Leonard Bernstein was in his early 30s, already hailed as a dynamo on the American classical scene, when he picked up a musical tome, opened to a blank page, and scribbled some proud thoughts about his dog. The book was Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons. The dog, named Gaby, had recently been trained to raise a paw on command. As Bernstein noted, writing by hand: “Gaby does not merely lift his paw: he lifts it as high as it will go, with a movement rapid yet discreet, carrying with it a sweep of triumph executed with perfect delicacy.”
This piece of marginalia, faithfully documented in the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress, doesn’t tell us much about Bernstein’s opinion of Stravinsky’s Poetics. It does, however, underscore his love of canine companionship — a fact worth celebrating at this time of year, as his birthday, on Aug. 25, leads into National Dog Day, on Aug. 26. (Listen to WRTI’s classical broadcast on Tuesday to hear music in tune with the theme.)
In the age-old cats vs. dogs divide, classical composers often fall more on the feline side of the fence, a fact we celebrated with our recent programming for International Cat Day. It’s easy to understand why: cats are generally quieter, more low-maintenance and self-sufficient. Also far less prone to interrupting a productive afternoon with the urgent need for a walk.
But Bernstein, a figure of boundless energies himself, was an inveterate dog lover — and a serial dog owner. Along with the well-trained Gaby, his menagerie of family pooches over the years included a sibling pair of German Shepherd puppies, adopted on a whim from an auto mechanic (he named them Franny and Zooey, after a new book by J.D. Salinger); a tiny, fluffy Bichon-Frise named Tookie (short for “Tuchus”); and a succession of dachshunds named Henry, four in a row.
“I don’t know what it is about Bernsteins and dogs, I really don’t,” his youngest daughter, Nina Bernstein Simmons, said in a 1997 interview for Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note, a PBS American Masters documentary. “It’s just always been an unquestionable fact of life. You’ve got to have dogs. Other people have cats. Bernsteins have dogs.”
This was true of the wider Bernstein clan, as well: Leonard’s brother, Burton, owned a beloved pup named Mippy. She served as the inspiration for a pair of short elegies commissioned by Juilliard, as part of a suite of brass pieces written for members of the New York Philharmonic, and premiered at Carnegie Hall on April 8, 1959.
As the Office of Leonard Bernstein explains in a catalog note: “Elegy for Mippy I and II are popular pieces with his brother Burtie’s dog in mind. Mippy I was written for horn and piano. Mippy II is for solo trombone. Tragedy struck Mippy, and each of these pieces help signify the dog’s second coming.” Here is “Elegy for Mippy II” as recorded by Joseph Alessi, principal trombone with the New York Phil, in the late 1990s.
Mippy wasn’t the only dog Bernstein memorialized with a compositional miniature. “Rondo for Lifey,” also part of the 1959 suite of brass works, was dedicated to a Skye Terrier that belonged to a friend, the actor, singer and comedienne Judy Holliday. (Holliday was married to the clarinetist and record executive David Oppenheim; the 2023 biopic Maestro depicts Oppenheim and Bernstein as lovers, a plausible but unconfirmed idea.) As Bernstein’s catalog notes, the rondo “begins with an expressive intro, quickly followed by pervasive staccato phrasing throughout.” Here it is performed by Wynton Marsalis and Judith Lynn Stillman.
In September of 1959, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic went on a tour of the Soviet Union sponsored by the State Department. There he met Russian cellist Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich, who later inspired the 1977 piece “Slava! A Political Overture.” Another inspiration was the cellist’s dachshund, Puks. (As reported in Time magazine, “Rostropovich [had] taught Puks to leap on the piano bench and bang away at the keyboard with his front paws.”) In Bernstein’s original score, orchestra members were instructed to chant “Puks!” near the end of the piece; this was later modified to a chant of “Slava!”
A similar dedication anchors one of the shortest, sweetest odes in the Bernstein canon: “Fanfare for Bima,” scored for trumpet, trombone, French horn and tuba (or bass trombone). Bima was a black Cocker Spaniel who belonged to Serge Koussevitzky, legendary director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and an important teacher and mentor to Bernstein. “When he wanted to call Bima to come to him, he would whistle a musical phrase,” Gabe Kosakoff, a former tour guide at Tanglewood, once recalled. “The phrase is 9 notes long and in 6/8 time. It was probably in F Major. (Koussevitzky did not have perfect pitch.)”
Bernstein’s fanfare is a translation of this distinctive call, jaunty and brisk. Hear this minute-long recording by the Brass Ensemble of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and you can easily imagine Bima bounding up the porch stairs at Seranak, Koussevitzky’s summer residence at Tanglewood, tail wagging in time.
