Leonard Bernstein’s career-long involvement with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra intersected with the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and the growth of television. He first conducted the Philharmonic in 1943, at age twenty-five, and his term as music director (1958−69) is remembered as a particularly vibrant period in the orchestra’s history. On taking over that role, Bernstein embarked on an ambitious agenda both for thematic programming, including focuses on American music and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and for public-facing initiatives, such as the televised Young People’s Concerts and touring. In addition, Bernstein used his position to highlight the work of solo performers who were members of minority groups, and he oversaw the orchestra during its period of racial integration.

The growth of Bernstein’s career coincided with the growth of television, so many knew him through his broadcasts. His fifty-three hour-long award-winning Young People’s Concerts (1958−72) are among his most significant television work and were seen at their height by nearly ten million in the USA and in over forty countries. In each show, the maestro would expound on some musical principle, with clarity and appeal, accompanied by demonstrations by him and the New York Philharmonic. While the series clearly shows Bernstein’s brilliant pedagogy, a deeper story lies beneath. No other musician in the late twentieth century so fully addressed the issues of the day as did Bernstein, and no other classical musician has ever been so widely seen. Through his Young People’s Concerts, the maestro not only spread his love of music but also raised his artistic voice from this bully pulpit to work for a better world.

No one so inspired the generation of American musicians born in the 1940s and 1950s as did Bernstein, an ‘inescapable’ and ‘incontroverible’ icon of the 1960s and beyond. His celebrity was particularly linked to the explosive growth of television, beginning with appearances on Omnibus (from 1954) and the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts (from 1958). Two texts complicate his reputation as Wunderkind of American music: Tom Wolfe’s ‘Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s’ (1970) and Leon Botstein’s ‘The Tragedy of Leonard Bernstein’ (1983). But by the time of his 100th birthday celebrations in 2018, Bernstein’s stature as cultural icon seemed intact and secure, resting largely on West Side Story.

Bernstein was a popular figure, in the conventional sense of garnering attention and admiration from a great many people, but his relationship to popular music was hardly straightforward. Bernstein expressed scepticism about much of popular music from the 1960s on and his personal taste hewed to the musics of his youth, such as swing-era jazz, blues, and the Golden-era of Broadway and popular song, while occasionally expanding to include rock’n’roll. However, Bernstein also viewed popular music as a kind of wellspring that composers could draw from, whether it was Mozart’s Magic Flute or his own West Side Story. Not only could borrowing from popular music revitalize tonal classical music for the twentieth century, as opposed to twelve-tone serialism and other mid-century modernist trends, but Bernstein also firmly believed that popular musics, particularly jazz, were the key to creating a uniquely American musical style.

Bernstein wrote five books during his life: The Joy of Music (1959), The Infinite Variety of Music (1966), Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts (1962), The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (1976), and Findings (1982). The first four were part of his desire to make his lectures and commentary from his televised appearances available in written form and the fifth book is a compilation of mostly minor writings from throughout Bernstein’s life. This chapter is a summary of the contents of each of these books, with commentary on what the more substantial efforts tell us about the author’s musical philosophy. The major essay from Findings considered here at some length is Bernstein’s senior honours thesis written while a student at Harvard: ‘The Absorption of Race Elements into American Music’. Although better known as a conductor and composer, Bernstein’s writings are also important representations of his thinking.