Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story (review)

Toward the end of his life, Leonard Bernstein feared that despite his multifaceted contributions to American music he would be remembered mainly for West Side Story. He was always a bit uncomfortable with his legacy as a Broadway composer, yearning for an enduring reputation as a creator of concert works. Whether or not Bernstein's fear has become a reality, West Side Story remains his best-known composition. Music from the show has been recorded and arranged hundreds of times in a variety of styles ranging from jazz to punk rock. The focus of significant critical and scholarly attention, West Side Story has been studied in numerous essays, articles, general writings on musical theatre, and dissertations, but it has never been the sole subject of a scholarly book. Nigel Sime-one's Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story addresses the work from a variety of perspectives, providing a useful and accessible volume on an important American work of art.

The emphasis in Simeone's book is on the music rather than on the plot or lyrics, although the author stresses the collaborative nature of the show and includes information on and from the other contributors to the original stage production (the 1961 film version of West Side Story is not discussed). Simeone begins by summarizing Bernstein's career as a stage composer prior to the 1957 opening of West Side Story with a biographical sketch and quotations from reviews of his stage works up to that point. Chapter 2 traces the origins of the show, which date from early 1949, when Jerome Robbins approached Bernstein with an idea for a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. Simeone discusses the evolution of the book (by Arthur Laurents), the recruiting of lyricists (Stephen Sondheim was not the first choice), the change of producers, and the auditioning of the cast. The chapter draws on a number of primary sources, such as Bernstein's datebook (held in the Library of Congress's Leonard Bernstein Collection) and his 1957 journal of important dates in the show's history ("Excerpts From A West Side Log," Playbill, 30 September 1957, 47-48), sketches outlining the plot and music, drafts of the script, letters between the principal creators, and newspaper columns devoted to Broadway gossip.

Chapter 3 is a discussion of the music manuscripts for West Side Story, which are in the Bernstein Collection. Included are a section on music cut from the show and a summary of revisions and additions to the music. Bernstein often recycled unused music, and Simeone shows examples of this with respect to West Side Story. For instance, the song "America" can be traced back to Bernstein's never-performed 1941 ballet Conch Town. Chapter 4 is an analysis of the music; general issues of style and genre are covered as well as musical features of each number. Chapter 5, entitled "Reception," is a survey of early critical reaction to the show in the United States and England. This chapter also includes a section on the financing of the production. In chapter 6, Simeone describes the process of making the original cast album, recorded, as was typical, in a single day shortly after the show's New York premiere. Appendices listing the music manuscripts related to West Side Story in the Bernstein Collection and the numbers on the original cast recording (included on the accompanying compact disc) round out the volume.

Historians will enjoy the collective weight of primary sources used in this book. The sheer amount of material in the Bernstein Collection (about 350,000 items) can prove challenging to researchers, but the most important documents are referenced in the book. Simeone's citations of the Bernstein Collection and the music manuscripts appendix would be more useful, however, if he had included the actual box and folder number of each item; this would make each document much easier for other researchers to find. Anyone who has worked extensively with...