Leonard Bernstein Supported Our Efforts Fighting Religious Extremism in the 1980s

Leonard Bernstein. Photo: Photo by Susesch Bayat; Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon.

Leonard Bernstein was not shy about sharing his political beliefs with the world. Nor was he afraid of the various epithets — liberal, Jew, antiwar, radical chic, commie-pinko-queer — which over the years stuck to him like burrs on his coattails. He spoke out and fought doggedly for the causes he believed in. He donated fees, wrote letters and campaign songs, in order to communicate his fervent hope for a better world.”

New York, N.Y. Leonard Bernstein [Luce Index™ 95] was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim.

Born in Massachusetts in 1918, Bernstein died at 72 in the Dakota, on Manhattan‘s Upper West Side near Lincoln Center where he had conducted.

In an essay entitled “My Father’s Idealism,” Bernstein’s son Jamie writes:

“Leonard Bernstein grew up in a world of stark political contrasts. From the Depression to Roosevelt and the New Deal, from Nazism to World War II and the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, young Bernstein witnessed a world full of evil that was occasionally tempered by powerful forces of good. In the mid-1960’s, just as life and public justice in America seemed to be making some progress, Bernstein and his contemporaries found themselves swept up in the upheavals of three devastating assassinations: President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and then five years later, Rev. Martin Luther King and President Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy. And then there was yet another long and wounding war, in Vietnam.

“Through it all, my father clung hard to the belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists had the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace. After all, he reasoned, if humans could create and appreciate musical harmony, then surely they were capable of replicating that very same harmony in the world they lived in.

“Leonard Bernstein was not shy about sharing his political beliefs with the world. Nor was he afraid of the various epithets — liberal, Jew, antiwar, radical chic, commie-pinko-queer — which over the years stuck to him like burrs on his coattails. He spoke out and fought doggedly for the causes he believed in. He donated fees, wrote letters and campaign songs, even entire musical works, in order to communicate his fervent hope for a better world.”

Leonard Bernstein Supported Our Efforts Fighting Religious Extremism in the 1980s