Our Dad, Leonard Bernstein, Would Want His Music Played at the Kennedy Center

Opinion|Our Dad, Leonard Bernstein, Would Want His Music Played at the Kennedy Center

Our father, the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, liked to tell us about the time Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis called to ask him to be the first executive director of the Kennedy Center in Washington, which was being built as a memorial to her slain husband. He was so honored that he blurted out a yes — then hung up aghast. He didn’t feel remotely suited to be executive director of anything.

Our mother, Felicia, called Mrs. Onassis back to say that her husband was deeply humbled, but suggested it might be more appropriate for him to, perhaps, compose a piece to inaugurate the center. That was how “Mass” came to be written. We were in the audience for the first performance on Sept. 8, 1971, when the work’s multifarious sounds and enormous, diverse cast filled the Kennedy Center Opera House with melody, spectacle and joy. Our father’s music has had a special place at the Kennedy Center ever since.

Since President Trump has asserted control over the center, making himself chairman and purging its board and administration in favor of his loyalists, a number of artists (though certainly not all) have severed ties with the institution in protest. Many friends and associates have urged us, the rights holders of our father’s music, to withdraw his works from a gala program on Saturday.

We asked ourselves: What would our dad do? In our hearts, we already knew the answer. He would let his music be heard.

The Kennedy Center was created to gather and uplift all Americans, and all of America’s visitors. Our father felt exactly the same way about making music; he strove to embrace and unite humanity through the works he wrote and performed.

On many occasions, he felt pressured to modify or curtail his own artistic activity. Sometimes the pressure came from the U.S. government: During the Red-baiting hysteria of the 1950s, he faced difficulties in renewing his passport, and almost didn’t make it to Milan to conduct Maria Callas at La Scala.