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The Unanswered Question VI : The Poetry of Earth

Bernstein at Harvard

1976
Rated G
178 minutes
Documentary, Music
Directed By: Humphrey Burton
Starring: Leonard Bernstein
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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: This lecture takes its name from a line in John Keats' poem, "On the Grasshopper and Cricket". Bernstein does not discuss Keats' poem directly in this chapter, but he provides his own definition of the poetry of earth, which is tonality. Tonality is the poetry of earth because of the phonological universals discussed in lecture 1. This lecture discusses predominantly Stravinsky, whom Bernstein considers the poet of earth.

Language
English
Release Date
January 11, 1976
Budget
$1,000
Revenue
$2,000
Data provided by TMDB