Whither Music?

This amazing lecture series (The unanswered Question ), is actually an interdisciplinary overview about the evolution of Western European classical music from Bach through the 20th century crisis and beyond a bit . Mr. Bernstein uses linguistics namely Chomskian Linguistics to provide a framework to illustrate how music and all the arts evolved toward greater and greater levels of ambiguity/expressivity over history until the 20th century crisis . He manages this impressive feat of popular education , by dividing music into; Phonology (the study of sound); Syntax (the study of structure) and; Semantics (the study of meaning)

Theoretical Context “... The purpose of these six lectures is not so much to answer the question as to understand it, to redefine it. Even to guess at the answer to “whither music?” we must first ask whence music? what music? and whose music?” (pg. 5) Essentially, the purpose of this lecture series was to discuss the future of classical music. His inspiration for the series’ title came from Ives’ 1908 work, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein interprets Ives’ piece as posing the question, “whither music?” because of the tonal language and increasingly dissonant nature of music at the time it was written. These lectures are a useful artifact for us to see one side of the music theory debate in the mid-twentieth century. This debate regarded the future of classical music and the roles both tonality and twelve-tone writing would take. Bernstein was disappointed with the trajectory of classical music in the 1960s, as atonality took more precedence. To examine how music got to this point, Bernstein argued that we have to understand “Whence music.” By the time he gave the lectures, however, he was more optimistic about the future of music, with the rise of minimalism and neoromanticism as predominantly tonal styles. Encouraged by the progress of tonality's resurgence, Bernstein, in essence, uses these lectures to argue in favor of continuing the tonal music system through eclecticism and neoclassicism. Many composers in the mid-twentieth century converted from serialism to tonality and vice versa. Bernstein's compositions are rooted firmly in tonality, but he felt that, in order to be taken seriously, he had to draw on serial techniques. He credits this to eclecticism, which he argues is a superb twentieth century innovation and an ideal direction for music to take into the future. Content To answer the question, “Whither music?” the first three lectures are based on the question, “Whence music?”[5] These lectures provide background about the history of music, and most of the analogies to linguistics are created during these segments. With the deployment of the linguistic connections as the series progresses, the lectures begin to feature listening examples more prominently. This is especially evident in the increasing frequency of full movements, and the increasing length of the lectures. Lectures 4 and 5 discuss the current state of classical music through the lenses of Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Lecture 6 discusses the potential future directions music can, and should, take.