Bernstein Ten Little Pieces

Music is for listening to -

definitely.

But when I hear music, I don't want to just listen.

MUSIC: Mambo by Leonard Bernstein

I want to move!

I want to dance.

A dance can be romantic.

It can be frenetic.

It can be a party or a battleground.

Romeo and Juliet - perhaps the most famous lovers of all -

meet during a dance at a masked ball.

A moment of happiness before their two warring families,

the Montagues and the Capulets, tear them apart.

And if you update Shakespeare's tragic love story, what do you get?

MUSIC: Mambo by Leonard Bernstein

West Side Story, a stage musical composed by Leonard Bernstein.

Shakespeare's Verona in Italy becomes New York City in the 1950s,

where a turf war is under way.

The Montagues and the Capulets become two rival street gangs,

the Sharks and the Jets.

And Romeo and Juliet make way for Tony and Maria.

Bernstein had seen Latin dance music when he visited Puerto Rico,

and now he watched as one particular dance craze

swept through New York City in the '50s.

And so, for his musical, out went Shakespeare's masked ball

and in came mambo.

Bernstein's Mambo's got fast rhythms packed with semiquavers

and great melodic lines.

It's full of passion and danger,

just like the emotions on those hot city streets.

It's music to make you move.

Mambo!

Mambo!