As music biopics go, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is typical: entertaining, if middle-of-the-road. (I suppose it was too much to wish it had been something on the level of Ken Russell’s 1968 Delius film, Song of Summer.) Bernstein superfans will know most of the film’s depicted events—and maybe complain about the ones left out—but there was one aspect of his life that was new to me at least: the conductor’s apparent semi-regular drug use.
I found myself wondering whether or not his habit had any effect on his musical abilities, particularly in his later career. This reminded me of something I read in Ian MacDonald’s analysis of The Beatles, Revolution in the Head:
If amphetamines (“speed”) were the characteristic pharmaceuticals of the high-energy early Sixties, the late Sixties were dominated by cannabis and LSD, drugs which slow thought and amplify sensation, rendering the commonplace fascinating and making it hard to judge the worth of one’s impressions.[1]
The dominant stylistic trait in Bernstein’s late discography is his tendency to slow tempi, not only slower than was typical at the time, but often much slower than what he had previously recorded. Compare some of the movement timings from the symphonies he recorded:
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (I. Tempo molto moderato – Largamente – Allegro moderato – Presto):
1961: 13’16”
1989: 15’13”
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6 (I. Largo):
1963: 18’55”
1986: 22’29”
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (III. Adagio):
1962: 16’32”
1988: 19’25”
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (IV. Finale. Allegro moderato):
1967: 28’39”
1988: 33’06”
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 (IV. Finale. Adagio lamentoso):
1953: 11’19”
1964: 11’38”
1986: 17’12”
Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend):
1965: 23’00”
1979: 26’11”
1985: 29’46”
Bernstein’s case of the “slows” was not necessarily a new or unique development in conducting. Slow tempi, often drastically so, were also major features of the late careers of Klemperer and Celibidache, which preceded and overlapped with Bernstein’s. Klemperer’s approach, however, was mostly the result of physical injury and geriatric decline; Celibidache’s from his personal philosophies on the nature of performance and the phenomenology of sound. Bernstein was neither, to my knowledge, physically impaired like the former, nor was his performance method influenced by religio-philosophical ideas like the latter. Ever since I first heard his late recordings, a number of them struck me as interpretively miscalculated. It is a matter of speculation if he like, The Beatles, had been deluded by “drugs and overconfidence” into “accepting their initial inspiration as a creative ‘found’ object.”[2]
Research on Bernstein’s drug addiction and how it may have affected his conducting is, perhaps, still too touchy a subject for scholars to explore in-depth, but Cooper’s film may have at least opened the door. Maybe future generations will remember the conductor as classical music’s pioneer “science-enhanced superhero.”[3]
Notes
[1]: MacDonald, Ian (1994). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (3rd ed.). Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-55652-733-3. Page 257.
[2]: MacDonald, p. 258.
[3]: Bloom, Ben (June 30, 2023). “The Enhanced Games—a drugs Olympics where cheaters can prosper”. The Guardian. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/30/the-enhanced-games-a-drugs-olympics-where-cheaters-can-prosper.