He was given piano lessons as a boy and had his pre-college education at the Garrison and Boston Latin schools. Going on to Harvard University, he worked with Walter Piston, Edward Burlingame Hill, and A. Tillman Merritt, among others. By the time of his graduation, in 1939, he had made an unofficial conducting debut (his own incidental music to The Birds), and directed and performed in Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock. Later, at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he studied piano with Isabella Vengerova, conducting with Fritz Reiner, and composition with Randall Thompson.
In 1949 he became a student of the Boston Symphony’s reigning conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, at Tanglewood, and he was subsequently named his conducting assistant.
Bernstein’s first permanent conducting post, however, was as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, to which he was named in 1943. That was an important year for him both as a composer and as a conductor. Not only did he win the New York Music Critic’ Award for his first symphony, Jeremiah, but he also made his sudden and now famous debut with the Philharmonic, substituting on just a few hours’ notice for the indisposed Bruno Walter at a concert at Carnegie Hall. He won extraordinary praise, and was soon being sought as guest conductor by leading orchestras all over the world.
In the years following he served as music director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra for three seasons, from 1945 to 1947, and was head of the conducting faculty at Brandeis University from 1951 to 1956.
Serge Koussevitzky had died in 1951, and Bernstein took over the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood, where he continued to teach in the summer from time to time. Of great personal importance this same year was his marriage to the Chilean actress and pianist, Felicia Montealegre.
In 1957 Bernstein was invited to become Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, and from 1958 until 1969 conducted more concerts with them than anyone had ever done. Relinquishing the post after his eleven-year tenure, he accepted the lifetime title of Laureate Conductor. Two years later he led his thousandth concert with the Philharmonic, and he continued to be a frequent guest. More than half of his 400-plus recordings were made with this orchestra.
He traveled the world with his baton. He conducted in London and at the International Music Festival in Prague in 1946, and in Tel Aviv in 1947; he shared a transcontinental tour of the United States and Israel with Koussevitzky in 1951, and in 1953 became the first American ever to be invited to conduct a production at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (Cherubini’s Medea with Maria Callas). Meanwhile, he was making almost annual tours with the New York Philharmonic, both in his years as music director and afterwards as well, ultimately playing hundreds of concerts in 70 cities throughout 35 countries. For an international tour that commemorated the United States Bicentennial in 1976 he programmed only American music and played it to sold-out houses wherever he went.
His support and promulgation of American composers is a matter of record, particularly in the case of Aaron Copland, whose close friend he had been for decades..."half of his life," Bernstein remarked in an affectionate tribute on the occasion of Copland’s birthday celebration in 1975. As a young pianist he played Copland so much that he called the Piano Variations his trademark. As conductor he programmed and recorded (several of them twice) nearly all the Copland orchestral works. He devoted several of his television Young People’s Concerts to Copland and commissioned an important work, Connotations, for the opening of Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center in 1962. At another birthday party, this one in 1979, Bernstein’s greeting happily and publicly acknowledged Copland as "my first friend in New York, my master, my idol, my sage, my shrink, my guide, my counselor, my elder brother, my beloved friend."
Bernstein composed his own first large-scale work, the Jeremiah Symphony, in 1944, inspired by his Jewish heritage. It was performed in Pittsburgh for the first time, the composer conducting. His second symphony, based on a poem by W. H. Auden and called The Age of Anxiety, was first performed by Koussevitzky, with Bernstein as piano soloist, in 1949. The Boston Symphony and the Koussevitzky Foundation together commissioned his Symphony No. 3, subtitled ‘Kaddish.’ It was composed in 1963 and dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy.
Other major compositions by Bernstein include Serenade for violin, strings, and percussion (1954); Five Anniversaries for piano solo (1964); Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, commissioned for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and first produced there in 1971; Chichester Psalms for chorus, boy sopranos, and orchestra (1974); a "political overture," Slava!, written in 1977 to honor Mstislav Rostropovich; Songfest, a cycle of songs for singers and orchestra (1977); Divertimento for Orchestra (1980); Missa Brevis (1988) for singers and percussion; Arias and Barcarolles for piano duet (or alternatively, chamber orchestra or string orchestra) and two singers; and Concerto for Orchestra (subtitled Jubilee Games), both works completed and first performed in 1989.
Bernstein’s one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti, from 1951, was followed in 1983 by A Quiet Place, a sequel meant to be performed with it. He collaborated with choreographer Jerome Robbins in three major ballets: Fancy Free (1944) and Facsimile (1946) for American Ballet Theater; and Dybbuk for New York City Ballet. He composed the film score for the Academy Award-winning On the Waterfront (1954) and the scores for two theater works on Broadway, Peter Pan (1950) and The Lark (1955).
Trained in the classical tradition but always thoroughly attuned to and communicative of the popular idiom as well, Bernstein made substantial contributions to the Broadway musical stage, beginning with On the Town in 1944 and following with Wonderful Town in 1953, Candide in 1956 (also produced by numerous opera companies), and the immensely popular West Side Story (1957), later made into an Academy Award-winning film. His Bicentennial work, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was produced in Washington and on Broadway in 1976.
Bernstein’s eminence as a writer is based on The Joy of Music (1959), The Infinite Variety of Music (1966), Findings (1982), and their translations into nearly a score of other languages. Six lectures given at Harvard University in 1972-73 when he was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry were later collected into a book entitled The Unanswered Question.
Bernstein was the recipient of scores of honors besides those mentioned. The National Fellowship Award in 1985 applauded his life-long support of humanitarian causes, and he received the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was elected in 1981, the MacDowell Colony’s Gold Medal, medals from the Beethoven Society and the Mahler Gesellschaft, New York City’s highest honors in the field of the arts, the Handel Medallion, a Tony Award (1969) for Distinguished Achievement in the Theater, and literally dozens of honorary degrees and awards from colleges and universities including his alma mater, Harvard (Man of the Year in 1966). He was given ceremonial keys to the cities of Oslo, Vienna, Beersheva and Bernstein, Austria among others, and high honors from many nations: Italy, Israel, Austria, Mexico, Denmark, Germany (the Great Merit Cross), England, and France (where, successively, he was created Chevalier, Officer, and Commandeur of the Legion d’Honneur), as well as UNESCO’s Silver Wand. Far from being a prophet without honor in his own country, he received Kennedy Center honors in 1980.
Festivals of Bernstein’s music have been produced throughout the world, most recently at the Beethoven/Bernstein Festival in Bonn, Germany; and in London, produced jointly by the Barbican Centre and the London Symphony (of which he was honorary President since 1987). Another was produced by the Israel Philharmonic in commemoration of his debut concerts with the orchestra 30 years before. (The Israel Philharmonic also tendered him the lifetime title of Laureate Conductor in 1988).
In June 1990, Bernstein was among the first recipients of the Praemium Imperiale, an international prize created in 1988 by the Japan Art Association and awarded for lifetime achievement in the arts. Bernstein used the $100,000 prize to found the Bernstein Education Through the Arts Fund, Inc. before his death on October 14, 1990.
Bernstein was the father of three children: Jamie, Alexander, and Nina, and the grandfather of two: Francesca and Evan.
Leonard Bernstein is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
Leonard Bernstein's offical website is: http://www.leonardbernstein.com
This biography appears on Last.fm by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.
I Feel Pretty
Leonard Bernstein Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Chino? Why Chino?
Maybe she's just dolling up for us, gracias querida
Rosalia, Consuelo my adorable friends
Can you keep a secret?
I'm hot for secrets
No, I won't tell you
What?
What?
The poor girl is out of her mind
I am crazy
She might be at that
She looks somehow different
I do
And I think she is up to something
I am
I do, I am, she talks like a parrot
What is goin' on with you Maria?
I feel pretty
Oh, so pretty
I feel pretty, and witty and gay
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me today
I feel charming
Oh, so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real
See the pretty girl in that mirror there
Who can that attractive girl be?
Such a pretty face, such a pretty dress
Such a pretty smile such a pretty me!
I feel stunning
And entrancing
Feel like running and dancing for joy
For I'm loved
By a pretty wonderful boy!
Have you met my good friend Maria
The craziest girl on the block?
You'll know her the minute you see her
She's the one who is in an advanced state of shock
She thinks she's in love
She thinks she's in Spain (la la lala la)
She isn't in love, she's merely insane
It must be the heat
Or some rare disease (la lala la)
Or too much to eat
Or maybe it's fleas
Keep away from her send for Chino!
This is not the Maria, we know!
Modest and pure, polite and refined (la lala la)
Well-bred and mature, and out of her mind!
Miss America (Miss America)
Ay que linda te ves
Miss America bravo
Speech (speech)
I feel pretty
Oh, so pretty
That the city should give me its key
A committee
Should be organized to honor me (la la lala lala lala)
I feel dizzy
I feel sunny
I feel fizzy and funny and fine
And so pretty
Miss America can just resign! (Lala lala lala lala)
See the pretty girl in that mirror there
What mirror where?
Who can that attractive girl be?
Which? What? Where? Whom?
Such a pretty face, such a pretty dress, such a pretty smile, such a pretty me!
Such a pretty me! Such a pretty me! Such a pretty me!
I feel stunning (I feel stunning)
And entrancing (and entrancing)
Feel like running and dancing for joy
For I'm loved
By a pretty wonderful boy!
The song "I Feel Pretty" from the musical West Side Story is sung by Maria, a young Puerto Rican woman who has just fallen in love with Tony, a former member of the rival gang, the Jets. In this particular scene, she has just received news that Tony has killed her brother in a gang fight, but she is unaware of this and is caught up in her excitement about her new relationship with Tony. She sings about feeling pretty and confident, despite the chaos around her.
At first, the other characters express their concern for Maria, thinking that something is wrong with her. They mention Chino, who is supposed to be Maria's boyfriend, and wonder if he has done something to upset her. However, it becomes clear that Maria is simply happy and in love, and she continues to sing about her newfound confidence and joy.
The song is notable for its playful, upbeat melody and catchy lyrics, which contrast with the more serious themes of the musical. It is also a standout moment for the character of Maria, who is often portrayed as naïve and sheltered, but in this song, she asserts her independence and celebrates her own beauty.
Line by Line Meaning
What has Chino done to her
Why is she suddenly so different? Is something going on with her?
Maybe she's just dolling up for us, gracias querida
Perhaps she's just getting dressed up for our benefit, my dear friend.
Rosalia, Consuelo my adorable friends
Addressing her friends who she finds truly lovable and charming
Can you keep a secret?
Asking her friends to keep a secret from others.
I'm hot for secrets
Really interested in keeping secrets and maintaining privacy.
No, I won't tell you
Declining to reveal the secret to her friends.
The poor girl is out of her mind
Suggesting that something is wrong with her.
She might be at that
Acknowledging that she is acting strangely.
She looks somehow different
Noticing that she looks and behaves differently today.
I do
Admitting that she does look different than usual.
I am
Confirming that she is up to something today.
I do, I am, she talks like a parrot
Making fun of herself by repeating what Rosalia just said and likening herself to a parrot.
What is goin' on with you Maria?
Really curious and concerned about what is happening to Maria.
I feel pretty
Feeling absolutely lovely.
Oh, so pretty
So much prettier than before.
I feel pretty, and witty and gay
Feeling confident, happy and flirty.
And I pity
Feeling sorry for any girl who isn't her today.
Any girl who isn't me today
She is especially pretty today and no other girl could match her beauty.
I feel charming
Feeling absolutely delightful.
Oh, so charming
Extremely charming.
It's alarming how charming I feel
Feeling amazing and charming so much that it is slightly alarming.
That I hardly can believe I'm real
Almost like she's living in a dream, feeling that she's too charming to be real.
See the pretty girl in that mirror there
Referring to the mirror and admiring her reflection.
Who can that attractive girl be?
Who is the beautiful woman she sees in her reflection?
Such a pretty face, such a pretty dress, such a pretty smile, such a pretty me!
Loving absolutely everything about how she looks today and finding herself gorgeous.
I feel stunning
Feeling unbelievably gorgeous and attractive.
And entrancing
Feeling captivating and charming others.
Feel like running and dancing for joy
Feeling so amazing that she wants to celebrate by running and dancing.
For I'm loved
Someone she loves and admires is loving her back, which is making her feel amazing.
By a pretty wonderful boy!
Loved by a boy who she thinks is pretty wonderful.
Have you met my good friend Maria
Introducing Maria as her good friend.
The craziest girl on the block?
Asking whether Maria is considered as the craziest girl in the neighborhood.
You'll know her the minute you see her
Suggesting that Maria's behavior is so different that it is immediately noticeable.
She's the one who is in an advanced state of shock
Humorously implying that she is temporarily crazy.
She thinks she's in love
Expressing that she feels like she's in love.
She thinks she's in Spain
Jokingly implying that Maria is so crazed that she thinks she's in Spain instead of where she actually is.
She isn't in love, she's merely insane
Jokingly saying that Maria is not really in love, she is just crazy.
It must be the heat
Suggesting that the weather is causing her to behave in a crazy way.
Or some rare disease
Jokingly suggesting that an unknown disease has caused Maria's odd behavior.
Or too much to eat
Humorously implying that Maria's behavior is due to eating too much.
Or maybe it's fleas
Humorously suggesting that Maria's behavior is due to flea bites.
Keep away from her send for Chino!
Admonishing others to stay away from Maria and calling for Chino to help her.
This is not the Maria, we know!
Implying that Maria is not herself and something is wrong.
Modest and pure, polite and refined
Normally very cultured, modest and soft-spoken.
Well-bred and mature, and out of her mind!
Despite being cultured and mature she's acting crazy and doing things outside the ordinary.
Miss America, ay que linda te ves
Playing on the Miss America pageant, referring to her good looks.
Miss America Bravo Speech
Humorously suggesting that her looks are so stunning that she deserves a speech.
That the city should give me its key
Feeling so pretty and self-assured that she feels like the city should give her the key to the city.
A committee should be organized to honor me
Feeling very special and deserving of recognition, like a whole committee should be organized to honor her.
I feel dizzy
Feeling giddy and caught up in the moment.
I feel sunny
Feeling happy and uplifted.
I feel fizzy and funny and fine
Feeling excited and elated, like she's on a high.
Miss America can just resign!
Feeling so pretty and amazing that Miss America should resign so she can take over the title.
Which? What? Where? Whom?
Thinking back about the girl she saw in the mirror, unsure of which or what details she's talking about.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Cathy Davis
She knocks this song out of the park. Dazzling rendition of "I Feel Pretty." Back in 1963 my high school Farragut did this Bernstein song. Memories
Genevieve Ogu
This is amazing!!! How I love her voice😍.
Albert Rombeaut
I love those who sing really for others. So does Joyce. Her art of singing makes her dress also wonderfull.
Robby Warren
Even though she's a mezzosoprano, she also hits notes that are lower and higher than the average mezzosoprano range that are in the alto range and soprano range.
Lady Flowers
I just love how much fun the director has :D
paul brussee
Wonderful performance!
Lírico Lírico
Que maravilla!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mary Stamper
Finally someone sings this song in a way that shows its true potential. Much better than the usual B'way approach.
J
Though it was written for B’way……..
Singer Buddy
@Yoga Jedi
Completely agreed