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| Composers Biography |
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Leonard Bernstein
[ Life | Works
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| The American conductor, pianist and composer Leonard Bernstein had a strong influence on American musical taste, particularly in his championing of Mahler. Many of his works incorporate popular American idioms and jazz rhythms. As a composer his greatest success was the musical West Side Story, a modern American version of Romeo and Juliet.
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| In addition to West Side Story, Bernstein’s best known works include the ballet-score Fancy Free and the overture to his comic operetta Candide. MIDI FILE - from "Candide": Overture (4'27'') He wrote three symphonies: his second symphony, The Age of Anxiety, is based on the work of the English poet W.H. Auden. The Jeremiah Symphony of 1942, with its mezzo-soprano solo, represents a religious vein in Bernstein's music. MIDI FILE - from Symphony No.2: 5th Mov. (4'58'') This was followed, twenty years later, by another manifest Jewish work, the so-called Kaddish Symphony. The Chichester Psalms were commissioned for Chichester Cathedral in the South of England. His theatrical setting of the Roman Mass may be mentioned alongside his later Missa brevis, based on his own incidental music for a play by Jean Anouilh.
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