The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein

First published: 1959; illustrated

Subjects: Arts and education

Type of work: Art

Recommended Ages: 10-18

Form and Content

The Joy of Music is in two parts, a felicitous combination of conversations that Leonard Bernstein was contracted to write for publishing company Simon and Schuster but never finished and the scripts of his subsequent television shows about music for the CBS series Omnibus.

Bernstein states in the introduction that he will deal with “purely musical meanings,” which are the only ones worthy of musical analysis. Any questions that the reader may have about Bernstein’s rejection of extramusical associations are dispelled in the two opening dialogues of part 1, “Imaginary Conversations.” Two major art forms are represented, music and literature. Bernstein, the musician, counters the observation of a fictitious Lyric Poet that the “hills are pure Beethoven.” Bernstein wins the debate, explaining at length that music is without any meaning except its own, “a meaning in musical terms, not in terms of words, which inhabit an altogether different mental climate.” The musician, he suggests, hears so much in the music that it is “unnecessary to bring associations into the picture at all.”

Having laid the philosophical foundation for his book, Bernstein devotes the next three sections of part 1 to problems that he encounters as a composer. Since these sections do not show him as a success, they provide a welcome contrast to his self-portrayal as an overbearing conversationalist and, ironically, win him the reader’s understanding.

The first section on composing, written in the form of telegrams and letters between Bernstein and a fictitious Broadway Producer, shows Bernstein wanting to write a symphony but yielding to demands to write music for the theater. The choice is not only between abstract and program music but also between solitary work and collaboration. Bernstein was versatile. According to Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1992), he was “equally successful in writing symphonic music of profound content and strikingly effective Broadway shows.”

The second section on composing, written in the form of a luncheon conversation between Bernstein and his Professional Manager, shows Bernstein’s difficulty in living up to his predecessor in American popular music: composer George Gershwin (1899-1937). Bernstein’s early frustration at not writing a “hit” is humorously expressed in the understatement of his title: “Why Don’t You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?”

The third section on composing was written before the first two, which would have placed it, as indicated by its title, as an expository “Interlude” in the middle of the “Imaginary Conversations.” Appearing as it does out of chronological order, it brings part 1 of the book to a close with a description of the composer’s secondary function in setting film music. This order has its logic as well, for part 2 does not feature Bernstein as a composer but as an articulate commentator who is secondary to the works that he is presenting.

Preceding this part of the book is a brief photograph section with images from four of the following seven Omnibus television scripts that constitute part 2: “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” “The World of Jazz,” “The Art of Conducting,” “American Musical Comedy,” “Introduction to Modern Music,” “The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach” and “What Makes Opera Grand?”

Whereas part 1 conforms to the concept of a book of conversations and is easily read, part 2, the television scripts, presupposes the ability to read music and the availability of a keyboard. Excerpts that the television audience heard played appear in the book in piano reduction scores. Those who cannot hear the notes that they see will have to play the excerpts or seek them out in recordings. The length of time that it takes to digest part 2 is inversely proportional to the extent of the reader’s musical training and prior familiarity with the pieces Bernstein chooses as his examples.

Nevertheless, it is worthwhile even for the beginning student to read The Joy of Music because Bernstein offers something for everyone. CBS was staggered by the public response to the telecasts. According to Bernstein, they received “letters from plumbers and professors, little children and old men.”

Critical Context

The Joy of Music, in particular the Omnibus scripts, was an immense success. Many people who later became professional musicians made their career decisions as a result of watching Leonard Bernstein on television in the 1950’s. He did not talk down to his audience, and he analyzed music with contagious enthusiasm. Moreover, he did not exhaust his topics. Each show served as an introduction, a glimpse of infinite possibilities for further exploration. Bernstein’s next television series, his Young People’s Concerts, was translated in 1962 into the more easily studied book-and-record form. More than a decade later, in 1973, Bernstein again reached a tremendously large international audience with his six Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. Entitled “The Unanswered Question,” after a composition by American composer Charles Ives (1894-1954), the series is a vindication of tonal as opposed to atonal music.

Bernstein was a pianist, composer, conductor, and brilliant music analyst. Most of his prodigious output was in composition. Many people know him for the memorable tunes in the Broadway show West Side Story (1957) and for the more serious Chichester Psalms (1965), commissioned for Chichester Cathedral in England. Bernstein did much for music in America. His Fanfare I (1961) was written specially for John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Bernstein also conducted the New York Philharmonic to capacity audiences from 1958 to 1969.

The Joy of Music was the first manifestation of his rare ability to convey extraordinary analytical insights to large audiences from the general public. In a tribute written for the occasion of Bernstein’s seventieth birthday in 1988, Humphrey Burton, former head of Music and Arts for the BBC, said The Joy of Music “should be on every music lover’s bookshelf.”