Romina Dezillio considers female tango singers’ artistic and social contributions to the professionalization of women within the national and international tango scene. Her study of the consolidation process of the tango cancionista (female tango singer) during the 1930s in Argentina reveals gender-based relationships between the tango canción and Argentine society as she highlights the personal styles and careers of three star cancionistas: Rosita Quiroga (1896–1984), Azucena Maizani (1902–1970), and Libertad Lamarque (1908–2000).

Paulina L. Alberto uses original research about a multigeneration family of Black musicians to illustrate different stages of musical experimentation that fed into tango. In doing so, she sheds new light on the relationship between the Afro-Argentine musical and dance tradition of candombes and early tango, and she challenges the entrenched racial narrative of Afro-Argentine “disappearance” over the course of the nineteenth century.

Kendra Stepputat examines the choreomusical aspect of tango through an ethnographic lens in European countries. She focuses on one of the currently very popular tango social dance events in Europe called encuentros milongueros, paying particular attention to how these events, originally set up to mimic tango dance environments in Buenos Aires, have developed into translocal/contemporary tango music-dance practice that is particular to Europe. In doing so, she challenges the reader to rethink what it means to call tango a transnational art form, and how this definition is evolving.

On 9 July 1967, Leonard Bernstein led the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in a concert atop Mount Scopus, celebrating in the aftermath of the Jewish State’s geopolitical victory in the Six-Day War. Even as explosions thundered on in the distance, Bernstein publicly championed Jerusalem’s destiny to be a peaceful, unified city in which all could flourish through increased cultural tolerance. This event is perhaps more indicative than any other of the contradictions between Bernstein’s personal and political beliefs as a progressive, first-generation Jewish American and his deeply ingrained, lifelong loyalty to Zionism and Israeli nationalist sensibilities. This chapter briefly explores how these oft-conflicting belief systems and historical events shaped Bernstein’s lifelong struggle to negotiate his identity as an American New Jew.

This chapter describes Bernstein’s education, which prepared him well for his chosen activities. His primary and secondary education took place at William Lloyd Garrison School in Roxbury, MA, and his final six years at the demanding Boston Latin School. Bernstein then attended Harvard College, where he earned an A.B. in Music in 1939. His early life also included two hours of daily Hebrew study at the family’s temple from age eight until his Bar Mitzvah. In addition to his largely academic training in music at Harvard, Bernstein studied piano privately from age ten until his college graduation, and then for two years attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and piano with Isabelle Vengerova, earning an M.M. His formal study and the many connections that he made while at Harvard and Curtis helped make possible Bernstein’s rapid success as a conductor and composer.

Between October 1955 and March 1958, Bernstein presented seven television broadcasts on the Omnibus culture series. He addressed topics from Beethoven, Bach, modern music, and opera to musical theatre and jazz and appealed widely to audiences, educating and offering knowledge while avoiding excessively elevated language. Writing the scripts himself, Bernstein effortlessly moved from various roles as a conductor, narrator, pianist, and educator within the context of the show, dazzling audiences with his charismatic personality and stylish attire. The programmes were well received, with an estimated sixteen million viewers tuning in to watch the December 1955 ‘The Art of Conducting’ broadcast. His carefully selected words, analogies, and references were extremely relatable to the middle-class family demographics of the programmes, and the broadcasts fostered Bernstein’s growing pop-star status as he gained international popularity as a conductor and both a Broadway and classical composer.

Jewish related works form a significant part of Bernstein’s oeuvre. He draws from Hebrew texts taken from the bible and liturgy and also uses traditional Jewish melodies. Bernstein had a strong Jewish upbringing in his synagogue, Mishkan Tefila in Boston. Throughout his life Jewishness provided an approach to express his heritage and larger humanitarian ideas. This chapter discusses the Jewishness in Bernstein by investigating various works, including his three symphonies. In 1945 Bernstein was commissioned to write a setting of the Hashkiveinu prayer for a Friday evening service by the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. This piece is discussed as a demonstration of various compositional styles that Bernstein applies that are not derived from Jewish tradition. Through differing approaches of direct use of melodies and text from the Jewish tradition, Bernstein provides an example of Jewishiness in art music with a complex and varied approach.

Bernstein was a prolific recording artist, and this chapter considers his vast recorded legacy, from his earliest recordings made in the 1940s to later ventures, including several important opera sets as well as a large swathe of orchestral repertoire, with the symphonies of some composers (notably Beethoven, Schumann, and Mahler) recorded more than once. As well as mainstream European repertoire, Bernstein never lost his enthusiasm for recording music by American composers, including outstanding discs of Copland, Foss, Harris and Ives. While Bernstein was usually pleased with the results of his sessions – whether in the studio or recorded live in concert – he also felt the need at times to return to composing. These creative phases were intermittent (Bernstein was usually at his happiest when working with other musicians), but the consequence was a healthy output of new work, most of which Bernstein himself subsequently recorded, including two cycles of his symphonies and recordings of his major stage works.

Bernstein’s fame, reputation, and personality have for the most part been seen as excessive and problematic. This perception militated from the start against his position in time, place, and tradition as a serious composer being influential or even accepted. Yet from the golden moment of opportunity for American composers in which he grew to adulthood to his barely noticed final works, he was following a diligent route of creative output that may yet bear fruit at greater distance from the man himself, though it would be difficult to claim that, taken as a whole, it has yet done so.

As a composer/practitioner, Julián Graciano offers insights into tango as a transnational musical form by analyzing the performance element of spontaneity and improvisation in two musical genres typically associated with the United States and Argentina, namely jazz and tango respectively. Graciano shows show how the two genres have impacted each other in sound, style, and technique, illustrated with numerous musical examples of his own tango-jazz hybrid compositions and other tango and jazz composers. As a bonus, Graciano provides a video tutorial on how to realize a tango lead sheet.

It was an essential dimension of Bernstein’s personality to be actively involved in public engagement with (usually) classical music, bringing it to the masses with an accessible approach. This chapter explores how he used writing and broadcasting to communicate his own passion for music, as well as his insights as a composer, conductor and musician. Talking about ‘what makes music tick’ was as much at the heart of his mission as composition and performance were, and whether talking about Beethoven and Bach on primetime television in Omnibus or publishing his public lectures as bestselling books, Bernstein’s efforts in music appreciation helped to solidify his image as perhaps America’s most recognizable and popular classical musician.

As we laid out the final chapter order of this book, we reflected on the research questions we initially posed when soliciting proposals from an array of tango scholars and scholar-artists. How do diverse humanistic fields of inquiry further shape our understanding of the tango art form? Inversely, how does the tango help us further understand culture and society? How do interdisciplinary perspectives on tango influence current scholarship? How do international perspectives on and research approaches to tango differ, and why are they important?

For Americans, the Cold War (1947−91) and the rivalry that resulted between the United States and the Soviet Union were real and constant. One celebrated figure affected by the shadows and triumphs of the Cold War was Leonard Bernstein. Yet, throughout his career, even through the worst conflicts, Bernstein steadfastly embraced the ideal of hope and a strong patriotic belief in peace, freedom, and democracy. From the outset, and both privately and publicly, he spoke about the importance of American leadership in upholding these ideals, even when governments (his own included) dismally failed to safeguard them. When his personal circumstances were at risk, he nevertheless continued to dedicate himself to these hopeful ideals in letters, writings, and popular media. In the end, when governments failed, he embraced the dignity and potential of the American people themselves with the responsibility to sustain these values through the Cold War climate.