>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Sue Vita: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. My name is Susan Vita, and I'm the Chief of the Music Division here at the Library. It is my pleasure to welcome you tonight to the latest in our ongoing collaborative lecture series with the American Musicological Society. This series has been going strong since the inaugural lecture by Judith Tick on Ruth Crawford Seeger probably 10 years ago. And we are pleased to co-sponsor the series which highlights research that was done in the Music Division either in-house or online. Tonight's lecture by Dr. Daniel Callahan will explore the physicality of Leonard Bernstein's conflicting practices. Sorry, conducting practices. Probably both. And fits right in with the worldwide celebration of Bernstein's centenary this year. Somebody told me that there are 20 events celebrating Bernstein this week, so I'm glad that you all chose ours, and -- as you know, the Library of Congress holds the Leonard Bernstein Collection which contains 400,000 items. This AMS Lecture is part of a week-long series of events looking at many different aspects of the American icon. We hope that you will join us for our other events as well which include a screening of On the Waterfront, on Thursday, a concert on Friday of known and unknow Bernstein songs featuring Michael Barrett and a fantastic team of young singers. I'm just really looking forward to that, and another all-day affair on Saturday, which is not the Royal Wedding [laughter], in which we will have six speakers and performers talking about all things Bernstein. We will also have a selection of the treasures from the Bernstein collection that will be on display all day long, and we hope to see you there. While there is nothing like being there in person, one great thing about the AMS Library of Congress partnership is that we record the lectures for future webcasts on the Library's website and YouTube. And the lectures of the talented scholars selected for the series are available for all to enjoy around the world. Before Dr. Callahan speaks, I'd like to introduce Martha Feldman, the Mable Green Meyers Professor of Music and the Humanities at the College -- in the College at the University of Chicago. Professor Feldman is the President of the American Musicological Society and will be offering her greetings from the Society. So thank you all again for joining us this evening and please join me in welcoming Professor Feldman. [ Applause ] >> Martha Feldman: It's really an enormous pleasure to be here and to be able to introduce an AMS Library of Congress Lecturer at this amazing great institution where I actually carried out dissertation research as an avid, very zealous PhD student quite some time ago, decades ago. I won't say how many. Like many AMS members, I've returned to the Library's collections in music and have worked in other areas of the Library many times over the years in person, by correspondence, and now digitally as well. So it's very, very rewarding to be able to participate in this collaboration during my tenure as AMS President. I want to thank very sincerely the staff who have helped with this -- David Plyler, Kate Miller, Ben Walsh, and, of course Susan Vita. And with that, let me just say that I'm particularly happy and honored to introduce tonight's speaker, Professor Daniel Callahan, a valued colleague in musicology and a dear friend as well. Daniel earned his BA at NYU and his MA, M.Phil., and PhD at Columbia University, the last of those in 2012. Since 2014, Daniel has been Assistant Professor of Music at Boston College where he teaches courses that range from Aesthetics, Empathy, and Ethics to Modernism in Dance. Before that, he was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Music in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, a position into which I was lucky enough to have hired him in 2012 when chairing my department, that's before we were friends, and where he taught for two years Undergraduate and Graduate Courses. He taught wonderful courses on music video, Soundies to YouTube, and Choreomusicalities, and collaborations between different composers and choreographers, and things that none of us were doing and none of us had, in some cases, even heard of. A cellist and dancer himself, Daniel has given an extraordinary number of professional papers on topics that stretch from Bernstein, Copeland, and John Cage, to Mullermae [assumed spelling], 1930's cartoons, Maersk Cunningham, Nijinsky, Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers, and in approaches that suture together the concerns of music, dance, and image with those of gay aesthetics and desire. Daniel Callahan is the recipient of many grants, fellowships, and awards in addition to the Mellon Postdoc that I mentioned earlier. He's won a Whiting Dissertation Completion Fellowship, the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award from the Society of Dance History Scholars, and various awards from Boston College, Columbia, and AMS. This summer we'll see the publication of Daniel's ambitious and much anticipated article for the Journal of the American Musicological Society entitled, "The Gay Divorce of Music and Dance, Choreomusicality, and the Early Works of Cage-Cunningham," which adduces new archival and performative evidence for the early collaborations of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, to argue that music and dance were not divided in their early years but were interrelated intimately, especially through gay critiques of heterosexual marriage. Given that Daniel has established himself in public presentations as an intellect to be reckoned with, there's reason for great excitement about his book in progress, The Dancer From the Music, Choreomusicalities in American Modern Dance which is bound to set American music and dance studies on a new course. Please join me in welcoming Professor Daniel Callahan in his AMS Library of Congress lecture entitled "Bernstein Conducting Himself." [ Applause ] >> Daniel M. Callahan: Thank all of you for coming. Thank you, Susan Vita, our Chief Librarian of Music Division, thank you Martha Feldman for that incredibly generous introduction. I wasn't sure who you were talking about some part of that, and also for your exemplary leadership as President of the American Musicological Society, and for being a mentor and friend to me for these past six years. Words to not being to express how honored I am to share my research with all of you today here at the Library of Congress. In September, 2011, during my final year of writing my dissertation on music and modern dance, I came to the Library's Music Division to research what had then been a long brewing side project, "The Complicated Gestation of Bernstein's Westside Story." I had intended to stay in Washington, D.C. for just a week and then go back to my dissertation in New York. That was the plan. The Music Division's Senior Music Specialist, Mark Eden Horowitz, welcomed me. He talked with my about my research and alerted me that hundred and hundreds of letters in the personal correspondence of Leonard Bernstein, letters that had previously been sealed and unavailable to researchers, had very recently been unsealed and were in the midst of being processed. Much to the chagrin of my then boyfriend and my dissertation advisers my one-week stay turned into three weeks. Since that time, my side project has now turned into a second book project. For that I want to thank Mark Eden Horowitz, who is one of the national treasures here at the Library of Congress, along with the amazing staff who helped make today possible, especially Kate Miller and David Pylar [assumed spelling], and in the back, Jay Ken Lock and Mike Terpin [assumed spelling] on audio visual. We had a near meltdown earlier and they saved the day. Like the 90-degree weather in Washington, D.C. today, Leonard Bernstein is hot. You do not need a musicologist to tell you this. Just look at my title slide's photograph of him after a concert [laughter]. Backstage in 1951, a photograph taken by Ruth Orkin and held here in the Library of Congress, this massive Leonard Bernstein collection. If that doesn't convince you, maybe he's not your type, consider the myriad concerts and special events that are taking place around the globe this year in celebration of Bernstein's centennial. If you are a classical music fan, the Bernstein at 100 Events, which are occurring at a local symphony orchestra near you, are not news. If you are not a classical music fan, and perhaps joining us on YouTube, and have just stumbled upon this, you still might not be convinced that Bernstein is hot. In that case, I look to Hollywood and I ask you to consider the news that came out two weeks ago today -- "Jake Gyllenhaal Plays Music Icon Leonard Bernstein in Cary Fukunago-Helmed 'The American'" We have a kind of famous actor who really wants an Oscar who's also a bit of a heartthrob agreeing to play Leonard Bernstein on screen. On that very same day, May 1st, on Netflix, former Saturday Night Live writer, John Mulaney released his stand-up special Cape Gorgeous . Within six minutes into his routine, Mulaney relates how, when he was 12 years old, his father brought up and made Leonard Bernstein the center of what might be the world's most mysterious sex talk. Instead of butchering the joke, I will just direct you to Netflix. Finally, only a few days ago, it was announced that Bradley Cooper will also star in, and in this case direct, a Leonard Bernstein biopic. So, the question is not whether or not Bernstein is hot. The question is now, "Wer Wird Bernstein Besser Spielen [laughter]?" Who will be better at playing Leonard Bernstein on screen? As two of Hollywood's leading men wish to embody him, it's kind of not surprising. Leonard Bernstein made embodying himself look so easy, so smart, so musical. Take, for example, this, my first clip from a Young People's Concert , nationally televised in 1960 called "Who is Gustav Mahler? I like to imagine my mother back in Chicago, age eight in Ukrainian village, perhaps my first generation grandparents also watching Bernstein in their living room. So let's just watch this now. [ Music ] >> Now, was that heartbroken-sounding music the real Mahler? Or is the other happy sleigh bell music? No, they're both Mahler. They're the voices of the two different people inside him. >> Daniel M. Callahan: If the real Mahler had two different people inside him, according to Leonard Bernstein, one might very well wonder, how many different people were inside the real Leonard Bernstein? And how will any actor, even one as talented as Jake Gyllenhaal or Bradley Cooper, play him and convey this on screen -- conductor, composer, pianist, writer, educator, activist, television celebrity, husband to his wife, Felicia, father to three children, lover to countless men, and devoted friend. Bernstein sought to be the best in all possible worlds. Both during and after his life, critics and biographers diagnosed him as a precocious genius who squandered his talent because of an inability to focus on a single activity. In the past decade, multiple scholars have nuanced our understanding of Bernstein, focused most often on his compositions. Today I'm excited to share some of my research on Bernstein's conducting, an area that has not received as much scholarly attention. Like his other professional activities, Bernstein's conducting has had a mixed reception among critics. Considerable ink was spilled in newspaper reviews for half a century, and among amateur lovers, both fans and detractors of his conducting, have been vocal from the 1940s up to the present, now 27 years after his death -- 28. Among critic practitioners of conducting, Bernstein is often considered a first-rate showman and a second-rate technician. Take Gunther Schuller who presents his scorched Earth perspective on a century of conducting his his book, The Complete Conductor . Schuller makes no secret of his preference for conductors who, like himself, quote, "Respect rigorously the content of a score," end quote, so much so that, quote, "The score becomes a kind of sacred document," end quote. Once one accepts Schuller's idealization of the score, most of his large book seems logical enough. Schuller's criticisms of Bernstein most often regard temp beat. Usually he's too slow. For example, Bernstein once did conduct the andante second movement of Brahms's First Symphony with the quarter note at 24 beats per minute. While that might be a flagrant and specific foul, Schuller's criticism of Bernstein is unflagging throughout his book. For the most part he is concise, never exceeding a phrase or sentence. For example, quote, "Leonard Bernstein was Reiner's pupil, but one of the world's most histrionic and exhibitionistic conductors." Or, Bernstein's interpretation of Brahms's First Symphony has quote, "too much of an oy-vay Weltschmerz to be bearable," end quote. And, quote, "Bernstein was one of the most overrated and adulated conductors of recent times. He rarely practiced what he preached, to work in service of the composer, a sad fact, given his enormous basic natural talent, musical and conductorial-gestural." Published in 1997, Schuller's feeling that Bernstein was grossly overrated was obviously not shared by the many classical music lovers who had been doing all of that overrating for decades. Critic John Rockwell remembers that as a teenager in the late 1950s he had fierce arguments in which he defended Bernstein again other teenagers who labelled his conducting, quote, "flamboyant," a word that occurs throughout discourse about Bernstein on the podium. I don't think teenagers today are talking about Bernstein's flamboyance. Oh, this is the 1950s. The understanding of Bernstein as better than his critics and in need of defense against them was so widespread that it could even provide a laugh in a primetime sitcom. In "Everyone's a Critic", a 1999 episode of Frasier , the character Niles Crane is named a music critic for a magazine [laughter]. >> How did this happen, Niles? >>I was at a party thrown by the publisher, Olga Swardre [assumed spelling]. The pretentious fop who had the job before me was there too, spouting sheer drivel about Leonard Bernstein. Being polite, I kept my tongue sheathed [laughter], until he referred to Bernstein's conducting as overrated. >> I assume you pounced. >> Like a ninja [laughter]. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Back to Gunter Schuller. After 479 pages, throughout which Bernstein here and there is consistently criticized for failing to adhere to various details, Schuller finally offers, quote, "a word about Bernstein," end quote. It's actually over 500 words in a page-conquering footnote, following yet another knit-picky critique about Bernstein's Renickderstortions [assumed spelling] and Measure 92 of [inaudible] Suite Number Two. The rest of this footnote, outlined on the slide, is devoted to a critique in which Schuller touches on Bernstein's inability to focus on a single professional activity as well as, quote, "his ego-driven distortions, exaggerations, and histrionics, his drinking, outrageous behavior, pursuit of the trendy and chic, and his bisexuality," end quote. Schuller concludes that Bernstein, quote, "had very little discipline and no shame. And that his podium antics and athletic exhibitionism, although wonderful for audiences in television," end quote, demonstrate that he did not put the score first. Schuller wanted more Beethoven, less Bernstein. For Bernstein and his fans, the distinction between Beethoven and Bernstein was too blurred to matter. Given Bernstein's celebrity status, it is not surprising that discussions of his conducting on stage were sometimes conflated with his conduct off stage. Histrionic podium antics and athletic exhibitionism, to quote Schuller, "bothered him." But so did the fact that Bernstein, his colleague for decades, was a less than puritanical homosexual. I should note that I will refer to Bernstein as gay and homosexual, and not bisexual. This is how his closest friends refer to him. It is also how his wife, Felicia Montealegre, referred to him in a letter shortly after they were married in 1951 or 1952. This is in the Library's recently unsealed letters. Quote, "You are a homosexual and may never change," end quote. Schuller's criticisms betray a larger fear, that fallible bodies and performances can never do justice to ideal works. A large part of any musical performance is not just a musician's movements that result in a specific sound, say, how tight or wide a cellist's bravado is, but also bodily movements and facial expressions that are often considered supplementary to musical expression. The distinction between movements that do and movements that don't, result in a specific sound, become wonderfully blurry when we consider the conductor. And so what Schuller calls histrionics might be worth a closer look. Musicians who played under Bernstein maintain contra Schuller that he was not moving for the audience. Quote, "He certainly does not act and gesticulate for the sake of show," end quote, said Viennese Violinist Hans Novak. "He jumps about during rehearsals when he has no public behind him," end quote. Bernstein sought to both lead the musicians and become the music, music that was far larger than his five feet eight inches and 140-something pounds. For Bernstein, as for the music-loving scholar, Roland Bart, every score became, quote, "a muscular music in which the body itself must transcribe what it reads. It is the scripter, not the receiver, end quote. Bernstein, more than any conductor I know spoke and wrote of music in just this way. Bart. when he was fully involved in a work of music, writes that, quote, "Every distinction between composer, interpreter, and auditor is abolished, so much so that the musical text becomes Bart's body." Fellow musicologist and future AMS President, Suzanne Cusack, has written of, quote, "the desire to know the music as a means to physically be that music," end quote. This is empathy. Today we might think of empathy as being able to know what it's like to be someone else, to stand into their shoes, to know how they feel. So we might think of people like nurses or Meryl Streep or Former President Barack Obama. The word empathy, however, entered the English language only in the early 20th century and then, as a translation of the German aesthetic concept of [foreign word], which is the vitalization of a non-living art object through the projection of one's own kinesthetic self into it. One projects oneself into the artwork in order to experience the artwork dynamism, its movement, and its form. You basically say, I am you to a score, or a sculpture, or a painting. This concept was embraced in the 1930s by John Martin, the first full-time dance critic in the United States. He believed that modern dance offered its viewers the chance to experience kinesthetic empathy with the bodies of another engaged in choreography. But before I come back to modern dance, a quick note about some older dancing. Whether in rehearsal or in concert, Bernstein's body might remined one that the word "orchestra" derives from the Greek "orchestra," orches meaning dancing place. The part of the stage in ancient theaters that was nearest the audience, where the chorus danced and sand. We might say that Bernstein's conducting is a kind of bodily scripting of the orchestral music in front of him, or literally Orchesographie , the title of our [inaudible] 1589 Treatise on the Relationship Between Dance and Music and Social Dance as well as the word that would morph into choreography two centuries later. Although Bernstein and his fans often speak of his spontaneity while conducting, of his in the momentness, I want to propose that we think of Bernstein's conducting instead as choreography. What's more, by the end of this talk, I hope to show that this choreography actually remains surprisingly consistent from performance to performance, sometimes even across decades. This is not just that there are certain standard gestures in Bernstein's movement vocabulary, but repeat across scores. There certainly are. But also that entire set patterns of movement repeat with the precision that strikes me as uncanny and noteworthy. A larger conclusion here is that Bernstein's body, for all of its movement and supposed visibility on television, on stage, has actually been taken for granted and has never been that carefully observed. One sometimes even encounters interpretations of the same work that sound fairly different, but in which Bernstein's conducting looks nearly identical. Bernstein's podium choreography for the "Rite of Spring" is more consistent across years, I realized in November of 2014, than was that of conductor Andris Nelson's over a three-concert-weekend at Boston's Symphony Hall. This was surprising but what, if anything, did it mean? Bernstein's choreography on the podium registered his empathy with the score. It is his shameless presentation of that empathy that represents, perhaps, his most unique contribution to the art of conducting. For Bernstein, the podium was both a dancing place and a safe space of sorts where, emboldened and legitimated by a beloved score, he could become both the music and, paradoxically, most himself. From the beginning, reviewers noticed the nearness between Bernstein's conducting and modern dance. Consider Alan Downs's rave review of Bernstein's breakthrough performance on Sunday, November 14th, 1943, when famously Bernstein stepped in for an ailing Bruno Walter and conducted the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Downs writes, quote, "He conducted without a baton, justifying this by his instinctively expressive use of his hand and a bodily plastic which, if not always conservative, was to the point, alive and expressed of this music. And so understood by the players. Greater reserve will come later. It would be ominous if Mr. Bernstein had it now," end quote. Note that phrase, "bodily plastic." This refers to expressive movement practices, like dance, that were widespread in the first third of the 20th century, such as Dalcroze Eurhythmics here with some dancers at an early program at Peabody and then Bernstein on your right. An expressive dance or free dance, the craze set off by Isadora Duncan. Although Downs doesn't use bodily plastic in a directly negative way, he still suggests that this quote, "not always conservative," unquote movement is just a phase. Opportunities to conduct increased when Bernstein was named the Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra in 1945. So, too, the possibilities for him to be reviewed, and these reverences to the choreographic nature of his conducting would continue throughout the rest of his life. For example, we hear at this chorybantic choreographies, which include the miming of facial gestures of uncontrollable states." That's Virgil Thompson writing in '47. And then Harold Schonberg who kind of had it in for one of Bernstein, wrote, quote, "Bernstein is the most choreographic of all contemporary conductors." And Schonberg again in 1953, quote, "He rose vertically into the air, a la Nijinsky, and hovered there a good 15 seconds by the clock." The two references to choreography here both suggest that, as was true when the when the word began its wider circulation in the early 20th century, that it was a term that was only applied to the more outre modernist dancing such as that of Nijinsky. References to Nijinsky also portray an understanding of Bernstein not only as saltatory, ready to leap out of a window on stage, but also as unconventionally masculine. In his draft for his 1979 "Young People's Concert, Ballet Birds," which you can see online through the Library of Congress, Bernstein was read to publicly address he fact that he had been criticized for being too dancerly for too long. He wrote, "Besides, after years of reading in the papers about my own balletic movements on the podium, whatever that may mean, I probably ought to give myself some real ballet music to dance to, so that the critics can feel justified. Right? Eventually either Bernstein or someone on the Production Team decided that airing his grievance with the critics and further drawing attention to his style would not make for good TV for children. Eventually, Bernstein developed a thick skin. He was not the first conductor on whose bodily movements the press became fixated. Consider, of course, Gustav Mueller, the composer who Bernstein famously championed. He was also criticized for his conducting on the podium. Just as some criticism of Bernstein thinly disguises the homophobic sentiment beneath it, so, too, did criticism and grotesque characterizations of Mahler's body sometimes reveal antisemitism. Over his career, Mahler's conducting gestures became more reserved. According to critics, he used less of the space around him on the podium and his affected presentations were less dynamic with time. Bernstein's development as a conductor took the exact opposite course. At the Curtis Institute in 1939, Conductor Fritz Reiner tried to instill in Bernstein a sense of discipline, an obsessive attention to detail, control over all parts of the score, and a relative economy of gesture. This was the opposite of the more emotion and motion-filled example of the training Bernstein was receiving simultaneously under Koussevitzky in summers at the Berkshire Music Center, today Tanglewood. But the real impetus for Bernstein's large, very physical conducting came from the example of Dimitri Mitropoulos. Mitropoulos awakened in your Bernstein passions both musical and sexual, even if they were never consummated between the two men. We can't be sure. In January, 1937, during his sophomore year of college at Harvard, Bernstein met Mitropoulos. The conductor immediately saw something special in the young man and invited him to his rehearsals for his American debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. By all accounts, Bernstein's own, those of his friends, letters to others, the young Bernstein was dazzled by Mitropoulos's conducting which included Ravel's Rhapsody Espanol and Schumann's Second Symphony . Metropoulos took Bernstein and his friend Mildred to a café after the rehearsal they were invited to watch, and there he fed the young man an oyster off of his fork. And then, the setting intimacy was followed by Mitropoulos's just as sudden departure. It all upturned the young Bernstein's world. Over a year after their first meeting in 1938, Bernstein wrote about his relationship with Mitropoulos, but renamed him Eros Mavro [assumed spelling] in a very thinly-veiled autobiographical short story titled, The Occult . Looking at that story, which he wrote for a writing course at Harvard, what Bernstein seems to have seen in Mitropoulos was a man who used his body fully and without shame. Carl, as Bernstein renames himself in the story, observes the conductor in rehearsal and is stunned. While conducting Eros Mavro rises up and falls back down onto the stool on the podium. He breaks the stool, but he never stops conducting. Eros Mavro jumps up and then he crashes down again, breaking the replacement stool yet again. Then he takes Carl to lunch and feeds him an oyster off of his fork [laughter]. The character Carl becomes obsessed with Eros Mavro after he leaves town for his next engagement. Carl repeats a mantra in his head. Plato makes Eros the center of all emotions. Plato makes Eros the center of all emotions. Carl latches onto the importance that the older man links to the word "sympathetic." And when Eros Mavro finally writes back, it confirms all of Carl's wishes. Quote, "Eros writes to him, 'I want you. I dared not believe it before. Come to me."' Considering the sophomore outing in creating writing, literally sophomoric, I think it is okay if we put aside the intentional fallacy for a moment. The story, which Bernstein published in his collection of writing findings in 1982, and which exists here at the Library in the Leonard Bernstein Collection, demonstrates that from Mitropoulos learned to be simultaneously spiritual and highly physical nature of conducting, an act involving the entire body. He also learned the importance of feeling a real connection with a fellow musician and fellow gay man. Mitropoulos's influence can be seen not just in Bernstein's leap-heavy conducting, and here we see some slides of Mitropoulos midair while conducting, but also in the way that Bernstein conceptualized conducting and its relationship to sexuality and erotics. Materials in the Library of Congress's Leonard Bernstein collection revealed the vicissitudes of shame and comfort with which Bernstein viewed his homosexuality and body, and the relationship of these relationship of these feeling to his career as a conductor. From his college years throughout the 1940s, Bernstein we now know had hundreds of male sexual partners. Although the majority of these relationships were casual, Bernstein still saved his correspondence with many of these men. They were filed away by Helen Coates who was Bernstein's first piano teacher and then later his personal secretary and confidante. One of the relationships that seemed more than casual was with a man named Seymour Meyerson. The two first met in 1945. Helen Coates, in a letter to Bernstein several years later would even question Bernstein's decision to marry by brining up Meyerson as an example of a partner who made Bernstein truly happy. Coates, Meyerson notes in a letter to Bernstein, would also confide in Meyerson about Bernstein's very busy sex life and how she tried to manage it. Based on the letters available and trust which Bernstein and Coates showed him, Meyerson seems to have been one of the more stable relationships Bernstein had in the 1940s. The two would continue writing to each other even years after they separated. Like Bernstein, Meyerson also married and had children. And we wrote of the joys and trials of family life and asked after Bernstein's wife, Felicia. He would also recall their previous love for each other. He wrote to Bernstein of how one night, while placing an older sheet on the bed his wife and he would shortly share, he realized that it was the same sheet upon which he and Bernstein used to regularly sleep. Throughout the 1940s, Bernstein also planned to compose a musical on James M. Cain's hardboiled novel, Serenade , about a tenor who falls under the dangerous influence of a gay conductor. Kind of just ruined the plot. I apologize. By the end of the 1940s, as Bernstein's prospects for a major conducting position increased, his datebooks and correspondence here at the Library revealed that he was seeing a psychoanalyst multiple times a week in an effort to suppress his homosexual desires. Yet, even after his marriage to Felicia Montealegre in 1951 and as late as 1954, Bernstein was still hoping to make a musical on Cain's Serenade . He couldn't let go of this link between sexuality and conducting just as he couldn't let go of the photos and letters of the men with whom he had casual relationships, the vast majority of which are now available to the public here at the library. Bernstein's connection between conducting and the erotic did make its way into the public and on prime time. Consider his third Omnibus Television Special on the "Art of Conducting" in 1955. After going over the elements of musicianship a conductor must have, Bernstein moved on to the intangibles. And this is as published in his "IT Joy of Music . He wrote, quote, "The conductor must make the orchestra love the music as he loves it. It is not so much imposing his will on them like a dictator; it is more like projecting his feelings around him so that they reach the last man in the second violin section. And when this happens, when 100 men share his feelings, exactly, simultaneously, responding as one to each rise and fall of the music, to each point of arrival and departure, to each little pulse, then there is a human identity of feeling that has no equal elsewhere. It is the closest thing I know to love itself. On this current of love the conductor can communicate at the deepest levels with his players, and ultimately with his audience," end quote. Bernstein called this focus on an identity of feeling through empathy with the music throughout his life. In outline, it is similar to the erotic as theorized by [inaudible] critic Audre Lorde in her essay, Uses of the Erotic, Erotic as Power . "[Inaudible] the erotic quote comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers." Lord continues writing the erotic is, quote, "the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience," end quote. As Bernstein aged and became increasingly comfortable discussing his work and sex and sexuality without fear of approach, he made it clear that, for him, conducting was a kind of erotic transfer of power and pleasure. Consider his words here. >> There's a kind of closeness that can be developed with members of an orchestra. It is a love affair in which you and a body are breathing together, closely together, lifting and sinking together. And I'm not making this sound too lurid or too sexual. It is, sort of, sexual. But it's with 100 people. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Bernstein is clearly being a bit of a bad boy there at the end of the quote, but I think that his understanding of conducting is earnest and honest and -- even if it's kind of playful here. And if we take him seriously, as I think we should, I want to now refocus on his body in performance and see how it registers these ideas. Now, an obvious place to go would be to a performance of the Mahler Five Adagietto which we just heard as underscore to Bernstein's comments. Or perhaps to the final movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony , or as any diehard Mahler fan would suspect, to the final movement of Mahler's Second . And these are some photos of Bernstein conducting Mahler's Second Symphony . Looking at these photos, we might remember that when Bernstein learned that Mahler's Tenth Symphony had been edited and completed the performance, he said, quote, "I have one question. Will it give me an orgasm"? End quote. Kind of a bad boy sometimes. Today, however, I want us first to consider Bernstein's conducting of Tchaikovsky. Bernstein programmed and performed Tchaikovsky's Pathetique, the Sixth Symphony with increasing relish from the early 1970s on. In 1986, on tour, he partnered it on programs with his own Serenade for Solo Violin after Plato's Symposium . Some critics noticed a newfound drama and level of commitment in Bernstein's conducting of the Pathetique . Others disagreed. After conducting the New York Philharmonic at UCLAs Royce Hall, critic Martin Bernheimer described the Bernstein's body as, quote, "Shrugging, jumping, sighing, soaring, gushing, crouching, rocking, rolling, bounding, bobbing, leaping, jiggling, stabbing, hunching, bumping, grinding, and grunting," end quote. Regarding the fire alarm that interrupted Tchaikovsky's Symphony, Bernheimer wrote, quote, "A managerial spokesperson refused to confirm any connection between the potential conflagration and the flamboyant performance on the podium. Nevertheless, this was an undeniably, uniquely flamboyant performance," unquote. Regarding Bernstein's affect during the symphony, Bernheimer wrote, quote, "Emoting above and beyond any call, Bernstein acted out a series of virtuosic charades. He wiggled in moments of agitation as if he were auditioning for the next Twyla Tharp extravaganza," end quote. Bernheimer ends his review by comparing the concert's end with post-coital affect. Quote, "The Protagonist looked picturesquely spent, ecstatic, euphoric, wrung out as he basked in the post climactic applause. He also acted as if he and his symphonic cohorts had somehow succeeded in scaling at least three Mount Everest's. The exquisite ardor of the moment could be expressed only in an ever increasing orgy of hugs and kisses. I lift before the maestro embraced the stagehands," end quote. Bernheimer's depicture of Bernstein as self-indulgent, unnecessary, flamboyant, over-emotional, and excessive in bodily actions seems to be motivated by more than just the desire to accurately cover the performance. Not all critics agreed however. For example, take Tim Page of the New York Times who wrote, quote, "In the wrong hands, Tchaikovsky can sound blatant and vulgar, and listening to his music can be a faintly embarrassing experience, like reading the intimate diary of somebody you don't know. There was nothing embarassing about Mr. Bernstein's Pathetique , although it was as confessional as any performance I have ever heard," end quote. The pathetic symphonist's scores provided Bernstein an opportunity to perform professional climaxes galore. Bernstein was particularly convincing when embodying late 19th century sequences such as the one at Rehearsal O in the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony . In this clip, from the first every Young People's Concert Min 1958, "What Does Music Mean?" note the way that Bernstein's whole body lands on the beginning of each iteration of the sequenced motive. Each time he says the word "want" with an increasing sense of attack and bigger bounce back, as if charged by the rise of the sequence, so much so that by the last three wants, he is throwing his head back as if in convulsions of desire. This will make more sense as you watch the clip. >> Okay, by saying that it has the feeling of wanting something very badly that you can't have. Did you ever feel that you wanted something more than anything else in the world, and you said so, and they said no, you can't have it. And you said, again, I want it. And, again, they said no, and again you said louder and and more excited, I want it, and again, louder, I want it, until it seemed that something would break in your head and there's nothing left to do but cry. Well, that's like this music. Listen. [ Music ] Finally something breaks in your head and -- [ Music ] -- and you cry. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Now that we have seen Bernstein demonstrate his idea of this music and the charmed smile it elicited from one young viewer in the audience, let's compare it to a filmed live performance 12 years later. Here, I want you to know the same increased attacks and the final throwbacks of his head. But also three other things that occur across Bernstein's conducting on the podium. First, the tiny look of ecstasy signified by the open mouth and the slump of the body at the beginning of the sequence. Two, Bernstein's use of two hands on the baton as he nears the climax of the phrase. And, three, the famous Bernstein leap. He gets airtime off of the podium at the arrival of the interrupting stormy motive. [ Music ] Now that we've seen three common features in Bernstein's movement vocabulary, and also the kind of sense of his face registering the music on it, you might even say that Bernstein faces the music, meaning not that just he's conducting the orchestra, but he's also reflecting the music on his face, we can now turn to something else. Presumably this is something that only [inaudible] orchestra could see that's presumably not for the audience even though he knew he was being filmed here. As bassist Orin O'Brien, who was the first female member of the New York Philharmonic who was not a harpist, as she noted about watching Bernstein both from the auditorium and the stage, she wrote, quote, "From the audience as an usher at Carnegie, I found it difficult to take some of Bernstein's gyrations and dancing around the podium. Upon joining the orchestra as a bassist in 1966, however," she realized "his movements weren't put on for the audience's benefit. He was simply living music that he believed in so deeply." In my remaining time with you, I want us to consider a few moments where Bernstein's conducting is clearly a set choreography, one that repeats across years. First, I'd like us to consider the end of part one, "The Dance of the Earth," from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring . I'd like to draw your attention to the three levels of Bernstein's forward jabs. You'll notice him doing this. And then, the very, very dramatic kind of pause. He's frozen at the very, very end of part one. So let's watch this from 1966. [ Music ] And now, six years later, in 1972, the same passage. [ Music ] This is a very clear, I hope, example of how exactly the movement repeats. And this happens again in my next and what will be my final example. Bernstein might leave us almost fairly breathless as we watch him conduct. Bernstein himself also found himself increasingly breathless. At Alan J. Warner's memorial service in New York City, a bunch of Bernstein fans knew he would be there. And they gathered and they held up signs saying, "We love you. Please stop smoking." And Bernstein, at the end of his life, wrote, quote, "The great thing about conducting is you don't smoke and you breathe in great gobs of oxygen," end quote. This seems kind of funny and cute, but in August 1990, Bernstein was to conduct the Koussevitzky Memorial Concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Because his emphysema was kind of progressing, they had to actually line up oxygen tanks and bring them backstage. He was supposed to conduct everything on the program. But because he was very, very ill, Carl St. Clair had to step in and conduct Bernstein's arias and barcarolles which had just been orchestrated by Bright Sheng. When you read reviews of this final concert, newspaper writers all kind of focus on the fact that Bernstein was very clearly ill. Several of them mentioned his coughing fit in the middle of the third movement of the Seventh Symphony which would be the last work that he would ever conduct. Having read these stories and also the biographies if Bernstein, especially the great Humphrey Bearden biography and Tim Page's Concert Review, and having not yet seen the film that I will shortly show you, I was incredulous when my colleague at Boston College, Sandra Hebert, who was studying piano at Tanglewood that summer, insisted to me that Bernstein performed his signature leap at some point during the Seventh Symphony . And I said, you know, Sandy, that's not possible. He was coughing, he's conducting. You were just imagining the great Bernstein, which didn't square with everything. Furthermore, I had heard the 1990 concert on commercial recording multiple times. It's a recording that I love. And hearing it, I didn't believe that Bernstein -- the tempo was slower -- would have jumped in his final conducting appearance. The concert was very, very special in 1990. It marked 50 years since his first professional appearance at Tanglewood in 1940. He conducts Britain's [inaudible] "Britain's Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes . This is very important as well because Bernstein conducted the premier of Peter Grimes in the U.S. at Tanglewood. And he also -- the final work on the program that he conducted was -- he conducted Bernstein's -- Beethoven's Seventh Symphony . Beethoven's Seventh is one of the two scores that Bernstein had to prepare for his audition with Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute in 1939. It was also Beethoven's Seventh programmed for his first concert as a Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958. It's a very -- a work that's very, very near and dear to Bernstein. I'm going to show you two sets of two clips. The first will come from a filmed performance of Bernstein with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1978. And this is from the beginning of the fourth movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony . I want you to notice the nearly identical movements in this clip and in the following clip. And this suggests that Bernstein was really thinking of conducting as a kind of choreography, or at least performing it that way. You'll notice that there's a lot of elbow pumping that he does. It's kind of like a dance in the countryside imagined by someone who lives in the city. That sounds odd, but I'll just show you and I think you'll see what I see pretty quickly. [ Music ] And now this is 12 years later at Bernstein's final appearance at Tanglewood. [ Music ] You can see the same gestures here. And I think that's pretty clear. And then for my final example of the talk and of the evening tonight, this is Bernstein's own score of Beethoven Seven which the New York Philharmonic has digitized and put online at the wonderful archives. I wanted to use this final passage of descending 16th notes. We're going to watch Bernstein conduct it again with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1978 and you'll notice that, again, that there's this kind of wind-up, a kind of pitch forward, a pitch up and down, and then it ends. And you'll just see this right here. [ Music ] [ Applause and Cheering ] And so again that same wind-up and then the kind of punch forward, the up and down. Here 12 years later in his final conducting at Tanglewood. [ Music ] [ Cheering and Applause ] Though physically exhausted, and less than two months away from his death on October 14, 1990, Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Seventh Symphony that afternoon with the same choreography that he had been using for decades. Like the dancers with whom he had personal and professional relationships throughout his career, like any musician, Bernstein relied on muscle memory he had long internalized after numerous performances. Quote, "We are in a profound and virtually inescapable sense prisoners of our bodies," notes Gunter Schuller in his book, The Complete Conductor . Prisoners seems a bit strong. If we take that out, it sounds less bleak and more obvious. "We are in a profound and virtually inescapable sense, our bodies." Is the actions our bodies perform the constant iterations that come to identify us as musicians and otherwise? Then I suggest it is time we fully acknowledge. In Bernstein's final performance, the vast majority of the audience didn't recognize that he was repeating the choreography long stored in his muscle memory, a choreography predicated on kinesthetic empathy with a series of notes that has been dubbed "The Apotheosis of the Dance" by Wagner. Many in the shot at Tanglewood even missed his small jump at the beginning of the fourth movement, but it was there. The podium was still a dancing place that Sunday afternoon. But Bernstein's body took up slightly less of it. The podium also remained a kind of safe space, the place where Bernstein could move shamelessly in no small part because he could temporarily forget many of his other identities, even if others could not, and focus only on the music that he sought to become. As the musical community celebrates Bernstein's 100th anniversary in 2018, we might also fully appreciate his conducting as both carefully choreographed and instructively shameless. Thank you. [ Applause ] I believe we now have time for questions. There's a microphone at the back. We ask that you wait for the microphone before asking a question. And if you could kindly identify yourself for the microphone, that would be appreciated. >> Hi. I'm Bill Black. I live here in Washington. My question is, with all of this energy and dance skill, did -- that he demonstrated with music, did he demonstrate that in other parts of his life? Did he literally like to go out dancing? Did you see it in, you know, his leisure time, sports, anything else like that? >> Daniel M. Callahan: You know, there's -- if you look through the photograph-like record of Bernstein both here at the Library of Congress, at other archives, if you plug in a Google Search, you can see him that he's a -- he has -- seemed to have had a lot of energy. People always say, oh, I'm too busy. You know, I'm really, really busy. Bernstein was really, really, really busy in the 1940s and across his life. And, yes, you see photos of him swimming, running around with the kids and the dog in the backyard. There does seem to be a lot of energy. I probably need more film footage about him on the dance floor, like a bar mitzvah or a wedding or something to give you my full kind of appraisal of his dancing and social situations. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was quite a bit of it, yes. >> So as a non-musicologist, have a very basic question. I'm sold on everything you've said. I think it's terrific talk. And I love the way it hangs together and everything. Can you help me understand how other conductors -- because it seems to me, it would seem that muscle memory would work for everybody. So why didn't it work for others. What were they responding to at the time what they were responding, you know, 10 years apart, or why would that be different than what he did? >> Daniel M. Callahan: Good question. So I don't mean to imply or sell as you say. I'm a musicologist, but you are not. I make no money. I make a little bit, but not enough. So I didn't mean to imply or to sell that other conductors weren't doing this. Yes. I think I even say that, you know, like any musician in the final paragraph of my talk, Bernstein relied on muscle memory. However, there's this thing that happens, both with conductors and when we see people who maybe do things with their bodies, a certain dance move, whatever, that are kind of more out there, that are not, that we're not used to, where we begin to talk about the music, the movement, in this case conducting, as if it is disordered or random or kind of outrageous. My point here is that for all of the talk of Bernstein's kind of flamboyance and largeness, there is a consistency, one that we could kind of expect, I think, from most musicians who have to get on stage and give a performance in front of an audience. There are some conductors who do seem -- I mean, of course there's many, many styles of conducting. There are some who seem to kind of mix it up from performance to performance. I gave the example of Andris Nelsons at the Boston Symphony Orchestra because my first month in Boston or second month in Boston in 2014 I took a bunch of students over three different nights to see him conduct. And I was shocked at how different the conducting was when he put his right arm back on the podium, when he went up onto the balls of his feet, when he would do this kind of -- he does this kind of left-hand wave sometime. And for someone who thinks about people dancing and moving around a lot, that kind of stuck out to me. And it was only then that I began to think, wow, for all of Bernstein's supposed kind of craziness and dancing around on the podium, he's actually pretty darn consistent. So that's kind of the larger point and the context for why I'm kind of saying. It's also a great excuse to watch a lot of Bernstein clips over and over again. >> My name is Mather Feiffenberger [assumed spelling]. I live here in Washington. Perhaps an obvious question, but, yeah, very interesting. You talk about how -- about Bernstein's consistency. This was also, would you say, instinctive, unconscious? I mean, if he were here now, would he say to us, oh, yeah, I planned it that way, or would -- or you think he'd be surprised at what you had found? >> Daniel M. Callahan: While I've done a lot of research, I feel no way able to speak for Leonard Bernstein or what he thought. I think that there, there is a -- for a lot of people there's a thing. For example, the way you speak, the way you move in general, where you do certain things kind of over and over again, and you just get used to it. And you maybe don't even think about it. In my hide, you know, my voice sounds kind of very specific and, you know, deep and rich, and then I hear a recording of myself and I'm like that's not what my voice sounds like. And I'm not thinking. I'm not trying to sound the way that I do. It just is. So I'm going to guess, if I had to guess, I would say that it's probably partly just a matter of practice and having run through a score so many times. So that's like many things in life -- partly kind of done on purpose and cultivated and probably learned, and partly in a way natural or instinctive is the word that you just used. >> And last question, have you been in touch, by chance, with any of his children and presented this research and gotten their reaction? >> Daniel M. Callahan: Right. So Jamie Bernstein, Bernstein's daughter, who has a book coming out, or just out right now, I believe. >> Coming out in June. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Coming out in June. I met her this past February in Colorado Springs, Colorado because she, like her dad. Is kind of in demand, especially this year. She had to leave the morning of my talk, but that night before the talk I went over the talk with her. I discussed it with her over the a drink in the hotel lobby, and I kind of focused on this idea of Bernstein's muscle memory. And I said, you know, it seems like, you know, you dad would do a lot of certain things over and over again, and people don't really kind of realize that or give them credit. And I say that partly because I didn't really realize that, until I sat down and watched the videos over and over again. And she said, that's the exact same phrase that I use when I talk about my dad, muscle memory. So, but, yes, I have met Jamie. I've heard from Roger Englander who was Bernstein's longtime producer whom I did a series of interviews with, an oral history with, back in 2011. That -- his son Alex is kind of wonderful, so I do look forward to meeting more of the family as time goes on. >> Kwon Kwon. I'm a local resident. I've got two questions. You mentioned something about three levels when Bernstein was conducting "Dances of the Earth", Stravinsky's Rite of Spring . Could you repeat those three -- >> Daniel M. Callahan: Oh, right. So there's -- both here and in the day [inaudible], I tried to pick examples [finger-snap] that you could kind of very, very quickly grasp. I know that many of you have not seen these videos. None of you have seen them the 1990 film of the final performance. And you probably haven't been in front of the mirror in your bedroom repeating what Bernstein does, like I do. So there's a kind of thing in both of these where the kind of place where you kind of -- when he's conducting, he goes here, he goes down, he goes up, and the kind of specificity with which this happens in both of these clips, you see it again in the Beethoven. It's the exact same sequence. An audience member in Colorado Springs who was extremely lovely and who I've been emailing with, suggested that I might consider having the two clips side-by-side and slowing down one of them. I've done various work with video editing, taking kind of silent film of modern dancers who were dancing to a record, and then synchronized it. She suggested I should do a split screen because -- especially to see the time kind of winding down on the clock over here. We're at 8:11 p.m. I kind of rushed through the end of the talk a little bit. My apologies. But, so yeah, there's this -- there's a very kind of clear -- the kind of spots that he's hitting and what a dance analyst would call his kinosphere. If you imagine like the DaVinci circle. He goes to the same spots. And this is, you know, over a decade later. So I hope that answers your first question. >> Second question is, since he had his own choreography, could he have choreographed something like West Side Story ? No [laughter]. No. Because I could feel Jerome Robbins in the grave doing like you better say no quickly [laughter], and put a box around my name as it is in the contract. No. He couldn't. However, I would guess Ben Stein was intimate with, you know, in working offstage with many, many dancers. Robbins especially. You see these great photos of Bernstein at the piano trying things out of West Side Story . And Robbins is literally -- has his hands on his shoulders touching him. Dancers tend to be very, very touchy people, you know? You're sitting around one moment. [Inaudible] your dancer is braiding their hair, giving massages. I think that Bernstein was very, very comfortable in this world because he had to be. He was working with dancers a lot in the 1940s. Do I think that being around dancers a lot -- I mean, I hand out with the dancers sometimes. Does that mean that I can choreograph like a Morris Cunningham? Absolutely not. So that's my best guess on that. >> Merin Alsop frequently refers to his experiences with Bernstein. I wonder if you've ever had a chance to compare notes with her and -- >> Daniel M. Callahan: That's an excellent question. I'm so busy kind of teaching and writing the book that I'm currently writing that I haven't. But if you look at the recently -- or not [inaudible] anymore. The Bernstein, the last interview with Jonathan Cott. There's this wonderful passage where Bernstein talks about Merin Alsop and says that you really have to look out for this one. She's going to kick some ass. And so -- and you also see Alsop in her own promotional materials for Baltimore kind of promoting how active she is. You see her in [inaudible] of the podium but they had a video camera follow her into the gym, and you see Marin on the treadmill kind of going because, as she says, conducting his a highly physical art. It's many things. It's also promotional and dealing stoners and programming with the orchestra. But it is ultimately a body moving around trying to create a certain sound from a 100 or so people in front of you. So I would relish the opportunity to interview Marin Alsop. Marin, if you're watching on YouTube, please contact me. So, yeah. Thank you. Very great question. >> A couple of comments and a question. My first time to Tanglewood in 1972 was Bernstein conducting. I have no recollection of what. I just remember it was lovely. It was magical. And then I lived in Boston for a long time and it was [inaudible] and the whole thing. And just two weeks ago I went to the Ken-Cen for the [inaudible] and the L.A. Phil, and I watched him and I guess the Philharmonic was great, but I don't remember. I watched him and his hair flew and his tails flew, his baton flew. He jumped several times and I was in love. My question is, when you were here for your three weeks and since then with the material that you've researched at the Library of Congress, was there any great, wonderful, magical moment of something that you found that you didn't know before? >> Daniel M. Callahan: Yes, a lot. Yeah, a lot. How much time do we have? I mean there -- you know, at the beginning of the talk, Susan Vita, Chief Librarian, said that there are, you know, over 400,000 items in the collection. This is a archivist's -- I worked in an archive in college. One of my first kind of gigs was being an Archival Assistant at the Arnold Schoenberg Center when I was younger. Archivists often speak of the linear feet when they describe a collection. And it's only a small exaggeration to say that Bernstein's would circle the globe twice here at the Library. The personal letters were amazing because we have this very, very kind of polished presentation. This is someone who really knows how to work a stage, who knows how to work a camera, which I do not. And, you know, seeing him talk kind of freely with people -- that was really, really amazing. Seeing the archival video that I got from the wonderful Bridget Carr at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives. That was a real aha moment. I knew that there was video. I knew it existed. And it kind of confirmed in a really, really beautiful, poignant way. I mean, when I first saw that video I was sobbing, basically. And then I realized this is actually wonderful. I mean this is -- even at the very, very end, you know, kind of, you know, dealing with his own, you know, physical fitness at that time. Ben Stein is like still on it, and is still doing that same choreography. So I think, yes, the first -- you know, when I was here looking at all those letters, that was very, very overwhelming and kind of aha. And then a few years ago, now, in the basement of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, at the lower level, their archives, seeing that film for the first time. Those were both kind of bookend archival aha moments for me. >> Hi. Susan Garfinkel. I work here at the Library. I guess a comment and a question. And I'll follow up and say that -- like the last questioner, I also went to Tanglewood in the '70s as a child with my family. And just [inaudible] like Marin Alsop except that I did not go onto become a wonderful conductor. I dreamed of becoming a conductor because of Leonard Bernstein. And what's probably relevant to you is, as a, you know, a student who was studying music, but was no, you know, genius or anything, his conducting made perfect sense to me and without knowing anything about any of this critical discourse about it. It didn't -- it never occurred to me that it didn't make sense or that it wasn't related to the music. It helped me understand the music to watch him conduct the same symphonies that I was playing at summer camp or in high school. My question is, since you started your talk mentioning that he was often criticized for doing too many different things or trying to do too many different things, and I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but do you have an assessment of how successful he was as a conductor compared -- I say that -- I think of him as a conductor first because that's how I encountered him. What is your sense of his conducting in relation to his other activities, his television, and his composing, and all that? >> Daniel M. Callahan: I can only answer -- I mean, this is not my musicological expertise speaking. This is just me as Daniel speaking. For me, the -- it's hard to separate all the things. Number one, number two. It -- since -- if like you just put me on the spot, if I had to pick which do I think he kind of excelled at more between conducting and composing, I would say conducting, and I would say that partly because it was what he was doing [inaudible] so much of his time. The man had to take a sabbatical from conducting because he was conducting too much, and he wanted to compose some stuff. He had to say, New York Philharmonic, see you later like in a year. I need to -- I need some time to do other things. I think because, just hours per day, so much of it was -- more of it was conducting than composing. I would say that that in some ways he probably saw his own achievement as a conductor rise more. Of course there's tons of stories about Bernstein feeling like he did not live up to these kind of impossible standards that he set for himself about composition, you know. He wondered why are more people not listening to my symphonies? Why do more people not know the "Serenade for Solo Violin?" You know, everybody knows West Side Story , and which is how I first, you know, came across Leonard Bernstein as a child when -- before I was imitating him conducting in the mirror as an adult, as a child, I would imitate the sharks on the street with that beautiful low shot on the Lego Lift. So I guess partly because he was -- he just had -- he was giving it more, I would say, conducting. That was a very long answer. I don't -- it's like picking, you know, your favorite child or something. You don't want to do that. But I would say conducting I guess. >> I'm Steve [inaudible]. The examples you gave were a -- [ Inaudible Speaker ] -- that there are differences in the way you approached [inaudible]. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Very, very good question. And one that I have not actually have had that known or has actually asked me before. I haven't -- to be very honest, I haven't compared enough repeat performance of him conducting the same things. There is, of course, a lot of footage of Bernstein conducting his own work. For example, the recording of West Side Story with Carreras. There's that horrible scene where he has to keep conducting the same passage over and over again. I would not be able to use that to judge. A very painful scene to watch in some ways. So I guess my short answer is that's a very good question. And I will get back to you if you email me. And I kind of go through my file and think about it. [ Inaudible Speaker ] -- and I live in Washington, D.C. And I think of Bernstein -- [ Inaudible Speaker ] All right. My question is, was he more staid, more reserved in conducting high or -- would something such as the "Surprise" in the 94th Symphony have surely caused him to execute the Bernstein Leap. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Right. I would say that if you compare his conducting -- this is -- I did kind of maybe cheat a little bit by taking a late 19th century work and an early 20th century work, both of which are very loud and big. I would say that if you look at his conducting of classical composers -- Mozart, Haydn -- that actually I don't -- it's not necessarily as a whole more reserved, actually. Obviously you don't have the reason to do things like you do at the conclusion of the "Dance of the Earth" at the end of Part One of the Rite of Spring . If you conducted Haydn like that, there might be a slight mismatch or you would get a very interesting sounding Haydn. I don't know. But in terms of the kind of engagement and the full use of the body, I would say that kind of occurs throughout the rep. Yes. So, yeah. Does that answer your question? >> Yes. >> Daniel M. Callahan: Thank you. >> Well, I'd like to thank our speaker one last time. If you could join me in that. Thank you, Professor Callahan. [ Applause ] >> Daniel M. Callahan: Thank you. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.