Lenny. And weep.

One of the reasons I love living in New York City is because Leonard Bernstein lived right up the block. And right up the block they filmed the location shots for his masterpiece, WEST SIDE STORY. When WEST SIDE STORY opened, most people complained as they left the theatre that none of the songs were "hummable."  What a window into how far ahead of his time the Maestro was, as it is now one of the most recognizable scores in the world.

Listen to his "Tonight":

What might have easily been a pedestrian, conventional love ballad, he underscores with breathless syncopation and our hearts flutter along as these two infatuated youngsters fall in love on a fire escape. The key shifts wildly, keeping us off balance, and each verse ends in an ominous minor key foreshadowing the star-crossed nature of a fleeting romance. It is the musical equivalent of pure joy, with the haunting notion ever present that all of this might not last or end well. Pay special attention to the young Sondheim's lyrics here. They are pitch-perfect for this song, the youth, the vigor, and the sweet, almost inarticulate ways a drop-out gang member and an immigrant dress-maker might describe their indescribable feelings. "With suns and moons all over the place." "Today, the world was just an address, a place for me to live in, no better than all right. But here you are, and what was just a world is a star."

While Bernstein was writing this score, he was simultaneously writing his opera TROUBLE IN TAHITI, a sad story loosely based on the demise of his parents' marriage. 

Think of "Tonight" and all of its breathless promise, now listen to TROUBLE IN TAHITI; Scene 4 (from 0:00 to 2:40):

Achingly beautiful, about an aching subject: A duet sung apart, a couple utterly lost to themselves and to each other. Alone, together. It is a duet of regret, of pointless lies, and running through all of it is an unlikely strain of hope. I think that is what I most admire about Bernstein, that he tenders hope among the hopeless, that he tempers ecstasy with restraint if not sadness. The sweep of this score is monumental, funereal, a requiem of the highest calibre. It is almost inconceivable that Bernstein was capable of such emotional breadth during the same period in his life.

Bernstein was a deeply spiritual man, and drew from his Jewish background and his profound curiosity in Christianity to give us both the CHICHESTER PSALMS and, under commission by Jacqueline Kennedy to open the theatre in her husband's name, his MASS.

Listen to his "Adonai-ro-i:"

Bernstein's gift for melody is all over this piece. Like any good artist, especially any good artist of the late 20th Century, he understood that less is more. This is a simple melodic line rendered lush by the harmonics, and surprising by the occasional flight into the atonal. The harsh staccato section is battled into submission, bathed and washed and cleansed by the return of his stunning and now fully realized melodic line at the end.

And, out of all the transcendent music in MASS, I choose the finale for you:

It is a synthesis of all the themes he has introduced earlier in the score. It builds from the simple song we heard earlier, now sung by a boy, and builds into a canon of glory, of praise, of celebration. Allow yourself to be swept up in Bernstein's gradual rise, let your emotion soar with this score the way it inevitably will if you simply let it wash over you. And feel the enormous peace, perhaps, certainly the peace I feel every time I allow myself the privilege of listening to this.

I've written and often that Leonard Bernstein will be revered by future generations in the way we revere say, Brahms and Mahler and Stravinsky. We don't quite yet. Because he is still mortal to many of us the lucky who lived while he did. But as he passes further into the past, he will pass deeper into our collective psyches. And his music will move us in deeper ways, this man, this genius, who could score the feelings in our hearts, the specific pains and joys, the ordinary and extraordinary, and make us feel things we didn't even know we were capable of feeling. 

I live down the block from where he wrote this music. And sometimes, I have to pinch myself.