The Unanswered Question III : Musical Semantics (1976)

Bernstein at Harvard

Run Time: 2h23m | Release: 11 Jan 1976

Genres: Documentary | Music |

Budget: $1,000.00

Revenue: $2,000.00

Production Countries: United States of America

9 / 101 Vote Count

Overview:

This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse: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 Bernstein defines musical semantics as "meaning, both musical and extramusical" this lecture focuses exclusively on the "musical" version of meaning.