The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

The varied forms of Leonard Bernstein's musical creativity have been recognized and enjoyed by millions. These lectures, Mr. Bernstein's most recent venture in musical explication, will make fascinating reading as well. Virgil Thomson says of the lectures: "Nobody anywhere presents this material so warmly, so sincerely, so skillfully. As musical mind-openers they are first class; as pedagogy they are matchless".

Mr. Bernstein considers music ranging from Hindu ragas through Mozart and Ravel, to Copland, suggesting a worldwide, innate musical grammar. Folk music, pop songs, symphonies, modal, tonal, atonal, well-tempered and ill-tempered works all find a place in these discussions. Each, Mr. Bernstein suggests, has roots in a universal language central to all artistic creation. Using certain linguistic analogies, he explores the ways in which this language developed and can be understood as an aesthetic surface. Drawing on his insights as a master composer and conductor, Mr. Bernstein also explores what music means below the surface: the symbols and metaphors which exist in every musical piece, of whatever sort. And, finally, Mr. Bernstein analyzes twentieth century crises in the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, finding even here a transformation of all that has gone before, as part of the poetry of expression, through its roots in the earth of human experience.

These talks, written and delivered when Leonard Bernstein was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, are the newest of the author's literary achievements. In addition to a distinguished career as conductor, pianist, and composer, Mr. Bernstein is the recipient of many television Emmys for the scripts of his Young People's Concerts, Omnibus programs, and others, and is the author of The Infinite Variety of Music and The Joy of Music, for which he received the Christopher Award.

Beware that although Bernstein tries to put everything in "layman"'s terms, many of the concepts touched upon will be difficult to understand without a rudimentary knowledge of musical notation.

I found this 'book' to be extremely interesting and a unique, welcome perspective on the nature of music. Those of you interested in Bernstein's compositions will get a nice long look at the inner workings of the mind of one of America's greatest composers; and even if his insights as to the answers of the questions he's asking are erroneous, the manner in which he couches said questions is insightful in and of itself, and more than worth the investment.


Musicology at its best!   January 17, 2000
 21 out of 24 found this review helpful

I respect Bernstein even more as a scholar of music and languages than I do as a conductor. I thought this was an inspired literary work of his, really. For example, his explanation of musical motive in Beethoven's 5th Symphony where we are shown that Beethoven has taken the common coda form, TA TA TA DUM, that many classical works end with, and turned it to a motive from which derives the motion and power of HIS entire symphony. That is Bernstein at his most insightful and brilliant. Wonderful! Illuminating! I would never have thought of things that only a conductor and musicologist can otherwise understand and explain. Thank you Lenny, we love you!

genius   September 20, 1999
 3 out of 17 found this review helpful

This is genius. Only now scientific research is proving his incredible leap of imagination.


Is strongest when considering music   March 20, 1999
 22 out of 28 found this review helpful

The Unanswered Question, the transcript of six lectures delivered at Hardvard in 1973, outline a new theory of music. Inspired by work of Noam Chomsky and other linguists, Bernstein attempts to find a system of musical grammar analagous to that of language. This is the weakest part of the book. He makes strained generalizations and is attempting to show something that quite possibly isn't true. Starting with the third lecture, however, his work becomes stronger. He includes an efficient analysis of Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony without any extramusical associations. Then he proceeds (with musical examples) to trace the "twentieth century crisis" in music and how Schoenberg and Stravinsky derived different "solutions." This is the strongest past of the book, and certianly worth suffereing through the first two weaker lectures. "The Unasnwered Question" is strongest for raising questions rather than answering them.