A Musical Life Explored

A new course aims to shed light on the formative years of famous Harvard alum and “West Side Story” composer Leonard Bernstein ’39. As part of the course, to be taught this spring jointly by Watts Professor of Music Kay K. Shelemay and Mason Professor of Music Carol J. Oja, students will interview people who knew the world-renowned conductor and composer.

“There have been a number of Berstein biographies,” Oja explained. “Each biography, of course, covers the whole of his life, but the depth of information about the early years is not huge.”

Bernstein’s works are often credited with bridging the gap between classical and popular music for the general public.

“It’s the New York Bernstein that people know, and we want to know the Boston Bernstein,” Shelemay said.

Bernstein, a Boston native, made his unofficial conducting debut in a performance of “The Birds” while still an undergraduate. After Harvard, he found enormous success both as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic and as a composer.

The course will get at the Boston Bernstein through interviewing people who knew him during his early years, both before and during his time at Harvard. Professors are still searching for more people who knew Bernstein in his early years or were affiliated with his organizations and schools.

“We’re approaching the outer limits of the time frame to talk to people who knew him. The time is ripe for the project,” Shelemay said.

Both professors are certain that a great deal of information remains undiscovered.

“There’s a lot of material out there. It’s one of those projects that’s potentially explosive,” Oja said.

The course will consist primarily of interviews and research conducted by the students.

“There are probably not many undergraduate classes at Harvard where you get to do this type of new research,” the course’s teaching fellow, Emily T. Abrams, said.

She added that students will be able to follow their own research interests in choosing who to interview.

Alex Y. Shiozaki ’09, a potential music joint concentrator and Bernstein aficionado, had not heard about the seminar prior to being contacted for this article. “There’s not much information available about it on the web,” he said. But Shiozaki expressed interest in taking the seminar or one similar to it in the future.

“In my opinion it’s important to understand the composer when playing a piece,” Shiozaki said. “The composer should have some say in the way the piece is played. One way you can discover what the composer would have wanted is by learning about the context.”

Oja said she hopes the course will attract students with a variety of interests beyond music.

“We want people in music, but we want more than that,” Oja said. “This appeals to people in Jewish studies, in gender studies.”

Shelemay also stressed the range of interests and skills that the seminar will intersect with, adding that “what’s great about seminars like this is you get professors and students with different expertise.”

The culmination of the Bernstein seminar will be a festival celebrating Bernstein’s life, to be held at Harvard in October 2006. In addition to performances of Bernstein’s music, the seminar participants will put together an exhibition about his early years.

But Shelemay said the compilation of students’ original research is not the only goal of the course. “What we find will be the icing on the cake,” Shelemay said. “But the cake itself is the process.”