Four not-so-random thoughts about the upcoming “Celebrate America” festival of the Fort Worth Symphony, featuring music of Copland, Gershwin, and Bernstein, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya:

1. Ten years ago, Americans woke up one morning to watch one of the symbols of our national identity crumble to the ground in a few traumatizing moments of pre-meditated violence. In the ensuing decade, we have witnessed the demise of prosperity and peace, along with the subtle undermining of the orderly political process. Parallel to this, and definitely related to those trends, the cultural establishment, including our great opera companies and orchestras, finds itself in an increasingly precarious situation. Bankruptcies, pay cuts, and decreased seasons—after decades of growth and expansion—have become commonplace for America’s orchestras and opera companies.

It’s extraordinarily fitting, in the face of this ongoing, slow-boiling crisis in all levels of American culture, to celebrate the legacy of the three composers who represent America at its best.

2. If the Russian imperial government had not succumbed to a wave of virulent anti-Semitism and discrimination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, none of this great American music would have happened: Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein were all sons of Russian-born Jews. This doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism, official or not, is a good thing. It means that human beings have a remarkable ability to create work of great beauty and great meaning in the wake of tragedy and suffering. It also means that one country’s stupidity can be another’s gain.

Immigration, and the constant assimilation of immigrants, has been the single most significant contributing factor to America’s greatness. Russia literally exported a huge portion of its available genius to America. The sons of immigrants created Rhapsody in Blue, Billy the Kid, and Chichester Psalms, and they were able to do so because they came of age in a country that was willing to embrace them, and, more significantly, to educate them. (Notice also that a Peruvian-born musician, Fort Worth Symphony Musical Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, will conduct these works in the festival.) Today’s children, including the children of today’s immigrants, will continue to build and maintain a strong American culture, if they are given the opportunities and education.

3. Two of the three composers represented in the festival, Copland and Bernstein, were primarily gay in sexual orientation. Five years ago, it would have been superfluous to bring this up, but in an era in which major political figures—including significant presidential candidates—openly and noisily espouse an agenda of discrimination based on sexual orientation, it’s worth remembering that the men who wrote Lincoln Portrait and “There’s a Place for Us” were both gay. And, since this festival of American music falls—surely not entirely by coincidence—just a few days before the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, one may well observe that attacks of September 2001 and the renewed attacks on civil rights both originated in religious fundamentalism.

4. With this festival, we’re getting a clear, succinct and varied view of three great composers from the middle years of the twentieth century. And it’s definitely worth noting that the Fort Worth Symphony has a pretty good record of presenting new works by living composers as well.

But what about the rest of the American classical musical heritage from before 1970? What about Hanson, Barber, Menotti, Harris, Beach, Crawford, Ruggles, Joplin, Dett, Ives, Thompson, Thomson, Paine, Cowell, and Hovhaness, to name only a few? What about the lesser-known but equally great works of Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein?

As a longtime enthusiastic lover of twentieth-century American concert music, I’m anticipating enjoying every minute of the festival. And I’m expecting, after it’s over, to just want more.

Image: Leonard Bernstein in 1955 (via)