The Unanswered Question - Six Talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstein

tv show

poster for The Unanswered Question - Six Talks at Harvard by Leonard Bernstein

6 total episodes

-

1 seasons

First Aired January 11, 1976

Overview

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.

Previous EpisodeNext Episode
The Twentieth Century Crisis poster unavailable

The Twentieth Century Crisis

Season 1 - Episode 5 - 2h 13m

Air Date

February 08, 1976

Overview

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, Bernstein now designates a point in history that took ambiguity too far. Twelve-tone music emerges as one potential solution to the crisis, but Bernstein considers this idiom so ambiguous that it destroys the all-important balance between clarity and ambiguity.