actual quality. I mean, I think this letter really challenges that because this is somebody who is very much aware that the thing that they’re being given could be, you know, a kind of constructed image in some sense. You know, there’s a sense in which she’s kind of critically engaging with that, you know. And this isn’t just a kind of blind, ‘Oh, look he’s so good looking, look at this lovely photo’. It's like, ‘Well, actually, is this photo real?’ You know, yeah, so, you know, I like the fact that this letter kind of complicates that image of the fan as just a, you know, sort of delusional young woman. I don’t think that’s what comes across here solely.

Flora: Yeah, I wonder whether … is there something very mid-20th century about starting to ask those questions? Like, as you know, more and more people have televisions in their homes, and the kind of the image culture somehow is growing so quickly. That actually, you know, you might become more suspicious of the people that you’re watching on a day to day basis, and yet you might be aware that you don’t actually know them. You’re just seeing a lot of them, and that’s a different thing. 

Kate: Yeah, so it touches upon this idea, doesn’t it, that performance has become a thing in a way it wasn’t a thing before. It’s something that people are doing – that they’re very obviously doing – that people are aware they’re doing. Of course, it’s not just the celebrities who are performing, but it’s the people who are, you know, shaping their own identities and working out who they want to be in that public sphere. So I think, you know, this is where you get this kind of feedback loop, isn’t it, between, you know, lots of the anxieties about celebrities and their authenticity that are also, to some extent, anxieties about people themselves.

Flora: So Bernstein’s fans are using Bernstein, whether they realise it or not, to kind of work out who they are effectively.

Kate: Yeah, and of course, if who Bernstein is thought to be turns out not to be real, there’s a risk that that’s going to somehow undermine or compromise the sense of self that they themselves have been building on him. 

[music]

Kate: So, I mean, I think what comes through in all these letters, right, is that this question about authenticity is really high stakes for fans. You know, whether they're writing in and saying, ‘Yes, I believe in your authenticity’, or whether they’re writing in and saying, ‘I don’t really know whether you’re authentic, and I have an issue with this’, it’s clearly an issue that they massively care about. You know, and I think part of the reason for that comes back to the things we were talking about in the previous episode, you know, the way in which celebrity identity becomes bound up in our own attempts to work out who we are and build our own sense of self – you know, if we have hooked our identity to some idea you know, who this celebrity is, and that idea turns out not to be real, then, you know, there’s a risk of embarrassment, of shame, of personal exposure, you know, that also then transfers on to us as an individual. 

Flora: And as so often, I guess that shows us that classical music is kind of … it’s functioning to plug a gap to add to people’s lives, you know – that there’s something missing.

Kate: Yes, and we'll be picking up on those themes in our final episode where we'll be talking about fandom and longing. 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 you can keep it real and pick up a pen and paper. You can 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 Shafer, Karen Skinazi, Chuck Talley and Justin Williams. Music courtesy of the University of Bristol.