Book contents
- Leonard Bernstein in Context
- Composers in Context
- Leonard Bernstein in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Musical Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Bernstein’s World
- Part II Conducting
- Part III Composition, Creation, and Reception
- Chapter 11 The Crisis of Faith
- Chapter 12 Popular Music
- Chapter 13 American Sound
- Chapter 14 Exotic Evocations
- Chapter 15 Opera
- Chapter 16 Women, Gender, and Sexuality
- Chapter 17 Film
- Chapter 18 Early Shows
- Chapter 19 Late Shows
- Part IV Bernstein as Musical and Cultural Ambassador
- Part V Connections
- Part VI The Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 14 - Exotic Evocations
Latin America, Polynesia, and the Middle East (Including Israel)
from Part III - Composition, Creation, and Reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2024
- Leonard Bernstein in Context
- Composers in Context
- Leonard Bernstein in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Musical Examples
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Bernstein’s World
- Part II Conducting
- Part III Composition, Creation, and Reception
- Chapter 11 The Crisis of Faith
- Chapter 12 Popular Music
- Chapter 13 American Sound
- Chapter 14 Exotic Evocations
- Chapter 15 Opera
- Chapter 16 Women, Gender, and Sexuality
- Chapter 17 Film
- Chapter 18 Early Shows
- Chapter 19 Late Shows
- Part IV Bernstein as Musical and Cultural Ambassador
- Part V Connections
- Part VI The Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
Bernstein loved to conduct works (e.g., by Liszt, Mahler, Ravel) inspired by dance rhythms and folk songs of various lands and peoples. His own compositions, similarly, often invoke distant places and their musics. Fancy Free and West Side Story include such Latin American dance-types as danzón, mambo, and cha-cha-chá. The soprano in Trouble in Tahiti sings about a film full of stereotypical Pacific-island ‘natives’. Other references to various Elsewheres occur in Songfest (a rhythmically adventurous Latin American sound for ‘A Julia Burgos’; Middle Eastern stylistic allusions in ‘Zizi’s Lament’), On the Town (the Congacabana nightclub scene; the humorously klezmer-ish, rather than Arab-sounding, call of Rajah Bimmy), Wonderful Town (‘Conga!’), and two works inspired by visits to Palestine/Israel: ‘Silhouette (Galilee)’, based on a well-known Arab song (including some Arabic words); and Four Sabras, no. 2, for piano (‘Idele, the Chasidele’), which abounds in typically East European Jewish musical traits.
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- Leonard Bernstein in Context , pp. 114 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024