On January 18, 1958, a hall full of young listeners at Carnegie Hall heard the New York Philharmonic's new music director ask a question that sounds simple and is not: what does music mean? Television cameras were rolling, and a generation was about to fall in love with an orchestra.
A question at Carnegie Hall
Leonard Bernstein had been music director of the New York Philharmonic for just two weeks when he led that first program, called "What Does Music Mean?". The Philharmonic had been giving concerts for children since 1924, when the pianist and conductor Ernest Schelling founded its Young People's Concerts. What changed in 1958 was that CBS put them on television, and Bernstein put his whole heart into them.
He did not stand at a lectern and recite facts. He sat at the piano, played a phrase, had the orchestra play it back, joked, sang, and invited the audience to listen for what he heard. Each program began with a question, such as what makes American music sound American, or what a conductor actually does. By the end of the hour, children who had never set foot in a concert hall had been given a way in.
The teacher behind the baton
Bernstein was already a famous composer and conductor, but the people closest to him saw him as a born teacher. Before the Young People's Concerts he had explained music on the television series Omnibus, once painting the opening page of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony across the studio floor so he could walk viewers through the composer's discarded drafts.
He wrote every Young People's Concert script himself, then worked with the production team to trim the wording, sharpen the examples and keep the pace lively. He described the series as part of his "educational mission", and he refused to talk down to his audience. The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page noticed this when he revisited the scripts: "It is startling to realize that Bernstein presumes a greater musical knowledge on the part of his children." Children, it turned out, rose to meet him.
Live, unedited and around the world
Every program was broadcast live, so there was no fixing mistakes afterwards. On concert days technical rehearsals could start as early as 6 a.m., followed by an orchestra rehearsal at 8, a dress rehearsal at 10 and the concert itself at noon before a packed house. In 1962 the series became the first concert series broadcast live from the new Lincoln Center.
The range was remarkable. Bernstein devoted hours to Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, Shostakovich and Holst, to jazz in the concert hall, to the Latin American spirit in music, and even to musical intervals and modes. The programs first aired on Saturday mornings, and they were considered important enough that for about three years CBS moved them into prime time in the evening before they settled on Sunday afternoons.
Over 14 years Bernstein led 53 Young People's Concerts. They were translated and shown in some 40 countries, and one history of the series estimates that at their height they reached nearly ten million viewers. The series won Emmy Awards for children's programming in 1961 and 1962.
“Among my favorite, most highly prized activities of my life.”Leonard Bernstein, on the Young People's Concerts, Quoted by the Leonard Bernstein Office, leonardbernstein.com
Stars in the making
Bernstein also used the series to open doors for young musicians. Special Young Performers programs introduced gifted teenagers and young adults to a national audience. In January 1963 the pianist André Watts, then 16, made his debut on a Young People's Concert. Bernstein said he made a special effort to find Black artists for these solo spots. Flutist Paula Robison and cellist Lynn Harrell were among the other young soloists.
Young conductors took the podium too, among them Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado, James DePreist, Sylvia Caduff and Helen Quach. Bernstein mentored many more, including Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop, who became two of the most celebrated American conductors of their time. Tilson Thomas took over the Young People's Concerts after Bernstein, leading them from 1971 to 1977.
A hundred years and still playing
Bernstein stepped down as music director in 1969 but kept leading the concerts until 1972, and he called them among the activities he prized most in his life. His scripts became a book, first published in 1961 and expanded over the years, and the broadcasts were later restored and released on video, including a nine-disc set of 27 programs in 2013, so new generations of children and teachers can still watch him at the piano. The Library of Congress has pointed to the series as proof of his mastery of both music education and television.
The series he made famous is still going. The Philharmonic marked 100 years of Young People's Concerts in the 2023-24 season, and today it presents them on Saturday afternoons for children aged six and up, with chances beforehand to try instruments and meet the musicians. A sister series, the Very Young People's Concerts, welcomes children aged three to six, and its host when it began in 2005, the violist Rebecca Young, went to her first Bernstein concert as a two-year-old and grew up to become the orchestra's associate principal viola. The orchestra currently reports more than 7,300 children and family members at its Young People's Concerts and more than 7,400 schoolchildren at special school performances, and some programs now feature music composed by children in its Very Young Composers program.
Bernstein believed that any child, given a good question and a great orchestra, could hear what he heard in music. Decades later, in concert halls, classrooms and living rooms around the world, children are still proving him right.
People in this story
Sources & further reading
- Young People's Concerts, Leonard Bernstein Office (leonardbernstein.com)
- Leonard Bernstein: The Educator, Carnegie Hall
- The New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts Marks Its 100th Anniversary, Playbill, 2023
- Young People's Concerts, Wikipedia
- Young People's Concerts, New York Philharmonic
- Education Impact, New York Philharmonic
- Leonard Bernstein and His Young People's Concerts (Alicia Kopfstein-Penk), Rowman & Littlefield, 2015
- Leonard Bernstein (America's Story from America's Library), Library of Congress, archived copy
Researched from the sources above and checked against them. Spotted an error? Tell us.
Tikkun olam in action. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.
