The Original Culture Warrior

Late compositions like that one and "Mass," an extravaganza about Roman Catholic ritual, drew nothing like the praise of his earlier "West Side Story" or "On the Town." Still, Bernstein continued to show that the pursuit of excellence could coexist with American democracy. (It is one of the qualities that made him such an effective cultural emissary during the cold war.) But that position became decidedly lonelier after 1968, when Richard Nixon replaced the old economic resentments of presidential campaigns with obnoxious new cultural ones pitting "the silent majority" against assorted decadent elites. By the time Bernstein died in 1990, the very things he hoped might unite us had become a tool for driving us apart.

Anybody reading the papers can see how vicious the culture wars have grown. Just about any personal quality with a whiff of distinction—a hobby, a vegetable preference—can get you branded an elitist and a threat to our values. Remember how, in a desperate bid for self-preservation, John Kerry pretended four years ago he didn't speak French? Or consider how, at this year's Republican convention, Barack Obama was mocked by the multimillionaire former mayor of New York City and prominent opera buff Rudy Giuliani for being "cosmopolitan." Maybe Tocqueville was right about us.

Nobody thinks that if only Sean Hannity listeners had a subtler appreciation of Mahler, they'd cozy right up to Nancy Pelosi fans, or that a wave of "Bad Dicky" revivals might heal the wounds of the body politic. But the Bernstein festival reminds us that one of our civilization's triumphs has been finding ways to reconcile "elite" and "popular," to stop treating the words like opposing epithets. At a time when so many other echoes of Camelot are in the air, we may yet see the return of its cultural spirit, one that few Americans have embodied as fully as Lenny Bernstein.

Because even beyond the festival, that spirit can be detected around town, nowhere more clearly than in the temple of the elites, the Metropolitan Opera. Since taking over as general manager two years ago, Peter Gelb has worked to correct what he calls the defeatism of the classical-music establishment of decades past. "Rather than admit that it was not being successful reaching a broader public, there was a movement—which Bernstein was totally opposed to—of disdaining the public," he says. Gelb has thrown open his doors to millions of new operagoers. He simulcasts opening night in Times Square and beams live HD broadcasts of the Met's operas to movie theaters. He does this not just because it's good for the bottom line but because, in his strong form of democratic elitism, it's good for the art. "I don't think you can be truly, completely, theatrically successful unless you have the public filling the theater," he says.

Still, the old question does bear asking: what's in it for the folks? If American society needs more common ground, why shouldn't Bernstein or any of his successors be content with boosting ratings to the Super Bowl? I put the question to the man who stands nearest the legacy of Leonard Bernstein. Michael Tilson Thomas took over the Young People's Concerts in the 1970s, and now, as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, uses TV and the Internet with a Lenny-like aplomb. Bernstein insisted on high-low harmony because "he was a humanist," Thomas says. "As a result of knowing these great pieces of music or great poems or paintings, or whatever the art might be, you become bigger and more understanding. And that's the highest purpose of what the arts are trying to do."

According to Thomas, it's not just the lectures and books and TV gigs that bear this message: Bernstein's real spirit lies in his music. Nowhere does it ring clearer than in what the composer John Adams describes (in the new essay collection "Leonard Bernstein: American Original") as his masterpiece: "West Side Story." Like just about everything intended for the Broadway stage, the show (with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, libretto by Arthur Laurents and dances by Jerome Robbins) can be classed as a middlebrow work. But when you're listening to it—which you'll have the chance to do on Oct. 29, when PBS airs a performance of Thomas conducting the show's "Symphonic Dances" suite at Carnegie Hall's opening night—the high-low distinctions come to seem as remote as those 19th-century free-for-alls.

In Bernstein's score, soaring symphonic moments downshift suddenly to knockabout numbers like "Gee, Officer Krupke." Crucial, too, are the weird strands tangled up in its DNA: Bernstein acknowledged that he lifted the opening phrase of "Mambo" from some unknown band he once heard in Puerto Rico, and other moments bear the influence of his great friend Aaron Copland. Because its kaleidoscopic qualities put the show in a realm all its own, everybody, no matter what his background, has to travel some cultural distance to get there. Everybody, in its presence, feels a little bit a stranger and a little bit at home. Bernstein's music creates its own crossroads, which is another way of saying it's about as American as a work of art gets.

© 2008