Music Was It

Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein
by Susan Goldman Rubin
178 pages
Charlesbridge

Publisher's description:

“Life without music is unthinkable.”—Leonard Bernstein, Findings

When Lenny was two years old, his mother found that the only way to soothe her crying son was to turn on the Victrola. When his aunt passed on her piano to Lenny’s parents, the boy demanded lessons. When Lenny went to school, he had the most fun during “singing hours.”
But Lenny’s love of music was met with opposition from the start. Lenny’s father, a successful businessman, wanted Lenny to follow in his footsteps. Additionally, the classical music world of the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by Europeans—no American Jewish kid had a serious chance to make a name for himself in this field.
Beginning with Lenny’s childhood in Boston and ending with his triumphant conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic when he was just twenty-five, Music Was IT draws readers into the energetic, passionate, challenging, music-filled life of young Leonard Bernstein.
Archival photographs, mostly from the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress, illustrate this fascinating biography, which also includes a foreword by Bernstein’s daughter Jamie. Extensive back matter includes biographies of important people in Bernstein’s life, as well as a discography of his music.

My comments:

This is a quick and easy read. There are many nice pictures, but my favorites are the pages of doodles (p. 65 and 66) from Bernstein's college notebooks. Handwritten tests and compositions, and autographed photos from musicians he admired are also illuminating.

The design is clean and simple. The cover and end papers are dark blue, and everything inside is black and white. Images are nice and large, and white space is used sparingly but effectively. The only flourish is a musical staff marking the beginning of each chapter, and chapter titles done in a faux-handwriting font.

In addition to conducting research through books, and exhibits at Harvard and the Library of Congress; the author interviewed two of Bernstein's children in person, and his brother and a lifelong friend via telephone. Bernstein's daughter, Jamie, wrote the foreward.

I would have liked it if Rubin had delved into Bernstein's impact, discussing some of his major contributions like West Side Story, On the Town and Candide, in an introduction or the first chapter instead of leaving them to the epilogue. Some interesting aspects of his personal life, like his bisexuality and the fact that he smoked (despite having asthma) are also crammed into the epilogue, as afterthoughts.

End materials include a discography, timeline, biographies of friends and mentors, a bibliography, quotation sources and an index. These are all substantive. The discography includes a couple of DVDs in addition to audio recordings; actually watching Bernstein conduct would be a treat as he used his hands rather than a baton and was noted for his energetic style. I imagine is style may have influenced young conductors like Gustavo Dudamel, however this also isn't discussed in the book.

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing

Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing *2011 YALSA Award Winner*
by Ann Angel
published by Amulet/Abrams

Publisher's description:
Forty years after her death, Janis Joplin remains among the most compelling and influential figures in rock-and-roll history. Her story—told here with depth and sensitivity by author Ann Angel—is one of a girl who struggled against rules and limitations, yet worked diligently to improve as a singer. It’s the story of an outrageous rebel who wanted to be loved, and of a wild woman who wrote long, loving letters to her mom. And finally, it’s the story of one of the most iconic female musicians in American history, who died at twenty-seven. Janis Joplin includes more than sixty photographs, and an assortment of anecdotes from Janis’s friends and band mates. This thoroughly researched and well-illustrated biography is a must-have for all young artists, music lovers, and pop-culture enthusiasts.

My comments:
This book was a labor of love. It began as a short piece that Angel was encouraged to expand. She worked on it for years, conducting email interviews with Joplin's friend and bandmate Sam Andrew (who wrote the introduction), Joplin's former road manager John Byrne Cooke and her friend and publicist Myra Friedman. Angel even forged her own friendship with Friedman.

The eye-popping design is a delight. The colors and patterns adroning the pages reflect the psychedelic look of the album art incuded as illustrations. There are also many photos of Joplin, some filling an entire page, that show her both in her awkward youth and as the performer that she transformed herself into. This a fun book to browse through.

Angel does a really good job of describing Joplin’s persona and the impact her persona had on people, but what I felt was missing was in-depth analysis of her music. There is discussion of a few song lyrics, but it seemed a little too shallow to me. I would also have liked to hear more thoughts from fans and musicians who were influenced by Joplin. I thought that the view of 1950s culture presented was a little simplistic, but I liked how Angel shows Joplin as a misfit who struggled with her self image -- something that teens can identify with.

The bibliography is a bit difficult to navigate, because personal emails, articles, books, and albums are all lumped together without any obvious indication to show which is which. Divisional headings would have been helpful. The well-documented source notes, however, are very insightful, because they include the full sources and helpful things such as links.

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