William J. Bernstein is an American financial theorist. He is known for his research in the field of modern portfolio theory and for his finance books for individual investors who wish to manage their own equity portfolios. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Biography

Bernstein is a proponent of the equity or index allocation school of thought, believing that all equity selection strategies should be focused on allocating between asset classes, rather than selecting individual stocks and bonds, or from the timing of their sales. Bernstein's first book, ''The Intelligent Asset Allocator'', makes this case in detail; his second book'', The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio'' (McGraw-Hill, 2002; ISBN 0071385290), is aimed for those less comfortable with statistical thought. It also puts asset-class returns into long-term historical perspective.

Bernstein is a proponent of modern portfolio theory, which stands in stark contrast to the view that skilled managers can succeed in picking particular investments that will outperform the market, whether through market timing, momentum investing, or finding assets whose future value have been underestimated by the market. He argues that the financial research literature shows that most return is determined by the asset allocation of the portfolio rather than by asset selection.

Bernstein's third book, ''The Birth of Plenty'', is a history of the world's standard of living; it proposes four conditions that have historically been necessary for it to rise. His fourth book, ''A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World,'' published in April 2008 by Grove Atlantic, is a history of trade. In 2009 his fifth book was published "The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between" which continues the theme of asset allocation in a more accessible way.

Bernstein holds a PhD in chemistry and an MD; he practiced neurology until retiring from the field.

References

External links

Official web site

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:American writers Category:American chemists Category:American economists Category:American physicians

de:William Bernstein

Aaron Copland (; November 14, 1900 December 2, 1990) was an American classical composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers". He is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 40s in a deliberately more accessible style than his earlier pieces, including the ballets ''Appalachian Spring'', ''Billy the Kid'', ''Rodeo'' and his ''Fanfare for the Common Man''. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. However, he wrote music in different styles at different periods of his life: his early works incorporated jazz or avant-garde elements whereas his later music incorporated serial techniques. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.

Biography

Early life

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn of Lithuanian Jewish descent, the last of five children, on November 14, 1900. Before emigrating from Russia to the United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland, Anglicized his surname "''Kaplan''" to "''Copland''" while waiting in Scotland en route to America. Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H.M. Copland's, at 628 Washington Avenue (which Aaron would later describe as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's"), on the corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue, and most of the children helped out in the store. His father was a staunch Democrat. The family members were active in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, where Aaron celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. Not especially athletic, the sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read Horatio Alger stories on his front steps.

Copland's father had no musical interest at all, but his mother, Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang and played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children. Of his siblings, oldest brother Ralph was the most advanced musically, proficient on the violin, while his sister Laurine had the strongest connection with Aaron, giving him his first piano lessons, promoting his musical education, and supporting him in his musical career. She attended the Metropolitan Opera School and was a frequent opera goer. She often brought home libretti for Aaron to study. Copland attended Boys' High School and in the summer went to various camps. Most of his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales. From 1913 to 1917 he took music lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn, who taught him the standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker recital.

By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Copland decided to become a composer. After attempts to further his music study from a correspondence course, Copland took formal lessons in harmony, theory, and composition from Rubin Goldmark, a noted teacher and composer of American music (who had given George Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark gave the young Copland a solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition, as he stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." But Copland also commented that the maestro had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss.

Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Romantic style. But he had also composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share with his teacher. In addition to regularly attending the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony, where he heard the standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After graduating from high school, Copland played in dance bands. Continuing his musical education, he received further piano lessons from Victor Wittgenstein, who found his student to be "quiet, shy, well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism." Copland's fascination with the Russian Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a rebuke from his father and uncles. In spite of that, in his early adult life Copland would develop friendships with people with socialist and communist leanings.

Studying in Paris

From 1917 to 1921, Copland composed juvenile works of short piano pieces and art songs. Copland's passion for the latest European music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer, inspired him to go to Paris for further study. His father wanted him to go to college, but his mother's vote in the family conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France, he studied at the Fontainebleau School of Music with noted pianist and pedagogue Isidor Philipp and with Paul Vidal. But finding Vidal too much like Goldmark, Copland switched to famed teacher Nadia Boulanger, then aged thirty-four. He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge had ever before thought of studying with a woman." She interviewed him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent immediately."

Boulanger had as many as forty students at once and employed a formal regimen that Copland had to follow, too. Copland found her incisive mind much to his liking and stated: "This intellectual Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire, is not only familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared for anything worse in the way of dissonance. But make no mistake...A more charming womanly woman never lived." Though he planned on only one year abroad, he studied with her for three years, finding her eclectic approach inspired his own broad musical taste.

Adding to the heady cultural atmosphere of the early 1920s in Paris was the presence of expatriate American writers Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, as well as artists like Picasso, Chagall, and Modigliani. Also influential on the new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, Sartre, and André Gide, the latter cited by Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré, which helped spread his fame and stature in the music community. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction like many of the expatriate members of the Lost Generation, Copland returned to America optimistic and enthusiastic about the future.

1925 to 1950

Upon returning to America, Copland was determined to make his way as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on New York City's Upper West Side, which kept him close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that area for the next thirty years, later moving to Westchester County, New York. Copland lived frugally and survived financially with help from two $2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships—one in 1925 and one in 1926. Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal loans kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II. Also important were wealthy patrons who supported the arts community during the Depression, underwriting performances, publication and promotion of musical events and composers.

Soon after his return, Copland was introduced to the artistic circle of Alfred Stieglitz and met many of the leading artists of that time. Stieglitz's conviction that the American artist should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy" influenced Copland and a whole generation of artists and photographers, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Walker Evans. Evans' photographs inspired portions of Copland's opera ''The Tender Land''.

In his quest to take up Stieglitz's challenge, Copland had few established American contemporaries to emulate apart from Carl Ruggles and the reclusive Charles Ives, although the 1920s were Golden Years for American popular music and jazz, with George Gershwin, Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong leading the way. Later, however, Copland joined up with his younger contemporaries and formed a group termed the "commando unit," which included Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, and Walter Piston. They collaborated in joint concerts showcasing their work to new audiences.

Copland's relationship with the "commando unit" was one of both support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them together. The five young American composers helped promote each other and their works but also had testy exchanges, inflamed by the assertion of the press that Copland was the "truly American" composer. Going beyond the five, Copland was generous with his time with nearly every American young composer he met during his life, later earning the title the "Dean of American Music."

Mounting troubles with the ''Symphonic Ode'' (1929) and ''Short Symphony'' (1933) caused him to rethink the paradigm of composing orchestral music for a select group, as it was a financially contradictory approach, particularly in the Depression. In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), as composers sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: first, music that students could easily learn, and second, music which would have wider appeal, such as incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc. Copland undertook both goals, starting in the mid 1930s.

Perhaps motivated by the plight of children during the Depression, around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for young audiences, in accordance with the first goal of American Gebrauchsmusik. These works included piano pieces (''The Young Pioneers'') and an opera (''The Second Hurricane'').

During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe, Africa and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and would return often to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works, ''El Salón México'', which he completed four years later in 1936. This and other incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik, creating music of wide appeal.

During this time, he composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal," one of his first pieces to convey the landscape of the American West. Branching out into theater, Copland also played an important role providing musical advice and inspiration to The Group Theater—Stella Adler's and Lee Strasberg's "method" acting school. The Group Theater followed Copland's musical agenda and focused on plays that illuminated the American experience. After Hitler and Mussolini's attacks on Spain in 1936, leftist parties had united in a Popular Front against Fascism. Many Group Theater members were influenced by Marxism and other progressive philosophies, and several had joined the Communist Party, including Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets. Copland also had contact later with other major American playwrights, including Thorton Wilder, William Inge, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee and considered projects with all of them. During the 1930s, Copland wrote incidental music for several plays, including Irwin Shaw's "Quiet City" (1939), considered one of his most personal and poignant scores.

In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for ''Of Mice and Men'' and ''Our Town'', and received sizable commissions. In the same year, he composed the radio score "John Henry", based on the folk ballad. But it wasn’t until the worldwide market for classical recordings boomed after World War II that he achieved economic security. Even after securing a comfortable income, he continued to write, teach, lecture and eventually conduct.

Demonstrating his broad range, Copland in the 1930s began composing music for ballet, including his highly successful ''Billy the Kid'' (1939), the second of four ballets he scored (after ''Hear Ye! Hear Ye!'' (1934)). Copland's ballet music established him as an authentic composer of American music much as Stravinsky's ballet scores established him with Russian music. Copland's timing was excellent; he helped fill a vacuum for the American choreographers who needed suitable music to score their own nationalistic dance repertory.

In keeping with the wartime period, Copland's "Piano Sonata" (1941) was a piece characterized as "grim, nervous, elegiac, with pervasive bell-like tolling of alarm and mourning." It was later adapted to "Day on Earth," a landmark American dance by Doris Humphrey.

Copland started to publish some of his lectures in the 1930s, "What to Listen for in Music" being one of the most notable of his writings. Copland eventually moved over to rival ASCAP. Through royalties and with his great success from 1940 on, Copland amassed a multi-million dollar fortune by the time of his death.

The decade of the 1940s was arguably Copland's most productive, and it firmly established his worldwide fame. His two ballet scores for ''Rodeo'' (1942) and ''Appalachian Spring'' (1944) were huge successes. His pieces ''Lincoln Portrait'' and ''Fanfare for the Common Man'' have become patriotic standards (See Popular works, below). Also important was the ''Third Symphony''. Composed in a two-year period from 1944 to 1946, it became the most popular American symphony of the 20th Century.

In 1945, Copland contributed to ''Jubilee Variation'', a work commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony in which ten America composers collaborated. But the piece is seldom heard in the concert hall. Copland's ''In the Beginning'' (1947) is a choral work using the first chapter and the first seven verses of the second chapter of Genesis from the King James Version of the Bible and is a masterpiece of the choral repertory.

Copland's ''Clarinet Concerto'' (1948), scored for solo clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for bandleader and clarinetist Benny Goodman and a complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the ''Piano Concerto'' (1926). His "Four Piano Blues" is an introspective composition with a jazz influence.

Copland finished the 1940s with two film scores, one for William Wyler's 1949 film, ''The Heiress'' and one for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel ''The Red Pony''.

In 1949, he returned to Europe to find Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-War radical musicians. He also met with the proponents of the twelve-tone school (Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg) and found himself having greater sympathy for them than he did for the French, whom he felt were drifting too far from classical principles to suit his taste.

1950s and 1960s

In 1950, Copland received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Rome, which he did the following year. Around this time, he also composed his ''Piano Quartet'', adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition, and ''Old American Songs'' (1950), premiered by William Warfield.

Because of the political climate of that era, ''A Lincoln Portrait'' was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower. That same year, Copland was called before Congress, where he testified that he was never a communist.

Despite the difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies posed, Copland nonetheless traveled extensively during the 1950s and early 1960s, observing the avant-garde styles of Europe while experiencing the new school of Soviet music. In addition, he was rather taken with the work of Toru Takemitsu while in Japan and began a correspondence with him that would last over the next decade. Copland wrote of the Japanese composer: "He has the 'pure gold' touch, he chooses his notes carefully and meaningfully." Copland also gained exposure to the latest musical trends in Poland and Scandinavia. In observing these new musical forms, Copland revised his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he encountered. In particular, while Copland explained the importance of the work of John Cage and others (in his chapter titled "The Music of Chance"), he found that these radical trends in music which appealed to those "who enjoy teetering on the edge of chaos" were less likely to gain the appreciation of a wider audience "who envisage art as a bulwark against the irrationality of man's nature." As he summarized: "I’ve spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts."

In 1954, Copland received a commission from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to create music for the opera ''The Tender Land'', based on James Agee's ''Let Us Now Praise Famous Men''. Copland had been leery of writing an opera, being especially aware of the pitfalls of that form, including weak libretti and demanding production values. Nevertheless, Copland decided to try his hand at "la forme fatale," especially as the 1950s were boom times for American playwrights, with Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Thorton Wilder doing some of their best work. In spite of its flaws, the opera has established itself as one of the few American operas in the standard repertory.

Copland exerted a major influence on the compositional style of an entire generation of American composers, including his friend and protégé Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works and cites Copland's "aesthetic, simplicity with originality" as being his strongest and most influential traits.

Later life

From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. Though not enamored with the prospect, he found himself without new ideas for composition, saying: "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." Copland was a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the US and the UK. He made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records. In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from ''Appalachian Spring'' and ''The Tender Land''; these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony). From 1960 to his death, he resided at Cortlandt Manor, New York. His home, known as Rock Hill, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. It was further designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008. Copland's health deteriorated through the 1980s, and he died of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on December 2, 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow). Much of his large estate was bequeathed to the creation of the Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $600,000 per year to performing groups.

Personal life

Copland was a calm, affable, modest, and mild-mannered man, who masked his feelings. Even friends found it hard to crack his façade. Although shy, he preferred to be in a crowd rather than alone. He lived simply and approached composing in the same manner. He was an avid reader. He always remained thrifty, even after he achieved substantial wealth. In company, Copland could be "almost devilishly droll" and fun-loving. His tact served him well in his private life and in his public life as a moderator, committee man, and teacher. Copland was a constant and diligent worker and a night owl, who composed primarily at the piano and at a relatively slow pace. He was careful in assembling and storing his documents and scores, so he could later find and re-use earlier ideas and themes.

Deciding not to follow the example of his father, a solid Democrat, Copland never enrolled as a member of any political party, but he espoused a general progressive view and had strong ties with numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including Odets. Copland supported the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1936 presidential election, at the height of his involvement with The Group Theater, and remained a committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he regarded as having been instigated by the United States. He condemned it as, "almost worse for art than the real thing". Throw the artist "into a mood of suspicion, ill-will, and dread that typifies the cold war attitude and he'll create nothing". In keeping with these attitudes, Copland was a strong supporter of the Presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. As a result, he was later investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s and found himself blacklisted. Copland was included on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations. Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn questioned Copland about his lecturing abroad, neglecting completely Copland's works which made a virtue of American values. Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and were closed in 1975. Though taxing of his time, energy, and emotional state, Copland's career and international artistic reputation were not seriously affected by the McCarthy probes. In any case, beginning in 1950, Copland, who had been appalled at Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists, began resigning from participation in leftist groups. He decried the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy.

Composer

Influences

Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin, Debussy, Verdi and the Russian composers. Some of his preferences might also have been formed by the anti-German feelings during World War I, as later he studied German music. Copland's curiosity about the latest music from Debussy and Scriabin was frustrated by the fact that sheet music for "avant-garde" works was expensive at that time and hard to come by. Of all her students, she listed Copland first. Copland especially admired Boulanger's total grasp of all classical music, and he was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of conception and elegance in proportion." Following her model, he studied all periods of classical music and all forms—from madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano, small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater and film. Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense of forward motion...the feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity." Copland stated that an ideal music might combine Mozart's "spontaneity and refinement" with Palestrina's "purity" and Bach's "profundity".

Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel, Roussel, and Satie, as well as Les six, a group that included Milhaud, Poulenc, and Honegger. Webern, Berg, and Bartók also impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated debate. These "moderns" were discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including the use of jazz and quarter-tone music. Serge Koussevitzky had just arrived in Paris and was adding to the ferment by conducting and promoting the new music of Russia and France. Later he would conduct many Copland premieres in New York. Among the first performances that Copland attended was Milhaud's ''La création du monde'', which caused riots in Paris. Milhaud was Copland's inspiration for some of his earlier "jazzy" works. He was also exposed to Schoenberg and admired his earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's ''Pierrot Lunaire'' a landmark work comparable to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." Copland even tried out Schoenberg's innovative twelve-tone system and adapted it to his style.

Above all others, Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite twentieth century composer. Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality is apparent in many of his works. Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects," "bold use of dissonance," and "hard, dry, crackling sonority."

Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was jazz. Although familiar with jazz back in America—having listened to it and also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the impression of such music heard in one's own country...when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time." His earlier works especially demonstrate the influence of jazz rhythmic, timbral and harmonic practices. That influence is apparent in a few later works, such as the ''Clarinet Concerto'' commissioned by Benny Goodman. During the late 1920s and 1930s, Copland sought out jazz at the Cotton Club and heard Duke Ellington, Benny Carter and Bix Beiderbecke, among others. Of Duke Ellington among other jazz composers, Copland said he was "the master of them all."

Although Copland was intrigued by the idea of a "jazz concerto" and "symphonic jazz," his ''Concerto for Piano and Orchestra'' did not succeed in that form as had those of Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin, who was praised by such eminent musical exiles as Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky (Gershwin had recently died at 38 and so was no longer a potential rival). Yet, enthusiastic as he was about jazz throughout his life, Copland also recognized its limitations:

"With the [Piano] Concerto I felt I had done all I could with the idiom, considering its limited emotional scope. True, it was an easy way to be American in musical terms, but all American music could not possibly be confined to two dominant jazz moods – the blues and the snappy number."

Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works. Copland pointed out in summarizing the American character of his music, "the optimistic tone", "his love of rather large canvases", "a certain directness in expression of sentiment", and "a certain songfulness". As he advanced in his career (by 1941), he said of himself and advised other composers:

"I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanisms [folksongs and folk rhythms]. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature it will also be American in quality."

In contradiction to this statement, however, he continued to look for and employ folk material for several more years.

Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation with Schönberg's twelve-tone system, resulting in two major works, the ''Piano Quartet'' (1950) and the ''Piano Fantasy'' (1957).

Early work

Copland's earliest compositions before leaving for Paris were short works for piano and some art songs, inspired mostly by Liszt and Debussy. He experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones. In ''Three Moods'' (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled "Jazzy", which he noted "is based on two jazz melodies and ought to make the old professors sit up and take notice".

One of Copland's first significant works upon returning from his studies in Paris was the necromantic ballet ''Grohg''. This ballet, suggested to Copland by the film ''Nosferatu'', a free adaptation of the Dracula tale, provided the source material for his later ''Dance Symphony''. Originally intended as an orchestral exercise while he was studying in Paris, Copland completed it as a full orchestral score after returning to New York in 1925. It too had "jazz elements" as did many of Copland's works in the 1920s.

Copland's ''Symphony for Organ and Orchestra'' (1924) brought him into contact with Serge Koussevitzky, a conductor known as a champion of "new music", and another figure who would prove to be influential in Copland's life, perhaps the second most important after Boulanger. Koussevitzky performed twelve Copland works during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Symphony. Copland's relationship with Koussevitzky was apparently unique, as his interpretations of Copland's works reflected the particular admiration that the latter had for the young composer. Copland's ''Music for the Theatre'' (1925) and the ''Piano Concerto'' (1926) were both composed for Koussevitzky.

Other major works of his first period include the ''Piano Variations'' (1930), and the ''Short Symphony'' (1933). However, this jazz-inspired period was relatively brief, as his style evolved toward the goal of writing more accessible works using folk sources.

Popular works

Impressed with the success of Virgil Thomson's "Four Saints in Three Acts", Copland wrote ''El Salón México'' between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular acclaim that contrasted the relative obscurity of most of his previous works. It appears he intended it to be a popular favorite, as he wrote in 1927: "It seems a long, long time since anyone has written an ''Espana'' or a ''Bolero''—the kind of brilliant piece that everyone loves." Copland derived freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s. This work also marked the return of jazz patterns to Copland's compositional style, though they appeared in a more subdued form than before and were no longer the centerpiece. Chávez conducted the premiere, and ''El Salón México'' became an international hit, gaining Copland wide recognition.

Copland achieved his first major success in ballet music with his groundbreaking score ''Billy the Kid'', based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring. The ballet was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary, adapting the "strong technique and intense charm of Astaire" and other American dancers. It was distinctive in its use of polyrhythm and polyharmony, particularly in the cowboy songs. The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling "I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received." John Martin wrote, "Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere." It became a staple work of the American Ballet Theatre, and Copland's twenty minute suite from the ballet became part of the standard orchestral repertoire. When asked how a Jewish New Yorker managed so well to capture the Old West, Copland answered "It was just a feat of imagination."

In the early 1940s, Copland produced two important works intended as national morale boosters. ''Fanfare for the Common Man'', scored for brass and percussion, was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events. Even musical groups from Woody Herman's jazz band to the Rolling Stones adapted the opening theme. Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded a "prog rock" version of the composition in 1977. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's ''Third Symphony,'' where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. In the same year, Copland wrote ''A Lincoln Portrait'', a commission from conductor André Kostelanetz, leading to a further strengthening of his association with American patriotic music. The work is famous for the spoken recitation of Lincoln's words, though the idea had been previously employed by John Alden Carpenter's "Song of Faith" based on George Washington's quotations. "Lincoln Portrait" is often performed at national holiday celebrations. Many Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians, actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with Henry Fonda doing the most notable recording. This fragment (lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger) is now one of the best-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television, including commercials for the American beef industry. The ballet, originally titled "The Courting at Burnt Ranch", was choreographed by Agnes de Mille, niece of film giant Cecil B. DeMille. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on October 16, 1942 with de Mille dancing the principal "cowgirl" role and the performance received a standing ovation. A reduced score is still popular as an orchestral piece, especially at "Pops" concerts.

Copland was commissioned to write another ballet, ''Appalachian Spring'', originally written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as a popular orchestral suite. The commission for ''Appalachian Spring'' came from Martha Graham, who had requested of Copland merely "music for an American ballet". Copland titled the piece "Ballet for Martha", having no idea of how she would use it on stage but he had her in mind. "When I wrote ‘Appalachian Spring’ I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well…And she's unquestionably very American: there's something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American." Copland borrowed the flavor of Shaker songs and dances, and directly used the dance song Simple Gifts. Graham took the score and created a ballet she called ''Appalachian Spring'' (from a poem by Hart Crane which had no connection with Shakers). It was an instant success, and the music later acquired the same name. Copland was amused and delighted later in life when people would come up to him and say: "Mr. Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can see the Appalachians and just feel spring." Copland had no particular setting in mind while writing the music, he just tried to give it an American flavor, and had no knowledge of the borrowed title.

Symphonic works

Copland composed three numbered symphonies, but applied the word "symphony" to more than just symphonies of typical structure. He rewrote his early three-movement ''Organ Symphony'' omitting the organ, calling the result his ''First Symphony''. His fifteen-minute ''Short Symphony'' was the ''Second Symphony'', though it also exists as the ''Sextet''. His ''Dance Symphony'' was hurriedly extracted from the earlier unproduced ballet ''Grohg'' to meet an RCA Records commission deadline.

The ''Third Symphony'' is in the more traditional format (four movements; second movement, scherzo; third movement, adagio) and is his most famous symphony. At forty minutes, it is his longest orchestral composition. He composed it with Koussevitzky's unique character in mind, "I knew exactly the kind of music he enjoyed conducting and the sentiments he brought with it, and I knew the sound of his orchestra, so I had every reason to do my darnedest to write a symphony in the grand manner." Completing the work after World War II was won by the Allies, he stated that the symphony was "intended to reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time." It is the best known, most performed, and most recorded American symphony of the 20th Century.

Later work

Copland's work in the late 1940s and 1950s included use of Schönberg's twelve-tone system, a development that he recognized as important, but which he did not fully embrace. His first result was his "Piano Quartet" (1950). However, he found the atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach a wide audience. So, in contrast to the Second Viennese School, Copland's use of the system emphasized the importance of the "classicalizing principles", in order to prevent the material from falling into "near-chaos".

In 1951, Copland undertook one of his most challenging works, the "Piano Fantasy" (1957) which he labored over for several years. Critics lauded the effort, calling the piece "an outstanding addition to his own oeuvre and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous achievement". Jay Rosenfield stated, "This is a new Copland to us, an artist advancing with strength and not building on the past alone."

Other late works include: "Dance Panels" (1959, ballet music), "Something Wild" (1961, his last film score)(much of which would be later incorporated into his "Music for a Great City"), "Connotations" (1962, for the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), "Emblems" (1964, for wind band), "Night Thoughts" (1972, for the Van Cliburn Piano Competition), and "Proclamation’" (1982, his last work, started in 1973).

Film composer

By the 1930s, Hollywood began to beckon "serious" composers with promises of better films and higher pay. The reality, however, was that few found good projects. Copland sought to enter that arena, as both a challenge for his abilities as a composer and an opportunity to expand his reputation and audience for his more serious works. Unlike the total attention he would hope to get from a concert-goer, Copland wrote that film music had to achieve a balance. It should be "secondary in importance to the story being told on the screen" while notably adding to the dramatic and emotional content of the film—but without diverting the viewer's attention from the action.

Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1937, he had high hopes: "It is just a matter of finding a feature film that needs my kind of music." What he found, however, was the ongoing tendency of studios to edit and cut movie scores, which often subverted a composer's intentions. No projects seemed suitable at first. But his patience paid off two years later when Copland found a kindred spirit in director Lewis Milestone, who allowed Copland to supervise his own orchestration and who refrained from interfering with his work. Copland composed three of his five film scores for Milestone.

This collaboration resulted in the notable film ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), from the novel by John Steinbeck, that earned Copland his first nomination for an Academy Award ( he actually received two nominations, one for "best score" and another for "original score"). He considered himself lucky with his first film score: "Here was an American theme, by a great American writer, demanding appropriate music." He often avoided the full orchestra, and he rejected the common practice of using a leitmotiv to identify characters with their own personal themes. He instead matched a theme to the action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with exaggerated emphasis.

Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming motive toward the end of a scene. Virgil Thompson wrote that the score for "Of Mice and Men" established "the most distinguished populist musical style yet created in America."

Copland's score for ''The North Star'' (1943) was nominated for an Academy Award, and his score for William Wyler's 1949 film, ''The Heiress'' won the award. Several themes from his scores are incorporated in the suite ''Music for Movies.''

When commenting on the effectiveness of film scores, Copland said: "I'd love to be able to have audiences see a film with the music, then see it a second time with the music turned off, and then see it a third time with the music turned on. Then, I think they'd get a much more specific idea of what the music does for a film.".

Critic, writer, and teacher

Starting with his first critiques in 1924, Copland began a long career as music critic, teacher, and observer, mostly of contemporary classical music. He was an avid lecturer and lecturer-performer. He wrote reviews of specific works, trends, composers, festivals, books about music, and recordings. He took on a wide range of issues from the most general ("Creativity") to the most practical ("Composer Economics"). Copland also wrote three books, "What to Listen for in Music (1939)", "Our New Music (1941)", and "Music and Imagination" (1952). He had a long list of notable students (see below). Copland put a good deal of time and energy into supporting young musicians, especially through his association with the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, both as a guest conductor and teacher. In working with young composers, Copland thought it more important to focus on expressive content than on technical points.

Conductor

Copland studied conducting in Paris in 1921, but not until his involvement conducting his own Hollywood scores, did he undertake it except out of necessity. On his international travels in the 1940s, however, he began to make appearances as a guest conductor, performing his own works. By the 1950s, he was conducting the works of other composers as well. From the 1960s on, he conducted far more than he composed.

A self-taught conductor, Copland developed a very personal style. He occasionally asked friend Leonard Bernstein for advice. Copland took an understated and unpretentious approach to conducting and modeled his style after other composer/conductors such as Stravinsky and Hindemith. Observers of Copland noted that he had "none of the typical conductorial vanities". Though his friendly and modest persona, and his great enthusiasm, were appreciated by professional orchestra musicians, some criticized his beat as "unsteady" and his interpretations as "unexciting". Some of his peers, like Koussevitzky, went even further, advising him to "stay home and compose". Copland thoroughly enjoyed conducting but admitted that he did it in part because in the last seventeen years of his life he felt little inspiration to compose. He was offered "permanent" conducting posts but preferred to operate as a guest conductor. Nearly all of Copland's conducting appearances included his own works, which added to the intoxication of conducting. As he stated, "Conducting puts one in a very powerful position…Best of all, it is a use of power for a good purpose." It also allowed him the freedom to travel which he always enjoyed.

Copland was a strong advocate for newer music and composers, and his programs always included heavy representation of 20th century music and lesser-known composers. Newton Mansfield, violinist with the New York Philharmonic, stated, "The orchestra didn’t take him too seriously. It was like going out to a nice lunch." Copland recorded nearly all his orchestral works with himself conducting. Beginning in 1964, this award "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression." Copland was awarded the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in composition for ''Appalachian Spring''. His scores for ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), ''Our Town'' (1940), and ''The North Star'' (1943) all received Academy Award nominations, while ''The Heiress'' won Best Music in 1950.

In 1986, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

He was awarded a special Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in 1987. He was made an honorary member of the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia in 1961 and was awarded the fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1970.

Notable students

Samuel Adler

Norma Beecroft

Elmer Bernstein

Paul Bowles

Mario Davidovsky

Jacob Druckman

Halim El-Dabh

Alberto Ginastera

Alvin Lucier

José Pablo Moncayo

Juan Orrego-Salas

Einojuhani Rautavaara

Michael Tilson Thomas

Douglas Townsend

Lester Trimble

Selected works

''Scherzo Humoristique: The Cat and the Mouse'' (1920)

''Four Motets'' (1921)

''Passacaglia'' (piano solo) (1922)

''Symphony for Organ and Orchestra'' (1924)

''Music for the Theater'' (1925)

''Dance Symphony'' (1925)

''Concerto for Piano and Orchestra'' (1926)

''Symphonic Ode'' (1927–1929)

''Piano Variations'' (1930)

''Grohg'' (1925/32) (ballet)

''Short Symphony (Symphony No. 2)'' (1931–33)

''Statements for orchestra'' (1932–35)

''The Second Hurricane, play-opera for high school performance'' (1936)

''El Salón México'' (1936)

''Billy the Kid'' (1938) (ballet)

''Quiet City'' (1940)

''Our Town'' (1940)

''Piano Sonata'' (1939–41)

''An Outdoor Overture'', written for high school orchestras (1938) and transcribed for wind band (1941)

''Fanfare for the Common Man'' (1942)

''Lincoln Portrait'' (1942)

''Rodeo'' (1942) (ballet)

''Danzon Cubano'' (1942)

''Music for the Movies'' (1942)

''Sonata for violin and piano'' (1943)

''Appalachian Spring'' (1944) (ballet)

''Third Symphony'' (1944–1946)

''In the Beginning'' (1947)

''The Red Pony'' (1948)

''Clarinet Concerto'' (commissioned by Benny Goodman) (1947–1948)

''Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson'' (1950)

''Piano Quartet'' (1950)

''Old American Songs'' (1952)

''The Tender Land'' (1954) (opera)

''Canticle of Freedom'' (1955)

''Orchestral Variations'' (orchestration of ''Piano Variations'') (1957)

''Piano Fantasy'' (1957)

''Dance Panels'' (1959; revised 1962) (ballet)

''Connotations'' (1962)

''Down A Country Lane'' (1962)

''Music for a Great City'' (1964) (based on his score of the 1961 film ''Something Wild'')

''Emblems, for wind band'' (1964)

''Inscape'' (1967)

''Duo for flute and piano'' (1971)

''Three Latin American Sketches'' (1972)

Film

''Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait'' (1985). Directed by Allan Miller. Biographies in Music series. Princeton, New Jersey: The Humanities.

''Appalachian Spring'' (1996). Directed by Graham Strong, Scottish Television Enterprises. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities.

''Copland Portrait'' (1975). Directed by Terry Sanders, United States Information Agency. Santa Monica, California: American Film Foundation.

''Fanfare for America: The Composer Aaron Copland'' (2001). Directed by Andreas Skipis. Produced by Hessischer Rundfunk in association with Reiner Moritz Associates. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.

Written works

Copland, Aaron (1939; Revised 1957), ''What to Listen For in Music'', New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, reprinted many times.

Copland, Aaron (2006). ''Music and Imagination'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-58915-5

Notes

References

Berger, Arthur, ''Aaron Copland'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953)

Hall, Roger, ''A Guide to Film Music: Songs and Scores ''(Stoughton, MA: PineTree Press, 2007)

Kamien, Roger, ''Music: An Appreciation'', 3rd edition (Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College, 1997), ISBN 0-07-036521-0

Oja, Carol J., & Judith Tick, eds., ''Aaron Copland and His World'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

Pollack, Howard, ''Aaron Copland'' (NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1999), ISBN 0-8050-4909-6

Ross, Alex, ''The Rest is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century'' 1st edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

Smith, Julia, ''Aaron Copland'' (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1953)

External links

Copland House

American Masters "Aaron Copland" at www.pbs.org

The Aaron Copland Collection, 1900–1990, Music Division, Library of Congress

Review of "Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man" by R. James Tobin

Who Was That Masked Composer? by David Schiff

Aaron Copland and His World

Aaron Copland On Film Music

Brief Copland Bio

''Music and Imagination'' (1952)

Keeping Score: Copland and the American Sound – Multimedia website produced by the San Francisco Symphony

Aaron Copland at NPR Music

Aaron Copland's personal library on LibraryThing

The Presidency Project – ''Remarks at the Presentation of the 1964 Presidential Medal of Freedom Awards.''

Lifetime Honors – National Medal of Arts

; Listening

Art of the States: Aaron Copland

Audio (.ram files) of a 1961 interview for the BBC

Audio (.smil files) of a 1980 interview for NPR

Fanfare for America (video)

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William Caesar Warfield (22 January 1920 - 26 August 2002), was an American concert bass-baritone singer and actor.

Early life and career

Warfield was born in West Helena, Arkansas and grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was called to serve as pastor of Mt. Vernon Church. He gave his recital debut in New York's Town Hall on March 19, 1950. He was quickly invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Australia and give 35 concerts. In 1952, Warfield performed in ''Porgy and Bess'' during a tour of Europe sponsored by the U.S. State Department (he made six separate tours for the US Department of State, more than any other American solo artist.) In this production he played opposite the opera star Leontyne Price, whom he soon married, but the demands of two separate careers left them little time together. They divorced in 1972, but were featured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from ''Porgy and Bess''.

According to a recent exhibit about World War Two, Warfield was the only African American member of the "Ritchie Boys" thousands of soldiers who were trained at Fort Ritchie, Maryland. It was an intelligence center where hundreds of Jewish recruits who fled Nazi German for the United States were trained to interrogate their one-time countrymen. According to the exhibit at the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Warfield was brought to the camp because of his strong German skills which he perfected while studying music. Because of segregation, his skills were never put to use.

Warfield was a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. In 1975 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He later became Chairman of the Voice Department. In 1994, he moved to Northwestern University's School of Music, where he stayed until his death.

He sang the premiere performances of the version for soloist and orchestra of Set I of Aaron Copland's ''Old American Songs'' in 1955, and of the version for soloist and piano of Set II of the collection in 1958. (He also recorded both sets of the songs.) His vocal talents were also featured on two recordings of Handel's "Messiah" - a classic, but heavily cut, performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy (released in 1959), and a lesser-known, drastically restructured recording made in 1956, also heavily cut, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Bernstein combined the Christmas and Resurrection sections, and ended with the arias and choruses depicting the death of Christ. The Ormandy recording featured the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Bernstein's the Westminster Choir.

Warfield was also accomplished in acting and poetry recitation. He played the character De Lawd in a celebrated Hallmark Hall of Fame television production of The Green Pastures, a role he played twice (these were the days of live TV, before video tape). He appeared in two Hollywood films, including a star-making performance as Joe in MGM's 1951 Technicolor remake of ''Show Boat''. His other film was an overlooked item called "Old Explorers", starring James Whitmore and José Ferrer. In a nod to "Show Boat", Warfield played a cameo role as a tugboat captain. Footage of Warfield in "Show Boat" has been seen in several TV shows and/or films, notably ''That's Entertainment!''. Warfield played his ''Show Boat'' role in two other productions of the musical - the 1966 Lincoln Center production, and a 1972 production in Vienna. And he was heard singing Ol' Man River in three different record albums of the show - the 1951 motion picture soundtrack album on MGM Records, a 1962 studio album featuring Barbara Cook and John Raitt on Columbia Masterworks, and the RCA Victor album made from the Lincoln Center production.

Warfield made an appearance on ''The Colgate Comedy Hour'' and on a program called ''TV Recital Hall'' in 1951, the same year that he made his screen debut in ''Show Boat''. He later appeared on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' in 1955. In 1961, he appeared as a recital soloist on an episode of the Young People's Concerts, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In March 1984 he was the winner of a Grammy in the "Spoken Word" category for his outstanding narration of Aaron Copland's ''Lincoln Portrait'' accompanied by the Eastman Philharmonia Orchestra. And in the 1990s, he narrated a special jazz arrangement of music from "Show Boat", on the PRI program Riverwalk Jazz. In 1999 Warfield joined baritones Robert Sims and Benjamin Matthews in a trio by the name of "Three Generations". Managed by Arthur White, this ensemble toured the United States giving full concerts of African American Spirituals and folk songs until Warfield's death in 2002.

Vocal decline

Beginning in 1962, Warfield began to have some trouble with his voice, as he himself admitted in his autobiography. This was only slightly noticeable on the 1962 studio recording of ''Show Boat''. By the time he made the 1966 recording of the Lincoln Center production of the musical, his voice had deepened from merely bass-baritone to a full-fledged bass, and he could not sing the climactic high note on ''Ol' Man River'' as easily as he had in the 1951 film version, though he sounded fine on his lower notes. Because of this problem, however, he compensated by learning how to sing even more expressively than he had before.

By 1976, Warfield, although still making various stage and television appearances, was not singing as much as he had in the past. He served as narrator in various orchestral works, such as Aaron Copland's ''Lincoln Portrait'', and occasionally performed ''sprechstimme'' roles in Mahler works. However, he did sing on occasion during his final years, despite the fact that by then his singing voice was practically gone. In those years, when he sang ''Ol' Man River'', he would not perform it with the original lyrics, but with the altered ones that Paul Robeson used in his recitals beginning in 1938.

Organizations

Warfield was active in many organizations, After appearing as the featured artist at the 50th year convention of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc. (NANM), he became active with the organization, serving as its President for two terms. He later served on the boards of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) and the Schiller Institute. After joining the Schiller Institute in 1996, he began to collaborate with acclaimed vocal coach Sylvia Olden Lee in a project to save the performance tradition of the Negro spiritual. During the final years of his life, from 1999 to 2002, he performed regularly at Schiller Institute biannual conferences, often with Olden Lee as his accompanist, and the two of them travelled the country conducting singing workshops for members of the LaRouche Youth Movement. Warfield was made an honorary member of the Delta Lambda chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia at Ball State University in 1961, and awarded the Fraternity's Charles E. Lutton Man of Music Award in 1976 at its national convention in Evansville, Indiana.

Legacy

Warfield and his success story continues to inspire young singers around the world, especially African American classical singers. The William Warfield Scholarship Fund continues to support young minority singers at the Eastman School of Music. To date the fund has awarded scholarships to over 50 students.

References

External links

William Warfield Scholarship Fund

Schiller Institute biography and obituary

William Warfield interview by Bruce Duffie

National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.

Category:1920 births Category:2002 deaths Category:African American singers Category:American male singers Category:American opera singers Category:American baritones Category:LaRouche movement Category:People from Phillips County, Arkansas Category:Grammy Award winners

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Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim. According to ''The New York Times'', he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."

His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for ''West Side Story'', as well as ''Candide'', ''Wonderful Town'', ''On the Town'' and his own ''Mass''.

Bernstein was also the first conductor to give numerous television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954, continuing until his death. In addition, he was a skilled pianist, often conducting while performing piano concertos simultaneously.

As a composer he was prolific, writing symphonies, ballet music, operas, chamber music, pieces for the piano, other orchestral and choral works, and other concert and incidental music, but the tremendous success of ''West Side Story'' remained unequaled by his other compositions.

Biography

Early life

He was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukrainian Jewish parents Jennie (née Resnick) and Samuel Joseph Bernstein, a hair-dressing supplies wholesaler originating from Rovno (now Ukraine). Despite his surname he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein. His family spent their summers at their vacation home in Sharon, Massachusetts. His grandmother insisted that his first name be ''Louis'', but his parents always called him ''Leonard'', which they preferred. He officially changed his name to ''Leonard'' when he was fifteen, shortly after his grandmother's death. However to his friends and many others he was simply known as "Lenny."

His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a bookstore in downtown Lawrence; it is standing today on the corners of Amesbury and Essex Streets. Sam initially opposed young Leonard's interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to orchestra concerts in his teenage years and eventually supported his music education. At a very young age, Bernstein listened to a piano performance and was immediately captivated; he subsequently began learning the piano seriously when the family acquired his cousin Lillian Goldman's unwanted piano. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School. As a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of piano teachers in his youth including Helen Coates who later became his secretary.

After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, where he studied music with, amongst others, Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston, the author of many harmony and counterpoint textbooks. Although he majored in music with a final year thesis (1939) entitled ''"The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music"'' (reproduced in his book ''Findings''), Bernstein's main intellectual influence at Harvard was probably the aesthetics Professor David Prall, whose multidisciplinary outlook on the arts Bernstein shared for the rest of his life. One of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play ''The Birds'' in the original Greek. Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet ''Fancy Free''. During his time at Harvard he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. Bernstein also mounted a student production of ''The Cradle Will Rock'' directing its action from the piano as the composer Marc Blitzstein had done at the premiere. Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a friend and influence (both musically and politically) on Bernstein.

Bernstein also met the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos at this time. Although he never taught Bernstein, Mitropoulos's charisma and power as a musician was a major influence on Bernstein's eventual decision to take up conducting. Mitropoulos was not stylistically that similar to Bernstein, but he probably influenced some of Bernstein's later habits such as his conducting from the keyboard, his initial practice of conducting without a baton and perhaps his interest in Mahler. The other important influence that Bernstein first met during his Harvard years was composer Aaron Copland, whom he met at a concert and then at a party afterwards on Copland's Birthday in 1938. At the party Bernstein played Copland's ''Piano Variations'', a thorny work Bernstein loved without knowing anything about its composer until that evening. Although he was not formally Copland's student as such, Bernstein would regularly seek advice from Copland in the following years about his own compositions and would often cite him as "his only real composition teacher".

After completing his studies at Harvard in 1939 (graduating with a B.A. ''cum laude''), he enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. During his time at Curtis, Bernstein studied conducting with Fritz Reiner (who anecdotally is said to have given Bernstein the only "A grade" he ever awarded), piano with Isabelle Vengerova, orchestration with Randall Thompson, counterpoint with Richard Stöhr, and score reading with Renée Longy Miquelle. Unlike his years at Harvard, Bernstein appears to not to have much enjoyed the formal training environment of Curtis, although often in later life he would mention Reiner when discussing his important teachers.

1940–1950

After he left Curtis, Bernstein lived in New York. He shared a flat with his friend Adolph Green and often accompanied Green, Betty Comden and Judy Holiday in a comedy troupe called The Reviewers who performed in Greenwich Village. He took jobs with a music publisher, transcribing music or producing arrangements under the pseudonym Lenny Amber (the German meaning of his name in English). During this period in New York City, Bernstein enjoyed an exuberant social life that included relationships with both men and women. In 1940, Bernstein began his study at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer institute, Tanglewood, in the conducting class of the orchestra's conductor, Serge Koussevitzky.

Bernstein's friendships with Copland (who was very close to Koussevitsky) and Mitropoulos were important in him being recommended for a place in the class. Other students in the class included Lukas Foss who also became a lifelong friend. Koussevitsky perhaps did not teach Bernstein much basic conducting technique (which he had already developed under Reiner), but instead became a sort of father figure to him, and was perhaps the major influence on Bernstein's emotional way of interpreting music. Bernstein later became Koussevitzky's conducting assistant and would later dedicate his ''second symphony, "The Age of Anxiety''" to him.

On November 14, 1943, having recently been appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, he made his major conducting debut at sudden notice —and without any rehearsal—after Bruno Walter came down with the flu. The next day, ''The New York Times'' carried the story on their front page and their editorial remarked, "It's a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves." He became instantly famous because the concert was nationally broadcast, and afterwards started to appear as a guest conductor with many US orchestras. The program included works by Schumann, Miklos Rozsa, Wagner and Richard Strauss's ''Don Quixote'' with soloist Joseph Schuster, solo cellist of the orchestra. Before the concert Bernstein briefly spoke to Bruno Walter who discussed particular difficulties in the works he was to perform. It is possible to hear this concert (apart from the Wagner work) on a recording of the CBS radio broadcast that has been issued on CD by the orchestra. From 1945–47 Bernstein was the Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra which had been founded the previous year by the conductor Leopold Stokowski. The orchestra (with support from the Mayor) was aimed at a different audience with more modern programs and cheaper tickets than the New York Philharmonic.

In addition to becoming known as a conductor, Bernstein also emerged as a composer in the same period. In January 1944 he conducted the premiere of his ''Jeremiah Symphony'' in Pittsburgh. His score to the ballet ''Fancy Free'' choreographed by Jerome Robbins opened in New York in April 1944 and this was later developed into the musical ''On the Town'' with lyrics by Comden and Green that opened on Broadway in December 1944.

After World War II, Bernstein's career on the international stage began to flourish. In 1946 he made his first trip to Europe conducting various orchestras and recorded Ravel's ''Piano Concerto in G'' as soloist and conductor with the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 1946, he conducted opera for the first time, with the American première at Tanglewood of Benjamin Britten's ''Peter Grimes,'' which had been a Koussevitzky commission. That same year, Arturo Toscanini invited Bernstein to guest conduct two concerts with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, one of which again featured Bernstein as soloist in the Ravel concerto.

In 1947, Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time, beginning a life-long association with Israel. The next year he conducted an open air concert for troops at Beersheba in the middle of the desert during the Arab-Israeli war. In 1957, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv; he subsequently made many recordings there. In 1967, he conducted a concert on Mt. Scopus to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem. During the 1970s, Bernstein recorded his symphonies and other works with the Israel Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon.

In 1949, he conducted the world première of the ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'' by Olivier Messiaen, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Part of the rehearsal for the concert was released on CD by the orchestra. When Koussevitzky died two years later, Bernstein became head of the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, holding this position for many years.

1951–1959

After much personal struggle and a turbulent on-off engagement, he married Chilean actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre on September 10, 1951. One suggestion is that he chose to marry partly to dispel rumors about his private life to help secure a major conducting appointment, following advice from his mentor Dimitri Mitropoulos about the conservative nature of orchestra boards. Bernstein's sexuality has been a matter of speculation and debate. Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator in ''West Side Story'') said that Bernstein was "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay." Shirley Rhoades Perle, another friend of Bernstein's, said that she thought "he required men sexually and women emotionally." But the early years of his marriage seem to have been happy, and no-one has suggested they didn't love one another. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander, and later Nina. There are reports though that Bernstein did sometimes have brief extramarital liaisons with young men, which several family friends have said his wife knew about.

In 1951, Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world première of the Symphony No. 2 of Charles Ives which was written around half a century earlier but never performed. Throughout his career Bernstein often talked about the music of Ives who died in 1954. The composer, old and frail, was unable (or some reports say "unwilling") to attend the concert, but his wife attended. He reportedly listened to a radio broadcast of it on a radio in his kitchen some days later. A recording of the "premiere" was released in a 10 CD box set ''Bernstein LIVE'' by the orchestra, but the notes indicate it was a repeat performance from three days later, and this is perhaps what Ives heard. In any case reports also differ on Ives' exact reaction, but some suggest he was thrilled and danced a little jig. Bernstein recorded the 2nd symphony with the orchestra in 1958 for Columbia and 1987 for Deutsche Grammophon. There is also a 1987 performance with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra available on DVD.

Bernstein was a visiting music professor from 1951–56 at Brandeis University and he founded the Creative Arts Festival there in 1952. He conducted various productions at the first festival including the premiere of his opera ''Trouble in Tahiti'' and Blitzstein's English version of Kurt Weill's ''Threepenny Opera''. The festival was named after him in 2005, becoming the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts. In 1953 he was the first US conductor to appear at La Scala in Milan, conducting Maria Callas in Cherubini's ''Medea''. The same year he produced his score to the musical ''Wonderful Town'' at very short notice, working again with old friends Comden and Green who wrote the lyrics.

In 1954 Bernstein made the first of his television lectures for the CBS arts program Omnibus. The live lecture, entitled "Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony", involved Bernstein explaining the work with the aid of musicians from the former NBC Symphony Orchestra (recently renamed the "Symphony of the Air") and a giant page of the score covering the floor. Bernstein subsequently performed concerts with the orchestra and recorded his Serenade for Violin with Isaac Stern. Further Omnibus lectures followed in 1955-8 (later on ABC and then NBC) covering Jazz, Conducting, American Musical Comedy, Modern Music, J.S. Bach and Grand Opera. These programs were made available in the USA in a DVD set in 2010.

In late 1956 Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in concerts that were to have been conducted by Guido Cantelli, who had tragically been killed in an air crash in Paris. This was the first time Bernstein had conducted the orchestra in subscription concerts since 1951. Partly due to these appearances, Bernstein was named the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957, replacing Dimitri Mitropoulos. He began his tenure in that position in 1958 having held the post jointly with Mitropoulos in 1957-8. In 1958 Bernstein and Mitropoulos took the New York Philharmonic on tour to South America. In his first season in sole charge Bernstein included a season-long survey of American classical music. Themed-programming of this sort was fairly novel at that time compared to the present day. Bernstein held the Music Directorship until 1969 (with a sabbatical in 1965) although he continued to conduct and make recordings with the orchestra for the rest of his life and was appointed "Laureate Conductor".

He became a well-known figure in the United States through his series of fifty-three televised Young People's Concerts for CBS, which grew out of his ''Omnibus'' programs. His first Young People's Concert was televised a few weeks after his tenure as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic began. He became as famous for his educational work in those concerts as for his conducting. The Bernstein Young People's Concerts were the first, and probably the most influential series of music appreciation programs ever produced on television, and were highly acclaimed by critics. Some of Bernstein's music lectures were released on records, with at least one winning a Grammy award. The programmes were shown in many countries around the world, often with Bernstein dubbed into other languages. Twenty-five of them were released on DVD by Kultur Video.

Prior to taking over the New York Philharmonic Bernstein produced the music for two shows. The first was for the operetta Candide which was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman based on Voltaire's novel. The second was Bernstein's collaboration with the choreographer Jerome Robbins, the writer Arthur Laurents and the lyricist Stephen Sondheim to produce the musical ''West Side Story''. The first three had worked on it intermittently since Robbins first suggested the idea in 1949. Finally, with the addition of Sondheim to the team and a period of concentrated effort, it received its Broadway premiere in 1957 and has since proven to be Bernstein's most popular and enduring score.

In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, portions of which were filmed by CBS. A highlight of the tour was Bernstein's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, in the presence of the composer, who came on stage at the end to congratulate Bernstein and the musicians. In October, when Bernstein and the orchestra returned to the US, they recorded the symphony for Columbia. He recorded it for a second time with the orchestra on tour in Japan in 1979. Bernstein seems to have limited himself to only conducting certain Shostakovich symphonies: 1, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 14. He made two recordings of Shostakovich's ''Leningrad Symphony,'' one with the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s and another one recorded live in 1988 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the only recording he ever made with them (along with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1).

1960–1969

In 1960 Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic held a Mahler Festival to mark the centenary of the composer's birth. Bernstein, Walter and Mitropoulos conducted performances. The composer's widow, Alma attended some of Bernstein's rehearsals. In 1960 Bernstein also made his first commercial recording of a Mahler symphony (the fourth) and over the next seven years he made the first complete cycle of recordings of all nine of Mahler's completed symphonies. (All featured the New York Philharmonic except the 8th Symphony which was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra following a concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1966.) The success of these recordings, along with Bernstein's concert performances and television talks, was an important part of the revival of interest in Mahler in the 1960s, especially in the US.

Other non-US composers that Bernstein championed to some extent at the time include the Danish composer Carl Nielsen (who was perhaps then only a little known in the US) and Jean Sibelius, whose popularity had perhaps by then started to fade. Bernstein eventually recorded a complete cycle in New York of Sibelius's symphonies and three of Nielsen's symphonies (Nos. 2, 4, and 5), as well as conducting recordings of his violin, clarinet and flute concertos. He also recorded Nielsen's 3rd Symphony with the Royal Danish Orchestra after a critically acclaimed public performance in Denmark. Bernstein championed US composers, especially those that he was close to like Aaron Copland, William Schuman and David Diamond. He also started to more extensively record his own compositions for Columbia Records. This included his 3 symphonies, his ballets and the ''Symphonic Dances'' from ''West Side Story'' with the New York Philharmonic. He also conducted an LP of his 1944 musical ''On The Town,'' the first (almost) complete recording of the original featuring several members of the original Broadway cast, including Betty Comden and Adolph Green. (The 1949 film version only contains four of Bernstein's original numbers.)

In one oft-reported incident, in April 1962 Bernstein appeared on stage before a performance of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor with the pianist Glenn Gould. During rehearsals, Gould had argued for tempi much broader than normal, which did not reflect Bernstein's concept of the music. Bernstein gave a brief address to the audience starting with "Don't be frightened; Mr Gould is here..." and going on to "In a concerto, who is the boss (audience laughter)—the soloist or the conductor?" (Audience laughter grows louder). The answer is, of course, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, depending on the people involved." This speech was subsequently interpreted by Harold C. Schonberg, music critic for ''The New York Times'', as abdication of personal responsibility and an attack on Gould, whose performance Schonberg went on to criticize heavily. Bernstein always denied that this had been his intent and has stated that he made these remarks with Gould's blessing. Throughout his life, he professed admiration and friendship for Gould. Schonberg was often (though not always) harshly critical of Bernstein as a conductor during his tenure as Music Director. However his views were not shared by the audiences (with many full houses) and probably not by the musicians themselves (who had greater financial security arising from Bernstein's many TV and recording activities amongst other things).

In 1962 the New York Philharmonic moved from Carnegie Hall to Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in the new Lincoln Center. The move was not without controversy because of acoustic problems with the new hall. Bernstein conducted the gala opening concert featuring vocal works by Mahler, Beethoven and Vaughan Williams, and the premiere of Aaron Copland's ''Connotations'', a serial-work that was merely politely received. During the interval Bernstein kissed the cheek of the President's wife Jacqueline Kennedy, a break with protocol that was commented on at the time. In 1961 Bernstein had conducted at President John F. Kennedy's pre-inaugural gala, and he was an occasional guest in the Kennedy White House. He also conducted at the funeral mass in 1968 for the late President Kennedy's brother Robert Kennedy.

In 1964 Bernstein conducted Franco Zeffirelli's production of Verdi's ''Falstaff'' at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1966 he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting Luchino Visconti's production of the same opera with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Falstaff. During his time in Vienna he also recorded the opera for Columbia Records and conducted his first subscription concert with the Vienna Philharmonic (which is made up of players from the Vienna State Opera) featuring Mahler's ''Das Lied von der Erde'' with Fischer-Dieskau and James King. He returned to the State Opera in 1968 for a production of Der Rosenkavalier and in 1970 for Otto Schenk's production of Beethoven's ''Fidelio''. Sixteen years later, at the State Opera, Bernstein conducted his sequel to ''Trouble in Tahiti,'' ''A Quiet Place.'' with the ORF orchestra. Bernstein's final farewell to the State Opera happened accidentally in 1989: following a performance of Modest Mussorgsky's ''Khovanshchina'', he unexpectedly entered the stage and embraced conductor Claudio Abbado in front of a cheering audience.

With his commitment to the New York Philharmonic and his many other activities, Bernstein had little time for composition during the 1960s. The two major works he produced at this time were his ''Kaddish Symphony'' dedicated to the recently assassinated President John F. Kennedy and the ''Chichester Psalms'' which he produced during a sabbatical year he took from the Philharmonic in 1965 to concentrate on composition. To try and have more time for composition was probably a major factor in his decision to step down as Music Director of the Philharmonic in 1969, and to never accept such as position anywhere again.

1970–1979

After stepping down from the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein continued to appear with them in most years until his death, and he toured with them to Europe in 1976 and to Asia in 1979. He also strengthened his relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra – he conducted all nine completed Mahler symphonies with them (plus the adagio from the 10th) in the period from 1967–76. All of these were filmed for Unitel with the exception of the 1967 Mahler 2nd, which instead Bernstein filmed with the London Symphony Orchestra in Ely Cathedral in 1973. In the late 1970s Bernstein conducted a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic, and cycles of Brahms and Schumann were to follow in the 1980s. Other orchestras he conducted on numerous occasions in the 1970s include the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1970 Bernstein wrote and narrated a ninety-minute program filmed on location in and around Vienna as a celebration of Beethoven's 200th birthday. It featured parts of Bernstein's rehearsals and performance for the Otto Schenk production of ''Fidelio'', Bernstein playing the 1st piano concerto and the Ninth Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic and the young Placido Domingo amongst the soloists. The program was first telecast in 1970 on Austrian and British television, and then on CBS in the US on Christmas Eve 1971. The show, originally entitled ''Beethoven's Birthday: A Celebration in Vienna,'' won an Emmy and was issued on DVD in 2005.

Like many of his friends and colleagues, Bernstein had been involved in various left wing causes and organizations since the 1940s. He was blacklisted by the US State Department and CBS in the early 1950s, but unlike others his career was not greatly affected, and he was never required to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. His political life received substantial press coverage though in 1970 due to a gathering hosted at his Manhattan apartment. Bernstein and his wife held the event seeking to raise awareness and money for the defense of several members of the Black Panther Party against a variety of charges. ''The New York Times'' initially covered the gathering as a lifestyle item, but later posted an editorial harshly unfavorable to Bernstein following generally negative reaction to the widely publicized story. This reaction culminated in June 1970 with the appearance of "Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's", an essay by satirist Tom Wolfe featured on the cover of the ''New York'' Magazine. The article contrasted the Bernsteins' comfortable lifestyle in one of the world's most expensive neighborhoods with the anti-establishment politics of the Black Panthers. It led to the popularization of "radical chic" as a critical term. Both Bernstein and his wife Felicia responded to the criticism, arguing that they were motivated not by a shallow desire to express fashionable sympathy but by their concern for civil liberties.

Bernstein's major compositions during the 1970s were probably his ''MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers''; his score for the ballet ''Dybbuk''; his orchestral vocal work ''Songfest''; and his US bicentenary musical ''1600 Pennsylvania Avenue'' written with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner which was his first real theatrical flop, and last original broadway show. The world premiere of Bernstein's ''MASS'' took place on September 8, 1971. Commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., it was partly intended as an anti-war statement. Hastily written in places, the work represented a fusion not only of different religious traditions (Latin liturgy, Hebrew prayer and plenty of contemporary English lyrics) but also of different musical styles including classical and rock music. It was originally a target of criticism from the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and contemporary music critics who objected to its Broadway/populist elements on the other. In the present day it is perhaps seen as less blasphemous and more a piece of its era – in 2000 it was even performed in the Vatican.

In 1972 Bernstein recorded Bizet's ''Carmen,'' with Marilyn Horne in the title role and James McCracken as Don Jose, after leading several stage performances of the opera at the Metropolitan Opera. The recording was one of the first in stereo to use the original spoken dialogue between the sung portions of the opera, rather than the musical recitatives that were composed by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death. The recording was Bernstein's first for Deutsche Grammophon and won a Grammy.

Bernstein was appointed in 1973 to the Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor of Poetry at his alma mater, Harvard University, and delivered a series of six televised lectures on music with musical examples played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Taking the title from a Charles Ives work, he called the series "The Unanswered Question"; it was a set of interdisciplinary lectures in which he borrowed terminology from contemporary linguistics to analyze and compare musical construction to language. The lectures are presently available in both book and DVD form. Noam Chomsky wrote in 2007 on the Znet forums about the linguistic aspects of the lecture: "I spent some time with Bernstein during the preparation and performance of the lectures. My feeling was that he was onto something, but I couldn't really judge how significant it was."

A major period of upheaval in Bernstein's personal life began in 1976 when he took the decision that he could no longer repress his homosexuality and he left his wife Felicia for a period to live with the writer Tom Cothran. The next year she was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually Bernstein moved back in with her and cared for her until she died on June 16, 1978. Cothran himself died of AIDS in 1981. Bernstein is reported to have often spoken of his terrible guilt over his wife's death. Most biographies of Bernstein describe that his lifestyle became more excessive and his personal behavior sometimes cruder after her death. However his public standing and many of his close friendships appear to have remained unaffected, and he resumed his busy schedule of musical activity.

In 1978, Bernstein return to the Vienna State Opera to conduct a revival of the Otto Schenk production of ''Fidelio,'' now featuring Gundula Janowitz and Rene Kollo in the lead roles. At the same time, Bernstein made a studio recording of the opera for Deutsche Grammophon and the opera itself was filmed by Unitel and released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon in late 2006. In May 1978, the Israel Philharmonic played two US concerts under his direction to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Orchestra under that name. On consecutive nights, the Orchestra, with the Choral Arts Society of Washington, performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1979, Bernstein conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for the first and only time, in two charity concerts for Amnesty International involving performances of Mahler's Ninth Symphony. The invitation for the concerts had come from the orchestra and not from its principal conductor Herbert von Karajan. There has been speculation about why Karajan never invited Bernstein to conduct his orchestra. (Karajan did conduct the New York Philharmonic during Bernstein's tenure.) The full reasons will probably never be known – reports suggest they were on friendly terms when they met, but sometimes practiced a little mutual one-upmanship. One of the concerts was broadcast on radio and was posthumously released on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

1980–1990

Bernstein received the Kennedy Center Honors award in 1980. For the rest of the 1980s he continued to conduct, teach, compose and produce the occasional TV documentary. His most significant compositions of the decade were probably his opera ''A Quiet Place'' which he wrote with Stephen Wadsworth and which premiered (in its original version) in Houston in 1983; his ''Divertimento for Orchestra''; his ''Halil'' for flute and orchestra, his ''Concerto for Orchestra "Jubilee Games"''; and his song cycle ''Arias and Barcarolles'', which was named after a comment President Dwight D. Eisenhower had made to him in the 1950s.

In 1982 in the US, PBS aired an 11-part series of Bernstein's late 1970s films for Unitel of the Vienna Philharmonic playing all nine Beethoven symphonies and various other works. Bernstein gave spoken introduction and actor Maximilian Schell was also featured on the programs, reading from Beethoven's letters. The original films have since been released on DVD by Deutsche Grammophon. In addition to conducting in New York, Vienna and Israel, Bernstein was a regular guest conductor of other orchestras in the 1980s. These included the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam with whom he recorded Mahler's First, Fourth, and Ninth Symphonies amongst other works; the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich with whom he recorded Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'', Haydn's ''Creation'', Mozart's ''Requiem'' and ''Mass in C Minor''; and the orchestra of Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with whom he recorded some Debussy and Puccini's ''La Boheme''.

In 1982, he and Ernest Fleischmann founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute as a summer training academy along the lines of Tanglewood. Bernstein served as Artistic Director and taught conducting there until 1984. Around the same time he performed and recorded some of his own works with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon. Bernstein was also at the time a committed supporter of Nuclear Disarmament. In 1985 he took the European Community Youth Orchestra in a "Journey for Peace" tour around Europe and to Japan.

In 1985, he conducted a recording of ''West Side Story'', the first time he had conducted the entire work. The recording, featuring what some critics felt were miscast opera singers such as Kiri Te Kanawa, José Carreras, and Tatiana Troyanos in the leading roles, was nevertheless an international bestseller. A TV documentary showing the making of the recording was made at the same time and is available on DVD.

In his later years, Bernstein's life and work was celebrated around the world (as it has been since his death). The Israel Philharmonic celebrated his involvement with them at Festivals in Israel and Austria in 1977. In 1986 the London Symphony Orchestra mounted a Bernstein Festival in London with one concert that Bernstein himself conducted attended by the Queen. In 1988 Bernstein's 70th Birthday was celebrated by a lavish televised gala at Tanglewood featuring many performers who had worked with him over the years.

In December 1989 Bernstein conducted live performances and recorded in the studio his operetta ''Candide'' with the London Symphony Orchestra. The recording starred Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Adolph Green and Christa Ludwig in the leading roles. The use of opera singers in some roles perhaps fitted the style of operetta better than some critics had thought was the case for West Side Story, and the recording (released posthumously in 1991) was universally praised. One of the live concerts from the Barbican Centre in London is available on DVD. ''Candide'' had had a troubled history, with many re-writes and writers involved. Bernstein's concert and recording were based on a "final" version that had been first performed by Scottish Opera in 1988. The opening night (which Bernstein attended in Glasgow) was conducted by Bernstein's former student John Mauceri.

On December 25, 1989, Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin's Schauspielhaus (Playhouse) as part of a celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He had conducted the same work in West Berlin the previous day. The concert was broadcast live in more than twenty countries to an estimated audience of 100 million people. For the occasion, Bernstein reworded Friedrich Schiller's text of the ''Ode to Joy,'' substituting the word ''Freiheit'' (freedom) for ''Freude'' (joy). Bernstein, in his spoken introduction said that they had "taken the liberty" of doing this because of a "most likely phony" story, apparently believed in some quarters, that Schiller wrote an "Ode to Freedom" that is now presumed lost. Bernstein added, "I'm sure that Beethoven would have given us his blessing."

In the summer of 1990, Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas founded the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Like his earlier activity in Los Angeles, this was a summer training school for musicians modeled on Tanglewood, and is still in existence. Bernstein was already at this time suffering from the lung disease that would lead to his death. In his opening address Bernstein said that he had decided to devote what time he had left to education. A video showing Bernstein speaking and rehearsing at the first Festival is available on DVD in Japan.

Bernstein made his final performance as a conductor at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony playing Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from ''Peter Grimes'', and Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. He suffered a coughing fit in the middle of the Beethoven performance which almost caused the concert to break down. The concert was later issued on CD by Deutsche Grammophon.

He announced his retirement from conducting on October 9, 1990, and died of pneumonia and a pleural tumor five days later. He was 72 years old. A longtime heavy smoker, he had battled emphysema from his mid-50s. On the day of his funeral procession through the streets of Manhattan, construction workers removed their hats and waved, yelling "Goodbye, Lenny." Bernstein is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York next to his wife and with a copy of Mahler's Fifth lying across his heart.

Influence and characteristics as a conductor

Bernstein was one of the major figures in orchestral conducting in the second half of the 20th century. He was held in high regard amongst many musicians, including the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, evidenced by his honorary membership; the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he was President; and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he appeared regularly as guest conductor. He was probably the main conductor from the 1960s onwards who acquired a sort of superstar status similar to that of Herbert von Karajan, although unlike Karajan he conducted relatively little opera and part of Bernstein's fame was based on his role as a composer. As the first American-born music director of the New York Philharmonic, his rise to prominence was a factor in overcoming the perception of the time that the top conductors were necessarily trained in Europe.

Bernstein's conducting was characterized by extremes of emotion with the rhythmic pulse of the music conveyed visually through his balletic podium manner. Musicians often reported that his manner in rehearsal was the same as in concert. As he got older his performances tended to be overlaid to a greater extent with a personal expressiveness which often divided critical opinion. Extreme examples of this style can be found in his Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Nimrod from Elgar's ''Enigma Variations'' (1982), the end of Mahler's 9th Symphony (1985), and the finale of Tchaikovsky's ''Pathetique Symphony'' (1986), where in each case the tempos are well below those typically chosen.

Bernstein performed a wide repertoire from the baroque era to the 20th century, although perhaps from the 1970s onwards he tended to focus more on music from the romantic era. He was considered especially accomplished with the works of Gustav Mahler and with American composers in general, including George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Roy Harris, William Schuman, and of course himself. Some of his recordings of works by these composers would likely appear on many music critics' lists of recommended recordings. A list of his other well-thought-of recordings would probably include individual works from Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz, Schumann, Liszt, Nielsen, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Shostakovich, among others. His recordings of ''Rhapsody in Blue'' (full-orchestra version) and ''An American in Paris'' for Columbia Records, released in 1959, are considered definitive by many, although Bernstein cut the ''Rhapsody'' slightly, and his more 'symphonic' approach with slower tempi is quite far from Gershwin's own conception of the piece, evident from his two recordings. (Oscar Levant, Earl Wild, and others come closer to Gershwin's own style.) Bernstein never conducted Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F, or ''Porgy and Bess,'' although he did discuss the latter in his article ''Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?'', originally published in ''The New York Times'' and later reprinted in his 1959 book ''The Joy of Music.''

In addition to being an active conductor, Bernstein was a very influential teacher of conducting. During his many years of teaching at Tanglewood and elsewhere, he directly taught or mentored many conductors who are performing now, such as Marin Alsop, Herbert Blomstedt, Alexander Frey, Paavo Järvi, John Mauceri, Eiji Oue, Seiji Ozawa (who made his US TV debut as the guest conductor on one of the ''Young People's Concerts''), Carl St.Clair, and Michael Tilson Thomas. He also undoubtedly influenced the career choices of many US musicians who grew up watching his television programmes in the 1950s and 60s.

Recordings

Bernstein recorded extensively from the 1950s until just a few months before his death. Aside from a few early recordings in the mid-1940s for RCA Victor, Bernstein recorded primarily for Columbia Masterworks Records, especially when he was music director of the New York Philharmonic. His typical pattern of recording at that time was to record major works in the studio immediately after they were presented in the orchestra's subscription concerts, with any spare time used to record short orchestral showpieces and similar works. Many of these performances were digitally remastered and reissued by Sony as part of their 100 CD "Royal Edition" and their later "Bernstein Century" series. In 2010 many of these recordings were repackaged in a 60 CD "Bernstein Symphony Edition".

His later recordings (starting with Bizet's Carmen in 1972) were mostly made for Deutsche Grammophon, though he would occasionally return to the Columbia Masterworks label. Notable exceptions include recordings of Gustav Mahler's ''Song of the Earth'' and Mozart's 15th piano concerto and "Linz" symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for Decca Records (1966); Berlioz's ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold in Italy'' (1976) for EMI; and Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' (1981) for Philips Records, a label that like Deutsche Grammophon was part of PolyGram at that time. Unlike his studio recordings for Columbia Masterworks, most of his later Deutsche Grammophon recordings were taken from live concerts (or edited together from several concerts with additional sessions to correct errors). Many replicate repertoire that he recorded in the 1950s and 60s.

In addition to his audio recordings, many of Bernstein's concerts from the 1970s onwards were recorded on motion picture film by the German film company Unitel. This included a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies (with the Vienna Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra), as well as complete cycles of the Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann symphonies recorded at the same series of concerts as the audio recordings by Deutsche Grammophon. Many of these films appeared on Laserdisc and are now on DVD.

In total Bernstein was awarded 16 Grammys for his recordings in various categories including several for recordings released after his death. He was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1985.

Influence and characteristics as a composer

Bernstein was an eclectic composer whose music fused elements of jazz, Jewish music, theatre music and the work of older composers like Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, George Gershwin, and Marc Blitzstein. Some of his works, especially his score for ''West Side Story,'' helped bridge the gap between classical and popular music. His music was rooted in tonality but in some works like his ''Kaddish Symphony'' and the opera ''A Quiet Place'' he mixed in 12-tone elements. Bernstein himself said his main motivation for composing was "to communicate" and that all his pieces, including his symphonies and concert works, "could in some sense be thought of as 'theatre' pieces." According to the League of American orchestras, he was the second most frequently performed American composer by US orchestras in 2008-9 behind Copland, and he was the 16th most frequently performed composer overall by US orchestras. (Some performances were probably due to the 90th anniversary of his birth in 2008.) His most popular pieces were the ''Overture to Candide'', the ''Symphonic Dances from West Side Story'', the ''Serenade for Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion'' and the ''Three Dance Episodes from On the Town''. His shows ''West Side Story'', ''On the Town'', ''Wonderful Town'' and ''Candide'' are regularly performed, and his symphonies and concert works are programmed from time to time by orchestras around the world. Since his death many of his works have been commercially recorded by artists other than himself. The ''Serenade'', which has been recorded more than 10 times, is probably his most recorded work not taken from an actual theatre piece.

Despite the fact that he was a popular success as a composer, Bernstein himself is reported to have been disillusioned that some of his more serious works were not rated more highly by critics, and that he himself had not been able to devote more time to composing because of his conducting and other activities. Professional criticism of Bernstein's music often involves discussing the degree to which he created something new as art versus simply skillfully borrowing and fusing together elements from others. In the late 1960s, Bernstein himself reflected that his eclecticism was in part due to his lack of lengthy periods devoted to composition, and that he was still seeking to enrich his own personal musical language in the manner of the great composers of the past, all of whom had borrowed elements from others. Perhaps the harshest criticism he received from some critics in his lifetime though was directed at works like his ''Kaddish Symphony'', his ''MASS'' and the opera ''A Quiet Place'', where they found the underlying message of the piece or the text as either mildly embarrassing, clichéd or offensive. Despite this, all these pieces have been performed, discussed and reconsidered since his death.

Although he taught conducting, Bernstein was not a teacher of composition as such, and he has no direct composing heirs. Perhaps the closest are composers like John Adams who from the 1970s onwards indirectly adopted elements of his eclectic, theatrical style.

Works

Ballet

''Fancy Free'', 1944

''Facsimile- Choreographic Essay for Orchestra'', 1946

''Dybbuk'' (ballet), 1974

Opera

''Trouble in Tahiti'', 1952

''Candide'', 1956 (new libretto in 1973, operetta final revised version in 1989)

''A Quiet Place'', 1983

Musicals

''On The Town'', 1944

''Wonderful Town'', 1953

''West Side Story'', 1957

''The Race to Urga'' (incomplete), 1969

"By Bernstein" (a Revue), 1975

''1600 Pennsylvania Avenue'', 1976

''The Madwoman of Central Park West'', (contributed to) 1979

Incidental music and other theatre

''Peter Pan'', 1950

''The Lark'', 1955

''The Firstborn'', 1958

''Mass'' (theatre piece for singers, players and dancers), 1971

Film scores

''On the Town'', (only part of his music was used), 1949

''On the Waterfront'', 1954

''West Side Story'', 1961

Orchestral

Symphony No. 1, ''Jeremiah'', 1942

''Fancy Free'' and ''Three Dance Variations from "Fancy Free,"'', concert premiere 1946

''Three Dance Episodes from "On the Town,"'' concert premiere 1947

Symphony No. 2, ''The Age of Anxiety'', (after W. H. Auden) for Piano and Orchestra, 1949 (revised in 1965)

''Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, Harp and Percussion (after Plato's "Symposium")'', 1954

''Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs'' for Solo Clarinet and Jazz Ensemble, 1949

''Symphonic Suite from "On the Waterfront"'', 1955

''Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story"'', 1961

Symphony No. 3, ''Kaddish'', for Orchestra, Mixed Chorus, Boys' Choir, Speaker and Soprano Solo, 1963 (revised in 1977)

''Dybbuk'', Suites No. 1 and 2 for Orchestra, concert premieres 1975

''Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems for Six Singers and Orchestra'', 1977

''Three Meditations from "Mass"'' for Violoncello and Orchestra, 1977

''Slava! A Political Overture for Orchestra, 1977

''Divertimento for Orchestra'', 1980

''Halil'', nocturne for Solo Flute, Piccolo, Alto Flute, Percussion, Harp and Strings, 1981

''Concerto for Orchestra'', 1989 (Originally ''Jubilee Games'' from 1986, revised in 1989)

Overture to Candide

Choral

''Hashkiveinu'' for Cantor (tenor), Mixed Chorus and Organ, 1945

''Missa Brevis'' for Mixed Chorus and Countertenor Solo, with Percussion, 1988

''Chichester Psalms'' for Boy Soprano (or Countertenor), Mixed Chorus, and Orchestra, 1965 (Reduced version for Organ, Harp and Percussion)

Chamber music

Piano Trio, 1937, Boosey & Hawkes

Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, 1939

Brass Music, 1959

Dance Suite, 1988

Vocal music

''I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kids Songs for Soprano and Piano'', 1943

''Big Stuff'', sung by Billie Holiday

''La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano'', 1948

''Silhouette (Galilee)'', 1951

''Two Love Songs'', 1960

''So Pretty'', 1968

''Piccola Serenata'', 1988

''Arias and Barcarolles'' for Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone and Piano four-hands, 1988

Piano music

''Music for Two Pianos'', 1937

''Piano Sonata'', 1938

''7 Anniversaries'', 1944

''4 Anniversaries'', 1948

''5 Anniversaries'', 1952

''Bridal Suite'', 1960

''Moby Diptych'', 1981 (republished as Anniversaries nos. 1 and 2 in Thirteen Anniversaries)

''Touches'', 1981

''13 Anniversaries'', 1988

Other music

Other occasional works, written as gifts and other forms of memorial and tribute

"The Skin of Our Teeth": An aborted work from which Bernstein took material to use in his "Chichester Psalms"

"Simhu Na" (arrangement of traditional song)

"Waltz for Mippy III" for Tuba and Piano

"Elegy for Mippy II" for Trombone alone

"Elegy for Mippy I" for Horn and Piano

"Rondo for Lifey" for Trumpet and Piano

"Fanfare for Bima" for Brass Quartet: composed in 1947 as a birthday tribute to Koussevitzky using the tune he whistled to call his cocker spaniel

"Shivaree: A Fanfare" for Double Brass Ensemble and Percussion. 1970. Commissioned by and dedicated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in honor of its Centenary. Musical material later used in "Mass."

Bibliography

Bernstein, Leonard. [1976] ''The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard'', Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-92001-5.

Videography

''The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard''. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. VHS ISBN 1561275700. DVD ISBN 0769715702. (videotape of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures given at Harvard in 1973.)

''Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic''. West Long Branch, New Jersey: Kultur Video. DVD ISBN 0769715036.

''Bernstein on Beethoven: A Celebration in Vienna/Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1.'' West Long Branch, Kultur Video. DVD

''Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus – The Historic TV Broadcasts'' ,2010, E1 Ent.

''Bernstein: Reflections'' (1978), Euroarts.

''Bernstein/Beethoven'' (1982), Deustche Grammophon, DVD

''Bernstein Conducts "West Side Story" '' (1985) (retitled ''The Making of West Side Story'' in re-releases) Deutsche Grammophon, DVD

''"The Rite of Spring" in Rehearsal''

Awards

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1951

Sonning Award (Denmark), 1956

Ditson Conductor's Award, 1958

George Peabody Medal – Johns Hopkins University, 1980

Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1987

Royal Philarmonic Society Gold Medal (UK), 1987

Knight Grand Cross Order of Merit (Italy), 1989

Grammy Award for Best Album for Children

Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance

Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance

Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording

Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance

Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance

Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition

Grammy Award for Best Classical Album

Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award

Tony Award for Best Musical

Special Tony Award

Further reading

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References

External links

Leonard Bernstein official site

Discography

The Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress Music Division

Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks

Bernstein's Boston, a Harvard University research project

FBI file on Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts

Gay Great – Leonard Bernstein

''Radical Chic'', a book by Tom Wolfe describing a gathering at Bernstein's apartment of New York's social elite and the Black Panther Party.

Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace of Music, written by Peter Gutmann, music journalist.

Arias and Barcarolles, The Leonard Bernstein Pages

Leonard Bernstein's maximum card from Israel

Obituary, ''New York Times'', October 15, 1990

''Leonard Bernstein: American Original'' (HarperCollins, 2008) Chapters by Alan Rich, Paul Boyer, Carol J. Oja, Tim Page, Burton Bernstein, Jonathan Rosenberg, Joseph Horowitz, Bill McGlaughlin, James M. Keller, John Adams

Category:1918 births Category:1990 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:American classical pianists Category:American conductors (music) Category:American film score composers Category:American musical theatre composers Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:George Peabody Medal winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:LGBT composers Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT parents Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:MacDowell Colony fellows Category:Opera composers Category:People from Lawrence, Massachusetts Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Ballet composers Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Brandeis University faculty Category:Curtis Institute of Music alumni Category:American expatriates in Austria Category:People from Sharon, Massachusetts Category:Jewish American classical composers Category:Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

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name	William Blake| image William Blake by Thomas Phillips.jpg
birth date	November 28, 1757
birth place	London, England
death date	August 12, 1827
death place	London, England
occupation	Poet, painter, printmaker
spouse	Catherine Blake (1782–1827)
movement	Romanticism
genre	Visionary, poetry
notableworks	''Songs of Innocence and of Experience'', ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'', ''The Four Zoas'', ''Jerusalem'', ''Milton a Poem'', ''And did those feet in ancient time''
influences	The Bible, Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jakob Böhme, Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Fuseli
influenced	Samuel Palmer, William Butler Yeats, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Hart Crane, Kahlil Gibran, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, John Gardner, Clive Barker, Kenzaburo Oe, Paulo Coelho, Jim Morrison, Aldous Huxley, Bob Dylan }}

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

Early life

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick St) in the Soho district of London. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. William attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Wright Armitage Blake. The Blakes were Dissenters, and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and would remain a source of inspiration throughout his life.

Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, a practice that was then preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Marten Heemskerk and Albrecht Dürer. His parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser.

Apprenticeship to Basire

On 4 August 1772, Blake became apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, for the term of seven years. At the end of this period, at the age of 21, he was to become a professional engraver. No record survives of any serious disagreement or conflict between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship. However, Peter Ackroyd's biography notes that Blake was later to add Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries—and then cross it out. This aside, Basire's style of engraving was of a kind held to be old-fashioned at the time, and Blake's instruction in this outmoded form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life.

After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (perhaps to settle a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). His experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, and varicoloured waxworks. Ackroyd notes that "...the most immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness and colour". In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally interrupted by the boys of Westminster School, one of whom "tormented" Blake so much one afternoon that he knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence". Blake beheld more visions in the Abbey, of a great procession of monks and priests, while he heard "the chant of plain-song and chorale."

Royal Academy

On 8 October 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near the Strand. While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude towards art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his ''Discourses'' that the "disposition to abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded, in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit". Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynolds' fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael.

David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the president's opinions (like Blake, Reynolds held history painting to be of greater value than landscape and portraiture), but rather "against his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice." Certainly Blake was not averse to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between 1780 and 1808.

Blake became friends with John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland during his first year at the Royal Academy. They shared radical views, with Stothard and Cumberland joining the Society for Constitutional Information.

Gordon Riots

Blake's first biographer, Alexander Gilchrist, records that in June 1780 Blake was walking towards Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison in London. They attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, set the building ablaze, and released the prisoners inside. Blake was reportedly in the front rank of the mob during this attack. These riots, in response to a parliamentary bill revoking sanctions against Roman Catholicism, later came to be known as the Gordon Riots. They provoked a flurry of legislation from the government of George III, as well as the creation of the first police force.

Despite Gilchrist's insistence that Blake was "forced" to accompany the crowd, some biographers have argued that he accompanied it impulsively, or supported it as a revolutionary act. In contrast, Jerome McGann argues that the riots were reactionary, and that events would have provoked "disgust" in Blake.

Marriage and early career

Blake met Catherine Boucher in 1782. At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. He recounted the story of his heartbreak for Catherine and her parents, after which he asked Catherine, "Do you pity me?" When she responded affirmatively, he declared, "Then I love you." Blake married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. The original wedding certificate may still be viewed at the church, where a commemorative stained-glass window was installed between 1976 and 1982. Later, in addition to teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver. Throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aid to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits throughout numerous misfortunes.

Blake's first collection of poems, ''Poetical Sketches'', was printed around 1783. After his father's death, William and former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a print shop in 1784, and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Johnson's house was a meeting-place for some of the leading English intellectual dissidents of the time: theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley, philosopher Richard Price, artist John Henry Fuseli, early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and Anglo-American revolutionary Thomas Paine. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the French revolution and American revolutions and wore a Phrygian cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. In 1784 Blake also composed his unfinished manuscript ''An Island in the Moon''.

Blake illustrated ''Original Stories from Real Life'' (1788; 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. They seem to have shared some views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage, but there is no evidence proving without doubt that they actually met. In 1793's ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion'', Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment.

Relief etching

In 1788, at the age of 31, Blake began to experiment with relief etching, a method he would use to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and final products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid to dissolve the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name).

This is a reversal of the normal method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching (which Blake also referred to as "stereotype" in ''The Ghost of Abel'') was intended as a means for producing his illuminated books more quickly than via intaglio. Stereotype, a process invented in 1725, consisted of making a metal cast from a wood engraving, but Blake’s innovation was, as described above, very different. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-coloured in water colours and stitched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including ''Songs of Innocence and Experience'', ''The Book of Thel'', ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'', and ''Jerusalem''.

Engravings

Although Blake has become most famous for his relief etching, his commercial work largely consisted of intaglio engraving, the standard process of engraving in the eighteenth century in which the artist would incise an image into the copper plate. This was a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to complete, but as Blake's contemporary, John Boydell, realised, such engraving offered a "missing link with commerce", enabling artists to connect with a mass audience and so becoming an immensely important activity by the end of the eighteenth century.

Blake also employed intaglio engraving in his own work, most notably for the illustrations of the Book of Job, completed just before his death. Most critical work has tended to concentrate on Blake's relief etching as a technique because it is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study draws attention to Blake's surviving plates, including those for the Book of Job: these demonstrate that he made frequent use of a technique known as "repoussage", a means of obliterating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting the back of the plate. Such techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different to the much faster and fluid way of drawing on a plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates why the engravings took so long to complete.

Later life and career

Blake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. Blake taught Catherine to write, and she helped him to colour his printed poems. Gilchrist refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the marriage. Some biographers have suggested that Blake tried to bring a concubine into the marriage bed in accordance with the beliefs of the more radical branches of the Swedenborgian Society, but other scholars have dismissed these theories as conjecture. William and Catherine's first daughter and last child might be Thel described in ''The Book of Thel'' who was conceived as dead.

Felpham

In 1800, Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex (now West Sussex) to take up a job illustrating the works of William Hayley, a minor poet. It was in this cottage that Blake began ''Milton: a Poem'' (the title page is dated 1804 but Blake continued to work on it until 1808). The preface to this work includes a poem beginning "And did those feet in ancient time," which became the words for the anthem, "Jerusalem". Over time, Blake came to resent his new patron, coming to believe that Hayley was uninterested in true artistry, and preoccupied with "the meer drudgery of business" (E724). Blake's disenchantment with Hayley has been speculated to have influenced ''Milton: a Poem'', in which Blake wrote that "Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies." (4:26, E98)

Blake's trouble with authority came to a head in August 1803, when he was involved in a physical altercation with a soldier called John Schofield. Blake was charged not only with assault, but also with uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the King. Schofield claimed that Blake had exclaimed, "Damn the king. The soldiers are all slaves." Blake would be cleared in the Chichester assizes of the charges. According to a report in the Sussex county paper, "The invented character of [the evidence] was ... so obvious that an acquittal resulted." Schofield was later depicted wearing "mind forged manacles" in an illustration to ''Jerusalem''.

Return to London

Blake returned to London in 1804 and began to write and illustrate ''Jerusalem'' (1804–1820), his most ambitious work. Having conceived the idea of portraying the characters in Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'', Blake approached the dealer Robert Cromek, with a view to marketing an engraving. Knowing that Blake was too eccentric to produce a popular work, Cromek promptly commissioned Blake's friend Thomas Stothard to execute the concept. When Blake learned that he had been cheated, he broke off contact with Stothard. He also set up an independent exhibition in his brother's haberdashery shop at 27 Broad Street in the Soho district of London. The exhibition was designed to market his own version of the Canterbury illustration (titled ''The Canterbury Pilgrims''), along with other works. As a result he wrote his ''Descriptive Catalogue'' (1809), which contains what Anthony Blunt has called a "brilliant analysis" of Chaucer. It is regularly anthologised as a classic of Chaucer criticism. It also contained detailed explanations of his other paintings.

The exhibition itself, however, was very poorly attended, selling none of the temperas or watercolours. Its only review, in ''The Examiner'', was hostile.

Also around this time (circa 1808) Blake gave vigorous expression of views on art in an extensive series of polemical annotations to the ''Discourses'' of Sir Joshua Reynolds, denouncing the British Academy as a fraud and proclaiming, "To Generalize is to be an Idiot."

In 1818 he was introduced by George Cumberland's son to a young artist named John Linnell. Through Linnell he met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the Shoreham Ancients. This group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age. At the age of 65 Blake began work on illustrations for the ''Book of Job''. These works were later admired by Ruskin, who compared Blake favourably to Rembrandt, and by Vaughan Williams, who based his ballet ''Job: A Masque for Dancing'' on a selection of the illustrations.

Later in his life Blake began to sell a great number of his works, particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas Butts, a patron who saw Blake more as a friend than a man whose work held artistic merit; this was typical of the opinions held of Blake throughout his life.

Dante's ''Divine Comedy''

The commission for Dante's ''Divine Comedy'' came to Blake in 1826 through Linnell, with the ultimate aim of producing a series of engravings. Blake's death in 1827 would cut short the enterprise, and only a handful of the watercolours were completed, with only seven of the engravings arriving at proof form. Even so, they have evoked praise:

:'[T]he Dante watercolours are among Blake's richest achievements, engaging fully with the problem of illustrating a poem of this complexity. The mastery of watercolour has reached an even higher level than before, and is used to extraordinary effect in differentiating the atmosphere of the three states of being in the poem'. Blake's illustrations of the poem are not merely accompanying works, but rather seem to critically revise, or furnish commentary on, certain spiritual or moral aspects of the text.

Because the project was never completed, Blake's intent may itself be obscured. Some indicators, however, bolster the impression that Blake's illustrations in their totality would themselves take issue with the text they accompany: In the margin of ''Homer Bearing the Sword and His Companions'', Blake notes, "Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost." Blake seems to dissent from Dante's admiration of the poetic works of ancient Greece, and from the apparent glee with which Dante allots punishments in Hell (as evidenced by the grim humour of the cantos).

At the same time, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the corruptive nature of power, and clearly relished the opportunity to represent the atmosphere and imagery of Dante's work pictorially. Even as he seemed to near death, Blake's central preoccupation was his feverish work on the illustrations to Dante's ''Inferno''; he is said to have spent one of the very last shillings he possessed on a pencil to continue sketching.

Death

On the day of his death, Blake worked relentlessly on his Dante series. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me." Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses. At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died. Gilchrist reports that a female lodger in the same house, present at his expiration, said, "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel."

George Richmond gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer:

Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell. He was buried five days after his death – on the eve of his forty-fifth wedding anniversary – at the Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields, where his parents were also interred. Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham and John Linnell. Following Blake's death, Catherine moved into Tatham's house as a housekeeper. During this period, she believed she was regularly visited by Blake's spirit. She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but would entertain no business transaction without first "consulting Mr. Blake". On the day of her own death, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it would not be long now".

On her death, Blake's manuscripts were inherited by Frederick Tatham, who burned several he deemed heretical or politically radical. Tatham was an Irvingite, one of the many fundamentalist movements of the 19th century, and was severely opposed to any work that smacked of blasphemy. Also, John Linnell erased sexual imagery from a number of Blake's drawings.

Since 1965, the exact location of William Blake's grave had been lost and forgotten, while gravestones were taken away to create a new lawn. Nowadays, Blake’s grave is commemorated by a stone that reads "Near by lie the remains of the poet-painter William Blake 1757-1827 and his wife Catherine Sophia 1762-1831". This memorial stone is situated approximately 20 metres away from the actual spot of Blake’s grave, which is not marked. However, members of the group Friends of William Blake have rediscovered the location of Blake's grave and intend to place a permanent memorial at the site.

Blake is now recognised as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949. In 1957 a memorial was erected in Westminster Abbey, in memory of him and his wife.

Politics

Blake was not active in any well-established political party. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of rebellion against the abuse of class power as documented in David Erdman's large study ''Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times''. Blake was both concerned about senseless wars of kingdoms, and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution. Much of his poetry recounts in symbolic allegory the effects of the French and American revolutions. Erdman claims that Blake was disillusioned with these revolutions, believing they had simply replaced monarchy with irresponsible mercantilism. Erdman also notes that Blake was deeply opposed to slavery, and believes that some poems of Blake read primarily as championing "free love" have had their anti-slavery implications short-changed. One of the more recent (and very short) studies of Blake, ''William Blake: Visionary Anarchist'' by Peter Marshall (1988), has classified Blake as one of the forerunners of modern anarchism, along with Blake's contemporary William Godwin. The British Marxist historian E.P. Thompson's last finished work was a study on William Blake, ''Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law'' (1993), and it shows how far Blake was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War.

Development of Blake's views

Because Blake's later poetry contains a private mythology with complex symbolism, his late work has been less published than his earlier more accessible work. The recent Vintage anthology of Blake edited by Patti Smith focuses heavily on the earlier work, as do many critical studies such as ''William Blake'' by D. G. Gillham.

The earlier work is primarily rebellious in character and can be seen as a protestation against dogmatic religion. This is especially notable in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' in which the figure represented by Satan is virtually the hero rebelling against an imposter authoritarian deity. In the later works such as ''Milton'' and ''Jerusalem'', Blake carves a distinctive vision of a humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice and forgiveness, while retaining his earlier negative attitude towards what he felt was the rigid and morbid authoritarianism of traditional religion. Not all readers of Blake agree upon how much continuity exists between Blake's earlier and later works.

Psychoanalyst June Singer has written that Blake's late work displayed a development of the ideas that were first introduced in his earlier works, namely, the humanitarian goal of achieving personal wholeness of body and spirit. The final section of the expanded edition of her Blake study ''The Unholy Bible'' suggests that the later works are in fact the "Bible of Hell" promised in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''. Regarding Blake's final poem "Jerusalem", she writes:

[T]he promise of the divine in man, made in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'', is at last fulfilled.

However, John Middleton Murry notes discontinuity between ''Marriage'' and the late works, in that while the early Blake focused on a "sheer negative opposition between Energy and Reason", the later Blake emphasised the notions of self-sacrifice and forgiveness as the road to interior wholeness. This renunciation of the sharper dualism of ''Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' is evidenced in particular by the humanisation of the character of Urizen in the later works. Middleton characterises the later Blake as having found "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness".

Sexuality

19th century "free love" movement

Since his death, William Blake has been claimed by various movements who apply his complex and often elusive use of symbolism and allegory to the issues that concern them.

In particular, Blake is sometimes considered (along with Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin) a forerunner of the subsequent 19th century "free love" movement, a broad reform tradition starting in the 1820s that held that marriage is slavery, and advocated for removal of all state restrictions on sexual activity such as homosexuality, prostitution, and adultery, culminating in the birth control movement of the early 20th century. Blake scholarship was more focused on this theme in the earlier 20th century than today, although it is still mentioned today notably by the Blake scholar Magnus Ankarsjö who moderately challenges this interpretation. The 19th century "free love" movement was not particularly focused on the idea of multiple partners, but did agree with Wollstonecraft that state-sanctioned marriage was "legal prostitution" and was monopolistic in character. It has somewhat more in common with early feminist movements (particularly with regard to the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired).

Blake was critical of the marriage laws of his day, and generally railed against traditional Christian notions of chastity as a virtue. At a time of tremendous strain in his marriage, in part due to Catherine's apparent inability to bear children, he directly advocated bringing a second wife into the house. His poetry suggests that external demands for marital fidelity reduce love to mere duty rather than authentic affection, and decries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws. Poems such as "Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree?" and "Earth's Answer" seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. His poem "London" speaks of "the Marriage-Hearse". ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion'' is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute to free love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held together only by laws and not by love. For Blake, law and love are opposed, and he castigates the "frozen marriage-bed". In ''Visions'', Blake writes

Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound In spells of law to one she loathes? and must she drag the chain Of life in weary lust? (5.21-3, E49)

In the 19th century famed poet and free love advocate Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote a full-length book on Blake drawing attention to the above motifs in which Blake praises "sacred natural love" that is not bound by another's possessive jealousy, the latter characterised by Blake as a "creeping skeleton". Swinburne also notes how Blake's ''Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' condemns the hypocrisy of the "pale religious letchery" of advocates of traditional norms. Another 19th century free love advocate, Edward Carpenter (1844–1929), was also influenced by Blake's mystical emphasis on energy free from external restrictions.

In the early 20th century Pierre Berger described how Blake's views echo that of Mary Wollstonecraft celebrating joyful authentic love rather than love born of duty, the former being the true measure of purity. Irene Langridge notes that "in Blake's mysterious and unorthodox creed the doctrine of free love was something Blake wanted for the edification of 'the soul'." Michael Davis' 1977 book ''William Blake a New Kind of Man'' suggests that Blake thought jealousy separates man from the divine unity, condemning him to a frozen death.

As a theological writer, Blake has a sense of human “fallenness”. S. Foster Damon has noted that for Blake the major impediments to a free love society were corrupt human nature, not merely the intolerance of society and the jealousy of men, but the inauthentic hypocritical nature of human communication. Thomas Wright's 1928 book ''Life of William Blake'' (entirely devoted to Blake's doctrine of free love) notes that Blake thinks marriage should ''in practice'' afford the joy of love, but notes that in reality it often does not, as a couple's knowledge of being chained often diminishes their joy. Pierre Berger also analyses Blake's early mythological poems such as ''Ahania'' as declaring marriage laws to be a consequence of the fallenness of humanity, as these are born from pride and jealousy.

Some scholars have noted both that Blake's views on “free love” are both qualified and may have undergone shifts and modifications in his late years. Some poems from this period warn of dangers of predatory sexuality such as ''The Sick Rose''. Magnus Ankarsjö notes that while the hero of ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion'' is a strong advocate of free love, by the end of the poem she has become more circumspect as her awareness of the dark side of sexuality has grown, crying "Can this be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water?" Ankarsjö also notes that a major inspiration to Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, similarly developed more circumspect views of sexual freedom late in life. In light of Blake's aforementioned sense of human 'fallenness' Ankarsjö thinks Blake does ''not'' fully approve of sensual indulgence merely in defiance of law as exemplified by the female character of Leutha, since in the fallen world of experience all love is enchained. Ankarsjö records Blake as having supported a commune with some sharing of partners, though David Worrall has recently read ''The Book of Thel'' as a rejection of the proposal to take concubines espoused by some members of the Swedenborgian church.

Blake's later writings show a renewed interest in Christianity, and although he radically reinterprets Christian morality in a way that embraces sensual pleasure, there is little of the emphasis on sexual libertarianism found in several of his early poems, and there is advocacy of "self-denial", though such abnegation must be inspired by love rather than through authoritarian compulsion. Berger (moreso than Swinburne) is especially sensitive to a shift in sensibility between the early Blake and the later Blake. Berger believes the young Blake placed too much emphasis on following impulses, and that the older Blake had a better formed ideal of a true love that sacrifices self. Some celebration of mystical sensuality remains in the late poems (most notably in Blake's denial of the virginity of Jesus' mother). However, the late poems also place a greater emphasis on forgiveness, redemption, and emotional authenticity as a foundation for relationships.

Religious views

Although Blake's attacks on conventional religion were shocking in his own day, his rejection of religiosity was not a rejection of religion ''per se''. His view of orthodoxy is evident in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'', a series of texts written in imitation of Biblical prophecy. Therein, Blake lists several ''Proverbs of Hell'', amongst which are the following:

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

As the chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. (8.21, 9.55, E36)

In ''The Everlasting Gospel'', Blake does not present Jesus as a philosopher or traditional messianic figure but as a supremely creative being, above dogma, logic and even morality:

If he had been Antichrist Creeping Jesus, He'd have done anything to please us: Gone sneaking into Synagogues And not us'd the Elders & Priests like Dogs, But humble as a Lamb or Ass, Obey'd himself to Caiaphas. God wants not Man to Humble himself (55-61, E519-20)

Jesus, for Blake, symbolises the vital relationship and unity between divinity and humanity: "All had originally one language, and one religion: this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus." (''Descriptive Catalogue'', Plate 39, E543)

Blake designed his own mythology, which appears largely in his prophetic books. Within these Blake describes a number of characters, including 'Urizen', 'Enitharmon', 'Bromion' and 'Luvah'. This mythology seems to have a basis in the Bible and in Greek mythology, and it accompanies his ideas about the everlasting Gospel.

One of Blake's strongest objections to orthodox Christianity is that he felt it encouraged the suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy. In ''A Vision of the Last Judgement'', Blake says that:

One may also note his words concerning religion in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'':

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors. :1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul. :2. That Energy, calld Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, calld Good, is alone from the Soul. :3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies. But the following Contraries to these are True :1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. :2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy. :3. Energy is Eternal Delight. (Plate 4, E34)

Blake does not subscribe to the notion of a body distinct from the soul that must submit to the rule of the soul, but sees the body as an extension of the soul, derived from the 'discernment' of the senses. Thus, the emphasis orthodoxy places upon the denial of bodily urges is a dualistic error born of misapprehension of the relationship between body and soul. Elsewhere, he describes Satan as the 'state of error', and as beyond salvation.

Blake opposed the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits evil and apologises for injustice. He abhorred self-denial, which he associated with religious repression and particularly sexual repression: "Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. / He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." (7.4-5, E35) He saw the concept of 'sin' as a trap to bind men’s desires (the briars of ''Garden of Love''), and believed that restraint in obedience to a moral code imposed from the outside was against the spirit of life:

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs & flaming hair But Desire Gratified Plants fruits & beauty there. (E474)

He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord, an entity separate from and superior to mankind; this is shown clearly in his words about Jesus Christ: "He is the only God ... and so am I, and so are you." A telling phrase in ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' is "men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast". This is very much in line with his belief in liberty and social equality in society and between the sexes.

Enlightenment philosophy

Blake had a complex relationship with Enlightenment philosophy. Due to his visionary religious beliefs, Blake opposed the Newtonian view of the universe. This mindset is reflected in an excerpt from Blake's ''Jerusalem'':

I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace. (15.14-20, E159)

Blake also believed that the paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which depict the naturalistic fall of light upon objects, were products entirely of the "vegetative eye", and he saw Locke and Newton as "the true progenitors of Sir Joshua Reynolds' aesthetic". The popular taste in the England of that time for such paintings was satisfied with mezzotints, prints produced by a process that created an image from thousands of tiny dots upon the page. Blake saw an analogy between this and Newton's particle theory of light. Accordingly, Blake never used the technique, opting rather to develop a method of engraving purely in fluid line, insisting that:

Despite his opposition to Enlightenment principles, Blake thus arrived at a linear aesthetic that was in many ways more similar to the Neoclassical engravings of John Flaxman than to the works of the Romantics, with whom he is often classified.

Therefore Blake has also been viewed as an enlightenment poet and artist, in the sense that he was in accord with that movement's rejection of received ideas, systems, authorities and traditions. On the other hand, he was critical of what he perceived as the elevation of reason to the status of an oppressive authority. In his criticism of reason, law and uniformity Blake has been taken to be opposed to the enlightenment, but it has also been argued that, in a dialectical sense, he used the enlightenment spirit of rejection of external authority to criticise narrow conceptions of the enlightenment.

Assessment

Creative mindset

Northrop Frye, commenting on Blake's consistency in strongly held views, notes that Blake "himself says that his notes on [Joshua] Reynolds, written at fifty, are 'exactly Similar' to those on Locke and Bacon, written when he was 'very Young'. Even phrases and lines of verse will reappear as much as forty years later. Consistency in maintaining what he believed to be true was itself one of his leading principles ... Consistency, then, foolish or otherwise, is one of Blake's chief preoccupations, just as 'self-contradiction' is always one of his most contemptuous comments".

Blake abhorred slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality. Several of his poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity: "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)". In one poem, narrated by a black child, white and black bodies alike are described as shaded groves or clouds, which exist only until one learns "to bear the beams of love":

When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me. (23-8, E9)

Blake retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, and social and political statements are often present in his mystical symbolism. His views on what he saw as oppression and restriction of rightful freedom extended to the Church. His spiritual beliefs are evident in ''Songs of Experience'' (1794), in which he distinguishes between the Old Testament God, whose restrictions he rejected, and the New Testament God whom he saw as a positive influence.

Visions

From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The first of these visions may have occurred as early as the age of four when, according to one anecdote, the young artist "saw God" when God "put his head to the window", causing Blake to break into screaming. At the age of eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, Blake claimed to have seen "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home and reported this vision, and he only escaped being thrashed by his father for telling a lie through the intervention of his mother. Though all evidence suggests that his parents were largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber. On another occasion, Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them.

Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. They were often associated with beautiful religious themes and imagery, and therefore may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits. Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works. God and Christianity constituted the intellectual centre of his writings, from which he drew inspiration. In addition, Blake believed that he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels. In a letter to William Hayley, dated 6 May 1800, Blake writes:

In a letter to John Flaxman, dated 21 September 1800, Blake writes:

In a letter to Thomas Butts, dated 25 April 1803, Blake writes:

In ''A Vision of the Last Judgement'' Blake writes:

Aware of Blake's visions, William Wordsworth commented, "There was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott." In a more deferential vein, writing in his ''A short biographical dictionary of English literature'', John William Cousins wrote that Blake was "a truly pious and loving soul, neglected and misunderstood by the world, but appreciated by an elect few", who "led a cheerful and contented life of poverty illumined by visions and celestial inspirations."

General cultural influence

Blake's work was neglected for a generation after his death and was almost forgotten when Alexander Gilchrist began work on his biography in the 1860s. The publication of the ''Life of William Blake'' rapidly transformed Blake's reputation, in particular as he was taken up by Pre-Raphaelites and associated figures, in particular Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne. It was in the twentieth century, however, that Blake's work was fully appreciated and his influence increased. Important early and mid twentieth-century scholars involved in enhancing Blake's standing in literary and artistic circles included S. Foster Damon, Geoffrey Keynes, Northrop Frye, David V. Erdman and G. E. Bentley, Jr.

While Blake had a significant role to play in the art and poetry of figures such as Rossetti, it was during the Modernist period that this work began to influence a wider set of writers and artists. William Butler Yeats, who edited an edition of Blake's collected works in 1893, drew on him for poetic and philosophical ideas, while British surrealist art in particular drew on Blake's conceptions of non-mimetic, visionary practice in the painting of artists such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland. His poetry also came into use by a number of British classical composers such as Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who set his works. Modern British composer John Tavener has also set several of Blake's poems, including ''The Tyger'' and ''The Lamb''.

Many such as June Singer have argued that Blake's thoughts on human nature greatly anticipate and parallel the thinking of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, although Jung dismissed Blake's works as "an artistic production rather than an authentic representation of unconscious processes." Similarly, although less popularly, Diana Hume George has claimed that Blake can be seen as a precursor to the ideas of Sigmund Freud.

Blake had an enormous influence on the beat poets of the 1950s and the counterculture of the 1960s, frequently being cited by such seminal figures as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, songwriters Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, and English writer Aldous Huxley. Much of the central conceit of Phillip Pullman's fantasy trilogy ''His Dark Materials'' is rooted in the world of Blake's ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''. After World War II, Blake's role in popular culture has come to the fore in a variety of areas such as popular music, film, and the graphic novel, leading Edward Larrissy to assert that "Blake is the Romantic writer who has exerted the most powerful influence on the twentieth century."

Bibliography

Illuminated books

c.1788:'' All Religions are One''

*''There is No Natural Religion''

1789: ''Songs of Innocence''

* ''The Book of Thel''

1790–1793: ''The Marriage of Heaven and Hell''

1793-1795: ''Continental prophecies''

1793: ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion''

* ''America a Prophecy''

1794: ''Europe a Prophecy''

*''The First Book of Urizen''

* ''Songs of Experience''

1795: ''The Book of Los''

* ''The Song of Los''

* ''The Book of Ahania''

c.1804–c.1811: ''Milton a Poem''

1804–1820: ''Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion''

Non-illuminated

1783: ''Poetical Sketches''

1784-5: ''An Island in the Moon''

1789: ''Tiriel''

1791: ''The French Revolution''

1792: ''A Song of Liberty''

1797: ''The Four Zoas''

Illustrated by Blake

1791: Mary Wollstonecraft, ''Original Stories from Real Life''

1796: Gottfried August Bürger, ''Leonora'' (not engraved by him)

1797: Edward Young, ''Night Thoughts''

1805-1808: Robert Blair, ''The Grave''

1808: John Milton, ''Paradise Lost''

1819-1820: John Varley, ''Visionary Heads''

1821: R.J. Thornton, ''Virgil''

1823-1826: ''The Book of Job''

1824-1827: John Bunyan, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'' (Not finished)

1825-1827: Dante, ''The Divine Comedy'' (Blake died in 1827 with work on these illustrations still unfinished. Of the 102 watercolours, 7 had been selected for engraving)

On Blake

See also

Radical Christianity

References

External links

Tate's online resource on William Blake

Friends of William Blake

Blake Society

"William Blake and Visual Culture" from the ''ImageText'' journal

Profiles

Profile at the Academy of American Poets

Profile at the Poetry Foundation

William Blake profile, video on BBC Poetry Season and BBC etching gallery

Archive

The G.E. Bentley Blake archive at the University of Toronto

The William Blake Archive.

William Blake archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Blake's notebook using the British Library

Settings of William Blake's poetry in the Choral Public Domain Library

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