Leonard Bernstein's personal archive, a vast collection of correspondence, musical manuscripts, photographs, recordings and memorabilia, is to be donated to the Library of Congress, the Bernstein family and the library announced Monday.
And in a collaboration between the Bernstein estate, the library and a consortium of institutions across the country, the material is to be used to create the Leonard Bernstein Multi-Media Archive, a technological experiment that may prove a major step in creating a vast, interconnected national data system.The plan, outlined recently at the library, calls for the material to be digitally copied.
Once digitized, electronic facsimiles of the letters, scores, books and recordings are stored in the library's computers - and once a distribution system is on line, the material will be available not only to other institutions but to private researchers and music lovers, who will be able to dial into the collection from their home computers.
No archive as extensive and varied as this one has ever been made widely accessible by electronic means.
"My father was not a quiet, conventional man," said Nina Bernstein, the conductor's younger daughter.
"He liked to push the envelope of accepted norms. Over the last three years, we have visited various institutions, and we found that some specialized in preservation and others specialized in access. In some, materials were beautifully preserved, but then packed away. The public-access libraries were great for allowing the use of the materials, but the materials suffered. What had Leonard Bernstein worked so hard for all his life but for public education? But what value would that public education be if the materials were ruined or stolen?"
Digitizing the material and making it available by computer solves that problem, and allows for capabilities entirely in keeping with Bernstein's image as both an educator and a master of modern media.
In an example of how the Leonard Bernstein Multimedia Archive might work, Nina Bernstein described a computer user calling up correspondence between Bernstein and Copland, finding a reference to a piece of music, and then calling up Bernstein's marked score and audio or video recordings of a performance.
There are, however, more than a few hurdles to be overcome, not all of them technological. The consortium of institutions, a loose alliance at the moment, is meant partly to be a collaboration with libraries, museums and schools that might provide materials and draw from the archive.
But its more important function is to get publishers, recording companies and television networks - all of whom have copyright interests in a substantial amount of the collection - to cooperate in a venture that will involve free access, anywhere in the world, to copyrighted materials.
The Bernstein estate itself owns a great deal of the archive's literary and musical treasure. Harry Kraut, the general manager of the estate, acknowledged the complications the proposed system raises, but said the family hoped that commercial enterprises would regard its donation as a gesture worth emulating.
Partly because the rights issues are likely to take time to sort out, there is no real timetable for the technical side of the project. A technical team headed by Christopher D. Pino, a New York-based systems analyst, will put together a prototype storage and retrieval system that will allow users to make connections between documents and performances.
The prototype is expected to cost around $2 million, which Nina Bernstein said the Bernstein estate and the library would raise.
"Technically," Pino said, "we could digitize the whole collection right now.
"But one reason we want to take two years on the prototype is so we are sure the system we set up can be used by as many institutions as possible. We want to know that we're all speaking the same language. And ideally, once the Bernstein project is finished, its technology and processing will be used for other archives.
"A Bernstein archive that stands alone will be useful. But I'd like to be able to go into the Bernstein archive, find Bernstein's connections with Mingus, and then investigate the connections between both of them and Stravinsky."
The physical archive, which Kraut said was valued at more than $2 million, is to be transferred from New York to Washington over the next year. But to give the gift a ceremonial touch, Monday morning Bernstein's children - Jamie Bernstein Thomas, Alexander and Nina - presented the manuscript score of "West Side Story" to James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, and James W. Pruett, the chief of the library's music division.
Several other institutions have been contending for the materials since Bernstein's death in 1990, including the New York Public Library and Harvard University.
In his will, Bernstein mentioned those institutions as possible repositories, but left the decision to his private foundation, the Springate Corporation, which is administered by his son and daughters.
The Library of Congress was chosen partly because Bernstein and his longtime assistant, Helen Coates, had given the library a substantial amount of material, including manuscripts, letters and books of press clippings, beginning in 1953. The family wanted the collection to reside in one place.
Actually, a major chunk of Bernstein's library has been donated elsewhere. In August 1992, the family gave Bernstein's library of conducting scores - excluding his own works, which are part of the Library of Congress's new acquisition - to the New York Philharmonic, the orchestra with which he was most closely associated through his long career.
Many of the scores bear personal notes and markings that convey some insight into his interpretive process. The Philharmonic is likely to be part of the consortium, so those scores, too, will be made available for digitization.
Still, the trove being given to the Library of Congress dwarfs that collection and will be an invaluable resource for biographers and for musicians interested in how such works as "West Side Story," "Candide," "Trouble in Tahiti" and the "Chichester Psalms" took shape.