How Leonard Bernstein make classical music not just excess of all but intrinsic to ordinary American kids that and more is ahead on Studio 360 right after this live. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington. Officials in the nation's capital say they're prepared if clashes break out today as white supremacists plan a protest and counter demonstrators promised outnumber them but so far protesters seem to be outnumbered by police and the media as N.P.R.'s Larry Kaplow tells us from a subway station outside Washington there's a heavy police and substantial media presence and maybe one or 2 dozen kind of protesters who do get all a couple of things that a few of the Unite the right to rally or is the fear to be going into the station but overall it's calm and it's a lot of anticipation about what happened today today's planned unite the right protest by white nationalists is meant to coincide with the anniversary of a deadly rally in Charlottesville Virginia a year ago the 5 nations surrounding the Caspian Sea have reached a landmark deal after decades of disputes it's the world's largest landlocked body of water and a hugely valuable resource as Charles Maynes reports from Moscow the agreement establishes the Caspian Sea legal status for over 25 years the big legal question surrounding the landlocked Caspian is that really a sea or just a big lake the answer has big implications for Russia and former Soviet republics Kazakhstan Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan all of whom join Iran with shoreline access to the Caspian at stake trillions of dollars in oil and natural gas reserves calling the Caspian a lake means the countries divide the resources equally label at the sea and suddenly there are economic winners and losers yet the leaders of the 5 states have just announced they signed the convention that finally establishes the legal ground rules the only problem no one is providing details which means the initial riddle is that a c. Or just a lake will haunt the Caspian for a little while longer n.p.r. News I'm Charles Maynes in Moscow. Firefighters in southwestern Oregon are busy as wildfires grow this weekend winds are driving huge blazes together but Oregon Public Broadcasting's Emily curate and reports the fires threaten hundreds of rural homes and they're spreading in wilderness areas fire management spokesman calle Casey says that terrain is too steep and dangerous for crews I mean people at home like armchair quarterbacking kind of think it is nowhere near pounds of fire like the old days and get around this wilderness this is in the old days when these trees killed people Casey is from a federal incident management team about 2000 people are working on fire containment their presence triples the population of Selma Oregon where the latest fire camp is based lightning started the fires almost a month ago and officials expect the area to burn for months to come for n.p.r. News I'm Emily curate in Bend Oregon this is n.p.r. . The family of the man believed to have stolen a plane from Seattle International Airport Friday night has issued a statement expressing shock and devastation investigators are still trying to determine why he took the plane a NASA spacecraft is now on its way to the sun Brendan Byrne of member station WFIU reports the probe launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral early this morning the Parker solar probe blasted off from Space Launch Complex 37 on a mission to fight closer to the sun than any other spacecraft an earlier attempt was scrubbed Saturday morning after launch officials discovered an issue with a helium leak now that the spacecraft is on its way to the sun Scientists hope the probe will shed some light on unanswered questions like the reason the sun's outer wispy Corona is hotter than its core observations from the probe could help predict space weather like solar flares the spacecraft will be the fastest human made object as reaches speeds around 480000 miles per hour of 4 and a half inch heat shield will protect the Parker solar propre temperatures nearing $2500.00 degrees it will make its 1st pass around the sun in November for n.p.r. News I'm Brendan Byrne in Okinawa Japan tens of thousands of protesters have marched to stop a planned relocation of a u.s. Military base they say they want it completely off the island the current plan is to move it from a crowded neighborhood to a coastal side on the southern Japanese island opponents say it'll be an environmental hazard and ignores local concerns. N.p.r. News support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Babel our European made language learning program Babel teaches practical conversation and Spanish French German and other languages available in the app store or online. Dot com. Support for Studio 360 comes from Babble a language app that teaches real life conversations in a new language like Spanish French or German Babble's 10 to 15 minute lessons are available in the App Store or on line at Babble b.a.p. Dot com. Studio only $61.00 credentials and I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. With Thomas Jefferson vegetable the I like to have the roasted chicken breast very well done everything is all about timing I try to get a little bit away from the actual subject which can secure place Studio 3 a it could Anderson. If you think about Henry David Thoreau what comes to mind our life is frittered away by detail simplicity simplicity simplicity I say let your affairs be as 2 or 3 and not a 100 or 1000 instead of a 1000000 count half a dozen and keep your accounts on your thumbnail the young guy who went to live in a cabin he built in the woods to get away from the rat race the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation a writer whose aphorism almost seemed designed for the bumper stickers and coffee mugs of people who listen to public radio if a man does not keep pace with his companions Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer let him step to the music which he hears or the 3rd row and that is how he pronounced it although most people now including me until I was schooled otherwise say thorough the thorough who was a great proto environmentalist we can never have enough of nature we need to witness our own limits transgressed and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. The book walled masterwork contains all of the above that of a nature writing self-help advice and a fantasy of a skate from the troublesome hurly burly of the world as it happens the book was published this very week in August 854 and it has influenced generations of young idealists environmentalists and back to the landers it helped create the image we still have of the lone writer going off all alone to create great work and solitude but it also lately has endured some backlash with questions about whether entitled Young Henry thorough really was roughing it at all for the newest installment of our American Icon series producer Matt Francisco picks up the story of Walden if you've ever read even a part of Walden it's probably because it was assigned to you in high school. Like the students and Concord Carlisle high down the street from Walden Pond in the small town of Concord Massachusetts north of Boston he like urges people to spend one day as deliberately as nature and just letting in the moment and not getting caught up in technology His purpose is to like gain an understanding of how he can improve his life and how he can live simply not be corrupted by materialism when he thinks about all the other farmers around him in Concord he notes that they're working like all of their life towards all of these things that they don't need and that they're not going to be able to enjoy properly because once they're done working for them they're basically going to be dead and out Walton has a kind of rebellious anti consumerist tribe that appeals to a certain kind of teenager. But not all high school students are fans of the book the 1st time they read it it was profoundly disillusioning that's my a.p. English teacher John deal I went to high school in Worcester Massachusetts about 40 miles from Concord that's where I read Walden in Mr deal's class back in 1908 literally my 1st year of high school teaching and he remembers reading Walden in his a.p. English class I thought that Walden would be a much more engaging the 1st person narrative I had thought there would be a through line. You know that would make it the kind of story you could read the way that you might read a novel narrated in the 1st person and Thor also is really content not to stay on a topic he rambles all over the place Walden doesn't really have a plot it's one part memoir one part self-help and 10 parts rant about everything that's wrong with American society so why do we still read Henry David Thoreau he was born in Concord as he like to say in the very nick of time to an 817 that's Laura Das now walls Kuroda biography of Thoreau thoroughly lived most of his life with his own very large family the thorough as were a middle class family who ran a boarding house and a pencil making business Henry David went to Harvard on a scholarship after he graduated he tried teaching but unlike most teachers at the time he didn't think kids learned better if you hit them the school superintendent visited his class in the 2nd week of his career as a public school teacher and chastised the row afterwards because he would not strike his students thorough quit then he went to work in the family pencil factory and he even invented a new way of making pencils but he didn't really want to make writing implements he wanted to write literature comes to a poor market here I mean even the little that I write is more than most thorough got a few things published in magazines but he mostly got rejection letters. By 845 when he was 27 years old his life was kind of a mess there really is a sense of crisis he's tried a number of pathways none of them have satisfied him some of them have been pretty disastrous and that he's hit a wall worst of all his brother John had died. They've been close and Henry took John's death really hard that sense that he deep debt to his brother was a big part of his life and so he had imagined a book that would be about a journey they took together up to Concord and Merrimack River is to write that book for all fantasized about having peace and quiet time all to himself time to write and grieve in a cabin by Walden Pond out on the edge of Concord he's always had this dream a very unconventional dream of going away to live by the pond and watch the progress of the seasons it was thorough as friend Ralph Waldo Emerson who made it happen at the time Emerson was one of America's most famous intellectuals he lived in Concord too and for years he had been looking out for young thorough and trying to help along as writing career and it turned out that Emerson had just bought this plot of land at Walden Pond that was about to be purchased by some developers Emerson happened across this group of people bidding on it and joined the bids and bought it on the spot. Thorough went and built himself a cabin there he kept an exhaustive Journal of everything he saw and did and every penny he spent boards $8.00 and $3.00 and a half cents to secondhand windows with glass 2 dollars and $0.43 thorough planted a garden so he could practice self-reliance like in his hero Emerson's famous essay but he wasn't just roughing and he had big plans for this little experiment I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach when I came to die discover that I had not lived. I went to visit Walden with Jeffrey ask Kramer Jeff she writes Mr Jeffrey is the curator of the library of the thorough Institute at the Walden Woods Project a nonprofit dedicated to keeping the land around Walton what state park from being developed last place Yeah I met Jeffrey in this light filled with wood paneled library with a bust of thorough on the wall and a big reading table under a giant chandelier we have about a 1000 volumes here about 60000 documents making it the most comprehensive collection of related material in the world Geoffrey and I drove over to the replica of camping at Walden State Park. Of the replica that isn't on the site of the original cabin It's actually right next to the parking lot charge house was about halfway across the pond and when they decided to build a replica which I think was in the 1960 s. Some point they were afraid of vandalism basically by being talking to which they put it here in a more visible area from the outside the cabin looks like your basic garden shed to Windows a pitched roof and a door symptom side so we're standing in a replica of thirds house 10 by 15 a pretty compact room with a bed and 3 chairs and a desk get a fireplace and eventually put in a stove pretty cozy for one person. Yeah it's cozy for one person but it's not confining I mean it's by the standards of like the Tiny House movement right it's it's fine it's pretty luxurious it's bigger than some dorm rooms I've been in so one could live here very comfortably for live there for 2 years 2 months and 2 days . He did write that book about the trip he took with his brother but it didn't sell he ended up with hundreds of remaindered capias I have now a library of nearly $900.00 volumes over $700.00 of which I wrote myself. People were just not that interested in what Thoreau went to Walden Pond to write but they had a lot of questions for throw about what he was up to in the woods Henry what are you doing killing a house out there by the by the pond who does that it's marginal and it was a place where middle class son of a businessman who graduate from Harvard College would not normally go people thought he was a bit odd even after he left Walden Pond everybody wanted to hear about why Pharaoh decided to live there and how he scraped by so he decided to give a series of lectures he based them on the journals he kept when he was living in the woods those lectures became the 1st few chapters of the book Walden in the book he criticizes the way the worker bees in Concord spend all their lives earning money just so they can wear stylish clothes and live in fancy houses most men appear never to have considered what a house is and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have and he scathing about the inequality he sees between the haves and the have nots the luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigents of another on the one side is the palace on the other or the almshouse and the silent poor but there's something else going on here. Thurles mother was an anti-slavery activist she helped bring some of the country's most radical abolitionists to speak in Concord but it wasn't just talk the thorough household was a stop on the Underground Railroad and Thoreau himself was an agent the thorough family's abolitionism shows up in Walton if you read between the lines Walden takes us on a journey of emancipation of the self with only very glancing references to what's always on his mind which is the fact of the American economy the capitalist economy rests on the enslavement of his fellow human beings and that people of like himself people who are white and privileged didn't see that was part of our own and slave meant to this larger capitalist system that's the system far wanted to opt out of by going to live at Walden Pond but Walden is also full of nature writing really beautiful nature writing in the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist sailing in the middle of the pond. But when I stood on the shore they rose up with great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander. And when they had got into rank circled about over my 29 of them and then steered straight to Canada with a regular honk from their leader at intervals in many ways we think of thorough as the founder of American environmental thinking because part of his own unique direction was to turn outward to the natural world under Emerson's influence had become a transcendental just. The transcendental lists believed that humans had a kind of divine spark some really important consequences and one of them is that you must respect every human being because all of us have that divine principle within but thorough went further he saw the divine in everything he saw that in nature he could see it in trees he could see it on a pond he could see it in the animals around him I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race and its gradual improvement to leave off eating animals. Jeffrey Cramer and I walked alongside the pond for a little while until it got to the original side of the cabin it's in a grove of trees marked off with granite posts we are standing at the site of where throws House originally stood when he lived here at 845. So as you can see from here he had a pretty good view of the current and do you yourself ever have a moment where you feel something here something you know transcendental or something you feel closer to in my earlier days of discovering thorough I would come here almost every weekend or every couple of weeks and I felt like I could almost feel like there was going to walk through the woods and maybe have a conversation with me lots of people come here for the. That sense of connection people like Danielle Scotter who comes from a strict religious family in Georgia I grew up in a household where we were encouraged and we had to live a certain type of life reading farro in college changed the way Danielle thought about her life I feel like I was never encouraged. Really to be an individual and so when I found through I feel like you saying. It's important to explore the world and kind of be yourself in a in a sea of others among society so I feel like I needed some direction and then when he literally said Go confidently in the direction of your dreams I said yes. Danielle Sr happens to live in Massachusetts. So one year Danielle went for a visit and she and her sister went to get tattoos Danielle decided to get a thorough quote tattooed on her leg. Pain it is to sit down to write when you've not stood up to live I actually modeled it on throws handwriting then they went to visit Walden Pond and when we got there we had just gotten our tattoos they were freshly ain't and so I actually still had mine covered my own covered it just so I could walk down to the pond and get as close as I could without actually getting too wet and I felt like it was Little some balik for me to like offered this like offering my body to the pond like offering my myself to throw most Mr deal my old English teacher never felt that connection to Walden and he especially doesn't buy the whole self-reliance part of the problem at the heart of Thoros commandments is that they only work if you have no need whatsoever for other people and even for of course is a hypocrite on that score because he was dependent on a number of other people economically and materially there's many accounts of the visits to Henry. Including by his family they came by on Saturdays and on Sundays he would come to town and repay visits to his family and his friends thorough didn't live off the beans he grew he was getting home cooked meals and that quiet spot where he built his cabin that happened to be between the main road and the railroad on the part of Walden Pond that was next to a little a little side road that went down to the town's favorite fishing hole which meant that he was visible from the main road it was a great recreational spot was where everybody went for a picnic or and I would Inger you took the kids or you went hunting or fishing even in the winter time ice harvesters showed up to cut up the frozen pond and truck off the ice to ship all over the world not only back there was. The train to Boston which ran right by the shore of Walden The railroad had just gone in and some of the Irish laborers who had laid the track still lived in shacks near the pond and a bunch of other people lived in the woods around Walden 2 on the margins of Concord society it was not secluded he was not a hermit he was not living in this existence away from people people think Thoreau Yeah I heard about him he's the guy who he claimed to live in the wilderness but he actually lived really close to home I heard his mother do his laundry I know about throw he was actually right down the street from the pub That's Robert Sullivan he wrote a book about Thera It's called the throw you don't know or thorough as we all know he was called we think that he didn't really get back to nature he doesn't shy away from the fact that man made stuff is in the wild you know we keep taking the environments over there but you're in your environment is never anywhere your environment is everywhere the environment is everywhere but what about the idea we have that Walden is some kind of guidebook for green. Living it's wrong John deal again we know now that environmentally one of the very best things you can do to reduce your footprint is to live in a city because I mean you and I both know that if somebody decides to go live in that pond they're going to have to drive there in their Jeep Grand Cherokee right and they're going to need to keep that car in working order and full of gas so they can drive you know to the Whole Foods in Concord and stock up on organic beans they're probably not going to be eating a woodchuck that wanders over at their doorstep the way that he did. Maybe a mistake is to think about Walden the place as being the important part of the book but Walton the book isn't really about getting away from it all you read Walden and if you read it literally say what got find a wall upon got to move they're going to set up got to do all that stuff but that's that's not what he's doing because it's not how to book it's it's a landscape painting or it's Or it's a you know a sculpture and you experience it and after you experience it you change but how exactly are we supposed to change if we're reading Walden Now what are we supposed to do to lead our Facebook account take ourselves off Twitter everywhere you look people are offering to sell us cleanses and fasts and there's not one thorough is all about didn't he say simplicity simplicity simplicity I think you can draw a line from thorough to someone like Gwyneth Paltrow and goop and this whole idea of morally and physically superior austerity and self negation I mean the thing is that for going to Paltrow that's $3000.00 yoga pants or whatever but those are things that can be bought right that you can sort of buy that discipline and that would have completely appalled him. But if we can't buy our way to simpler and more ethical living what can we do yeah sure I recycle but thorough would be they're saying and that's not good enough that's Laura walls again biographer and I wrestle with that because I think thorough would well 1st of all he would demand that I wrestle with it and then he would say if you do not have a better way to live why not. And so working out what that is and what that means specifically is literally what I'm doing right now and it's because I read thorough deeply enough that he won't let me go. After his 2 years at the pond he went back to live in town with the salesman and the farmers and the strive areas and the layabouts. People like us I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one. The tragedy. Is that it is read as a guy who went to a pond you know to build a house and make a better life. Really it's about a guy who came back from the pond so this is about engagement not about disengagement and in fact the only way you you make the world good or the only way to truly be in the world is to fully engage with. I learned this at least by my experiment that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost that is where they should be now put the foundations under them. Was the actor. Who read all the passages from. Produce the story. Also hosts a terrific somewhat the Roe vs New England based podcast called. On our website. Find out more about throw including pictures of the replica of his cabin also because you may already be thinking about where on your body you're going to have yours Inc We've got a photo of Danielle Scouters throat tattoo. In the 1970 s. Walden helped inform back to the earth survivalism but Gloria Gaynor is insistence in the 1970 s. On surviving is a whole different thing they swiveled words down on a piece of paper and I looked at them and what he's nuts this is the hit song The thing hit the lyric. Oh a nearly forgotten beside became the breakup anthem that's next on Studio 3 sixty's . Support for Connecticut Public Radio comes from vital projects fund supporting the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan where studio visit selected gifts from Agnes God and is now on view more info and tickets at Moma dot org. And this week's On the media we hear from the lawyer for Alex Jones a guy who also represents the owner of the new Nazi website The Daily storm or. Upset you that's with the 1st Amendment does man I mean it upsets me Don't miss this week's On the media from n.y.c. . Listen Sunday afternoon at 3 and it's a non core broadcast featuring music from shaky graves and comedy from Rachel Feinstein on this week's live from here tonight at 9. Barber and you're listening to Connecticut Public Radio. Support for Studio $360.00 comes from Babel offering a language program that uses interactive dialogue and speech recognition technology to teach a new language like Spanish French or Italian Babel is available in the app store or online at Babble dot com. 3. Break up songs have been around pretty much forever for instance there are plenty in opera like in La Bohem when Mimi and Rodolfo are right. And pop music is full of breakup songs but $12.00 and that's 40 years old this year is so full of heart it ended up not just being about surviving lost love but about enduring like to share the story of a song that's become a true anthem we have a writer my name is fence a latter day and night in 78 and 79 I was the disco critic Record World magazine and the singer My name is Gloria Gaynor and I am an international recording artist and performer I. Think the shake. Disco was an underground phenomenon for I'd say 5 years before anybody seriously above ground paid attention it certainly seems that more and more Americans are getting more and more into the disco say it was a club phenomenon it was created by deejays as a way of sustaining all evening of music by playing records and to and it brought about a kind of camaraderie that we hadn't seen in club goers and it was a very positive upbeat time for some of the records. Were popular around the same time were chic gray strolls sober struck he was one of the most gay performers reply period around Donna Summer. Women have always been the strongest vocals and disco the one thing that disco music never got credit for is the fact that is the 1st music ever to bring together people from every nationality race creed color and age group. Never concerned about I was gay and I was 1st really big. But should kind of slipped off the radar at the clubs the record company had said they were not going to renew my contract I'd been in hospital and had surgery on my spine I was thinking about the death of my mother I was thinking about the fact that I had been paralyzed from the waist down people going around the companies in the Queen is dead and there I am laying in hospital wondering was going to happen with my life hoping to completely survive and while I was there the record company called me and told me that they'd gotten a new president over from England and that where I was very popular and that he wanted to me to record this song called substitute. I heard the song didn't particularly like it but I didn't care they were the one Indian my contract I still was a recording artist I was happy to go and do it I get out to California with the producers and I asked them was going to be the b. Side and they asked me what kind of songs that I like what kind of songs that I like to sing and I thought well I like songs that are meaningful I like songs that are strong that touch people's hearts that have good melodies they sing we think you're the one we've been waiting for to record this song that we wrote 2 years ago . And they spread all the words down on a piece of paper and I looked at them and said what he's nuts you know put this on the basis that this is the hit songs the hit lyric is the timeless lyric. Well they said maybe it'll get a chance one day I'm like if I have anything to do with it it's going to get some play it's going to get noticed now. Beginning. To. Be. Taken. So we courted it we took it to the D.J.'s Studio 54 we gave him a stack of them that to give to his d.j. Friends around New York they began to play it people began to request it in a club and then they began to request it on radio because now they want to hear it on the way home they want to hear it on the way to work and the radio stations started calling a record company asking where is this song that we keep getting we quest for and the record company had to say which months to green if I got it on the b. Side of that of the. Next. Day. This was a huge comeback for her and it was also such a strong record and what it said of and house people respond to tour there was this sense a real fury and her but also terminations survival. Was I think 1st of was a woman's anthem but there was you know around this time but people became aware of Aids so for the gay community a song called I Will Survive gave people a sense of determination and hope this song taps into the tenacity of the human speech. It. Pulls up from inside of you whatever it is the gives you hope gives you strength whenever gives you courage you tap into that when you hear that song I think that's why a plaster them while it's still an anthem or something that went well beyond the idea of spurning boyfriend people want to sing that refrain. You know I look out at that audience I know they're going to love this song and know that it's going to and power. Is going to lift them and that gives me all that I need to go out and perform that song every single time. To. Get. To. That story was produced by Devon stroll of it for b.m.p. Audio I Will Survive has been inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Coming up we all know he was a genius. Nobody cared about how a charismatic conductor taught American kids to like classical music people speak to young people and make them feel like grown ups I don't know of anybody else was ever that successful Leonard Cohen's young people's concerts That's next on Studio 360. Support for Connecticut Public Radio comes from fiddleheads food co-op New London's full service grocery store focusing on local and organic products where community is at the heart of their business information at fiddleheads food co-op sometimes. Truth. We'll. Listen to all things considered and hear the bigger picture every afternoon. And tomorrow afternoon at 4 and you'll hear from the lawyer for radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on this week's On the media this afternoon at 3 You're listening to Connecticut Public Radio. Support for Studio 360 comes from Babble a language app that teaches real life conversations in a new language like Spanish French or German Babble's 10 to 15 minute lessons are available in the App Store on line at Babel b.a.p. b e L dot com. Studio 360. 957 was huge for Leonard Bernstein in September of that year the musical West Side Story opened on Broadway with Bernstein's music to lyrics by 27 year old Stephen Sondheim and it became an instant hit. Ok. But just right around the same time Bernstein became the conductor and music director of The New York for Mon when Bernstein took that big job he agreed a key part of it would be doing a series of concerts for very young people and he insisted that those concerts be broadcast on the new medium of television with that unlikely t.v. Star was born Leonard Bernstein would have turned a 100 this month fittingly he is the subject of our 2nd American icon segment today Sara fish go takes us to the place where Bernstein's t.v. Stardom began Carnegie Hall in New York City the home of the world's greatest musical event. Today's event is one in a series of New York Philharmonic young people's concert to explore the young people's concerts under the musical direction of Leonard Bernstein written and hosted by the very multitalented Mr Bernstein is to explore the thoughts and spirit of that man the composer and Maestro known as Lenny and here is Mr Bringuier. He was a new kind of Maestro he had a rare openness recalls Arnie Lang who was for 5 decades a percussionist in the New York Philharmonic because literally years and played with so many different conductors right in that of nothing about that but I always felt it was a person. The idea of doing classical concerts for young people was not new but starting in the 1950 s. Bernstein made it news by pouring every ounce of his personal self into every single concert broadcast starting with concert number one in January 158 when Lenny strode out from backstage at Carnegie Hall lifted his baton and led the orchestra in a stirring rendition of this then popular favorite. Right from the start Bernstein gave to his young audience and he took away after the attention getting fun of the piece by Rossini that kids everywhere recognized as the opening theme from the Lone Ranger he slid right into the lesson for the day but it really isn't about Willow ranger at all it's about no it's. A fly in f. Shockers. You see no matter how many times people tell you stories about what music means and get the stories aren't what music means at all music is never a boat and the music just is music just is if it sounds like a sophisticated message it was whether delivered from the podium or from the piano which was positioned on stage so Bernstein could sit down and play it to illustrate think this piece by show. The. Beautiful little. A once in a bottle nothing Bernstein was convinced that young people could understand anything if it was well delivered. Adults had already been exposed to Bernstein's musical musings on t.v. Earlier in the 50s he had appeared on the landmark show omnibus a Sunday culture program just as Arturo Toscanini conductor of the n.b.c. Symphony had finished his run on television. Author of Stein Pink wrote a book on the Young People's concert Toscanini stopped filming in 19541954 is when Bernstein shook the world with his sub Beethoven's 5th Symphony where he painted to score on the floor so that was just brilliant t.v. From 1960 for the whole atmosphere for the mass consumption of Syria's music seemed to change overnight then the oboe. Though you'd have to say all these programs were landing in a different world a world says composer John Corigliano which embraced classical music. Tell all our prisoners it was on the major networks we had n.b.c. Opera Theater we had operas and concerts on television Horowitz's rich. Turn $65.00 was a televised event classical music was loved and it was regularly taught in school as part of a good curriculum so in $157.00 the forces for the young people's concerts began to assemble Carnegie Hall was on board the orchestra itself the New York Philharmonic and c.b.s. Then widely known as the Tiffany Network so-called for its perceived elegance and high standards but even with all those venerable institutions lined up it was still Lenny's show and here is Mr Bernstein he was entirely responsible for all the scripts producer director of the broadcasts was Roger England with Bernstein writing the script and my plotting shots we got along terribly well up it was new in its format it was so simple and so direct the idea was to treat young people and classical music with respect Bernstein believed in teaching kids to listen to music as he said for its own values not through pictures dancers cartoons or other gimmicks the main ingredients were to be music and him with that in mind include or set up his camera one that was a camera and the back of the orchestra looking right at the orchestras I view of the conductor right at Bernstein's face full on I wanted to introduce extreme close ups or very wide shots with Bernstein as the center that was an angle that nobody had ever seen before this time. And when in doubt that would be the camera there were most nobody could write melodies like both are I assisted Roger and I also was in on the meetings with Lenny on the script Jon Karl ya know Junior that it was Jon Karl ya know Sr was the concertmaster the 1st violin. Asked of the New York Philharmonic then his son a composer worked with England or on the camera shots and we both had scores and mark them up and then we compared them and then he made a final score that was what he wanted to cut to because this was live television Meanwhile the t.v. Cameras were trying to follow the shot orders to for example feature the piccolo during a solo or to get a close up of the fascinated 6 year old in the 3rd row this was in the fifty's the cameras were huge and they'd lumbered around like mastodons we had 6 Conky cameras and everything had to be prepared in advance because there were no such things as rehearsals and so it went in the 1st couple of seasons Bernstein laid out the most basic ideas about music as far as he was concerned what does music mean what is American music what is orchestration and he personally did just about everything that could be done to entertain and engage. In the episode on humor music the orchestra plays a piece by multiples to. The men Bernstein explains how music can imitate just like voices that's one of the oldest ways of making you walk by imitating the people like comedians who do impersonations of famous star like impersonated read a guard on the all or the president eating at Red Hat but I would gladly have. The same with Gilbert and Sullivan as a way to understand music and speed I am about a lot about the moment you going to live I'm a subject of a lot of a long minute arrival in the be without it by the by a lot of a lot of other one of them a lot of guff about it out. I'm up. And out of town Bernstein gets the whole Carnegie Hall audience singing around. People didn't seem that before his music education. Fine wasn't part of it it was very dry and intellectual. In the concert called the Latin American spirit Bernstein plays rarely heard music and speaks up for his very humanistic worldview it's the mainly of these different ancestors influences in heritage is which makes the Latin American spirit what it is at any rate in the news the concerts were a magnet for children and their parents in what was a different atmosphere for concert going in general as they dressed up for it since pressing up to go to a concert they had a certain feeling that this was a great event and we felt that for them and of course it's too late to put the television in this period television itself was having a bit of an identity crisis as it tried to figure out what it should be commercial educational both of those things I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes down here in a famous speech of the moment Newton Minnow the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission warned the networks in 1061 to behave responsibly by adding some meaningful programming to what he called a vast wasteland of the t.v. Schedule I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland at that point c.b.s. Found it useful to renew Bernstein's broadcasts for several seasons as proof of its good intentions Bernstein's own children. We're happy about that remembers Jamie Bernstein the eldest of the 3 Alexander and I would get up in the morning with our dad and accompany him for the entire day though the camera rehearsal for him began at 7 am so that meant that we would wake up around $530.00 and have a sleepy breakfast and drive in semi darkness across town to Philharmonic Hall from Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Center all of the World's Greatest Musical be done by this time the concerts had moved slightly uptown to the recently built hall in the Lincoln Center complex and Bernstein was plugging away at being his charmingly relatable self you know the shape of a musical composition is the hardest thing for most people to grasp they key quickly figured out that by using pop music he could really keep his audience interested and focused let's take a pop tune in fact let's take a typical Beatles 2 and I remember when he used and I love her by the Beatles to explain a b. a Form as in sonata form 1st there was an 8 section and he went to the piano and actually sang in his terrible gravelly voice I give her all 'd my law. It's all a lie. And if you saw. Her to. Where that's a right and the audience just read notes on all the girls were screaming in Scream you really think that Roger Englander got all these fabulous audience reactions that a section is repeated exactly the say Bernstein loved having his own kids involved he thrived on the curiosity of younger people kind of you to fight him in a way but it didn't take much to youth if I am I think he always was that young. Person inside and that's why he was so good at communicating with young audiences. And so on right to the end of the base well that also there was that magic ingredient I just can't account for why he was so good on television that represents a small step forward from Twinkle twinkle little star he came along as television came along they they arrived simultaneously and were made for each other it was just one of those things we all knew he was a genius I mean nobody doubted that he could look you in the eyes and as far as you were concerned Lenny didn't have eyes for anyone else but you and he could do that to an audience he could speak to young people and make them feel like grown ups and I don't know of anybody else who's ever done that successfully Well Bernstein said is a town that has all kinds of talents but then there's Bernstein to operate them for certain purposes as far as his conducting was concerned Leonard Bernstein z youth of entertainment influenced t.v. Friendly image was not embraced by all certainly not by all adults music critic b.h. Hagon was interviewed in 1963 is obviously an extroverted it's exhibitionist and you can say well what difference does it make Well if you're if you're that way you have no discipline discipline is important in governing your handling of a piece of music and Harold c. Schoenberg the chief music critic of The New York Times then frequently addressed the question of just how much glamour and publicity any classical music career could withstand he didn't like his conducting and also was very negative about the music John Crow Yano says Schoenberg never really warmed up to Bernstein stuff he didn't like the very extravagant and passion that many demonstrated on the podium but many critics and millions of people love those quote. Yes and celebrated Bernstein's years with the New York Philharmonic and the young people's concerts had a long run on c.b.s. Several concerts premier my dear young friends I am happy and proud to welcome you to our 10th season of young people's guns it's they were amazingly successful the Nielsen ratings were always good at one point with $34000000.00 television sets turned on $6500000.00 of them were tuned to Lenny and to add to the festivities this is also the 1st season in which all our programs will be seen on television in color which is why I've got this mode is sleek colorful tie the programs were broadcast in 40 countries joining American exports such as Bonanza and the Flintstones. Some people teach to live Bernstein no question about it lived to teach my father was 1st Sure a permanent and compulsive teacher and everything that happened all the time was somehow about teaching Bernstein never fearful of self-examination knew this well much later in a reflective frame of mind he said in an interview I do feel this for better or worse that when I do play music for people that there is an element there of teaching it safe and there is this fear istic element I can't deny it and I can read myself out of it he was resigned to it like one of my own digital I am cursed with this need to teach so the young people's concerts and Leonard Bernstein were made for each other curse and all for 14 years they used each other in a most perfect manner at a time when you could open the for oil on your t.v. Dinner sit back with one of the 3 television networks and get a dose of cultural education from a guy called Money looking straight at you. There are geniuses all around us now are new to them Ted talks at national conferences and symposia But before all that there was a one man band who taught a generation or 2 how to listen and even more how to actually hear. W n y c s Sarah Fisher. You can see videos of one of those young people's concerts on our website Studio 360 dot or our American Icon series is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. And that's it for this episode of Studio $360.00 is a production of p.r.i. Public Radio International in association with Slate our executive producer is named Alice our senior editor is. Our show this week was mixed once again by Whitney Jones our producers are Lauren Hanson Sam Cam Saunders Tom our production assistant is Morgan Flannery and. He's tried a number of tough ways none of them have satisfied him some of them have been pretty disastrous thank you very much for listening. To our Public Radio International Stephen King's fictional town dairy is based on a real place in Maine he takes. This changes the way he was a little bet on next when the New England to do so collaborative will take you on a tour of Stephen King. Will visit a small Massachusetts town that's the setting for a new series by the office. The 1st thing they say is our talent. Will also look at alternative sources of energy around our region Please join us. Listen tonight at 6 am we fully consider asking the vice president to pay for my taxi and thought it would be inappropriate so I made up an excuse to avoid having lunch with the vice president of the United States to talk about saving the planet joins us next time for stories about trains planes and taxi has the most Radio Hour from p.r.s. . Listen to night or day. This is Connecticut Public Radio w n.p.r. And n.p.r. H.d. One merit and 90.5 p. Katie and Katie.