Leonard Bernstein's Influence In Music

Leonard Bernstein was born August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Samuel and Jennie Bernstein. Leonard at the age of eight Leonard’s aunt Clara introduced him to the piano, which would transform him from a frail boy to one of the most influential in music. Bernstein had found his first true love, the piano. He would sit at his window as a child and pretend to play for hours, until he received a piano of his own. He quickly learned to read music, and with some practice he was better than most adults. His first real piano lessons were from a neighbor’s daughter who taught him pieces such as “On to Victory” and “The Mountain Belle.” Even as a child, he would compose pieces and ask for his mother’s opinion, which he would continue to do

This eventually became an advantage for him. A man named Koussevitzky gave him his first job as an assistant, and would allow him to perform whenever Koussevitzky needed him to. This job kept him busy, so much so that he spent most of his spare time sleeping. The summer that would follow became the most important summer of his life. In 1942 Koussevitzky’s wife had died and he wanted to continue working, so he held a performance in Tanglewood, through his own funding and the funding of a few patrons. It was during this performance where he met David Oppenheim who would become his good

Here he did relatively well and was able to rent an apartment with Edys Merrill, a friend of a friend. They got along well, and spent most of their time in a bar with Bernstein playing the piano. During this time he worked very hard on his piece Jerimiah, which occupied much of his free time. Jerimiah would be one of his biggest success, even though it initially lost the competition held by the New England Conservatory. When he sent Jerimiah to Koussevitzky and Fritz Reiner the Curtis Institute conducting teacher. Reiner loved it and would invite him to conduct it with the Pittsburgh Symphony. Jeremiah had its premiere on January 28, 1944, at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh, and Bernstein would be the one to conduct it. The performance was a complete success. He would go on to conduct Jerimiah many times at the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and the New York Music Critics Circle, and would be over seventy radio stations nationwide. Jerimiah became so popular that he conducted it all over the world in cities such as Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Rochester, Prague and