Run Time: Approx. 36 minutes

Leonard Bernstein is one of the most significant figures in the development of modern orchestral music. He was the first American-born conductor to serve as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. His compositions have had a lasting presence in concert halls, opera houses, and on the Broadway stage. Over the course of his career, he won seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and sixteen Grammys. He became something of a celebrity following his televised exploration of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the first of many such lectures that eventually included his beloved Young People’s Concerts. In my opinion, no one before or since has so effectively communicated the principals of classical music to a public audience. For anyone interested, the complete lectures are available on YouTube.

To get to what’s important in this piece, though, we can put aside his accomplishments and focus on the man himself. He was an intellectual. He loved literature and philosophy. He was a magnetic personality. A Jewish man who lived through World War II, he managed to remain a humanist and an optimist. Most importantly, he loved love. He loved his wife, he loved his children, and he loved men. He loved his friends and told them so effusively.

The letter below, from Bernstein to fellow composer Aaron Copland, is a touching example of his unabashed affection.

Dear A:

It’s two days before your birthday, but I’m already thinking hard and tenderly about you; and this note is your birthday present carrying with it such abiding love as I rarely if ever get to express to you in our occasional meetings. I don’t know if you’re aware of what you mean, have meant for 30 years, to me and my music and so many of my attitudes to life and to people. I suppose if there’s one person on earth who is at the center of my life it’s you; and day after day I recognize in my living your presence, your laugh, your peculiar mixture of intensity and calm…. I hope you live forever.

A long strong hug—

Lenny

Leonard Bernstein with his wife Felicia and their children

Plato’s Symposium was a favorite of Lenny’s (as he was known to his friends) and, at least for a time, occupied a prime position on his bedside table. In the book, Plato imagines a gathering of seven prominent Athenian men around 416 BCE, who engage in a friendly competition of speeches in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire.

Though he later regretted changing the title from Symposium, a decision made to avoid accusations of pretension, the title he settled on, Serenade, is another allusion to love.The term means “evening music” from the italian sera, and dates to the medieval period when suitors would appear beneath the window of their beloved, armed with songs or poetry, like Romeo at Juliet’s balcony or John Cusack with his boombox in Say Anything.

Bernstein’s own program notes are a bit technical and heavily rely on the reader’s familiarity with Plato’s text. Just in case not everyone in the audience has had time to brush up on their Greek philosophy, I’ll offer a brief summary of each man’s thesis. It’s important to keep in mind that, while Bernstein was inspired by the arguments in his beloved text, Serenade is not an attempt to follow the story literally, but rather to evoke the spirit of each interpretation of love. Much like the flow of a debate, each subsequent movement picks up material from the previous one, expanding upon it and morphing it into a new argument.

Phaedrus

Eros is one of the oldest and most powerful gods. He emboldens us, causing us to do things we would not do for anyone else, even lay down our own lives.

Pausanius

There is a difference between common love, or physical desire, and heavenly love. Love is nobler when directed towards a person’s character and intellect, rather than their physical form. I should note that Pausanius builds his argument on the claim that any love a man feels for a woman is common because women are inherently inferior in mind and heart (a supposition to which I might be inclined to take offense.) Heavenly love, therefore, can exist only between two men of equal character. Outdated views aside, the point stands: heavenly love betters both parties.

Aristophanes – The Comic Playwright

Long ago, every human contained two people: two faces, four arms, and four legs. They could be two males, two females, or one male and one female. When these primordial humans threatened the gods, Zeus contained their power by slashing them in half. Now, every person must spend their life searching for the half with which they were originally united. Love is the desire to become whole.

Eryximachus – The Physician

Health is the harmonious relationship between opposing forces. Eros brings balance to the body and the world, promoting health and harmony in all beings.

Agathon – The Tragic Playwright

Eros imparts youth, beauty, and wisdom to everyone he touches. Love inspires peace rather than violence. It creates art, friendship, and virtue. Eros is beautiful and good, and so love makes us beautiful and good. Bernstein deemed this the most moving speech of the dialogue.

Socrates/Diotima

Socrates denounces Agathon as naive, claiming his version of love to be only what he wants it to be, not what it actually is. He then recalls a teaching from the seer Diotima, whom he visited years prior. Eros cannot be inherently beautiful and good because he is desire incarnate, and you can’t desire something you already possess. But he is a great god, so he cannot be ugly and bad. Instead, he is the bridge between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and god and human. He is the desire for happiness.

Alcibiades – The Politician

Alcibiades drunkenly crashes the party, declaring his frustration at Socrates’ continued refusal of his advances. How could Socrates resist him? He is handsome, wealthy, and universally admired. Without intending to, Alcibiades illustrates many of the arguments that came before him. He proclaims his love to be more than physical, admiring Socrates’ mind. He longs for intimacy with Socrates, but he also longs for the wisdom and virtue that Socrates might impart on him. By refusing Alcibiades, Socrates fuels his desire, prolonging his love and proving his own point.

For this note, I’m inclined to skip my usual explanation of how the source material manifests in the composer’s musical choices. I think this piece has quite enough people opining without my adding to the fray. Instead, I encourage you to consider this work as an ode to love and all that it contains, whatever that means to you.

“What Bernstein surely meant us to understand was that his Serenade embodied all his loving feelings toward all his fellow human beings.” – Humphrey Burton