Just a brief note today, before I return to the work of my clients: Leonard Bernstein served our country well, bridging the chasm between Beethoven and The Beatles in a lifelong ecstasy dedicated to teaching and the performing arts. When his funeral procession made its way from Manhattan to Greenwood Cemetery, construction workers doffed their hats and shouted out, “Goodbye, Lenny.”
This new biography does a great service to history and Bernstein’s legacy, and this review is quite smart. It’s an interesting rhetorical move, though, to make the argument so early in an essay not to proceed to the next paragraph.
(Perhaps it was an editor’s decision. Ha!) There are, of course, many more things to say about Bernstein, whose work as a teacher reached millions of young Americans via the Young People’s Concerts, and included lessons about the virtues of The Kinks and The Beatles, too. I don’t have time to make the argument here, but I suggest that Bernstein played a fundamental role in the capacity of the American public to regard the *Sgt. Pepper’s* LP as a work of art.
Thanks for reading, and have a brilliant weekend!
