716 THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
LEONARD BERNSTEIN'S VERSION OF ARISTOPHANES
Of great interest to those who wish to confirm Bernstein's classical roots is a letter
written by John W. Darr (Harvard class of 1941) to the New York Times (November 4,
1990), which states that perhaps the first musical score written and directed by Bern-
stein for public performance (to critical acclaim) was for the production of Aristo-
phanes' Peace in Sanders Theater of Harvard University in 1941. Bernstein's contribu-
tion was announced as an "original modern score for chorus and orchestra by the
brilliant young composer Leonard Bernstein." Darr was leader of the chorus for the
production. Years later as fifth-grade teacher at the Midtown Ethical Culture School
in Manhattan, he got in touch with Bernstein about doing a production of Peace. Bern-
stein let Darr use the score, and his revival of the work was a memorable experience
for those involved.party music, but rather the natural expression of a contemporary American com-
poser imbued with the spirit of that timeless dinner party."
Certainly one will find compositions by Americans (just as we have seen in
the case of European composers) on classical themes of every sort, in every kind
of musical genre and style: symphonic, operatic, chamber, vocal, choral, instru-
mental, classical, popular, jazz, rock, atonal, twelve-tone, serial, minimalist, and
so on.^9
Inspiration from Greece and Rome is often given a unique color and mean-
ing in terms of things American, for example, in an art form that Americans have
made very much their own, musical theater. Three such works in particular il-
lustrate the successful metamorphosis of things classical into pure Americana:
The Golden Apple, which turns Homeric epic into an American saga; Gospel at
Colonus, which transposes the spirituality of Sophocles into a black American
gospel service; and Revelation in the Courthouse Park, a chilling and profound dra-
matic allegory embracing American rock, sex, religion, and the philosophical
message of Euripides' Bacchae.
The Beginnings of American Music. The beginnings of music in America are char-
acterized by the European background and fierce religious devotion of the New
England colonists, who considered the singing of psalms an integral part of their
new lives, as it had been of their old ones. The Puritan ministers of New Eng-
land preached about the need for better singing, and the result was the first
American music textbook, An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes, by the
Rev. John Tufts (a graduate of Harvard College), published in 1721; with it came
the important development in American music known as the singing-school
movement. Many groups for singing-school instruction sprang up and itinerant
singing masters began their careers; from them emerged a group of American
composers or "tunesmiths," sometimes designated as the First New England