Currently in my second year of a music degree, and am thrilled to have stumbled upon these lectures. It’s dense stuff but he’s so engaging and presents it all so accessibly. It would have been an honour to be a student in this class.
He was a genius many times over. I think he understood Mozart and Beethoven better than the composers themselves understood what they were doing when they wrote their timeless music. How many people can you say that about? Probably only a few in all of history, and Leonard was indeed one of them.
@@TheBigMclargehuge I wasn't saying you are right or wrong. I was just commenting on the man's skills as a musician and teacher. I'm not concerned about his political affiliations
This is the kind of lecture that should be on TV at 7pm on mainstream channels (maybe not as technical) People would get more intelligent, acquire a reasonable culture and learn how to think by themselves.
I am only 45 minutes in and I have to give my brain a rest. My head hurts. I will watch the rest in time. I do not know if my vocabulary is even remotely adequate to grasp everything he is saying. I am looking up the meaning of words left right and center... learning always learning. :-) What a brilliant mind he had.
The gratitude of the final movement and its final hymn is a message of gratitude not just for surviving a storm, but the gratitude we need to feel for Nature, and our prayer to survive the storms that we are causing with our negligence of Nature.
how times have changed 1:53 Jesus Christ I did not expect that. Such an enlightened, sophisticated lecture - and bam , right in the middle of it... holy shit.
I had the same reaction, and then thought “Well this was 50 years ago…. At the time, he probably thought he was being progressive for casting his imagined interlocutor as a woman.” 🙃
@@andreacochrane257 She was NOT imaginary. That was his daughter Jamie, who was a Harvard student at the time. She revealed this in her book. And imagining what it was like to have Bernstein as a father, I'll bet she gave back _to_ him as good as she got _from_ him, and he _expected_ her to.
I think the gist of what Bernstein is showing us with the sixth symphony of Beethoven is how it works on two levels: a purely musical level, and, in his words, an "extra-musical" one. It works as a pure musical metaphor of itself, and as tone painting, even if Beethoven didn't fully intend it that way. Brilliant lecture.
3:00 7:37 : metaphor is key 11:34 : Difference between art and reality!! 15:45 : !!!! Relation to some x factor 16:42 : musical semantics 22:56 23:59 : 3 "types" of metaphor
People of knowledge had much bigger and wider general education than they do today. Far too much specialisation going on now. This is why Bernstein can express himself so well and understand the wider point of view in how it all relates to language. He was one of the last from the 'classical' age. Almost no one these days can compose like him, let alone Beethoven.
Perhaps there was no such confrontation, no such 'bitchy' girl. It seems to me that these lectures were all prepared well beforehand, probably before he went up to Harvard to deliver them. Galileo used this technique, imagined dialogue between fictitious characters, for, among other reasons, elucidating his ideas. I suspect LB was using this technique as well. It's very effective.
These are the "Harvard Norton Lectures" every Harvard Music professor has them, they choose a topic and discuss it during these pre-planned lessons. In Bernstein's case he wanted to talk about the similarities between music and language, and he titled these "The Unanswered Question" after a piece by the same name by Charles Ives
This is based upon the English language and there are innumerable interpretations possible But how is it with the German language having completely different structures. And how is it with Sanskrit ? I do not believe in his proposed relation between language and music. He leaves out Indian music. And what is the musical relation between the poetry of Sri Aurobindo in his "Savitti" and ? What is the musical relation to his Savitri ? Music has got a source beyond our mental capacity. The western concept is that music comes from the composer, the Indian concept is that music comes from a World of music created by our Mahashakti and She gave to very few of us before their birth a key to enter this world by their intuition. So a composer is just copying what he heard in this hidden world and puts it into notes for us. If you study the teaching of Sri Aurobindo you get the info that there are levels in heaven where angels make music to which our music is noisy.
After listening to the one and only Leonard Bernstein talking about the 7th. The symphony will never be the same. A great teacher. Thank you for sharing this.
I would give anything to have eavesdropped on Lenny's discussion with "Blondie". It seems to have lead to a point at 12:45 that is almost metaphysical in its implications about music - and which Schopenhauer expressed for why music was the highest art form - it is the most direct and requires the least amount of "computing" with the mind. Amazing lectures and I'm very grateful they are available on UA-cam.
Toscanini's 1952 performance is just as vividly rendered as Bernstein's. You can also see the brook flowing over pebbles in the second movements and the little droplets of rain in the "storm" movement.
I'm going through my second time watching these lectures. Gave it a few month rest in between rewatching it. I am getting WAY more out of it this time. The ideas are not so novel and I'm actually understanding his full arguments and equating the linguistic versions with the musical ones. The hardest part is the "storm" elephant though. I mean, that's just clearly a storm. To me, that part is impossible to dissociate with its external meaning.
No one else think it's crazy how he decries the 'extra-musical' imagery and then gives the most vividly rendered performance of the 'Pastoral' I think I've ever heard... Only Lennie could get away with it....
@@christopherpi2010 9 years and I’m gonna reply in 2 minutes! 🙈😂. I get what he’s doing, but iirc he says “away with birds and the bees” or something similar right before giving the most characterful pastoral I’d heard to that point. But again it’s been 9 years, I might be wrong.
I really tried to listen to the Symphony without "extrinsic" meanings but i only lasted until 1:38:18 ...Not very far, i know but such is the force of the command that Louis has upon my soul...
Auf dem Grund allen "Progamm Vorstellungen " in der Musik sollte Absolute Kenntnis dieser Musik sein! Ein großer Musiker wie Leonard Bernstein lebt in der Musik und kann auf dem Grund der absoluten Musik Kenntnisse tatsächlich hören "Mondschein " Sonate zum Beispiel. Für einen einfachen Musiker wäre es besser in dieser Sonate zuerst cis - Moll richtig zu begreifen.
Part 3 an excellent lecture on the nature of the human being. The flawed and evolving nature of ALL HUMAN BEINGS!! What mr B is asking the listener to do is to forgive, forget and renew our habitual mind and find out how Beethoven attempts to overcome his very own nature. I think the references to the inquisitive student is fictional and only there as a dialogue tool (classic logic, people!) it also captures for better or worse the zeitgeist of his audience. Imagine a man of his age going back to school?
rhopalism: the art or skill of writing verse in which each successive word in a line is longer by one syllable than the preceding word or in which each line of verse is longer by a syllable or a metrical foot than the preceding line.
I would respectfully suggest to Ms. Perkins (below) that she listen to the symphony again, as I do, with eyes closed throughout and mind as blank as one can make it, so that all one's attention is focused through one's ears on the genius of the music. Again, Cagin, heartfelt thanks for these posting.
Imagine you attend a lecture and your own teacher refers to you as bitchy. 🤣. I love every second of that initial part of the lecture, along with the rest.
The next question though, is how does musical metaphor create synethesia, so that this music so calls up the pastoral not with literal metaphors but by the music itself. The key of F Major itself is one of its ways.
I just recently purchased the six DVD set of these lectures. Watching these has provide me some insight into this gifted man. His musical talent - especially how he can so easily play excerpts of music at the piano without looking at keyboard! - absolutely blows me away. Those musical moments with Bernstein playing at the piano are amazing. That said, these lectures are not entirely about music, and I have found myself frustrated watching them. Bernstein mentions an undergraduate woman who confronted Bernstein, and asked, "I understand what you say about Chomsky; but I don't understand what this have to do with music?" I feel the same way. Bernstein was fascinated with Noam Chomsky's observations about linguistic syntax. He spends a lot of time on Chomsky. I happen to be familiar with Chomsky, because I have applied his "tree diagrams" to learning German. Essentially, Chomsky observed that all languages share similar linguistic rules. There is a "deep meaning" to our sentences, whether they be simple sentences, or in the passive voice, or poetry. In these lectures, Bernstein is seeking a definition of "aesthetic" in music. In this case, he is kind of working backwards from Chomsky's approach. He says, there is no meaning to music beyond musical meaning. He is saying that, the "deep meaning of music" can be trivial, but by various musical transformations, composers create "metaphors" which imply the trivial, but avoid the trivial. This is what separates great composers from dull ones. It is impressive to see watch this man speaks so eloquently. However, in lectures 2 and 3, Bernstein struck me as someone who was talking to himself, wrestling with an intellectual puzzle of his own, with little regard for his captive audience. Whereas Chomsky's work can easily be understood on the level of symbols, Bernstein seems to be thinking out loud, in search of something that he could have formalized into simple rules. His self dialogue - with eidetic/perfect memory recall of passages from Shakespeare, the bible, various philosophers - about "aesthetic" in music, were far too intellectual for me. Nothing should be this complicated.
Thanks again for posting. Fantastic lecture and analysis. I know at least one music teacher who plans to use this series with her high school Music Theory classes. The other surprising aspect of this video is the makeup of the BSO. I think I counted 2 female players in the entire orchestra, then looked at photos of the present BSO that is filled with women in every section. Amazing social progress in the last 40 years.
You are welcome. I'd kindly suggest to those teacher to download them from UA-cam via Freemake Video Downloader (or via whatever program they prefer) "just in case". Best.
Actually a recent study by Vuoskoki and Eerola has shown that unfamiliar music can induce genuine sadness in subjects with no autobiographical connection to the music. You should read the published study it;s very interesting.
Thank you very much for sharing these videos. But it would be of great help if you enable the subtitles to be able to translate what it says, since I don't understand much of it. (It is not necessary that it be in Spanish, in English it helps me to read it) Greetings from Buenos Aires. To add them: Access UA-cam In the menu on the left, select Subtitles. Click on the video you want to edit. Click ADD LANGUAGE and select the one you want. Under captions, click ADD. Thank you very much
These lectures are great. One point of contention I have is the question of the left-hemisphere dominance in his view of music. I suppose he was latching onto Chomsky's work at the time, though. However, Iain MacGilchrist would disagree and I surmise has a more convincing argument suggesting the right-hemisphere is the source of music, and came _before_ language. Ergo, language was _informed by_ music. I suppose I could be mistaken, but after seeing (and mulling over) the first two parts, it seems to be his opinion.
26:25 - 27:24 are two of my favorite run-on sentences of all time: "So many excellent and sensitive minds have wrestled with this problem of "the meaning of music" - to say nothing of "the meaning of meaning." ... [names a bunch of smart people] ... And one thing they have always agreed on, in one way or another, is that musical meaning DOES exist - whether rational, or affective, or both. As hard as they've all tried to be logical, to avoid romantic generalizing or philosophical maundering, they have all had to bow eventually to some nagging truth which insists that those innocent F sharps and D flats, however sportively juggled or played with, do emerge from a composer's mind MEANING something - nay, EXPRESSING something - and expressing what may otherwise be inexpressible."
I also love how in freeing himself from the concrete-syntactical discussions and applications in the prior lecture, he allows for some more dynamic and rewarding applications of these ideas to music. For example, he's obviously working with and addressing strictly classical traditions, but how could some of these ideas be warped/flipped completely when applied to things like pop songwriting? Seems to me that pop songwriting, due to its more directly "prosaic" approach inherent to its dependence on lyric, actually has to bow into a lot of the proscriptions he lays out around the 1hr mark w/ the Pastorale. Verse-chorus structures demand a lot more stops and restarts (periods and punctuations, as he might call them from the previous lecture) in order to separate the material and put the different parts in dialogue with each other more effectively. Classical traditions are after a different "meaning" or "way of meaning" and are free to roam more. And all of that wouldn't have even been possible for me to think if he hadn't illustrated the crazy metaphors he's been drawing out so well over the past few hours in these lectures!
He says that the minor third is the 18th partial, which maybe is true, but isn't it also between the fifth and the sixth? CCGCEG? The major triad is built on a major third at the bottom, but that leaves a minor third on the top between the major third and the fifth.
Is a very interesting thing hearing somebody speaking about things to know a lot! But some users have some problems with the listening of English as it is our second language, please could you add the caption of transcription audio? Anyway thanks for uploading.
This just made realize how brilliantly "El Classico" by Tenacious D is structured. Think about it, how the lyrical structures are matched with the poetic semantics of the melodic components. The D knew understood the greatness of Beethoven.
Dearest Daphne...... please have you and new little Alex and Michael listen carefully...... all my love.....,.. Bernstein was a genius..... Alex will understand....... Jenny xxxxxxx
To hear music as music only...devoid of images and feelings....how on earth do you do that surely that is the point of colour and feeling in a symphony? someone who grasps this concept please explain..thank-you.
i think he is only suggesting that you try to focus your attention on the transformational techniques applied by beethoven to his basic themes in order to illuminate the way the surface level of the music is structured on a "grammatical" level. the point is to illustrate by this exercise that there is musical (and associated emotional) meaning encoded into the music itself that doesn't rely on the extramusical (programmtic) meanings ascribed to it by the composer, performers or audience. he isn't suggesting that you take it in without feeling anything, just that you try to appreciate how those feelings inside you are related to the observable transformation of motives in the surface level of the music itself (rather than because the music "depicts" images or scenes or emotional aspects). i think this is most clear when he discusses the idea that minor harmony sounds "sad" to us because of the physical phenomenon of a played minor third clashing with the major third that exists more more prominently in the overtone series of the fundamental note.
Doubling the number of winds was a common practice since Beethoven's time. Depending on the conductor, it is usually done for the sake of a bigger sound for a large hall.
But we have remember that there is a distinction between the emotions expressed by the music and those felt by the listener. It isn't illogical to listen to music and say, "that sounds sad." Of course this statement could be based on preexisting learned bias, but the real question posed and possibly answered by this study (at least more completely than anything else that I've read) is "Can music induce real feeling in the listener without a connection to biographical content.
But I see your point, and it's an important one: one thing is saying "that's sad", and a very different one is *feeling* sad because of the music, whether I say it's sad or not. Still I think they went about it the wrong way (or with the wrong music) to prove their point.
Currently in my second year of a music degree, and am thrilled to have stumbled upon these lectures. It’s dense stuff but he’s so engaging and presents it all so accessibly. It would have been an honour to be a student in this class.
It is dense because it is romantic horseshit. But the music great.
@@RichardFeinman-yf7lx thanks for your input Dick
The blonde student was his daughter Jamie, who was a Harvard student at the time. She revealed this in her book.
lol
I like to listen his talks... He is high level enlightening... Please add more of Bernstein lectures.
He was a genius many times over. I think he understood Mozart and Beethoven better than the composers themselves understood what they were doing when they wrote their timeless music. How many people can you say that about? Probably only a few in all of history, and Leonard was indeed one of them.
@@BenjiOrthopedicstupidest comment I have ever read
These lectures are a gift to humanity and a boon to anyone who wants to appreciate and understand music better. Thank you Mr. Bernstein, and also OP.
You are welcome, enjoy, best!
Can't get enough of Bernstein!!! He was a master teacher and artist. Thanks so much for sharing!!
You are welcome, enjoy, best!
And a communist rat, take what he says in stride as he minimizes everything western.
@@TheBigMclargehuge uh, ok
@@AlexSwireClark You can't really be saying I'm wrong.
@@TheBigMclargehuge I wasn't saying you are right or wrong. I was just commenting on the man's skills as a musician and teacher. I'm not concerned about his political affiliations
hands down best lecture in the series so far, his definition of (purely) musical meaning is just excellent.
Need a new hobby
goodness he is just so cool, and the quality of these lectures are unbelieveable
This is the kind of lecture that should be on TV at 7pm on mainstream channels
(maybe not as technical)
People would get more intelligent, acquire a reasonable culture and learn how to think by themselves.
I am only 45 minutes in and I have to give my brain a rest. My head hurts. I will watch the rest in time. I do not know if my vocabulary is even remotely adequate to grasp everything he is saying. I am looking up the meaning of words left right and center... learning always learning. :-) What a brilliant mind he had.
its because you are blond(ie)...
this lecture series is one i come back to every so often. i always get something new out of it
I love all of this lectures! Inestimable musical treasure for all mankind...
Wonderful lecture. I miss him. What a genius.
These lectures are pure gold
This is amazing!! What a treat!! My experience is transforming!!!
The gratitude of the final movement and its final hymn is a message of gratitude not just for surviving a storm, but the gratitude we need to feel for Nature, and our prayer to survive the storms that we are causing with our negligence of Nature.
how times have changed 1:53 Jesus Christ I did not expect that. Such an enlightened, sophisticated lecture - and bam , right in the middle of it... holy shit.
I had the same reaction, and then thought “Well this was 50 years ago…. At the time, he probably thought he was being progressive for casting his imagined interlocutor as a woman.” 🙃
@@andreacochrane257"interlocutor " is a fancy word!
@@andreacochrane257 She was NOT imaginary. That was his daughter Jamie, who was a Harvard student at the time. She revealed this in her book. And imagining what it was like to have Bernstein as a father, I'll bet she gave back _to_ him as good as she got _from_ him, and he _expected_ her to.
I think the gist of what Bernstein is showing us with the sixth symphony of Beethoven is how it works on two levels: a purely musical level, and, in his words, an "extra-musical" one. It works as a pure musical metaphor of itself, and as tone painting, even if Beethoven didn't fully intend it that way. Brilliant lecture.
This is such a beautiful lecture. He describes everything so well that even a beginner could understand. Please make more of these. (Yay)
3:00
7:37 : metaphor is key
11:34 : Difference between art and reality!!
15:45 : !!!! Relation to some x factor
16:42 : musical semantics
22:56
23:59 : 3 "types" of metaphor
happy birthday mr bernstein. Your lectures were some of my favorites
Your welcome, I hope you enjoy this series and other videos at my channel. Your encouraging comments are warmly welcomed. Best !
Thanks
you're great! knowledge jewells!
Beautiful series...What Beethoven piece is he playing até minute 29:30?
Thank you for posting this marvellous series. You have other great stuff as well, which I will look at with great relish.
People of knowledge had much bigger and wider general education than they do today. Far too much specialisation going on now. This is why Bernstein can express himself so well and understand the wider point of view in how it all relates to language. He was one of the last from the 'classical' age. Almost no one these days can compose like him, let alone Beethoven.
A lecture that introduced me to Beethoven's *sixth* and made me enjoy the symphony quite a bit.
Qué inteligencia, caray. Qué genialidad.
Thanks from me as well. Lenny was such an inspiring man!
Perhaps there was no such confrontation, no such 'bitchy' girl. It seems to me that these lectures were all prepared well beforehand, probably before he went up to Harvard to deliver them. Galileo used this technique, imagined dialogue between fictitious characters, for, among other reasons, elucidating his ideas. I suspect LB was using this technique as well. It's very effective.
These are the "Harvard Norton Lectures" every Harvard Music professor has them, they choose a topic and discuss it during these pre-planned lessons. In Bernstein's case he wanted to talk about the similarities between music and language, and he titled these "The Unanswered Question" after a piece by the same name by Charles Ives
I am totally d'accord with you, of course there was NO zeugma-shmugma-blondie, this tradition traces back to Socrates and his scholars
Yeah I had the same thought, well done on his part
That will forever be, an unanswered question.
This is based upon the English language and there are innumerable interpretations possible
But how is it with the German language having completely different structures. And how is it with Sanskrit ?
I do not believe in his proposed relation between language and music. He leaves out Indian music. And what is the musical relation between the poetry of Sri Aurobindo in his "Savitti" and ? What is the musical relation to his Savitri ?
Music has got a source beyond our mental capacity. The western concept is that music comes from the composer, the Indian concept is that music comes from a World of music created by our Mahashakti and She gave to very few of us before their birth a key to enter this world by their intuition.
So a composer is just copying what he heard in this hidden world and puts it into notes for us.
If you study the teaching of Sri Aurobindo you get the info that there are levels in heaven where angels make music to which our music is noisy.
One can only dream of such a great teacher! 👏👏👏
50 years since these were filmed...hard to believe, but what he is saying has not changed. It's all quite timeless!
Does anyone know??Wondering if he and Glen Gould were best friends??❤
After listening to the one and only Leonard Bernstein talking about the 7th. The symphony will never be the same. A great teacher. Thank you for sharing this.
You are welcome.
I think you meant the 6th??
Yes. A typo error that I didn't see. Thank you.
Beethoven: Let's harmonize these two notes with thirds.
Bernstein: OCCISUS!!!
I would give anything to have eavesdropped on Lenny's discussion with "Blondie". It seems to have lead to a point at 12:45 that is almost metaphysical in its implications about music - and which Schopenhauer expressed for why music was the highest art form - it is the most direct and requires the least amount of "computing" with the mind.
Amazing lectures and I'm very grateful they are available on UA-cam.
he said she was "pretty" too so, it might not have been all metaphysics for him... We are in the 1970's.
@@ericastier1646 He was pretty complex in that regard...
@@loge10 ok
Anyone spotted our darling Blondie?
Leonard Bernstein would need a cigarette after Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, wouldn't he?
Ha.
Toscanini's 1952 performance is just as vividly rendered as Bernstein's. You can also see the brook flowing over pebbles in the second movements and the little droplets of rain in the "storm" movement.
lol from watching these lectures you can learn alot of new vocabulary as well as musical ideas an metaphor :)
Very interesting. A little dry but deeper than I've heard anyone talk about music. And I loved seeing the one woman rocking the flute. Yes!
48:39 - Chiasmus. A great example of it from the Beatles: "All you need is love/All you need is love/All you need is love/Love is all you need."
Lol
That is no chiasmus. Except in the harmony, on the third 'need is' - if that is what you mean.
One would have thought Bernstein would be ideally placed to lecture on trilling,
so close
I'm going through my second time watching these lectures. Gave it a few month rest in between rewatching it. I am getting WAY more out of it this time. The ideas are not so novel and I'm actually understanding his full arguments and equating the linguistic versions with the musical ones.
The hardest part is the "storm" elephant though. I mean, that's just clearly a storm. To me, that part is impossible to dissociate with its external meaning.
No one else think it's crazy how he decries the 'extra-musical' imagery and then gives the most vividly rendered performance of the 'Pastoral' I think I've ever heard... Only Lennie could get away with it....
He is seperatkng the scientific from the other and applied meaning vs inherent meaning..
@@christopherpi2010 9 years and I’m gonna reply in 2 minutes! 🙈😂.
I get what he’s doing, but iirc he says “away with birds and the bees” or something similar right before giving the most characterful pastoral I’d heard to that point. But again it’s been 9 years, I might be wrong.
I really tried to listen to the Symphony without "extrinsic" meanings but i only lasted until 1:38:18 ...Not very far, i know but such is the force of the command that Louis has upon my soul...
Auf dem Grund allen "Progamm Vorstellungen " in der Musik sollte Absolute Kenntnis dieser Musik sein! Ein großer Musiker wie Leonard Bernstein lebt in der Musik und kann auf dem Grund der absoluten Musik Kenntnisse tatsächlich hören "Mondschein " Sonate zum Beispiel. Für einen einfachen Musiker wäre es besser in dieser Sonate zuerst cis - Moll richtig zu begreifen.
Thank you very much for sharing this!
You are welcome, enjoy, best!
It's kind of ironic that he teaches so much musical logic, and yet is the most passionate conductor.
these videos are fucking genius. thank you for putting these online for members of younger generations like myself to see.
Part 3 an excellent lecture on the nature of the human being. The flawed and evolving nature of ALL HUMAN BEINGS!! What mr B is asking the listener to do is to forgive, forget and renew our habitual mind and find out how Beethoven attempts to overcome his very own nature. I think the references to the inquisitive student is fictional and only there as a dialogue tool (classic logic, people!) it also captures for better or worse the zeitgeist of his audience. Imagine a man of his age going back to school?
rhopalism: the art or skill of writing verse in which each successive word in a line is longer by one syllable than the preceding word or in which each line of verse is longer by a syllable or a metrical foot than the preceding line.
48:17 "Basta Anafora!" Hahaha that's great, he sounds so good in Italian!
29:29 beethoven piano sonata 18 the hunt
Thank you
when he played brahms I died
I actualy heard the violas sounds so good hehehe
I would respectfully suggest to Ms. Perkins (below) that she listen to the symphony again, as I do, with eyes closed throughout and mind as blank as one can make it, so that all one's attention is focused through one's ears on the genius of the music. Again, Cagin, heartfelt thanks for these posting.
Anyone knows where Bernstein lecture on 29:33 was in which section if Beethoven’s symphony?
What i am still inquiring is how does one composer imagine and/or notate such metaphors and/or ideas?
Oh, Lenny, what beautiful eyes you have. Oh, Lenny, what beautiful hair you have.
15:58: Brahms 4th Symphony strikes randomly!
@Donluggy Passion is what comes to my mind when I see him, talking, commenting, conducting, playing ... living.
Imagine you attend a lecture and your own teacher refers to you as bitchy. 🤣. I love every second of that initial part of the lecture, along with the rest.
Blows one's mind from 56:50
The next question though, is how does musical metaphor create synethesia, so that this music so calls up the pastoral not with literal metaphors but by the music itself. The key of F Major itself is one of its ways.
piano sonata 18, 1st mov.
Thank you!!
There are some areas of L.A. which fit this description: "The whole town was old men and women".
I love you Mr. Bernstein
Hwhare, Hwhat, Hwhim.
Hweat Thins.
Coolhwip
Havawd 🎩
@@Simplyveej YOU'RE EATING HAIR
There's a part in that symphony where there are 8th note triplets played over 4/4. It's basically Meshuggah.
Was that at 1:31:20 made up on the spot or does there exist anything from Cole Porter like that?
As I understand it, it was his friend's rendition of the symphonic melody as a Cole Porter tune. Porter-esque. I don't think a real one exists.
"Blondie" haha. Would never fly today
He totally destroyed her lmao. In 2020 he would be cancelled
I just recently purchased the six DVD set of these lectures. Watching these has provide me some insight into this gifted man. His musical talent - especially how he can so easily play excerpts of music at the piano without looking at keyboard! - absolutely blows me away. Those musical moments with Bernstein playing at the piano are amazing.
That said, these lectures are not entirely about music, and I have found myself frustrated watching them. Bernstein mentions an undergraduate woman who confronted Bernstein, and asked, "I understand what you say about Chomsky; but I don't understand what this have to do with music?" I feel the same way.
Bernstein was fascinated with Noam Chomsky's observations about linguistic syntax. He spends a lot of time on Chomsky. I happen to be familiar with Chomsky, because I have applied his "tree diagrams" to learning German. Essentially, Chomsky observed that all languages share similar linguistic rules. There is a "deep meaning" to our sentences, whether they be simple sentences, or in the passive voice, or poetry.
In these lectures, Bernstein is seeking a definition of "aesthetic" in music. In this case, he is kind of working backwards from Chomsky's approach. He says, there is no meaning to music beyond musical meaning. He is saying that, the "deep meaning of music" can be trivial, but by various musical transformations, composers create "metaphors" which imply the trivial, but avoid the trivial. This is what separates great composers from dull ones.
It is impressive to see watch this man speaks so eloquently. However, in lectures 2 and 3, Bernstein struck me as someone who was talking to himself, wrestling with an intellectual puzzle of his own, with little regard for his captive audience.
Whereas Chomsky's work can easily be understood on the level of symbols, Bernstein seems to be thinking out loud, in search of something that he could have formalized into simple rules. His self dialogue - with eidetic/perfect memory recall of passages from Shakespeare, the bible, various philosophers - about "aesthetic" in music, were far too intellectual for me. Nothing should be this complicated.
Beautiful, is the only thing that always comes to my mind when I see Bernstein!
Thanks again!
Thanks again for posting. Fantastic lecture and analysis. I know at least one music teacher who plans to use this series with her high school Music Theory classes. The other surprising aspect of this video is the makeup of the BSO. I think I counted 2 female players in the entire orchestra, then looked at photos of the present BSO that is filled with women in every section. Amazing social progress in the last 40 years.
You are welcome. I'd kindly suggest to those teacher to download them from UA-cam via Freemake Video Downloader (or via whatever program they prefer) "just in case".
Best.
j jaypem bo
29:27 what is this Beethoven piece called??
Sonata No.18 in E-flat Major
@@garrysmodsketchesThank you so much!
That stuff about the minor third blew my mind.
Actually a recent study by Vuoskoki and Eerola has shown that unfamiliar music can induce genuine sadness in subjects with no autobiographical connection to the music. You should read the published study it;s very interesting.
Well that's obvious. One discovers - very rarely, true - masterpieces one did not know.
A pinnacle example of this is Shir Hashirim by Trivox.
Can you link it here? Thank you!
does anyone know what song he used with the first piano example @14:10? Thanks!!!!!
Brahms symphony n.4 1st movement.
You are welcome, enjoy, best !
Thank you very much for sharing these videos. But it would be of great help if you enable the subtitles to be able to translate what it says, since I don't understand much of it. (It is not necessary that it be in Spanish, in English it helps me to read it) Greetings from Buenos Aires.
To add them:
Access UA-cam
In the menu on the left, select Subtitles.
Click on the video you want to edit.
Click ADD LANGUAGE and select the one you want.
Under captions, click ADD.
Thank you very much
Thank you for the comment and feedback
I will deal with the subtitles ASAP. I've done one of them already. The rest will follow hopefully.
Best!
@@caginn You're big, don't worry, there's no rush. (translated online)
These lectures are great. One point of contention I have is the question of the left-hemisphere dominance in his view of music. I suppose he was latching onto Chomsky's work at the time, though. However, Iain MacGilchrist would disagree and I surmise has a more convincing argument suggesting the right-hemisphere is the source of music, and came _before_ language. Ergo, language was _informed by_ music.
I suppose I could be mistaken, but after seeing (and mulling over) the first two parts, it seems to be his opinion.
I've always loved the doppler effect around 2:03:45.
What is the Beethoven piece at 29:30-30:20?
Piano sonata n. 18, 1st mov.
cagin Thank you very much, not only for the info but also for giving UA-camrs the chance to enjoy this gem!
Fq Rni You are welcome, it is my pleasure sharing what I have. I hope you enjoy the video and the sonata. Best !
Beethoven - Sandstorm
26:25 - 27:24 are two of my favorite run-on sentences of all time:
"So many excellent and sensitive minds have wrestled with this problem of "the meaning of music" - to say nothing of "the meaning of meaning." ... [names a bunch of smart people] ... And one thing they have always agreed on, in one way or another, is that musical meaning DOES exist - whether rational, or affective, or both. As hard as they've all tried to be logical, to avoid romantic generalizing or philosophical maundering, they have all had to bow eventually to some nagging truth which insists that those innocent F sharps and D flats, however sportively juggled or played with, do emerge from a composer's mind MEANING something - nay, EXPRESSING something - and expressing what may otherwise be inexpressible."
I also love how in freeing himself from the concrete-syntactical discussions and applications in the prior lecture, he allows for some more dynamic and rewarding applications of these ideas to music. For example, he's obviously working with and addressing strictly classical traditions, but how could some of these ideas be warped/flipped completely when applied to things like pop songwriting?
Seems to me that pop songwriting, due to its more directly "prosaic" approach inherent to its dependence on lyric, actually has to bow into a lot of the proscriptions he lays out around the 1hr mark w/ the Pastorale. Verse-chorus structures demand a lot more stops and restarts (periods and punctuations, as he might call them from the previous lecture) in order to separate the material and put the different parts in dialogue with each other more effectively. Classical traditions are after a different "meaning" or "way of meaning" and are free to roam more.
And all of that wouldn't have even been possible for me to think if he hadn't illustrated the crazy metaphors he's been drawing out so well over the past few hours in these lectures!
somebody needs to make a spreadsheet with all of these rhetorical devices
21:18-21:24 Music is a game of Sonic. I loved Sonic games!
He says that the minor third is the 18th partial, which maybe is true, but isn't it also between the fifth and the sixth? CCGCEG? The major triad is built on a major third at the bottom, but that leaves a minor third on the top between the major third and the fifth.
Is a very interesting thing hearing somebody speaking about things to know a lot!
But some users have some problems with the listening of English as it is our second language, please could you add the caption of transcription audio?
Anyway thanks for uploading.
How Joaquinn Phoenix made it to blow those oboe lines with Leo Bernstein?
This just made realize how brilliantly "El Classico" by Tenacious D is structured. Think about it, how the lyrical structures are matched with the poetic semantics of the melodic components. The D knew understood the greatness of Beethoven.
that girl isn't blond
I wonder what Mr Bernstein would have made of this analysis of Beethoven's 5th symphony:
Argument to Beethoven's 5th
Clearly all just repetition.
Not hard to see why they chose the Pastoral Symphony for the original "Fantasia". A very good choice - it's all quite pictorial.
This Leonard dude has dope hair.
@ashcello93 The girl is obviously a fictional one, Mr.Bernstein created to illustrate a point!
What's the name of the Brahms piece around 15:00?
4th symphony
Dearest Daphne...... please have you and new little Alex and Michael listen carefully...... all my love.....,.. Bernstein was a genius..... Alex will understand....... Jenny xxxxxxx
What's the name of that Brahms's piece his playing at 14:12 ?
+Borgigote Bochinchola Symphony No 4
+Borgigote Bochinchola 1st movement.
To hear music as music only...devoid of images and feelings....how on earth do you do that surely that is the point of colour and feeling in a symphony? someone who grasps this concept please explain..thank-you.
i think he is only suggesting that you try to focus your attention on the transformational techniques applied by beethoven to his basic themes in order to illuminate the way the surface level of the music is structured on a "grammatical" level. the point is to illustrate by this exercise that there is musical (and associated emotional) meaning encoded into the music itself that doesn't rely on the extramusical (programmtic) meanings ascribed to it by the composer, performers or audience. he isn't suggesting that you take it in without feeling anything, just that you try to appreciate how those feelings inside you are related to the observable transformation of motives in the surface level of the music itself (rather than because the music "depicts" images or scenes or emotional aspects).
i think this is most clear when he discusses the idea that minor harmony sounds "sad" to us because of the physical phenomenon of a played minor third clashing with the major third that exists more more prominently in the overtone series of the fundamental note.
@@ShanevsDCsniperr Thank-you interesting.
question....why 4 clarinets when there is only a first and second clarinet part???
Doubling the number of winds was a common practice since Beethoven's time. Depending on the conductor, it is usually done for the sake of a bigger sound for a large hall.
But we have remember that there is a distinction between the emotions expressed by the music and those felt by the listener. It isn't illogical to listen to music and say, "that sounds sad." Of course this statement could be based on preexisting learned bias, but the real question posed and possibly answered by this study (at least more completely than anything else that I've read) is "Can music induce real feeling in the listener without a connection to biographical content.
21:25 just before was a huge big up to MUSIC
"She was being a little bitchy" 😐 oh
@MultiLerak ur welcome, enjoy, best.
But I see your point, and it's an important one: one thing is saying "that's sad", and a very different one is *feeling* sad because of the music, whether I say it's sad or not.
Still I think they went about it the wrong way (or with the wrong music) to prove their point.