The Unanswered Question I : Musical Phonology (1976)

Bernstein at Harvard

• Documentary
• Music

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: Phonology is the linguistic study of sounds, or phonemes. Bernstein's application of this term to music results in what he calls "musical phonology".

Rating

9 / 10 (2 votes)

Release date

January 11, 1976

Runtime

1h 45m

Language

English

Director

Humphrey Burton

Status

Released