Classical music is a feeling, Jim!
When the Victrola was invented and first commercialized, and music was needed to play on it, classical music was the only candidate. The people who ran the companies that sold the stuff thought that way. Things changed, of course, but the notion that classical was music carried down. In our house in the 50s we had a couple of Bing Crosby, a few Broadway show recordings, and a slew - well 10 or so - of classical discs - that nobody played. The classical era was over by the time Leonard Bernstein began his Young People's Concert series with the New York Philharmonic.
I had to take interest in it when Leonard Bernstein was on the TV. I recall, I could be wrong, it might have been a Sunday morning, and I was babysitting my sister when the folks were at church. The kids going into the Philharmonic looked really cool, like New Yorkers - but kids! Bernstein himself was a wigged-out cat.
I remember one evening at dinner making conversation with my father, and remarking, after perhaps he said something about cartoons in disparagement, that cartoons were good, in fact, they brought classical music to kids. Where could I have learned that except from Leonard Bernstein? [For his part, dad explained to me that the cartoon makers were probably out to avoid paying composers and music publishers.]
Bernstein's Young People’s concerts are out on DVD and reviewed last week in NYT Critic's Notebook. The writer gets Tom Wolfe's scathing depiction of Bernstein out of the way – Wolfe called compulsive Leonard The Village Explainer; says writer Anthony Tommasini: 'Our global village could use him now.'
He describes the first program. The question was: What does music mean? Bernstein leads the orchestra in the William Tell Overture. He asks the kids to identify the music and what it is about. Well of course it is about the Lone Ranger.
The kids shout out 'Cowboys, Indians, Bandits, The Wild West.'
No, says Leonard. 'Music is never about anything. Put images out of your mind.' Music is, says Lenny. He conducts the Strauss tone poem Don Quixote and makes up a story to go along. It I a silly story of snoring and prisons, but the kids can buy it. His premise as told by Tommasini is
Our feelings are often so deep, difficult and confusing that there are no words for them. Music names them, says L.B., but in notes and movement.
Concurs Jake: 'Like Looney Tunes.'
Related:
When Network Television Was Willing to Educate - NYT, Nov 18, 2004
Also of note:
Monitors of North Korean News Note Dip in Reverence for Kim - NYT, Nov 18, 2004
Dayton Allen, 85, Cartoon Voice Actor, Dies - NYT, Nov 18, 2004
10:39:01 PM 
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