On his book Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician
Cover Interview of October 06, 2009
A close-up
I wrote the Introduction as a mise en scène that would set the stage for what comes next—a tale of presidential betrayal of an American artist (by Truman and Eisenhower). In a larger sense, my work indicates how the arts are not separated from the domestic and international political milieus, from political and social forces. In other words, the aesthetic terrain is not in some pristine place but is instead linked to structures of power.
I think that my book makes much of this clear by focusing not on abstract theory but on the concrete, human case. Leonard Bernstein was, of course, a composer and conductor living in Cold War America. As composer of Broadway musical theater, he was subject to the demands of the Cold War culture industry for creative expression. Dissident and daring, Bernstein tested the limits imposed by orthodoxy—e.g., by naming and opposing the military-industrial complex and its adventures and expeditions around the globe. But Bernstein did not broach those limits.
In the sixties and later on, Bernstein did attack that complex, its promotion of an expansionist foreign policy and its most visible manifestation, the war in Vietnam. And Bernstein did not stop there: he also attacked racism and homophobia, in the 1977 Songfest and in public address.
The reader will learn from the section on Gustav Mahler how Bernstein’s championing of that composer fits into the socio-political analyses of Bernstein’s life-long projects.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
A close-up
I wrote the Introduction as a mise en scène that would set the stage for what comes next—a tale of presidential betrayal of an American artist (by Truman and Eisenhower). In a larger sense, my work indicates how the arts are not separated from the domestic and international political milieus, from political and social forces. In other words, the aesthetic terrain is not in some pristine place but is instead linked to structures of power.
I think that my book makes much of this clear by focusing not on abstract theory but on the concrete, human case. Leonard Bernstein was, of course, a composer and conductor living in Cold War America. As composer of Broadway musical theater, he was subject to the demands of the Cold War culture industry for creative expression. Dissident and daring, Bernstein tested the limits imposed by orthodoxy—e.g., by naming and opposing the military-industrial complex and its adventures and expeditions around the globe. But Bernstein did not broach those limits.
In the sixties and later on, Bernstein did attack that complex, its promotion of an expansionist foreign policy and its most visible manifestation, the war in Vietnam. And Bernstein did not stop there: he also attacked racism and homophobia, in the 1977 Songfest and in public address.
The reader will learn from the section on Gustav Mahler how Bernstein’s championing of that composer fits into the socio-political analyses of Bernstein’s life-long projects.