| A
Leonard Bernstein: Chronology of a Life in Music |
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| The Not-So-Humble Boston Beginnings | |
| 1918 | Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts of immigrant parents from czarist Russia |
| 1928 | Began his first piano lessons at home on the piano given by an aunt. On the day the piano arrived, he knew for sure his life was going to be all about music. |
| 1929 | Graduated from William Lloyd Garrison Grammar School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he learned to read music based on the solfege system and where he found "the most shining hours" to be "the singing hours"; entered Boston Latin School |
| 1930 | Began piano lessons with Susan Williams at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston |
| 1932 | Gave his first piano recital, attended his first symphony concert and began piano studies and a life-long association with Helen Coates; began but never finished his boyhood composition - a piano concerto subtitled "The War of the Gypsies and the Russians" |
| 1934 | Produced and performed
in the first Sharon Players production - a spoof of Bizet's Carmen,
at the Singers' Inn in Sharon where the Bernsteins had a summer cottage Debuted as a piano soloist playing the first movement of Grieg's Piano Concerto with the Boston Public School Orchestra |
| 1935 | Staged
and performed in his second Sharon Players' opera production - The
Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan; graduated from Boston Latin Made his first radio broadcasts on station WBZ, Boston - a series of 15-minute piano recitals, sponsored by his father's cosmetics company Entered Harvard University, where the intellectual stimuli compensated for the restricted music curriculum; began piano studies with Heinrich Gebhard; composed a 4-minute setting of Psalm 148 for voice and piano |
| 1936 | Staged and performed in the Sharon Players' production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore |
| 1937 | First
professionally performed as a piano soloist at the Sanders Theatre
in Cambridge where he played Ravel's Piano Concerto with the State
Symphony Orchestra Met and began life-long friendships with: the American composer Aaron Copland, the Russian conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (who were among the first to steer him into taking up a conducting career, with the potential of becoming America's great conductor), and actor-scriptwriter of Broadway and Hollywood musicals Adolph Green |
| 1938 | Became Music Editor of The Harvard Advocate |
| 1939 | Graduated
cum laude in music from Harward; wrote an insightful senior thesis
entitled "The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music" Made a successful conducting debut at the Sanders Theatre, conducting the Greek Society production of The Birds, based on the satire by Aristophanes, and for which he composed the music Mounted to great acclaim Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock at Harvard, featuring "the most talented student cast this [music] department has ever seen." (Boston Post) Began composing his "Hebrew Song" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra set to text from the Lamentations of Jeremiah; sketched piano duets entitled Scenes from the City of Sin; and drafted a piano transcription of Copland's El Salon Mexico Entered the Curtis Institute in Philadephia where he studied conducting under Fritz Reiner, piano with Isabelle Vengerova, orchestration with Randall Thompson, and score-reading with Renee Longy Miquelle |
| 1940 | Chosen
as one of five students for active participation in Sergei Koussevitzky's
conducting class at the Tanglewood summer music school, then known
as the Berkshire Music Center; conducted Randall Thompson's Symphony
No.2, the opening piece of the Berkshire Music Center's first Institute
Orchestra concert Composed his Sonata for Violin and Piano; performed but never published, it became the source of thematic material for his later works Facsimile and The Age of Anxiety |
| 1941 | Conducted
the Curtis Orchestra twice, performed Sibelius violin sonatina, the
Stravinsky concerto for two pianos on radio, and a succession of other
piano and conducting performances Graduated from Curtis Institute; opened a studio for the teaching of Piano and Musical Analysis |
| 1942 | Attended
second summer season at Tanglewood; conducted the Boston Pops on the
Esplanade, the final Institute Orchestra concert, became assistant
to Koussevitzky Completed Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, his first published work, "full of jazzy, rocky rhythms" which shortly premiered at the Boston Institute of Modern Art, played the piano for the first time in Boston's Symphony Hall as accompanist to the BSO principal cellist Moved to NY where he completed his first symphony Jeremiah while working at various musical jobs, waiting for the golden conducting opportunity - and fame - to knock on his door |
The
LEONARD BERNSTEIN
Pages
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Front Page
Leonard Bernstein:
the last 10 years
-a look at the book by T.R Seiler
Unbewußt, höchste Lust
- on the recording of Tristan
Heights of Rapture
- a foreword by Hildegard Behrens
***
Chronology of a
Life in Music:
The not-so-humble beginnings
Big time in the Big Apple
At the helm of the NYPO
The last 20 years
Discography:
The Composer
The Conductor / Pianist
Videography:
The Teacher /
the Musician in performance
and in rehearsal
Books
by and on Bernstein
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