Life is never strange it is always just life. I spent 11 hours yesterday listening to
Leonard Bernstein: An American Life-an 11-hour audio documentary narrated by Susan Sarandon on WMHT - BRAVO! (25th Anniversary this year). (OK- I lie a little, I missed the first 2 hours). Transfixed from 9-6.
It was the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's birth Aug 25.
The same day US Senator John McCain died after battling brain cancer for more than a year. He was 81.
The two gentlemen do not have politics in common, most certainly. But I was really moved listening to Bernstein's speech before a performance by Glenn Gould of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 of Johannes Brahms (by New York Philharmonic concert of April 6, 1962). Bernstein didn't agree with Gould but respected him so much as an artist that he conducted the concerto's tempi as Gould wished.
I really enjoyed John McCain's appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I think Stewart did too. He had a sense of humor. Flair. He had 'savvy'.
McCain and Bernstein believed in AN AMERICA yet they were miles apart politically. They believed in fair-mindedness. Of honor. Of love. Of belief.
Every music student ought to seek out Leonard Bernstein: An American Life. So many many lessons to be learned. There's a great anecdote (like amounts so so many others) of conductor Kent Nagano arriving at Bernstein's apartment. The maestro was hunched over the piano and asked Nagano 'how does this make sense to you' of a passage in the Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony (how many times had the maestro conducted this work !!!!!) He was to conduct again the next evening. Bernstein spent hours with Nagano agonizing over just a few bars of music.
Is that not a metaphor for living?
Bizarrely! Elite-ism isn't as elite as it often sounds....
One of John McCain's favorite songs:
Merle Haggard's If We Make It Through December
Photo © Andrew Lucre 2016
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer’s honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
McCain sure chose his moment to have a funeral: Labor Day weekend! Like- how could you not win approval on the sad tail end of Summer!:) You should have a regular spot on Jon Stewart's All That Heaven Allows gig. (Truth be told, they haven't actually consulted Stewart on that, up on high. For obvious reasons. I guess. mmmm..now there's a job opening: Attorney to Heaven. Looks great on the business card.
Methinks everyone got the jist of what this post is about. It's not equating McCain to Leonard Bernstein.
Clearly.
