Feeling desperate

Anyone who’s ever been a real fan will know what it feels like to long for something – to meet a celebrity, for tickets to a gig, to own that rare collectible. In so many ways, fandom promises to make life better. But these promises can also draw attention to the shortcomings we feel in our lives. 

In this episode, we ask: what’s the deal with fandom and longing?

We explore how celebrities can seem both like us and superhuman at the same time. We reflect on how classical music fandom could make Bernstein's listeners feel like 1950’s suburban life was not as fulfilling as it was cracked up to be. And we hear Bernstein explaining why he was a fan of Beethoven. 

From Bernstein's the archive, we meet a housewife whose dinner has been ruined by Bernstein, a father yearning to reconnect with his younger musical self, and a fan who finds in Bernstein hope for nothing less than world peace.

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 our previous episode, we were unpicking the mighty knot of issues around the idea of authenticity in classical music. For this season’s final episode, we’ll be getting real ourselves to think about the sense of longing that often accompanies fandom. 

Kate: We’ll be reflecting on why following celebrities lives often draws attention to the holes we feel in our own, and what kinds of better worlds Bernstein enabled his fans to imagine.

Actress: You know, sometimes you read a book, a poem, or hear a piece of music, and you know immediately and definitely that that is for you? Well, that’s the way your music affects me. Every time I hear it, I know it’s for me. I love it and want to hear more and more of it. Someday, maybe 10, 15, 20, 30, or even 50 years from now, will you please write some songs for soprano? I love your music, but I can’t sing a symphony or ballet music.

Actress: After the concert, several of my friends and I wished to obtain your autograph or to speak to you. But since this was impossible, I was hoping that you might, at your convenience, autograph the enclosed programme and return it to me.

Actress: It’s a little painful to bother you with such trivia, but as my recording of On The Town wears thin, I am feeling desperate. It is the 78 RPM Victor Red Seal album with Robert Shaw and Victor Coral. Have you any idea where I can find this gem? It is my soul food, the thing that breathes life into me when I feel spiritually dead.

Actor: Mr. Bernstein, this album is important enough to my well-being that I’m compelled to write and ask you if you know where one is hiding.

Actress: Ever since the time I heard you rehearsing the Boston Symphony in a radio rehearsal a year ago, and a year ago heard you relate to Mr. Fascett something of your busy schedule, I have felt that I knew you a little better. I wish it was possible for us to hear the conductors we love to hear speak more often.

Actress: Irving Fine almost introduced us but never did. But I didn’t want to meet you anyway. I tried many times to congratulate you on your programmes, especially the Sacre, which is your best, but there were too many people, and I couldn’t do it.

Actor: About a month ago, I saw West Side Story as a movie. How I wish I could express in words the feeling I received when your music filled the theatre. Since this is almost impossible for anyone and especially me – I’m only a freshman – I can only say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for making my heart feel the way it does when I’m in a church or with a good friend or watching a small bird take a bath in a pond.

Flora: What a beautiful image! Kate, I can’t believe that we’re in the final episode of this season. It’s been quite the journey. Tell us where did the idea for this episode – this topic of longing – where did that actually come from for you?

Kate: So, for me, this came from the interviews that I've been conducting with some of Bernstein’s former fan writers. In the course of these, quite a number of people had shared stories of kind of I guess what I would describe as a ‘near miss encounter’ with Bernstein. You know, like the mum who got a place at Curtis to go and study and would have been in the class with Bernstein, but then her parents wouldn’t let her go. There was somebody else I spoke to who had been accepted onto a conducting programme that he was running, but then the paperwork got lost and couldn’t go. So yeah, it was interesting, you know, these stories kept coming out over and over again of, like, people who’d very nearly had a chance to be really close to Bernstein, and it hadn’t quite come off. And yeah, I guess it just made me reflect on this idea that longing seems to be a really intrinsic part of a lot of people’s experience of fandom.

Flora: So interesting that it’s kind of maybe it’s the reverse side of that really impassioned kind of attachment to the celebrities, some feeling of absence perhaps. 

Kate: That they’re kind of just that little bit out of reach, and, you know, you can’t quite get to them. And I think a lot of this is a product of the way that celebrity images have been sort of managed and created in the 20th century, where on the one hand, you know, celebrities are often promoted as these kind of ordinary relatable figures – you know, somebody who could be like, you know, the boy next door. You know, yeah, someone who is basically like you. And yet they also are held up as having this extraordinary talent, some exceptional ability. So you’ve got these kind of two sides to it, you know, the ordinary and the extraordinary. And I think that that combination of things can really create this sense of longing, because you feel like you can almost get there, but somehow it’s always just out of reach.

Flora: Do you think there’s something specific to classical music here, as well, where actually so many of the composers that we hear their music played most often, they’re no longer with us? They’re all dead. And so is there some kind of automatic longing that maybe classical music fans, we’re all a bit nostalgic for, you know, if only I could, you know, sit down and speak to Bach, or…

Kate: Or Beethoven.

Flora: I don’t want to meet Beethoven! I think he’d have been mean! But yeah, there’s something about that particular kind of music where actually, it’s kind of centre of gravity is in the past, actually. And then that must have an impact on the musicians … the kind of celebrity musicians that we admire today.

Kate: I mean, we’ve talked, haven’t we, about the way that Bernstein was a kind of conduit between these dead composers and the audience. You know, it’s being in that kind of mediated capacity, that I think, again, it’s that sense of making something accessible, and yet the thing that is accessible you can never quite get to precisely because, as you say, most of the great composers we think about were dead and in the past.

Flora: And yet, I suppose, classical music celebrities, I mean, let’s face it, in most cases, Bernstein, I guess, is a slight exception here, but in most cases, they’re not as famous as celebrities outside the classical music world. It’s not that there’s also that other level of kind of glamour or massive wealth or those kind of huge disparities you get with a kind of slightly more normal celebrity. Actually, classical music celebrities are perhaps a bit more down to earth, compared to, you know, the Taylor Swifts and the Beyoncés of this world.

Kate: Yeah, although I think, you know, when the composers come into that, as well, there’s also a sense in which the longing is perhaps more existential. You know, there’s this sort of transcendental, out-of-world experience that’s on offer and that people want to connect with that feels quite … I mean, it’s very different from the kind of, you know, longing for a glamorous, exotic lifestyle that you would associate with somebody like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or …

Flora: Yeah, now, it’s a good point. Do we know how Bernstein felt about kind of celebrities or about dead composers, for that matter?

Kate: So Bernstein was very much a product of his generation in the sense that, you know, I think he is really invested as a musician, as a composer, as a conductor, as a person in this idea of the kind of superhuman artist. And this comes out nowhere more clearly than in his discussions on Beethoven. Of course, Beethoven, you know, being the iconic kind of 19th-century composer who, you know, we hold up for all of these things. So this is Bernstein on Beethoven.

Leonard Bernstein: And so this little provincial chap with bad skin and a comedy accent from the Rhineland arrived in Vienna, knocked ‘em all dead and was taken up by the Viennese nobility and made a hero. Before long, he was dominating the musical scene,

which he has continued to dominate ever since. The mighty, the colossal, the profound, the revolutionary, the mystic, romantic Beethoven. He was also, you should know, bad-tempered, stubborn, ill-mannered, messy, arrogant, moody, and miserly. But out of this homely human vessel and a defective one at that since he had grown deaf by the time he became 32-years-old, but out of this human vessel, spoke a voice that was more than human, a voice with the ring and the conviction of something eternal, something that still today makes us tingle with the sudden awareness that a divine spark exists in every one of us. Why should this be? I've been trying all my life to find out. The very first television programme I ever did was about Beethoven and such an inquiry. The very first chapter of my first book is called why Beethoven. Well, I’m still asking that question and I’ll probably never find a total answer. Mighty, colossal – these words just don’t explain anything because the final answer is a mystery, the mystery of why this one particular grubby, shaggy headed little man should have been chosen to wallop the galaxies with his music.

Flora: We’ve talked before about Bernstein's way with words, but I mean, this is just a masterpiece of delivery, isn’t it? I mean, he’s so articulate and he’s such a powerful speaker. I mean, I wasn’t alive at the right moment to hear him doing it live. But you get some sense of that charisma, just from listening to things like that, don’t you?

Kate: You absolutely do. And all the way he strings these adjectives. 

Flora: Yeah, the lists! 

Kate: The mighty, the colossal, the profound; and all the right emphasis on the words to give that real sense of drama. I think, you know, I mean, it’s also interesting here, isn’t it? I think you can see Bernstein presenting his own relationship with Beethoven rather like the fans imagine experience their relationship with Bernstein, right? Yeah. There’s this sense, you know, ‘I’ve been trying all my life to find out.’ There’s this longing: ‘I want to know him’. You know, ‘I did my first television programme about him. The very first chapter of my very first book’… you know, he’s like, on a quest to try and discover Beethoven. And yet, there’s a sense that Beethoven is always just out of reach. 

Flora: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s still being driven by that search. As I guess, yeah, the fans are still being driven by an attempt to get closer, which … they just can’t quite close that gap ever. 

Kate: I also think it’s interesting in this clip that we’ve heard, you know, the very earthliness and humanness, right? You know, he draws attention to all these bad qualities that Beethoven has. 

Flora: Yeah and he’s almost enjoying the idea of Beethoven being messy or bad tempered or arrogance or all these things all in one.

Kate: I'm very intrigued by the messy comment. I mean, do we actually know whether Beethoven was … 

Flora: Yeah, I don't know!

Kate: … domestically untidy clutter.

Flora: I mean, there are, you know, there are some amazing paintings. I’ve never been particularly aware of there being a lot of clutter in the background. The Marie Kondo technique awaits his attention!

Kate: But, you know, in that, I guess, he’s lighted on I mean, whether Beethoven was actually messy in his house or not, I don’t know. But, you know, there’s a sense of this being a very human, you know.

Flora: Yeah.

Kate: Yeah, whether you are the person who’s messy or the person who’s annoyed by the messy person, I mean, it’s basically a very normal thing to be, isn’t it? And yet somehow out of this, there comes this amazing creative genius. Yeah.

Flora: And I think he calls Beethoven, a couple of times, he calls him a ‘little man’. But then this idea of the massive dominance of this small … I mean, he was small. I think he was about five foot one, wasn’t he? I mean, he was a short man by our standards today. But, yeah, the kind of stature of him, historically, obviously, is then what Bernstein’s trying to get at there. I mean, I have to say, as a physical comparison, Bernstein, for his fans, was clearly a massive upgrade on where Beethoven stood as opposed to Bernstein. I mean, you know, because think of all those fan letters we were talking about a couple of episodes ago that, you know, fawn over Bernstein’s appearance and how handsome he is and how attractive and his hair and all these different things, you know. You’d write a very, very different letter equivalent to what Bernstein’s saying about Beethoven here. 

Kate: Yeah, I mean, I do wonder in that whether there’s something about, you know, the fact that we’ve moved into the 20th century where cameras are a thing, right? You obviously couldn’t photograph Beethoven. And yeah, that kind of image of the sexy celebrity that’s, you know, become a thing through Hollywood that’s clearly filtering down into the classical music world, for the benefit of fans.

Flora: Okay, so let’s get back to this idea of longing. What, I mean, what did longing look like in 1960s America? 

Kate: We’ve talked about the fact, haven’t we, that this is a period where American society undergoes a huge number of changes. You know, there’s this coming out of the war, this shift back towards kind of domestic environments, housewife staying at home, the good husband going out to earn, you know, his money and then coming home to his den. And I guess, you know, there’s a sense that this sort of suburban lifestyle that is new and exciting and on offer ought to be fully satisfying for people. Now, of course, for some people, they find a lot of pleasure in this. I guess the reality is that actually that kind of new American dream – the white picket fence – doesn’t actually live up to all that it was imagined to be.

Flora: Okay, so presumably, this is coming out through the fan letters that Bernstein is getting – that there is actually also a sense that people are perhaps trapped in their lives? Is that fair to say? 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And in some instances, people respond to this by sort of dreaming of a better world. You know, there’s this very real possibility that Bernstein might engender some massive change. But you often get those letters like the first one that we’re going to listen to today, where, you know, it’s really much more focused on the kind of everyday domestic environment.

Actress: My dear Mr. Bernstein, Your presentation of the opera Carmen on television this Sunday afternoon was enchanting and delightful. You made the excerpts so real, so vivid, so understandable, and the musical background was so excellent, that I have never enjoyed a performance of Carmen so much. It was so irresistible that my Sunday dinner was completely neglected and a positive flop to use the vernacular. Every time I hear the vivacious, scintillating music of Carmen, my heart aches to think of the keen disappointment and frustration of Bizet, that this wonderful music was not favourably accepted until after his death. Even hearing the musical score alone fills me with rapture and delight. But this afternoon, with your lucid analyzation and commentaries, the cast and dramatisation put on an unforgettable spectacle, and I hope there will be more of my favourites – La Pagliacci, La Traviata, Aida, the Walkyries … there are many others I do not care for at all. Much of Stravinsky does not interest me. I long for a Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Beethoven, Grieg’s Concerto, as only the New York Philharmonic and brilliant conductors, such as yourself, can bring out in its fullest quality and beauty. I guess I have a sweet tooth in music. Strangely, with my aesthete taste in music, I have composed many popular-style character, novelty and standard type songs, some production numbers. But alas, like Bizet, they may never have a chance until I’m out of this world. There are only melodies and lyrics. PS, My daughter is a major graduate of the University of Michigan. I will enclose a programme of her senior recital. Some years ago, I saw you in the drugstore adjoining Carnegie Hall with conductor Artur Rodzinski, who used to conduct the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra previously. You looked so young then, and aren’t you become prematurely mature by so much dedication to your profession? That was about 16 years ago. Also, when I was in New York a couple years ago, I spoke to your executive secretary on the phone at the hotel Osborne. She was most cordial, and if she is still with you, I want her to know I appreciated that. My daughter is a career girl in New York. She had fine possibilities for a musical career but gave it up. Please forgive my imposing on so much of your time, but your listeners feel you as a guest in their homes, and it seems like a relationship. Like a woman, I had to fill another notepaper. Sorry. Many thanks for your indulgence.

Flora: Wow, another letter writer with a lot to get off her chest here, I think. I mean … yeah, wow!

Kate: I think, you know, one of the things that really jumped out at me early on about this letter was this statement about her Sunday dinner having been ‘completely neglected and a positive flop’. And, you know, it’s almost as if, like, you know, the Sunday dinner is the thing that she is supposed to be finding meaning in, right? The possibility of creating a meal that everybody is going to sit down and enjoy together.

Flora: But a ‘flop’ is usually for performances, as well. It’s like this big show.

Kate: And it’s been ruined! It’s been ruined by Bernstein. And yet, you sense that there’s almost a pleasure in her. You know, she’s not bitter towards him that he’s ruined this. You know, it's a recognition that actually the thing he’s ruined it with is so much more meaningful and, you know, emotionally significant than the thing that she’d been required to do. 

Flora: And it seems like more than a coincidence that this is Carmen, too, you know, an opera all about an independent woman who I don’t think Carmen would have been sitting there cooking Sunday roast: that wasn’t her stick. And there’s something … there’s some kind of projected ambition here, as well, around that character, surely. 

Kate: I mean, I think it's not just the character of Carmen, is it, but also, you know, the music from this period in history. And, you know, this comes out as she goes on to list, you know, ‘I long for Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Beethoven and Grieg’. You know, I mean, this is all like emotionally intense romantic music, right? 

Flora: It’s the opposite of the everyday in music. And, you know, it is music that promises you another world, emotionally, if not physically. And that’s clearly … it’s really meaningful.

Kate: I think it’s also notable that she talks about Bernstein’s presence in their homes, I mean, by which she obviously means on the TV, as creating something that feels like a relationship. And yet, a lot of her letter is also kind of acknowledging or gesturing to the tenuousness of this claim, right?  So, she describes her encounters with him, but basically, she’s seen him when he’s with somebody else in a drugstore. You know, she talks about the phone conversation with his ‘executive secretary’. You know, so there’s this very weird sense of, on the one hand, feeling really close to him and yet also acknowledging that actually he’s really at a distance.

Flora: Yeah, and in terms of the actual structure of the letter, you know, there’s this rush of … of personal stuff that comes after the PS. You know, it’s like an afterthought that she really wants to share with him as this sort of bizarre combination of things to do with, yeah, the fact that she saw him once and information about her daughter, and, you know, it’s all coming … kind of rushing out at the very end. I wonder, you know, what do you think about her relationship with her daughter and her daughter’s career here? Is there a sense, do you think, for you, a feeling of a path not taken – that also her daughter … there’s a path not taken there as well, that, you know, this is kind of history repeating itself? 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she talks about, you know, her daughter as being a graduate in a way that seems, you know, a very positive thing. And yet, also, this idea of her daughter having a musical career has been given up. So I think, absolutely, this sense of kind of projection here that her mum had some ideal: you could have been this great musician, perhaps like Leonard Bernstein, and yet you’ve gone off to be a career girl instead. And yeah, that kind of sense of a path not taken that’s generated a significant loss. 

Flora: I wonder, does this whole question of paths not taken kind of end up being central to some of the fan letters that you’ve come across? 

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. So another letter that we’re going to listen to now is born out of precisely this kind of crisis. So this was a letter written by a man called Charles Keedwell who lived in Ottawa in Canada. And we can hear his son, Mark, reading the letter for us now.

Mark Keedwell: Dear Mr. Bernstein, I am not given to writing fan letters, but I am impelled to drop you a line after having read the article in the February issue of Show Business Illustrated. Probably you don’t pay much attention to presentations of this kind, but it made me very angry. It made me angry because it certainly does not represent my views nor those of so many people here in Ottawa. I hate to admit it, but we in this part of the country live in something of a cultural wasteland. In such an atmosphere it is hard to describe how much your recordings with the Philharmonic and your TV concerts mean to us. Believe me, they make all the difference and are looked forward to with great anticipation. Some of your records are not released in Canada, so many of us have to go to the trouble of importing them, but it is more than worth the effort. I’ve been a great admirer of conductors like Reiner and Toscanini and have prized as practically the last word on classical standards, their interpretations. That was before your recordings began to appear with the Philharmonic. Now I find that I’m acquiring and valuing your versions above the others. Now, I beg you to keep up the work. Whatever critics may say, you have brought more of the joy of music to many of us in the grassroots than we get from any other source. Incidentally, our family took off last summer for Tanglewood to hear your concert and found it tremendously exciting and moving. So how about a recording of the Symphony of Psalms and maybe even a new version of the Shapiro? In conclusion, let me thank you again so much for the great happiness your many sighted talents have brought us. Believe me, they are a bright light in a world that is not always too bright. Yours sincerely, Chuck Keedwell.

Flora: Gosh, that really strong sense that life is going on elsewhere, but, you know, he has to even import Bernstein’s recordings because he can’t even buy them where he lives.

Kate: Yeah, no, I mean, clearly, this letter has been motivated by some, you know, quite strong outrage at the way that Bernstein’s been promoted in the papers. Chuck Keedwell was, in fact, a speech writer by profession, so you get all the kind of, you know, rhetorical flair coming through. But this sense of being in a cultural wasteland had a very personal dimension for him, as I learned when I spoke to his son Mark in an interview, because actually, Keedwell, like us, was somebody who had grown up playing the piano very seriously and at one time, had dreamed of becoming a professional concert pianist. And at some point along the way in his, later teenage years, realised that the reality of life as a professional musician was not going to be compatible with the kind of family life that he wanted to lead. It was around the same time that he met the woman who would become Mark’s mum so yeah, you know, he decided to give that up. But I think, you know, certainly the way Mark talks about him, and I think it comes out in this letter, too, is that there’s a really strong sense that he was a man who had given something up and given up a real passion, something that, you know, brought him a huge amount of joy and life. And that when he looks to Bernstein, you know, he sees the possibility of reconnecting with this bit of his youthful self. And yet, the reality is the cultural scene is going on somewhere else.

[music]

Flora: Okay, it’s time for another letter, Kate. What have you got for us next?

Kate: So we’ve talked a bit, haven’t we, about transcending sort of domestic environments. This next letter is offering a rather grander vision, you know, imagining Bernstein, kind of bringing Heaven and Earth closer and this sort of spiritual transcendence that’s on offer.

Actor: My dear Sir, The occasion of this afternoon’s Philharmonic concert was too outstanding to allow of my neglecting writing you to appraise you of the phenomenal pleasure your pianoforte playing gave me. I sat spellbound in front of my radio, captivated and fascinated by the marvellous interpretation you gave of Beethoven’s C-major Concerto, an interpretation that it appeared to me was wholly unique and could scarcely be surpassed in perfection. Artistry such as yours – it savours too strongly of the divine to be allowed to be classified with the pleasure of this earthly existence. By pleasure, I think more commonly of entertainments, golf, a game of cards, parties, association with friends, etc. Music goes a way beyond this, and instead of being a pleasure, it is rather a spiritual experience. It transcends in its spirituality everything of earth and invades even the celestial precincts of heaven. You have been gifted by God himself, Mr. Bernstein, with the capability to fetch heaven down to earth for those of us who love the better things of life and bemoan the daily sordidness with which so many of us are dragged down. Such a masterpiece as the C-major Concerto pulls up again and sets our feet firmly in the path that always must lead on to God. And when such a masterpiece is interpreted by such a consummate artist as yourself, it becomes a still more powerful agent for telling us better of God and heaven. Please be continually mindful that whenever you play, as you did this afternoon, the very angels in paradise must pause to listen. This letter requires no reply. Please know that I felt I couldn’t neglect writing and still fulfil my Christian duty to yourself.

Flora: ‘This letter requires no reply’. Wow, I don’t know how many letter writers you come across, Kate, who actually explicitly said, ‘Don’t reply. This is, I feel, fulfilled by writing alone’? But yeah, this is a very striking letter. You weren’t wrong – this is grand scale longing!

Kate: Yeah, I mean, just as an aside, I think the point about, you know, the Christian influence here – this idea that it’s his Christian duty to write to Bernstein highlights that sense of get of distance between the fan writer and, you know, the person himself. Because obviously Bernstein was not from a Christian background at all. 

Flora: No.

Kate: And yet, this whole experience that the writer is describing and praising Bernstein for having created for him is very much framed through this kind of strongly Christian lens.

Flora: Yeah, once again, we’ve got Bernstein the mediator.

Kate: But this time, Bernstein’s kind of mediating God for this particular writer. 

Kate: Whilst ‘the angels in paradise stop and listen’.

Flora: Yeah, it’s incredible!

Kate: Yeah, I mean, It’s very intense, isn’t it? And, you know, it is just that sense of transcendence laid out in completely unequivocal terms that what this music does for this writer, what this performance has done is allow them to transcend … you know, they’re sitting still spellbound in front of their radio, and yet the experience they’ve had has been on some other divine, spiritual, eternal, other worldly kind of plane.

Flora: Yeah, I mean, from a historical perspective, I look at this and think, gosh, this is like this is Kunstreligion, as they would have called it in the 19th century. This is kind of a really 19th century experience of music, actually, yeah, opening up a new spiritual plane that you couldn’t otherwise access. It’s … well, what an extraordinary experience he clearly had.

Kate: Yeah, I think, clearly, for this writer, that sense of connecting with this other spiritual realm is very much taking place on a personal level. You know, I think there were other writers for whom you get a sense of this same dimension, but coming out through a much more political lens that is really rooted in the kind of tensions of this Cold War era, like the letter that we are going to hear now.

Actress: Dear Mr. Bernstein, Some years ago, we met you at Tanglewood through Mark Blitzstein. Ever since we have been your adult fans. We go to the Berkshire festivals each summer, and one year you lectured during a Sunday night series on music and War and Peace, its output, etc., your thesis being that nothing creative is done in a war period, but only in peace, etc. We were so moved that night by your cosmic thinking, and again last night when we listened to your broadcast, A Joyful Music on CBS. The music was extraordinary, your commentary brilliant, fascinating and fun. But your prayer at the end for peace and the children now and to come gave us hope and was a clear light in these frightening days of our years. 

Flora: What an extraordinary reminder that, yeah, all the while this period we’ve been talking about, the Cold War has been going on in the background. At all times, you know, people were fearful for their lives across the world.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, and it’s not just the Cold War, is it? But also, so this is 1961, this letter, you know, we’re in the kind of throes of the Vietnam War breaking out, all these young people being sort of conscripted to go and fight. And, you know, there was already a real sense of disillusionment around that particular conflict, I think. But what you get here, you know, is you see that there’s a … I guess Bernstein being thrust into this role of, like, global peace mediator, right? Somebody, you know, who they believe has the capacity to bring world peace to promote this kind of better vision of earth that’s also, I think, got a kind of spiritual dimension.

Flora: It’s really interesting that, as far as I remember, the UN still has positions where they make famous musicians, living musicians today … they provide them with these kind honorary titles, effectively, kind of being peace emissaries or whatever the actual title is. I mean, there clearly is some really important lingering sense that it’s artists in the broadest sense who are somehow, if not responsible for peace, then they are its most powerful advocates. 

Kate: And Bernstein was certainly put into that role. I mean, he’d done, you know, tours of the USSR already at this point that had been promoted on television, as well, you know, where he was basically trying to broker some sort of cultural peace between the Russians and the Americans. And very explicitly, you know – his fans know that that’s what he’s doing, that that’s, you know, part of his role in being sent there. It's interesting, I think, that it comes out in relation to this programme here, this broadcast, A Joyful Noise. This was actually a programme that was put on at Christmas time, and the ‘joyful noise’ interestingly featured quite a number of modernist compositions. So there are a lot of other writers who write in complaining about the …

Flora: Oh, interesting.

Kate: …the noise as not being joyful, but it’s being discordant and unseasonal and unfestive. 

Flora: Yeah. 

Kate: But obviously, for these writers, you know, there’s something about the sort of Christmas spirit and the kind of idea of, you know, peace being part of that festive season that’s really come through, but taken on this kind of global political dynamic, as well.

[music]

Flora: Alright, so a question for you, since this is our final episode in this season: do you feel differently about classical music fandom?

Kate: Yeah, so I think it has changed my perspective of classical music fandom or perhaps more just of classical music in general. You know, I think, you know, looking back at my own life, through my late pre-school and teenage years, you underwent this process of kind of indoctrination into the classical music world, you know, where you learned about all the repertoire and, you know, it’s very much associated or tied up in playing the violin quite seriously at that point. And then, you know, I went to a university and spent a lot of my postgraduate time undoing some of that indoctrination and learning to critique it and pulling it apart. I think, you know, what shifted for me with this project and, you know, thinking about the Bernstein fan mail has been really for the first time, engaging with classical music in some ways as a kind of form of popular culture, right? You know, it’s like every day, people are listening to it in their houses. And sure, part of its appeal is still that kind of specialness that we associate with the concert hall. You know, that absolutely comes into the domestic context, as we’ve seen in many of the letters. But there is also something that is just much more mundane and grounded in the everyday that I think you really ... I hadn’t really thought about classical music, you know, in those terms previously.

Flora: Yeah, and I suppose that’s the historical equivalent of the fact that, you know, so many of us these days, travel through the world with headphones on, and I mean, I realise we classical music lovers may be somewhat in the minority, but, you know, half the time when I’m out and about or in the gym or doing the washing up or whatever it is, if I’m wearing headphones, it’ll be classical music I’m listening to. It doesn’t change the fact that these are really mundane contexts. It doesn’t make the washing up any different to someone else’s washing up when they’re listening to whatever pop music they’re interested in. Yeah, I mean, it’s just that thing about its sort of presence, it’s pervasiveness in the everyday that I think, you know … it’s a subtle shift in focus, isn’t it, away from the concert hall and away from the grand narratives in some ways? But I guess, also, you know, the reality is that for a lot of us, these are the spaces in which we are most frequently encountering classical music, and therefore, in which we are most frequently making meaning around that music. 

Flora: And I think this takes us beautifully right back to where we started with this series where you were talking about wanting to almost to write music history starting with its listeners – starting with those fans who actually are consuming classical music. And it strikes me that’s really … that’s what you’ve been doing here.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, the narrative of music history that emerges from that, I think, is much more diffuse because you’ve got, you know, these individual people in different contexts with their own messy life stories. And yet, you know, there is a huge amount of meaning making that is going on there, right? 

Flora: And there are patterns, too, as you were saying, like, with this idea, for instance, of longing of all these different people in their different ways of their different lives. In each case, Bernstein and the music making that he’s associated with … they’re fulfilling some kind of need that those listeners have those fans have. 

[music]

Flora: Well, Kate, I mean, we’ve got to the end. I’ve got to say, thank you so much for bringing all this extraordinary material to light out of the archive, finding those fan letters and sharing them with us. I think I can’t possibly be alone in having found this really transformative in how I’ve thought about fandom. 

Kate: Well, and since this is our final episode, I also want to thank all of our listeners so much for engaging with this. We hope that whatever kind of music you love, you’ve enjoyed thinking about your own relationship to fandom or Bernstein, or both. 

Flora: Of course, if you found this series interesting, please do tell other people about it. Or if you like, tell us. As ever, we’d love to hear from you. You can email us at hello@dearmaestro.org, or you can write us a fan letter, of course, by picking up a pen and paper. You can find the postal address and all sorts of other delights on our website, dearmaestro.org.

[music]

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