Bernstein, Leonard

1918 - Bernstein was born on the 25th of August in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

1934 - Graduated from Boston Latin School.

Attended Harvard University, where he studied music with Walter Piston.

He enrolled in the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

1942 - He composed "Jeremiah Symphony".

1943 - Appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

1944 - Composed musicals "On the Town".

1947 - He conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time.

1949 - Conducted the world première of the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Olivier Messiaen.

1951 - Married Felicia Montealegre Cohn on 9th of September.

         - Became head of the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood.

         - Conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world premiere of the Charles Ives:Symphony No. 2.

1956 - He composed "Candide".
    
1957-1969 - Music Director of the New York Philharmonic.

         - Conducted the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv.

1960 - Bernstein began the first complete cycle of recordings in stereo.

1963 - Composed oratorio "Kaddish".

1966 - He made his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting Verdi's Falstaff.

1967 - Conducted a concert on Mt. Scopus to commemorate the reunification of Jerusalem.

1970 - Returned to the State Opera for Otto Schenk's production of Beethoven's Fidelio.

         - Bernstein conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

1976 - He left Felicia to live with his lover Tom Cothran.

1980 - He received the Kennedy Center Honors award.

1986 - The State Opera had Bernstein conducting his A Quiet Place.

1989 - Bernstein's final farewell to the State Opera.

         - Bernstein conducted the Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in East Berlin's Schauspielhaus (Playhouse).

1990 - Died on 14th of October and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

• "The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another . . . and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world."
• "Any great work of art revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world -- the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air."
• "[It was] an initiation into the love of learning, of learning how to learn, that was revealed to me by my BLS masters as a matter of interdisciplinary cognition-that is, learning to know something by its relation to something else."
• "A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future."
• "Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."