Is WEST SIDE STORY overlooked as a Sondheim musical? — Page 2

kj, let's not get too self righteous about days past.

One of the reasons that Bernstein was a household name at that time was because he was on TV a lot. He had those Harvard Talks and the Carnegie Hall concerts especially for children.

That doesn't really happen anymore on the scale that Bernstein did.
It's where I learned what the word "incongruity" meant.

Anyway, my point is that there are many reaons beside a smug collectve ignorance that people don't know something. There is far more information at one's fingertips, so knowing something "off the top of your head" really doesn't have as much value as it once did.

I for one would rather people know Bernstein's music rather than who he was.

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Fenchurch, I take your point. Wasn't trying to be self-righteous about the past, just attempting to put in perspective how widely Bernstein would have been recognized during the mid-twentieth century. And, yes, I personally do miss those days of a generalized middle-brow cultural literacy that's apparently been lost forever.

I know. Ain't it a bitch?

You mean the one that was on the program, Bernstein conducts WSS, Johnboy? I watched that at the Museum of TV(omg!), and they talked about how...I'm not quite sure, I think it had something to do with them getting short notice, but the musicians they gathered were the best they could get. I never actually heard the CD of it, but maybe that has something to do with it?

Yes, the mass is beautiful, but I think psalm 23 is even more beautiful!

"The truth is that there is no general culture anymore. Our technology has made it extremely easy to specialize your cultural aesthetic. "

That's a wonderful, profound way of putting it, fen. Thank you for those words.

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