Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins’s ballet Fancy Free relies on compositional montage and collage to simultaneously cross musical, racial, and sexual borders. Bernstein’s technique of alluding to different styles is similar to later practices of sampling in the way he stitches references together, quickly changing the character of the music to reflect the onstage action. Unlike sampling, however, all of Bernstein’s music for Fancy Free is newly composed, and he simulates different genres and styles such as big band jazz, solo piano improvisation, melodrama, cartoons, and film, among others, through parody and mimicry rather than direct quotation. Bernstein’s primary evocations are Billie Holiday and Aaron Copland. Bernstein wrote the opening song of Fancy Free, “Big Stuff,” for Holiday, although it ended up being recorded by another singer. “Big Stuff” not only embodies Holiday’s style of singing, but it also is saturated with George Gershwin and Harold Arlen’s accompaniment and melodic techniques. Copland’s allusive presence in Fancy Free is the ballet’s most obvious outside reference, particularly in the movements “Enter Three Sailors,” “Scene at the Bar,” and “Finale.” Copland also noticed how similar Bernstein’s music was to his own and commented that he was worried that critics would claim that Bernstein was his primary influence in his own forthcoming Appalachian Spring. Bernstein also incorporates Central and South American elements in the number “Danzón,” which directly quotes a Cuban Danzón. In “Danzón,” Bernstein employs a Cuban bass line that incorporates a “cinquillo” rhythm within a commercial Cuban music aesthetic and ensemble. The above examples are only three of the many layers of influence and reference in Bernstein and Robbins’s Fancy Free, a ballet that is grounded in border crossing that would come to define both Bernstein’s and Robbins’s identities.

Works: Leonard Bernstein: Fancy Free (11-51).

Sources: George Gershwin: Concerto in F (37); Stravinsky: Petrushka (39); Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker (40); Aaron Copland: Two Pieces for String Quartet (42), Piano Concerto (44); Leonard Bernstein: Conch Town (from an unfinished ballet) (45).

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Sarah Kirkman