'The Unanswered Question' Lectures By Leonard Bernstien

US Fascinating insights into the composition of music 07/09/21

Last week, we posted an article on a youtube video entitled the 'Best 5 minutes in music education'. This was a brief except of Leonard Bernstein explaining the history of 12 tone music, taken from his Lectures at Harvard University in 1973. Having investigated the full episodes, I can say the lectures are supremely inspiring and may change the way you approach music.

In the series, he draws analogies with other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and linguistics, to make the lectures accessible to an audience with limited musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse.

Here are the episodes in full:

1 - Musical Phonology

2 - Musical Syntax

3 - Musical Semantics

4 - The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity

5 - The XXth Century

6 - The Poetry of Earth

There is also a book entitled The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard which accompanied the series. Find out more about this amazing conductor, composer, educator and author here: https://leonardbernstein.com/

About the author [midierror]: midierror makes nifty Max For Live devices, innovative music hardware, award winning sample packs and hosts a podcast speaking to people in the music world.