The Joy of Music

The Joy of Music is Leonard Bernstein's first book, originally published in 1959 by Simon & Schuster. A highly acclaimed, bestselling work, it is still in print today.

For the television series featuring organ music, see Diane Bish.
First edition

In the book, Bernstein completely abandons the traditional academic style of books on classical music. Some of the chapters are cast in the style of conversations about music between Bernstein and several imaginary people. (One of these conversations contains Bernstein's thoughts on Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, a work he never conducted or recorded.) Other chapters of the book are made up of complete transcribed scripts of Bernstein's television music lectures of the 1950s, taken from the TV show Omnibus. They include his famous dissection of the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. But the published scripts rely heavily on extracts from scores,[1] accessible only to readers familiar with musical notation. However, all of Bernstein's Omnibus lectures were released on DVD in 2016, so readers of The Joy of Music can hear the musical examples.[2] The program on jazz was also recorded on an LP and has been released on CD. The Beethoven's Fifth lecture has also been released on CD, but in an unfortunate format making it impossible to listen without hearing "feedback" in different languages.[3]

References
  1. "The Joy of Music". Hal Leonard Corporation. 27 August 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018 – via Google Books.
  2. "Omnibus: Leonard Bernstein". Amazon.com. 1 July 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  3. "Beethoven: Symphony No. 5". Amazon.com. 16 June 1992. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
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