Like so much else in the United States, the standards of broadcast television have eroded beyond recognition since the days of Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” first aired on CBS from 1958 to 1972. The most celebrated American conductor – communicative, charismatic, and cool – introduced classical music to receptive kids in living rooms across the nation. Such was the network’s belief in this Saturday morning program that for three years it was broadcast in prime time. Later, it was shown on Sunday afternoons. The shows were syndicated in more than 40 countries, and the series was honored with five Emmys.
It’s sad to reflect that there was once a time when those who set the standards for network television actually saw it as part of the medium’s mission to educate and to elevate. How quaint of legislators and executives of our grandparents’ generation to want that.
Of course, at the same time, the Flintstones were hawking cigarettes…
Inevitably, the lure of lucre would trump public service, and the presence of educational and artistic programming would dwindle. I’m thankful that remnants of this sort of thing were still around in the ‘70s and ‘80s, though mostly thanks to PBS – now under fire by small minds and empty souls determined to undermine anything that truly does make this country great.
Here, on the birthday of Brazilian master Heitor Villa-Lobos, Bernstein sums up the composer’s musical aims in four minutes in this “Young People’s Concerts” broadcast of 1963:
Then he conducts Villa-Lobos’ biggest hit, “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.”
On an earlier broadcast, in 1960, Bernstein conducted the composer’s second-biggest hit, “The Little Train of Caipira,” from “Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2”
Happy birthday, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and requiescat in pace, American sanity.
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