On this day in 1957, West Side Story opened on Broadway. It has since become a permanent part of American music culture – everybody knows and loves this show and its singing, snapping, dancing gangs. When Leonard Bernstein wrote the music to this show, he had just been appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. The fact that the conductor of one of the world’s finest orchestras was also writing for music theater showed the depth and breadth of Bernstein’s abilities.

I recently saw online that you can once again purchase and play the original 1996 PC game Quake. While it wasn’t the first first-person-shooter, it was the first one that had a truly 3D world and allowed for multiplayer games. I wasted many hours playing this masterpiece with my college buddies (I regret nothing). What struck me about this 20-year anniversary sale was that the game was getting negative reviews. Well, the game is ancient as far as computers go, and the graphics looks abysmal compared to modern shooters. But still, the guts of the game hadn’t changed – so why the poor reception?

It was the music! The original game had a soundtrack by the metal band Nine Inch Nails. They scrapped this music in the currently sold version, probably because the band wanted a cut of the profits, and it would be hard to justify selling this ancient game for more than a few bucks – not enough to pay the piper. Quake was a good game, but they’re right, it’s a completely different experience without the death metal soundtrack. The same thinking applies to movies. If we were to remove the music from movies, they would feel empty. Try to imagine Star Wars without the heroic theme. Or Chariots of Fire without the iconic running music. Or Rocky without “Gonna Fly Now.” Now try to imagine them with different music …

Does it work conversely? Could the music stand alone without the film? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I suppose. I have to be honest and say I’ve never seen the movie On the Waterfront, but I know the Symphonic Suite from it that Bernstein wrote, and I feel like I can tell the flavor of the movie, based on the music alone.

Dudamel‘s back again. Expect to see him a lot.

This is one crazy video. Crazy-awesome, that is. I love how the audience is so into the music, they are standing up, dancing, clapping, cheering, throwing stuff. Why not? How can you sit still in this sort of atmosphere, with this music? And wow, those musicians nail it, even while standing up and dancing! Have a great Mardi Gras!

Leonard Bernstein‘s Mambo from West Side Story:

There are plenty of accounts that European and American audiences used to be this rowdy at concerts. The current “stuffy” atmosphere at Art Music concerts is often blamed on: 1) the late 19th century rise of the middle-class, which sought ways to distinguish itself from the lower class, and thus created a set of “rules” for concert-going; 2) the subtle but long-running smear-campaign against Art Music in movies & TV (who listens to Art Music? The losers, the squares, the fuddy-duddies, and the bad guys, who invariably have English accents); 3) Gustav Mahler.