>> Mark Eden Horowitz: I'm thrilled tonight to introduce two people. Michael Barrett, on my right, is the musical director for this evening's concert. He's the co-founder and associate artist director of the New York Festival of Song and co-founder and music director of the Moab Music Festival in Utah. Michael has been a guest conductor with the Orchestra of Saint Luke's, the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Israeli Philharmonic, and others. Michael was protege of Bernstein -- a protege of Bernstein's. Beginning as a student in 1982, he served as Maestro Bernstein's assistant conductor from 1985 to 1990. He currently serves as music advisor to the Leonard Bernstein estate. But most importantly, today is his birthday. >> Yay! >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And tomorrow his daughter is graduating from college. >> Woo-hoo! >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So. >> Michael Barrett: That's the big thing. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: That's the big thing. That's -- oh, and I didn't introduce myself. My name is Mark Horowitz with the Library. And I'm the curator of the Bernstein Collection here and have been doing so for 25 years. So he's in my blood now, I think you'll say. And our surprise guest this evening, to my right-right -- >> Jamie Bernstein: The horner-inner. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: -- yeah -- is Jamie Bernstein, Leonard's oldest daughter, the firstborn child, the keeper of the flame. Jamie is an author, narrator, and filmmaker. Her memoir, which literally is hot off the press, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, is literally just off the press. I think it doesn't come out on Amazon until June 5th. >> Jamie Bernstein: June 12th. Yeah, you can pre-order it, but it'll be -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. >> Jamie Bernstein: -- in the shelves of the bookstores -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. >> Jamie Bernstein: -- on June 12th. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And I've read it already. It's fantastic. >> Jamie Bernstein: Thank you. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: In addition to The Bernstein Beat, a family concert about her father modeled after his own groundbreaking young people's concerts, Jamie has written and narrated concerts for audiences of all ages -- Mozart, Copeland, Stravinsky, and others. As a concert narrator, she's appeared everywhere from Beijing to London to Vancouver. And in addition to her own scripted narrations, Jamie performs standard concert narrations such as Walton's "Facade" and Copeland's "A Lincoln Portrait." As a broadcaster, Jamie has produced and hosted shows for radio stations in the US and UK. She has presented the New York Philharmonic's live national radio broadcast as well as a live broadcast from Tanglewood. Jamie is co-director of the documentary Crescendo: The Power of Music. So now you know who's here. So any questions so far? >> Michael Barrett: But what have you done lately? >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. [Laughter] Well, both of you lately, I think, have been doing a lot of Bernstein-related work and traveling. I guess I'm just curious. Has -- what's been unexpected this year? Did you feel prepared for everything or -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Well, I -- you know, I travel a lot, doing concert narrations and giving talks and all the various things that I do. But really, the past 15 years were like the training for the marathon of this year because we -- you know, we, the Bernstein Office and my brother and sister and I and Michael, we all worked really hard to remind the world that the centennial of Leonard Bernstein was coming. And we suggested all sorts of things they might do. And then we just left everybody to figure it out. And to our astonishment, the response has been tremendous. And on the database at the Bernstein Office, we are now well past 3,300 centennial-related events worldwide. And no, I will not be able to attend them all, but I sure am trying. >> Michael Barrett: But you're coming close. >> Jamie Bernstein: I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm somewhere else every week. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, we're special, so. >> Michael Barrett: So Jamie is here tonight. Is it tomorrow, or it's the 20th? On the 20th here in Washington, in two days, you have two events, right. You have to be at the Phillips and at the -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Oh, right. >> Michael Barrett: -- Kennedy Center. It's like this. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. There's a wonderful concert called Late Night with Leonard Bernstein which I narrate. And it's two pianists, Michael Boriskin and John Musto, and a wonderful soprano, Amy Burton. And then it purports to be a sort of guided tour inside my father's insomniac brain. And so -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: This is at the Phillips. >> Jamie Bernstein: It's at the Phillips in the afternoon. And then I have to go straight from there to the Washington National Opera's gala to give a little -- say a few words. And then -- >> Michael Barrett: And they're doing a big Bernstein show that night, too, aren't they? >> Jamie Bernstein: They have some big Bernstein show. But then I'm actually dashing off to the other side of the building because I want to catch Wynton Marsalis doing his Bernstein show. >> Michael Barrett: And you can't squeeze in Candide, which is playing right now at the opera, too? >> Jamie Bernstein: I was going to, but I think I have a rehearsal. But no matter how many things I do, I'm always missing something terrific. >> Michael Barrett: I was surprised at the response, that all over the world of this groundswell of people who got really, really interested in Leonard Bernstein, not just to do a concert. But I was in Omaha. They had this whole Bernstein and Mahler festival in Omaha. And they're playing like 30 of his pieces throughout the whole season, a lot of it in the context of Gustav Mahler's work as well. So people are finding their own way in their own community or their own school or their own youth orchestra or their own major opera house, you know, to celebrate Bernstein. And it's been great. But it's also been -- I think I was a little bit surprised. But when I think about it, I'm not really surprised because his music -- I knew the quality of his music always. And he had this kind of bad rap on him, especially in the '60s and '70s. And it wasn't until really the late '80s it just started to ease up just a little bit. And that was because he wrote mostly tonal music. He wrote tunes, you know, melodies. >> Jamie Bernstein: Good ones. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah, good ones. And even in his serious music, it was -- he wrote a lot of listenable music. I mean, he wrote some very gnarly pieces, too. You'll hear the first thing on tonight's program is pretty out, if I can put it that way, pretty pointy. >> Jamie Bernstein: Pointy, yeah. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: That's my sister's adjective. Pointy. >> Michael Barrett: But the musical establishment and the halls of academia were really down on him. You know he never won a Pulitzer Prize? You know, I mean West Side Story didn't even win the Tony Award. He used to say, "Yeah, I lost out to 76 Trombones." [Laughter] >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I thought what we'd do tonight is something a little more not serious. But because people here are going -- I'm presuming everybody's going to the concert right after this. I thought we'd take the opportunity to have the two of you here to get a little more in depth about a couple of the things are going to be performed tonight. And one of them is stuff from A Quiet Place. So I thought people here would sort of enjoy some backstage stuff about that. >> Michael Barrett: Who knows what A Quiet Place is? Wow. [Laughter] Two, three, four. Pretty good. So you're fans. It was performed here at the Kennedy Center in 1984. Three, four, five? Can't remember. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes, in '84. >> Michael Barrett: Okay. But it has had precious few productions anywhere, really. But it was done in here and Houston. And recently, a New York City opera put it on. Fine production in New York City. >> It was just in Philadelphia. >> Michael Barrett: It was just in Philadelphia. That was not -- yeah. That was a smaller version of it, and yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: At Curtis Institute. >> Michael Barrett: Right. Right. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: One thing I was curious about, Jamie, and I've never sort of read anywhere or known the -- for those who don't know, the part of A Quiet Place is Lenny's early opera called Trouble in Tahiti, which at one point when the show was in Houston sort of opened the show, the opera, and in three acts. And it was the first act. But then they decided that didn't work. And you guys can sort of tell me why. But then at the Kennedy Center, it was moved as a flashback to the second act. >> Jamie Bernstein: Right. It comes in the middle now. So Trouble in Tahiti was this chamber opera, like a 45-minute-ish, is it -- >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. Forty, yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: -- opera that he wrote in 1951. It's a one-act opera. And then ever so many decades later, he and his librettist, Stephen Wadsworth, decided to write a sequel of sorts to Trouble in Tahiti. And that was A Quiet Place. So it opened at Houston Opera. Trouble in Tahiti came first. And it was in this very sort of user-friendly, jazzy idiom, musical idiom, whereas A Quiet Place has a very different musical flavor. It's a little more pointy, to use Nina's word. It has some -- it's thorny. And the opening scene, which takes place in a funeral parlor at a funeral, is practically all 12-tone, right? >> Michael Barrett: It's strict 12-tone music, yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: It is 12. >> Michael Barrett: Schoenberg would have been -- would have given him an A on that, I think. >> Jamie Bernstein: Right. So I think that -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Or an A-flat or an A-plus or any of them. >> Jamie Bernstein: Right. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I'm sorry for that. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yes, an A-flat. Oh. Very good. Anyway, it was troublesome to start with Trouble in Tahiti and then have your ear be used to that and then suddenly confront this completely different musical language. >> Michael Barrett: But if you start in the funeral parlor and you hear 38 minutes of 12-tone music, when you hear Trouble in Tahiti, oh, it's a relief. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: So that seemed to work better. So now it was inserted in the middle as a flashback. And then you go back into the, you know, present time, and then the opera finishes there. >> Michael Barrett: But it's the same characters. Some of the characters you don't even meet in Trouble in Tahiti. There's a little boy named Junior. They -- the parents talk about him, but you never see him. And then in A Quiet Place, there he is a full-grown man. It's really about probably 20, 25 years later. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: And -- >> Jamie Bernstein: And it's really about the family and how -- and their dynamics. >> Michael Barrett: Which is what Trouble in Tahiti is, too. It's about -- a failing marriage is really what it's about, so. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, that's something that I was really interested in, which is, as I understand it, that Trouble in Tahiti was very much influenced by your grandparents' marriage and in -- but it's never been clear to me. Did they realize it? How did they respond to it? >> Jamie Bernstein: That's a great question, and I don't know the answer. I've always wondered, "What was Sam and Jennie's reaction to this opera about Sam and Dinah?" Originally my father was going to call the married couple Sam and Jennie, and he changed the wife's name to his grandmother's name instead of his mother. I don't know why that made it all somehow more acceptable. But he kept the name Sam. >> Michael Barrett: He thought he was faking them out, I'm sure, yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: I don't know what he was thinking, and I don't know what his parents could have made of it all. I never did hear what their reaction was. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Did your grandmother see A Quiet Place? >> Jamie Bernstein: That's a good question, too. I don't know if she did. She may not have because it didn't come to Boston. And I don't think she came down to New York for it. And I know she wasn't in Houston. So maybe she never saw it. >> Michael Barrett: It wasn't in -- it was down in Washington, not in New York, when -- after Houston, it came to here, to the Kennedy Center. >> Jamie Bernstein: [Inaudible] Well, she -- I don't think she came down here either. So she never saw it. Mind you, my father wrote Trouble in Tahiti, this portrait of a marriage on the rocks, on his honeymoon. [Laughter] I think in a way, it was sort of like a superstitious spit in the corner thing. Like if I write this, then it won't happen to me or something. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, actually that was something. I made an editorial decision in your liner notes. You had something about that. But there's a letter from Lenny to Copeland from his honeymoon talking about he's decided to go back to work on the opera. So my sense is he started it before then. So that's what I put in the program. >> Michael Barrett: But he still wrote it on his honeymoon. [Laughter] >> Mark Eden Horowitz: You're right. Okay. >> Michael Barrett: Oh, so did you did you edit my liner notes? >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I did. >> Michael Barrett: Oh, okay. So what I said and what Mark took out was that I thought that he had written this as a kind of vaccination against just what Jamie said, against his brand new marriage -- >> Jamie Bernstein: And they're not mutually exclusive. >> Michael Barrett: -- turning out like his parents' marriage, you know. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: He did not want that to happen, and so. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I made it "worked on it during his honeymoon." >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So I think that was okay. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. Okay. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And then you took A Quiet -- worked with Lenny on A Quiet Place when you took it to -- he took it to Vienna and recorded it. >> Michael Barrett: Right. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And can you talk a little bit about the evolution there? You said something to me about there were how many edits that he -- >> Michael Barrett: Oh, who could count, I mean? So working with Bernstein was very interesting. I was his assistant conductor on this project. And we had a big American cast. It was all in English, and it takes place in America. So we brought over all these young American singers. And Stephen Wadsworth was directing it for the first time. And he's the guy who wrote the libretto. And he was already an established opera director. Very, very talented. Still is. And so we would go. We would have our rehearsals, orchestra rehearsals. We'd collect all the parts at the end of the rehearsal. We'd bring them back to his hotel suite. He had this big, huge room, and I just spread out all of the parts on the floor. And, you know, there they were. So that's a lot of music, you know. It was a big orchestra. It probably had, I don't know, 60 parts because some of some of the players share parts. So two violins read the same part. So it was probably an orchestra of 80, and we probably had 60 parts there. So we would have a list of what I would be taking notes on all day. And he'd go, "Oh, this is -- fix that" and "Oh, this isn't right" and "That should be a piano, not a mezzo piano," and, you know, just markings. And then "This chord isn't right. We have to find that." We -- still we're finding note mistakes from copyists and things like that. So we'd have this big, long list, and we'd go through. I'd -- and I'd deal with them one by one. And he'd say -- he'd call them out, you know, and I'd be running around and with an eraser and a pen or a pencil and just making sure that the parts were marked clearly. It might be a new phrase marking. It might be a dynamic because the balance wasn't right with the singers. So we had to, you know, put in a lot of piano pianissimos, you know, bring the orchestra down. Things like that just help a conductor so you don't have to stop all the time and tell your players what you want. Even though you're showing them with your hands and your body, they -- it's reinforcing if it's in the music, so. And he was a stickler for that. He always marked his parts very, very clearly. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. I'm sort of more of a musical theater guy, and that's my area of expertise. And in my experience, a lot of musicals, when they're being written, a lot of thought is being put into who the performers are going to be. And things often tend to be written for somebody's voice or something like that. And with the stuff in the collection with West Side Story, there's a lot of letters from your father to your mother complaining that they're forcing him to make changes and cuts and, you know, they're taking Tony's high C away from him and stuff like that. But do you have a sense with A Quiet Place? Was everything set in his mind, or did -- were things affected or influenced by the performers themselves and who was cast? Did he write any of the pieces for specific performers? >> Michael Barrett: I don't think in A Quiet Place, because the casts were changing all the time. And like I said, they were cast with young Americans, you know, a lot of 20- and 30-somethings. You know, it was young Kurt Ollman and Peter Kazaras and John Branstetter, people like that. Wendy White. Oh, yeah, I remember all these people. But -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Sheri Greenwald. >> Michael Barrett: Sheri Greenwald, yeah. A lot of beautiful singers. But, you know, Americans are so versatile, and even more so now, in terms of their musical training and in terms of our musical culture in America is so broad. And young people now, they -- this cast you're going to hear tonight, I could put them in practically any kind of music, and in three or four days, they would just knock it out of the park. They just -- they know how to do practically anything stylistically, you know. You just have to get them going, and then they start to get it. You'll hear them sing in five or six different kinds of musical styles tonight, from real opera to pop tunes, you know, and jazz and blues and stuff like that, so. The few singers I can think of that Lenny really had in his mind, though, were Jennie Touret, who was at the beginning of his career and who premiered most of his early compositions, like the Jeremiah Symphony and I Hate Music!, and she was one of the great sopranos in the 1940s and '50s and '60s. American. And he even wrote in his last piece, Arias and Barcarolles, there's an F-sharp that the singer has to kind of float a certain way. It's supposed to be soft and gentle. And he just writes over this one note "Jennie Touret," [laughter] like "do it like that." The other one he really loved toward the end of his career was Christa Ludwig, of course. And but he worked with so many great singers. And early in his career, he got to work with Maria Callas. But they never recorded because he said, "Well, we had different recording companies, and they wouldn't let us." That's a loss. Yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: It is. >> Jamie Bernstein: Too bad. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Also on the program tonight are several things from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which was something of a tragic situation. And I'm -- you were there, Jamie, and I just -- do you remember what it was like out of town, backstage, the rewriting, changing? [Laughter] Do you want to remember? >> Jamie Bernstein: Well, truly, I have blocked out most of my memories. What little I remembered, I put in my book. But the -- well, it was -- just to recap, this was a Broadway show that my father collaborated on with Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote Camelot and My Fair Lady. And everyone was so sure that this musical was a slam dunk that the Coca-Cola company invested a million dollars [laughter] in this show. And no corporation had ever done that before back -- this was in 1976. And it was supposed to be about the White House. It was called 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and coming out in the bicentennial. And so like how could you lose? It just sounded like the slam dunk of all time. But what my father and Alan Jay were trying to do -- this was just after Watergate. And everyone was so traumatized by what we had all been through. And there was the sense that we had narrowly escaped losing our grasp of our democracy. And so my father and Alan Jay Lerner really wanted to present a work that would express their -- that very sensibility. And so they devised this metaphor that the White House was the metaphor for the democracy. And it was a kind of history of the White House and the United States, or at least the first 100 years, as seen through the successive presidents and their wives and this African-American family of servants who lived downstairs. It was like upstairs, downstairs in the White House. And then you would follow the family in successive generations along with the successive presidents and their wives upstairs, which meant there wasn't really a plot and there weren't characters that you could follow along because it was more like a pageant where, you know, they [inaudible]. >> Michael Barrett: Here comes this president. Yeah. Right. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. So like -- >> Michael Barrett: Here's President Jefferson, and he does this. Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: You know, after about president number six or seven, you know, you're sitting in the audience and you're feeling like "so you mean like I'm stuck here until -- how many presidents more?" [Laughter] So it had a kind of built-in structural problem that they never succeeded in resolving. And they went through all kinds of incarnations, which I will not get into, but it was really a problem. And so when it finally came to New York City and opened on Broadway, it closed in six days. There were like eight performances, and boom, it was over. >> Michael Barrett: And no recording. >> Jamie Bernstein: And no cast recording because the -- you know, Bernstein and Lerner were so shattered by the experience that they just said, "You know, forget it. Just it's gone. We're closing the lid and we're walking away." And that's what happened. So a lot of this music was lost to the world. My father repurposed some of it into this and that. And there are a couple of songs from that show that still have a life. And one of them that still really resonates more than ever today is the song "Take Care Of This House." Is that in the show today? >> Michael Barrett: Yeah, we're doing it tonight. >> Jamie Bernstein: Why don't you talk about that? >> Michael Barrett: We're doing five or six things from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tonight because the Library, you guys requested it, and I thought, "Well, why not? There's a lot of fine music here." >> Jamie Bernstein: A lot. The music is fabulous. The score is amazing. It's just [inaudible]. >> Michael Barrett: And some great lyrics, too, actually. There's some really clever [inaudible]. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, the lyrics are fantastic, yeah. >> Michael Barrett: But, you know, I thought also this was a show that tried to really tackle a lot of race issues, black and white, black America, you know. And it went from slavery to post-slavery and all of these issues. And there were some really tricky things in this show, which are -- will not be on tonight's program. But at the heart of it, and this is what I came to realize, I think, from looking at it this time -- I thought, "Oh, I saw -- I can see what this show should have been, the focus" because everything that's shown to you about the the black family, the servants at the White House, is kind of through the lens of the first ladies and the presidents, you know, or early on, there's even an incredibly brilliant scene of British admiralty occupying the White House when the British actually burned the White House. Partially, anyway, except it started to rain. They must have done it in May. [Laughter] Anyway, but it occurred to me at the heart of the show is a young boy named Lud, L-U-D, and his young playmate, whose name is Thomasina. Seena, he calls her. And Lud and Seena grow up together, and you're going to hear a lot of their music tonight. Two or three things, anyway. And they -- I thought, "Oh, here are the real people. These are the -- this is the humanity of this show." And it should have been their love story and their life story as America passes by around them and how their status changed or got better or worse or something. I don't know. But that was -- I think that's kind of the heart of the show now for me. But of course what Jamie said is true -- is every president has a big thing, and I think it ends with Lincoln, about. I think he may be the last president. And he doesn't actually appear. >> Jamie Bernstein: That's actually -- >> Michael Barrett: Just the hat comes in, I think. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, the shadow. Yeah. It was weird. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: What you told me earlier about "Take Care Of This House," you just want to -- the -- Lenny's manuscripts? >> Jamie Bernstein: What about the manuscripts? >> Michael Barrett: No. Oh, you were just asking me to comment on that song? >> Mark Eden Horowitz: No, no, no, no, no. You told me when you -- >> Michael Barrett: Oh, that. The -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. So there's a song called "Take Care Of This House," which you will hear tonight. And it's Abigail Adams, the first lady to occupy the White House, and she's talking to her little servant boy, Lud, and educating him. And she says, "Take care of this house. Keep it from harm. If bandits break in, sound the alarm. Care for this house. Shine it by hand." >> [Unison] "And keep it so clean the glow can be seen all over the land." >> Michael Barrett: So it's a -- so it -- the house is this metaphor for everything good about America. She says, "Be always on call. If someone makes -- this house is everyone's dream. If someone makes off with a dream, the dream will be yours. So don't let this happen. Don't let anyone steal your dream," which is embodied by this great symbol of democracy. So she sings it to Lud, and then Lud starts singing along with her. And we're kind of taking it to the next level this time. Lud will grow up very quickly in this song and kind of take it over. >> Jamie Bernstein: Good. >> Michael Barrett: I have a tenor with a really nice high A, so I'm going to give it to him. >> Jamie Bernstein: That's great. >> Michael Barrett: But I remember I was in Bernstein's studio, and he had this big stack. And Mark said today, "Yeah, I know that big stack of A Quiet Place. I've got it in my office." >> Mark Eden Horowitz: 1600 or something. >> Michael Barrett: At 1600, yeah. So it was this big thing. And it was all bound up, and it said "1600 Pennsylvania" on it. And then Lenny wrote on it with a pencil, or he put it on a piece of paper on top. I can't remember. He said, "Take care of this house," and he meant all of this music because he was so -- I think he was kind of shattered that he'd put in so much effort and so much work. And he knew so much -- a lot of this piece was so beautiful and good, but it was kind of a loss, you know. He [inaudible] yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So the metaphor became a metaphor. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: Sort of. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And we're now, the Library, the ones taking care of the house. >> Jamie Bernstein: Thank you very much. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Thank you for letting us do that, yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, really. [Applause] >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I didn't mean for it to be an applause line. >> Michael Barrett: That was an exit line. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: But remember that I have something to tell you, so, that has to do with your taking care of that particular house. So when you're ready, we'll do that, but maybe you have more things to discuss -- for us to discuss. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: It's up to you. Do you want to -- whatever it is now, or is it better the way -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Well, do you have something more that you want us to talk about specifically regarding the concert or any other pieces? Because we could do that first, but I want to make sure to leave room for this surprise I mentioned. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, I had a couple of questions not about -- so much about what's on the concert, one of which -- this is perhaps unfair, but I'm curious if either of you have a sense of how different your lives would be today if Lenny had been a doctor or an architect [laughter] or a lawyer. You know, how much that's affected the course of your lives. >> Jamie Bernstein: Well, it's imponderable. I mean, my life was so affected in so many ways by how and who my father was, he -- you know, that I can't even imagine an alternative. I can't even picture it, you know. I don't think any of us can with our parents, really. You know, your parents are who they are. And when you're really little, you have no perspective about it. Your family is your family and your parents are your parents and you're -- you just -- it's what you are, what you wake up into, and you have no frame of reference. And so for me, you know, my dad was just my dad for a long time before I figured out that he meant something enormous to other people, you know. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Did you want to say something, Michael? >> Michael Barrett: Well, I don't think I would have become a dental assistant or something like that, but -- [laughter] >> Jamie Bernstein: Oh, you would've been such a good one! >> Michael Barrett: I will just comment on Bernstein's level of the way he worked. And one of the great things he taught me that I don't think I would have maybe learned at the same level being someone else's assistant, let's say, or having a different mentor -- and that was I just got this extremely clear vision of what it meant to be an artist. But not just an artisan, but a real artist, and a really, really good one. And it was this kind of relentlessness that he had and this -- also this thing about not holding his own work sacrosanct. And even I would say I don't think he even applied that to Beethoven and Mahler. I saw him change some things in Mahler several times, and I saw him -- and he conducted Mahler's version of Beethoven's string quartets with an entire string orchestra and with Mahler's markings in there. He said, "Look, I got Mahler's score from the library" and they're marked in pencil by Gustav and -- but it was the -- he didn't treat his own music that way either. He would -- he was always prepared to find something better in his own music, even if it's something that had been played everywhere for 20 or 30 years. I remember he did that with Chichester Psalms. The last time he did it that I was around in 1989. And he went, "I found something! Oh, this is what I always meant. This is how it's supposed to go." And he said, "Mark that down and write that, and this is the exact tempo marking." Of course it's different every day [laughter] and how you feel, but he was crazy about really fine-tuning his music and getting closer to what he thought the truth of it was. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Both of you have heard so much of Lenny's music through your lives. Do you hear new things in it in different performances? Do you find moments that you hadn't realized before? Do you -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, I do all the time. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Really? >> Jamie Bernstein: And in fact, last weekend, I even discovered a whole piece I didn't know. And I really thought I had it all in my head, but I did not know The Lark -- >> Michael Barrett: Oh, right. >> Jamie Bernstein: -- which is this incidental music that he wrote for a play by Jean Anouilh about Joan of Arc that came out in the early 1950s. And I had really never heard this music. And it's -- the way I heard it done was with acapella chorus. Is that always how it is? >> Michael Barrett: Right. Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: And it -- sometimes it's in French and sometimes in Latin. And it's got this completely medieval sort of folk, French dance flavor that is so unlike anything else my father ever wrote. And I was just astonished and delighted. It was like a big discovery. Like where have I been all these years? I missed this wonderful piece. I don't think it's performed very often. It was beautiful! >> Michael Barrett: How much do you know The Dybbuk? Because they're just doing it now, I think, at the City Dome. >> Jamie Bernstein: I just heard The Dybbuk, too, which was a ballet that he wrote with Jerry Robbins in the '70s. And they -- >> Michael Barrett: Big, huge piece, right. >> Jamie Bernstein: Big piece, and they just did it at the City Ballet last week. I heard that one, too, last week. So every week, it's something else, I must say. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Just in terms of The Dybbuk, in processing your father's papers and his music manuscripts, looking at his sketches, it's almost like it's fire coming out of him, you know. I mean, you can just tell the energy. But the most fascinating sketches I saw were for The Dybbuk because he's clearly trying to use the Kabbalah -- >> Jamie Bernstein: That's right. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: -- and to sort of form things and you -- >> Jamie Bernstein: And the numerology and everything, right. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: You know, so there's all these things I've never seen in any of other of his manuscripts. I wish somebody would write a dissertation on it. So if there's anybody -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: -- here looking for a -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Anybody out there? >> Mark Eden Horowitz: -- dissertation topic. So I will now let you do whatever it is you want to do, and then we'll take some questions. And then you'll get to enjoy the concert. >> Jamie Bernstein: Okay. Great. This will just take a minute or two. So first of all, there are no words to describe the gratitude that my -- not just my family feels, but musicians like Michael and so many others feel about what Mark does with the Bernstein archives. It's a marvel. And I'm so glad that we decided to bring that gigantic archive here to the Library of Congress because it cannot possibly have been taken care of more beautifully and thoughtfully and creatively. So thanks a lot. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Thank you. >> Jamie Bernstein: And for my book, there's just no way I could have gotten myself through writing this book without the help of Mark and everyone at the Library. So anyway, last two weeks ago, Mark and I found ourselves in Baltimore with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony, where we participated in this concert that was moderated by Scott Simon of NPR, right? >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yes. >> Jamie Bernstein: And we had a great time talking about the Bernstein music and all of that. And I didn't get a chance to go out into the lobby, where Mark told me that he had posted a letter that I had written to my father when I was very young in which apparently I corrected him because he had evidently claimed that Baltimore was the capital of Maryland. [Laughter] And so the letter that I wrote says -- and I called him Reynard, and I'm not sure what that joke was. >> Michael Barrett: Reyn? Oh. >> Jamie Bernstein: Might have been racist. >> Michael Barrett: Reynard the Fox. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yes. Right. And [inaudible] "I miss you so much, I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. You know, and, you know, you remember -- " Sorry. Got to get the glasses out, and it's very faint. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you what I wrote. "Do you know what? If you remember, you wrote -- on other side of your letter, you wrote the capital of the states you were in. Well, it seems you wrote down the wrong capital for Maryland. You wrote Baltimore, and real capital is in Annapolis." [Laughter] So okay. So Mark, I wanted you to know that for a few years now, I have had the letter that my father wrote in which he said the wrong capital of Maryland. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: You kept it back? >> Jamie Bernstein: I kept it because it's so fantastic, I couldn't bear to hand it over. But I'm going to give it to you now because it's the one that talks to that one. [Applause] >> Mark Eden Horowitz: That's [inaudible]. >> Jamie Bernstein: It's written on the Georgian Towers Motor Hotel stationary in Vancouver. And it says "Dearest littles," -- it's written to me and my brother Alexander -- "imagine I've been in four state capitals already and given concerts in all of them, the capitals of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Can you remember what they are? Answers on back, upside-down." Right. That's so my dad. Like he was always teaching, teaching. Always teaching, right. But he was wrong! [Laughing] So for me, this is just the most delightful thing in the whole wide world, so. And anyway, and then the other thing he does in here which is so adorable: He writes, "Also, I've just seen The Flintstones here in my hotel room, and they were marvelous tonight. Did you see them? I hope it was the same one about the crazy jazz and hot lips and Fred singing 'When the Saints Go Marching In.'I thought it was wonderful, and I can't get that tune out of my head." And then he draws a staff and he writes dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, which is the original theme song of The Flintstones. Before the one with the words "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones," there was another one before that. This is it! So all of this is in this fantastic letter, and now I'm giving it to you, Mark. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Thanks. [ Applause ] Four hundred thousand and one. [Laughter] >> Jamie Bernstein: Exactly. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Well, and the great thing about the collection or one of the things is I knew you were going -- we were going to Baltimore and do this display, and I knew you were going to be there. So the trick was to find something that related to you and Baltimore. >> Jamie Bernstein: And bingo. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And the Bernstein collection, anything you want, there it is. >> Jamie Bernstein: There it is. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So thank you. >> Jamie Bernstein: You're welcome. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So now I'm going to let you guys ask questions. We have, I don't know, about 15 minutes or so, and take advantage. Yes! They're bringing around a microphone so that you get recorded. >> He's a good trainer. He trains us to use the microphone. I'm delighted to be sharing this evening with you all. I was in the young people's orchestras inspired by your father, to the extent that when I used to play recitals, I would give a little talk before each piece -- >> Jamie Bernstein: Oh, good for you. >> -- because that's what he would do. >> Jamie Bernstein: You -- nowadays that's what all the young musicians do, so you were ahead of your time. >> Exactly. But I was curious. I saw in a PBS documentary years ago that he seemed to struggle in transitioning from his more outgoing conducting world role and composing, going into a composing space. I wondered if y'all could share a little bit about that. >> Michael Barrett: Well, I certainly witnessed that, I think. I'm sure you did, too. He tried, I think, more or less in the last decade of his life to have this dual life where he would conduct for about six months and then come back, usually in the fall or the winter, and then try and be a composer for six months. And it was really tricky for him because he would be so amped up from all the applause and the adulation and the great reviews and the public life and having so many friends all over the world and getting to see them all and having endless parties. And he was quite a social animal. And he loved people more than anyone I've ever seen, and all kinds of people. So he'd come home and then, you know, the most lonely thing, the only thing more lonely than being a composer, is like being a writer, I guess. You just got to sit yourself down and be alone in a room for hours and hours and hours and hope that you come up with something is -- was very solitary. And I think it took him a long time to finally find that rhythm of being quiet and being a composer. And a lot of times, I don't think he even found it. Just he'd want to go out or want to go hang out with his friends or invite people over all the time, and it was tricky. It's hard to have the most public life you can imagine, which is fun. Not just being a public personality like, you know, somebody who's on TV, but something that's -- I mean, his life. When you conduct a hundred people, you know, you are right there with them. You're doing something really fabulous together and active and positive and it's kind of a good drug, you know. It has -- releases a lot of endorphins, I think, and it's something you want to keep doing. So to just cut that off is strange and tricky. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Do you think that also had something to do with -- what I heard was that he couldn't understand why his serious music wasn't as popular with the public as his more West Side Story and musicals. I wonder if the two went together somehow. >> Jamie Bernstein: Well, I mean, it was really like he had several personalities. First we could say two, the public persona connecting with others and communicating and being on the road and orchestras and audiences and all that, and then the very private, inwardly turned composer who would, you know, have to go deep inside himself to find his own notes. And to have -- and in order to do that, he would have to kind of flush away all -- everybody else's notes that he'd been composing for all -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Conducting. >> Jamie Bernstein: I mean conducting -- thank you -- for all those months. And as he got older, it was harder and harder for him to switch the gears. And then just about the time he'd be getting some momentum going with his composing, oh, time to go back on the road and switch gears again. So it was really a kind of maddening life that he had designed for himself, but he really did have those two sides of himself. In terms of his own music, you know, the whole problem with this so-called serious music thing is, as we were discussing before, you could not be taken seriously as a serious composer if you wrote melodies. So by actively choosing to write melodies, my father consciously, you know, disqualified himself from being included in that pantheon and therefore would never get something like a Pulitzer Prize. And, you know, in the halls of musical academe, he was not considered a worthy composer. But now, of course, we're very glad that he stuck to his guns and continued writing melodies. And, you know, these so-called serious pieces, his symphonic works, that were so misunderstood at the time, now they sound completely contemporary, if not prescient, because contemporary composers, you know, feel completely free to write in any idiom they choose and to mix them all up together just like my father used to do. So his music seems to have laid the groundwork for today's contemporary composers. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: If I can add one thing to that, you don't know this, but when you gave us the collection, we made the decision, which we rarely, rarely do, to keep all the fan mail. Usually we just, you know, take a sample hundred or something like that. But there was something about your father's that we thought it expressed so many varied things over so much time. And it's a huge amount of material. I'm guessing 20,000 letters or something like that. And we happened to stumble upon a letter in the fan mail written by a young student at Harvard, John Adams. [Laughter] >> Michael Barrett: And that's in your program note tonight, so you can read this story. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Is it? >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Boy, I didn't realize that. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. I just read it and I went, "Oh, that's cool" because John Adams was a teacher of my mine, too. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Oh, then nevermind. It'll be in the program note. >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: But that's great. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: But he's just heard Chichester Psalms, and he sort of berates Lenny. "I don't understand how somebody who's as knowledgeable about -- as you are can turn their back to the future of music." And what's great is on the back of the letter, Lenny writes his response for Helen Coates to type up, his secretary. And it is the most thoughtful, sweet, caring response and basically says, "I can only write what comes from my heart," but he phrases it better than that. >> Jamie Bernstein: Wow. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And then a year later in the fan mail or two years later, there's another letter from John Adams telling Lenny how that letter changed his life, so. >> Jamie Bernstein: Wow. That is something. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: And it opened him up to jazz and all those things. >> Jamie Bernstein: That's fantastic! >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: That is collector's item stuff right there. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: Wow. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: So anyway, next question. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, sure. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Somebody back there. Yes. Wait until they get you with the microphone. [ Inaudible Speaker ] >> Michael Barrett: Oh, we have a couple of extras. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Okay. >> Thank you very much. To the three of you, first of all, grateful, grateful, grateful. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Thank you, thank you, thank you. >> Talk a moment about tritones -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: [Laughing] Yes. >> -- and what we might hear tonight. >> [Unison] Tritones! [Laughter] >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah, we love tritones. >> Michael Barrett: Like [singing]. That's a tritone. >> Jamie Bernstein: Or the anagram of that are the first three notes of West Side Story, bah, dah, dum, which all possibly came from the shofar blown on Yom Kippur. [ Imitating Shofar ] >> Michael Barrett: I think that's what that is. >> Jamie Bernstein: Anything else you'd like to know about the tritone? [Laughter] I think that covers it. >> Michael Barrett: Well, about tonight's program. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: How many are there? >> Michael Barrett: I'm sure there -- there's going to be a few dozen tritones in there, I'm sure. I just want to say one thing about atonal music, though. We said earlier that A Quiet Place, that whole first act is, which you won't hear tonight, but it's in a funeral parlor. Twelve-tone music, so. Bernstein told me a few times. He says, "I can write really good 12-tone music. I can." He says, "Look at what I've done. So I like it to portray and to evoke death. I think it's very effective for that. It's very -- also very good for boredom." [Laughter] >> Jamie Bernstein: In Candide, -- >> Michael Barrett: Yeah. >> Jamie Bernstein: -- there's a tone row. [Singing] >> Michael Barrett: It's quiet. Yeah. [ Singing ] And then the guy goes, "Quiet!" >> Jamie Bernstein: Right. >> Michael Barrett: And no one's made a peep, so, because they're bored out of their minds. It's no one's sitting there doing anything. It's hot. And so he uses 12-tone music. The other one is insomnia, which he was an expert at. >> Jamie Bernstein: Yeah. >> Michael Barrett: So there's a -- in A Quiet Place, Sam is saying, "I wish I could sleep. Oh, I wish I could sleep." He can't sleep, and there's this tone row going underneath him, and it's like driving him crazy. >> Jamie Bernstein: Cool. >> I'll add two small pieces to the things you've mentioned. I don't know if Mark's aware, but about seven or eight years ago, when John Adams was here at the Library, it was a noontime session. And one of your colleagues, you know, -- >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Yeah. >> -- got that letter out, presented it to him, and he was properly contrite. [Laughter] So. >> He was what? >> Properly contrite. He was -- >> Jamie Bernstein: That's great. >> But it kind of -- you know, they kind of made him face it. It was funny. And speaking of atonal or 12-tone music, I shared this actually last night at a post-concert Q and A at the National Symphony, where they did the Berg Violin Concerto. I heard your father give a brilliant analysis of that piece at Harvard in 1973. I mean, he unlocked the whole piece for me. So he could -- he really could do everything. It was one of the few 12-tone pieces he really loved and performed and recorded, so. >> Jamie Bernstein: Cool. Great. >> Michael Barrett: Good one. >> Jamie Bernstein: It is. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: Any brave souls out there? Yes. Wait, wait, wait, wait. >> Oh, thank you. Thank you. I would love to know your father's favorite composition of his own and perhaps his favorite composer or composition by someone else. >> Jamie Bernstein: Oh, well, he was often asked that question. And he would always say that it -- that, you know, "they're my children and I don't have any favorites." And whenever my brother and sister and I are recounting this, Nina says, [whispering] "But of course I was the favorite." Cracks us up. I think that he had a very special place in his heart, though, for Mass because he put more of himself into Mass than he did in just about any other piece. It's so multifarious, just like he was, and it has so many different flavors and ingredients, just like him. So I think it has more authenticity, in a way, than any other piece he wrote. And as a result, I think he had a very special relationship to it. And that was why when it finally premiered and was met with mixed reviews, it really stung him because he was very vulnerable over that piece. >> Mark Eden Horowitz: I'm told that we're -- our time is sort of at an end. Two things. Well, and have a wonderful time at the concert. I know you will. There is a display of some of the treasures from the Bernstein collection in the Coolidge Lobby you might enjoy. And tomorrow, in the building across the street, we're doing a whole day of Bernstein-related events, talks. There'll be a huge display there, some performances, some things you've never heard before. So I hope many of you can join us. I think it's from 11:00 to 5:00. And you can pop in and out however you please. And thank you for coming. That's all. [ Applause ]