The Unanswered Question - Six Talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstein
TV ShowEnded

The Unanswered Question - Six Talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstein

1976
1 season
6 episodes

The 1973 Norton Lectures by Leonard Bernstein, presented at his alma mater Harvard University, explores all types of music, including: folk music, pop songs, symphonies, tonal and atonal works; all taught by legendary master composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein.

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  • Ep 1

    1.Musical Phonology

    11-01-1976104m

    Phonology is the linguistic study of sounds, or phonemes. Bernstein's application of this term to music results in what he calls "musical phonology."

  • Ep 2

    2.Musical Syntax

    18-01-197696m

    Syntax refers to the study of the structural organization of a sentence, or as Bernstein summarizes, "the actual structures that arise from that phonological stuff" (p. 9). In addi...

  • Ep 3

    3.Musical Semantics

    25-01-1976142m

    Semantics is the study of meaning in language, and Bernstein's third lecture, "musical semantics", accordingly, is Bernstein's first attempt to explain meaning in music. Although B...

  • Ep 4

    4.The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity

    01-02-1976142m

    Bernstein provides two distinct meanings of the term ambiguity.

  • Ep 5

    5.The Twentieth Century Crisis

    08-02-1976133m

    Lecture 5 picks up at the early twentieth century with an oncoming crisis in Western Music. As these lectures have traced the gradual increase and oversaturation of ambiguity, Bern...

  • Ep 6

    6.The Poetry of Earth

    15-02-1976177m

    This lecture takes its name from a line in John Keats' poem, "On the Grasshopper and Cricket". Bernstein does not discuss Keats' poem directly in this chapter, but he provides his...

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