As a non-musical person, I have almost no idea what he said during this video, yet I found it fascinating. It's like when I listen to Feynman lectures.
@@thehappypine , is it that complicated to explain that the wavelength goes down by half when you go up an octave or that the tones in between are overtone frequencies. I would find that a lot more illuminating than whatever he said here.
Wadel Radel, it’s not complicated to say that. But that’s not the idea he is expressing. Among other things, he’s saying that as human culture has discovered, and become accepting of new intervals our music has changed and enriched. An interval is the distance between notes. An octave is an interval. Two of the same note twelve semi-tones apart. And their frequency wavelength is halfed if we tune using equal temperament but not always in other cultural or historical tuning systems.
You know you're too deep into jazz when the part that Leonard Bernstein calls "chromatic porridge" actually sounds pretty good and makes musical sense.
Man that's what I thought at 13 in 73 when it aired. I would hear certain things and want to know why it sounded better or different like Iris by Wayne Shorter or even 7 yrs before when watching Charlie Brown. The power of harmony.
Was he saved? According to his own words, he loved occultism, which is not a good sign at all. Anyway, without having believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, there is no eternal peace.
@rxw5520 You confirm what is obvious anyway: the word "Jewish " is simply used without even being defined. And that is fatally careless. What made Bernstein (and many others who are simply called that) a "Jew"? - Or, asked the other way around: What exactly is a "Jew" in the common, certainly usually unreflective use of the word? In other words, the definition that Bernstein, for example, corresponded to? If you are not just an "AI" TH-cam bot, I'd like to hear an answer.
@@germanchris4440Okay, I’ll bite. Bernstein was born to Ukrainian Jewish parents, grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, and strongly support Israel. He was both culturally and genetically Jewish. He attended synagogue as a youth and learned Hebrew. He was also a closeted gay man, and-to this day-that often alienates people from institutional religion as they reach adulthood, especially in that era. It looks like you follow a middle eastern messianic religion comprising one third of the world’s population and expect everyone to share your beliefs. Leonard Bernstein conducted Christian, Jewish and other musical works without discrimination.
@@YudronWangmo I will reply to you in detail. Would you perhaps take a careful look at this and then answer me again if applicable? Did he believe in the God of the Old Testament and try to keep the law, the Torah? This characterizes a true Jew above everything else. Or wasn't he a lover of occultism, i.e. the paganism that characterizes so-called "Judaism" today through the Babylonian Talmud, the Kabbalah, etc.? Did he believe in the God of the Old Testament and try to keep the law, the Torah? This characterizes a true Jew above everything else. Or wasn't he a lover of occultism, i.e. the paganism that characterizes so-called "Judaism" today through the Babylonian Talmud, the Kabbalah, etc.? I remind you that the synagogue of Satan are explicitly not Jews, but liars (Revelation 2:9 and 3:9). Pharisaism is a Babylonian cult - and today's rabbinism with its Talmudism is (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia) the modern continuation of Pharisaism. - And this is the occultism that so-called Jews sometimes even profess, such as Leonard Bernstein did. In that case, even if he were descended from the true Jews or the tribes of Israel, he would have been an apostate Jew who did what is an abomination before God. ANd to define the Jews simply as a race is a teaching of the Talmud, not a Jewish teaching. So, was Leonard Bernstein descended from Judah or one of the tribes of Israel? And: Was he of Jewish faith in God or did he follow the satanic-pharisaic Talmud? - Your explanations neither give a definition of the term "Jew", nor do they state that Bernstein was a Jew, namely in the biblical and therefore true sense of the word. So you have not answered my question and have not provided me with any clarity. However, it is precisely because this confusion surrounding the term Jew has been created that God will, in the end times, also and first of all exercise purifying judgments on the population of the present-day state of Israel, until it becomes clear in the end who the Jews or Israelites really are before God. Leonard Bernstein is no longer there, but the general question and uncertainty remains until God will provide the answer as far as the true remnant is concerned. This is not yet evident, neither in the current general population of the state called Israel nor in the other facts you share from Mr. Bernstein. However, as I said, there is much to suggest that he was at best an apostate Jew. - Or did he believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and tried to keep the law of God for the Jews?
When Bernstein gave his televised Lincoln Center Concerts for Young People, I was very young, too young to understand the theory presented here. But, Bernstein had a way of enchanting us with his love of music, and his unbiased fondness for ALL music, influenced my tastes. I grew up loving Claaical, Romance, Folk, Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Roma, Indian, and so many kinds and styles - due much to Leonard Bernstein’s wonderful programs. He was a kind of a Mr. Rogers of music - before Mr. Rogers. I wish there were something like that now - where musical styles can be mingled, and we can understand each other better.
Long ago my elementary school music teacher strongly encouraged me to watch Bernstein’s Concerts For Young People. Bernstein’s narration was way over my head. I tried to watch those same programs as an adult. I could not connect with Elmer Bernstein despite having an “above average “ music education. Finally- This video connected with me. It took a while. I’m 70.
I know what you mean. I wished I'd heard/seen Bernstein before I went to Indiana University and barely passed music theory! I had played piano for 11 years, and been taking vocal music lessons for about 5 years.
I knew he was eventually going to mention Bach. The dude that's genius really showcased the possibilities of music. I cant believe someone like Bach actually lived on this planet.
@@billlan0 I will always argue that that there are two periods in music history: BB (Before Bach), and AB (After Bach). Granted you also had Händel, but just in his massive Cantata Cycles alone (which very often take a decade, or more, to completely record), he managed to utterly change the musical landscape. I promise myself that in the year of my 55th birthday, I would love nothing more to spend a month or so, travelling around where Bach lived and worked, given his huge influence his music has had on my life ...
We have over 1,100 surviving compositions from J.S. Some musicologists believe there were several times more that have not survived. All of this written out by hand.
I remember foolin' 'round on the piano, exploring the intervals upon which my cello was tuned (C G D A), and thinking, "violins have an E string...". I knew the key signatures and could hear fifths, so I just kept adding *one more sharp* and eventually I got to "B#"--C. I was fascinated by this and immediately took the "newly discovered concept" to my orchestra teacher. She was an old-fashioned teacher who taught with tough love and made sure we knew all our scales and could describe them accurately as well as play them. When I told her she got a shiny look in her eye and said, "That's the Circle of Fifths!" I was so proud and thrilled to make her proud. 💛
Thanks. I grew up watching his series of lectures for young people. The city, Lawrence, Massachusetts, was also where Leonard Bernstein was born and, I think, raised. Also, my parents rented out the second floor of their double-decker, and we once had a tenant who said that he went to grade school with the Maestro. our City has great pride in his being a native son. R.I.P., Lenny.
"West Side Story" for me, remains the best and most complete musical of all time. The "Quintet" at the end of the first act is absolutely my favorite piece of theatrical music. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Sondheim.
Bach was a teacher, a highly motivated musical educator whose studies and curiosity coupled with his deep levels of perception led him to discover all of these brilliant and magically mystical elements of music allowing composers to expand their usage of the 12 notes into chords and harmonies never seen nor heard of before. Bach's genius was far beyond the norm as he spent endless days and years of his life in musical discovery and evolution so as to provide new and more progressive lessons for his students. All of his inventions were simply studies he created to keep his students fully engaged & enlightened as to what the full range, possibilities and scope of music actually is. His findings remain the most profound discoveries in the history of music. He created music that would have taken light years to uncover and shape into useful concepts and exercises. One must wonder what , if at all, his predecessors were even thinking.
Yes Bach was a genius but if you go into that room and apply yourself and are able to accurately focus your inquiry than even you or I will start to make forward motion it's not magic as much as determined persistant inquiry. What's very fascinating to me is how he was able to combine the very complex art of Counterpoint with all its structural permutations with the then NEW harmonic possibilities of unlimited modulation and even some chromatically altered harmony being clearly indicated no stated via his amazing counterpoint.
My beloved piano teacher, James Hopkirk, told me about the circle of fifths when I was about 11 years old. The most brilliant and enlightened of music educators, he explained this concept to me clearly and concisely, ending with, “So you see, Lois, all music exists in nature. We merely have to find it.” Fifty years after his death, I still mourn his passing.
The best of Bernstein - he eagerly shared his knowledge with everyone. He wanted other people to really learn about music. Remember the Young People's concerts on CBS? And he had a great sense of humor.
How did he just summarize 10 years of my musical learning into 6 minutes! The succinctness and effectiveness of his explanation are amazing. Thank you professor Bernstein!!
Thank you Leonard Bernstein for your New York Phil and Young People’s Concerts that I watched growing up in Kentucky in the 1960s. My mother would tune it in, but I watched it. WLAC in Nashville would broadcast those kinds of things back then as well as the Grand Ole Opry. Mr. Bernstein, whose music was also on our phonograph at home (Time-Life records), is the reason I have been a professional violinist for the last 40 years. Happy 100th! (Same age as my mother) Wish you were still with us, but of course, you are, in the legacy you left behind.
The great composers and musicians have an insight that goes beyond description. They can explain seemingly complex subjects more succinctly than the average piano teacher can do in 6 months of tedious lessons. This video is bookmarked for my students to watch.
TH-camrs need to to their game for 6 minute videos. 1. Straight to content. 2. Development of content. 3. Beautiful content. 4. Interesting content. 5. Thought provoking content. 6. I am content.
Alas, TH-cam awards 10 minute clips, thus forcing creators to add fluff. Just think, a decision of a single manager somewhere in Alphabet (google), can save humanity millions of man-hours watching fluff and filler.
Exactly, it's getting difficult to watch TH-cam videos anymore, they've caused TH-cam to have gone the route of network TV. However, this video was incredible.
This is a perfect score for a very sweet film. The score captured the action, the moods and the activities of the main character, Paulette. I have a friend who is blind. Her husband played the video while she listened to the music. There after, her husband told her Paulette’s story. He told her what she did, how she was feeling, and her various activities in the film. Then her husband played the video a second time. She told me that she could visualize Paulette. That she could visualize the actions as the score became brighter and faster. She could visualize Paulette’s moods, particularly when she was sad, as the music was slower and more somber. This friend has no musical background at all. Yet in this short film, the score so perfectly replicated the action of the film, that even a blind person could “see“ it. I don’t think there can be a better complement for the score than that.
Harvard lectures by Bernstein are a must for those who wish to have a unique understanding of the fundamentals of music. A lot to absorb but worth every penny and time spent on each lecture.
This was at Harvard, but he also gave us kids in Philly the same lecture (and many more) in a program called Music for Children back in the 50's. It was one of the truly formative experiences of my life - a life firmly rooted in a love for making, and hearing, understanding, and standing on its head, all aspects of music.
I love this guy. I learned the number system from one of his 5 minute "lessons" like this from one of his children's concerts. It matters who the teacher is. They tried to teach me in college but just didn't click. Bernstein nailed it in 5 minutes for me. The best music lesson I ever received. By the way, if you are into music and don't know the number system, learn it. It will change how you approach music and give everything a "name". Much easier to conceive and or remember music when you have someway to enumerate and name everything you are hearing.
@@belindadrake5487 You are somewhat correct in that many call it that now. Neal Matthews Jr. of the Jordainaires in the 50's took the old way of doing it with Roman numerals, which had been around since the late 1700's and basically just changed the Roman numerals to Arabic numerals and he and Charlie McCoy with very few modifications popularized it's use in Nashville. Neal probably went to "music school" somewhere lol! Once you know the system, learning a "pop" or "country" song is simply a short sequence of numbers which the musician can then easily remember and embellish from his own expertise or experience. They called it a head arrangement. This allowed the musicians to work together to create a unique arrangement from several brains instead of one. Works rather nicely. If you've ever played in a band you know what I mean. So yes, a lot of people today call it the Nashville system. However, it's roots go back almost 200 years. But it's the most important thing we can learn when we first start to learn music because it's a way to "visualize" what we hear. It becomes a way to "name" what we are hearing so to speak. I know it totally changed how I comprehend and remember music once I understood it. It's a bit like being "born again" in music! So whether you get if from "music school" with Roman numerals, or "Nashville" with Arabic numerals, the concept is the same and I highly recommend it.
@@birdsoldtimegospelmusic YES, my friend, l am well aware of all that you’ve said! I do know that. I wanted to keep it fairly basic, because some people just don’t like theory . 😳 Have you met people like that? OF COURSE YOU HAVE!! And yes, l have played in many bands. There’s so many ways to tackle learning music. You never stop learning. Personally , l love being a professional muso, who loves theory. I’m grateful that you put it all up. You put a smile on my ‘dial’ 😁!l! Maybe too, you know of John Cages 4”33!. Take care! You should check it out! I’d love to know wot you think of that one 😁Bravo my Friend !, 😃👍🏾🎹🎸
@@belindadrake5487 To say that Cage's music is "experimental" would be an understatement lol! I knew of him and his, shall we say unorthodoxed approach to music, but Had not "heard" this particular piece, nor much of anything from him really. I'm doing a "theory in small Bytes" series that will go up on one of my TH-cam channels before too long and I point out that music is any progression of sounds or silences that we can come up with. I also point out that if you want to make a living in music tho, you might want to stick with something other than someone chopping up a piano and releasing it on a CD lol! Good to meet another "music nerd" lol! I've been one all my life. At 78 I'm just glad I lived long enough to see all the advances in the tech used to play and create music. I was blessed with the knack for playing most anything of a musical instrument nature and I just got a Linnstrument which I'm told has been around since 2015 or so but I just heard about them and Immediately ordered one to control synths with. What a neat piece of equipment. I LOVE this thing. But it is a great example of many technologies put into one package and it could not have existed just a few year ago. I go back to working in a studio in the 60's and we had two 2 track Ampex machines running at 15 ips and a punch in was where you took two or three takes, selected the best parts and then spliced them together with a razor blade and tape. I now have a computer system with 48 light wire channels to a Yamaha DM2000, works like a charm, sounds great and you can automate punchin's. Disneyworld!! And the plugins!! And don't get me started on the internet and the wealth of knowledge available instantly. You don't even have to type if you don't want to, just talk to it, and here's the scary part, it talks back lol! Good to meet you my friend. I know we'd enjoy talking over "a cup of coffee". You sound like "good people".
what is basically talking about is the ever-diminishing distance between intervals that the human brain keeps evolving to find Pleasant. Even a hundred and fifty years ago, a minor second was considered a very ugly sound. now of course, with jazz, and modern music, it's not uncommon at all. it can sound quite beautiful in the right context. And now we begin to delve into things like quarter tones, and microtones. My education is probably very similar to Bernstein's, except obviously, being born in the 80s, everything he knew I was able to learn younger, and I'll pass down what I learn to composers and musicologists of the future. perhaps in a hundred years, the quarter tone will be very common, who knows?
He's kind of talking about two or three things. They're all fairly simple, but they are very important. First, is the progression of western music theory. Early music was focused on droning or octaves, then incorporated fifths (V's, dominants), then fourths (IV's, mediants), and then thirds. Thirds were either major or minor, and those gave you a major or minor chord. The key concept is that composers didn't think of music as being based around keys or chords until remarkably late; the most important unit before was intervals. When thirds began to be introduced, the concept of "tonality" was as well. This simply means that your music is in a "key", which means it has a limited number of notes in it. Then came sevenths, seconds and sixths. What happened was you had notes that fit into the key, this was tonal music. Those notes and chords had set roles, set meanings in that key. E.g., the fifth dominates it (specifically because all of the individual notes that are present in the V chord are shared or want to resolve to the I chord). These 'roles' are known as "diatonic function". The next interesting part was that this still didn't really work for instruments unless you retuned them for each key. This is because of what he was (I think) alluding to (confusingly) with the circle of fifths. To find the actual pitch frequency of the second or sixth, you had to find them by taking a fraction of the harmonic interval of two other notes. Basically, what this means is, there came to be a difference in frequency between, for example, an A# and a Bb depending on what key, and what direction you're moving in. What this means is, one instrument could not modulate keys. Because the notes would be out of tune. This led to the introduction of "equal temperament" (except for Germany - forget about germany) in the majority of music. This allows you to walk up to a piano and play in any key. But fundamentally, some of your notes are chosen at makeshift frequencies in between their natural #/b frequencies by (iirc) 100 "cents" (a unit of measurement of physical frequency). The final part is: once you had equal temperament, you now had 12 universal notes that you could combine in certain ways (tonally), or do any of the awful things that composers started doing in the 20th century, that made academic music super hard to listen to. Such as: button mash in a horrible mishmash of any combination of the 12 notes you wanted (playing chromatically). Chromatic means playing a sequence of the 12 notes in a row. I joke, but it has it's place. You can also use all 12 notes, and never create a tonic center, or have an ambiguous, shifting tonality (12 tone music). Finally, coming virtually full circle to the greeks, having equal temperament allows us to write in modes - which awesomely, and confusingly enough, have a tonality but do not have diatonic function. So you play all the notes found in a plain major or minor (or other) scale, but emphasize a different note as the tonal center of the song, and all of a sudden you have all kinds of neat weird stuff like minor iv chords. They sound very exotic. This all happened in about the last 1000 years of western music (not counting greek modes).
Leonard Bernstein was not a musical snob. he gave a stunning review to the 1969 lp 'TOMMY' by the WHO. written by Pete Townshend(w/ a couple of important songs by John Entwistle). it wasn't because of any musical virtuosity ,but rather it's energy and historic significance .they were the first Rock band to play the MET w/ their Rock "Opera".Bernstein attended,apparently, and personally praised Townshend. there is your 2 cents from a rock( WHO) fan .I play a little guitar. I'll be watching this again .I saw WEST SIDE STORY when it was re-released in the mid 60's( if I'm not mistaken). I wanted to be in a gang and sing at the same time .I've seen subsequent screenings and to say it holds up well would be an understatement. if it comes your way, find out first if it's the re-mastered version. THAT'S an experience! if you love music, you'll never tire of the seemingly endless credits accompanied by Bernstein's brilliant score.
Last year, I took my mom to see a production of West Side Story that was produced at the Banff School of Fine Arts. We loved it. The way that it opens with a vibrant number stands out. I came home and watched the movie version the next day. A singing dancing gang. :)
I had no idea he did a review of that album, thanks. I do know he praised the Beatles as well a few times. I think the reason why there was such negativity/snobbery towards rock music in the classical world is due to it's vast commercial and popular success in the 20th century while classical composers struggled to be successful (it's the same way many (but not all) rock fans feel towards rap and hip hop these days - which do have merits of their own as well.)
He defines the word magnetism. Even if you think he is a narcissist he is a good narcissist. (Never heard that before ). The man is so compelling and probably the best musical instrument to have ever existed . A force like no other.
Sadly it seems that the Larger than Life musical giant archetype like Berstein is out of fashion.These days it seems the priority is equality over excellence.
Just listened to Symphony #2 the Age of Anxiety, by Bernstein and pop efforts notwithstanding this guy could write it was eye opening don't know why I never got around to it.
I remember when i was a kid in the '70s Italian tv broadcasted some of his lessons, i was already totally fascinated! A great musical myth as a director, composer, pianist and teacher... ❤️
Never among my favorite conductors. Reasons for that, not to explain here. However.... a BRILLIANT musician and educator. Also FAR UNDERRATED as a composer. This is a must see for all music students studying music fundamentals and those studying form and analysis. Thank You for sharing this!
His interpretations are definitely open to criticism for sure, as well as his technique. But in terms of understanding music fully and having a master's control over the craft? No. It can't be debated. Lenny understood scores backwards and forwards. And while as I mentioned some of his interpretations are somewhat interesting (especially Beethoven's) and especially in his later years, his overall understanding and command of the podium can never be debated. He may not be the best baton technician, but he's one of the greatest musicians of the modern era hands down. And yes, highly underrated as a composer; I've played through so much of his stuff lately and it's just amazing the musicality and technique in his pieces.
For me it's the other way around. While some of his interpretations might be controversial, they are enlightening in some way. (Gould is also like this, but much more so.) He fully understood the larger picture of what he was conducting and made a coherent interpretation as he understood it. I haven't liked any of his music. West Side is catchy enough, but I'm not really into musicals at all.
I grew up in NYC when Bernstein led the NY Phil. Young Peoples Concerts were aired on TV. Bernstein was brilliant on these. He was able to communicate to young people very intelligently and clearly. It was truly a blessing growing up there in such an artistically rich environment. Bernstein was truly a gift to the world.
Thank you! As a teen in a rural town in the 1950s, I learnt an enormous amount about classical music from Leonard Bernstein’s lessons on LP records. He analysed symphonies and concerti so that anyone could understand them. I loved him from a distance, and have always been grateful to him. He was a born teacher, and now his daughter Jamie does the same as he did, in a different format. What a talented, generous and unusual family they are!
In that series of lectures, Leonard Bernstein taught me how to do algebra word problems, which has served me very well. At one point in his musings about musical linguistics, he placed music high on a spectrum from metaphorical to concrete. Music, like poetry, was placed very high on the metaphorical end of that scale, so mathematics must be placed on the lower more concrete end. With analytical geometry, you can express every single infinite point in a line or a curve or a circle, etc, with a single expression. A very nearly infinite set of points expressed with a single simple expression. How much more power could you ever hope to get? Now, once I realized that algebra was primarily a language, well I knew how to translate from one language to another. And the rest was simplicity itself.
I don't exactly know about that last (J. S.) Bach comment. Bach's era started the use of more refined temperaments, but they were still unequal, but were playable to transposed to 12 keys ("Well" Temperaments and the like). The theory of Equal temperament existed since the Renaissance, but was not put into practice until the mid to late 19th Century.
Craig Browning Yes yes in the end you stated the point here . There is no possibility for the modern musical world as we know it if you can't use the note F# in the key of C or any note in any key . Thats the point. Bach more than anyone else established this post tempered stage for the rest of the History of Western Art Music to play out on . He did that by composing truly great eye opening music in all keys; all the while conducting his own very musical yet surprisingly advanced inquiries into chromatic density.The history of European Classical Music (is) in fact, a history of the continual inclusion of more and more notes outside the key . Not just through increased modulation and increased melodic chromaticism but also through the inclusion of chromatically altered harmonies . This composer driven process (includes your favorites) creating higher and higher levels of chromatic density stalled in the early 20th century because at that point any further increase of said overall chromatic density would and did create polytonality and/or atonality . Bernstein refers to this crucial point as the 20th Century Crisis .Any survey of the history of Western Art Music that fails to mention this little understood but deeply central fact is most surely extremely lawed . That is, in the end ,the subject of this lecture series .
When I was a kid in the 1960's, Leonard Bernstein had orchestral teaching shows for young people on TV. I don't remember what it was called, but he helped us understand all of the musical instruments and their roles in the orchestra. He was fascinating.
He also had a few shows on Omnibus, which was kinda of a earlier version of PBS educational television, except it showed on a major network on Sunday afternoons or evenings. The quality of the programming was outstanding. Especially when you consider the absolute GARBAGE we have on TV these days. Imagine sitting in your living room watching say Simon Rattle or James Levine talking about a musical topic for an hour on a major network these days. But yes, his Young People's Concerts were WONDERFUL exposures for children to be introduced to music in all shapes and forms.
Fantastic! Breathtakingly informative and entertaining, seemingly without drawing breath. Such skill, flair and genius. This video and it's effect remind me of the famous lectures of physicist Richard Feynman, though finding the best 5 minutes from them would be a challenge :)
Well glad to see folks are still checking this out. I hope the content will spur some of you to watch this 6 part series in it's entirety. It's posted numerous places "cagin" or "Shawn Bay" for example. I can attest the entire series is liberally seeded with what is best and too often forgotten or overlooked about Western culture and Art Music. Not to mention amazing insights into the architecture and mindset of great composers and the underlying strings that connect all the arts.
my thanks to you for doing this. I am sending the video to two friends, one a physicist the other an MD with strong musical bent. And to my daughter, maybe she'll watch with HER two young ones. And I will watch the rest of the series. Again, thank you!
Great man. Many here might like to view the wonderful documentary on Mr Bernstein's life. He wasn't just a great conductor and composer, but someone who felt deeply about his fellow man.
A nicely presented overview of music, its evolution and its relation to the physics of the overtone series but this is meaningful only to people already familiar with the material...its a particularly elegant and concise summary of that which they already know. It presupposes an understanding of what is meant by say an octave, a fifth, chromaticism, overtone, harmonic series etc. etc.
Hey genius this is all correct except for one huge glaring error: and that is, this is a 5 min snippet of a 2hr long lecture, the 1st of 6... I'd say here we are 50min in and, you as a lay person aren't dealing with any undefined terms. Not to mention that by now you understand scientifically why major sounds happy and, minor not so much, as well as why children the whole world round sing the same taunting song. Plus you know what a monogenetic phoneme is!; as well as why the pentatonic scale is one.
Hey, I did a google on "chromatic porridge" (yeah, they opened for Gryphon a few times, as I remember...) but seriously, the phrase must have been one that rocked the house. Even the august bernstein.classical.org/collections/more-bernstein/
I just wish we had more musicians like Bernstein in today's society. At the moment there is absolutely nobody. No wonder classical music is dying a slow death. I weep.
@@FeonaLeeJones So why is the standard of music being produced so diabolical and those standing in the Prom during Promenade concerts all look like members of the Darby & Joan Club?
@@DavidA-ps1qr I do think all composers having come after JS Bach, are all trying to reinvent music and and not try and copy their predecessors...its like its been done, what else can a composer create that is different and unique? I feel like many composers have been able to incorporate many influences in their music, but I do agree that the original great composers are all Source for the newer composers...and its about how we can take what they did and make it our own. I don't know if this really answers your question, but I think we do have to continue the discovery and reinvention in music so it does not stay static.
@@FeonaLeeJones Thank you for your reply. I have checked your You Tube account and see you are obviously a very talented lady. To get into your position you would have had some excellent teachers as you mention. My original comment was aimed more at the average person's appreciation and understanding of "good" music. As I can see you are way above that average, it certainly doesn't apply to you :-)
how many of you all are old enough to remember Bernstein's series on music that PBS tv presented back in the 1950s or 1960s. Absolutely wonderful and i wish it could be presented today.
Really fascinating but rather over my head as My middle school music teacher Mr Smith taught me to hate music theory and middle school music teachers but I still loved all kinds of music. Took until I was 30 and learned to play folk-rock-Blues on guitar left-handed till I could really pursue it. A good teacher can make a wonderful impression, a bad one can take years to recover from.
Sebastián Arashiro what you are saying is the same as saying you can talk so to be able to read and to write is not important. Of course it's important.
It's not that important, that's what I said, meaning one can not know theory but still be a great musician, not that it would be a bad idea for someone to learn theory. But it doesn't make someone an ignorant or incompetent. It's also possible that someone can know a lot of music theory but still be musically incompetent.
It's really not that complex. It's interesting to think the circle of 5ths lead to the notes it the scale but I'm not convinced that's how it happened. They're relatively evenly spaced across the frequency spectrum (on a logarithmic scale, which again sounds complex but isn't if it's drawn for you): www.scielo.br/img/revistas/rbef/v34n2/a04fig03.jpg What I don't get it how Just Intonation came into being - moving the notes a little bit, something to do with overtones or something to make it sound "better" to our ears.
jwgmail Do you really think this guy is just gonna say anything in this lecture? Bernstein was the one of the foremost conductors in the world. Besides what you are going on about is so off topic of this lecture series. A little knowledge is dangerous. Can't you hear that this little 7 min let's you into the control room the power of vertical organization.
Bernstein is right: this is how the twelve tones of our music came to be. It may not only have been our voices, though. We can find these notes in nature as well, so one would find them naturally when plucking a string. A perfect fifth has a frequency that is 3/2 times the base frequency. And, like you pointed out by mentioning the logarithmic scale, the high note of an octave is 2 times the base frequency. So if A4 is 440Hz (which it is in most countries, except France, tsk), then A5 is 880Hz and A6 is 1760Hz. The other intervals are constructed with these ratios in mind. Going up a perfect fifth from A4 will give you E4 at (440 * 3 / 2=) 660Hz. Going down an octave from there will give you E3 at 330Hz. Going up a perfect fifth from E3 leads to B4 at (330 * 3 / 2=) 495Hz. Keep going until you have found all twelve notes in the octave. When you play these notes (try do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do), you will notice they sound a bit off to our modern ears, but otherwise come pretty close to the melody we were expecting. However, when you play chords with it, it doesn't always sound good. An A-major chord may still sound OK, but try a B♭-major and it will sound way off. This is because the ratios only work well for the note you used as a base. When using another note as the base, the relative frequencies are different. See "Church Modes" to learn more about this. When math became available to "fix" this problem (where music sounded different depending on the key you played it in), here's what they did: an octave has twelve notes (A, B♭, B, C, D♭, D, E♭, E, F, G♭, G, A♭). And we want to double the frequency in those twelve steps. So we multiply the base frequency by 2 to the power of 1/12. This is roughly 1,059463094359295. Let's call this value 'M' for magic number. Our fifth is now 7 steps from the base frequency of 440, so that's 440 * m * m * m * m * m * m * m = 659,3Hz. Pretty close to 660Hz, not quite the same, which is why we no longer call it "perfect". But thanks to this tuning, we can now play our music in whatever key we like and it will sound the same. Because regardless of our base note, the relative frequency of each note is the same.
I've learned more in five minutes than I did in seven years of primary education. I'm saving this video to watch again. I fear I may need to watch it more than a few times.
The terminology LB uses "3rd harmonic, 4th harmonic" are actually 3rd interval and 4th interval. Harmonics come from physics and are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency (vibrational mode) of a plucked string. The relationship of the basic intervals to harmonics is: 2nd harmonic = octave interval (2:1) 3rd harmonic = octave + fifth interval (3:1); 4th harmonic = two octave interval (4:1) 5th harmonic = two octave + third interval (5:1) 6th harmonic = two octave + fifth interval (6:1) 7th harmonic = two octave + flatted seventh interval (7:1) The intervals LB demonstrates sound good because they come close to exact integer ratios of frequencies: third interval = 5:4 fourth interval = 4:3 fifth interval = 3:2 sixth interval = 8:5 flatted seventh interval = 7:4
Bernie summed it ALL up when he told the 'young people' that music helps us to feel all those emotions for which there are NO WORDS. The TRUTH, distilled by this great man.
Without academic music education, i always knew that bach is our father and that the first movement of the well tempered clavier was the ultimate template of western music ❤
+Philip Hunter, the Beatles were interested in using interesting harmonies in their songs. For example: www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/you-gave-me-the-answer-paulmccartneycom-asks
It is not bullshit. We can safely assume the Beatles didn't know as much theory as Leonard, but they were still bound by western music's rules, whether directly known to them or not. The proof of this is shown in an analysis of the Beatles music itself. They would not have been popular had they completely ignored all the rules they had absorbed in their formative years, learning and playing (cover) songs that did generally follow the rules. While one doesn't have to know any music theory to write a good song, doing so makes it much easier and success more likely, ie. less trial and error, less dependence on luck.
This is not bullshit. I adore the Beatles, but I am a musician, and I actually attended these lectures live back in the 70s , and can tell you first hand they were terrific. Bernstein was an inspired teacher with vast knowledge and a passion for sharing it. He was also an inspired student. He did not think he knew it all. He was always hungry to hear more, and learn more. Paul McCartney would LOVE this stuff, because McCartney is smart enough to know HE doesn't know everything. All the best artists never stop learning. And as far as "famous tunes" are concerned. I beg to differ. Bach and Mozart have been pleasing audiences for hundreds of years. HUNDREDS OF YEARS. I fell in love with the Beatles in 1964, and I know every melody and lyric they ever recorded. Hundreds of years from now, they might still be appreciated, but Mozart has been dead for over 200 years, and his music continues to be played and appreciated in virtually every country on the planet since he wrote the stuff.
When one considers the instruments of Sumer, or the Hindu temples prior to the great dynasties of China, even stringed instruments of Greece and folk instruments of Laos, chords were relatively rare and limited to a fixed tonal range. The first chromatic scale didn't necessarily have witnesses to an exact date and time. Surely just as the tones of a major scale conformed to bamboo lengths and diameters , musical ideas were inspired by the sounds in nature, giving a texture to the color of sounds. Combine these 2 qualities and bounce them in a cave introduced some physics to the articulation of a note. The evolution of music took a vast landscape filled with the raw materials of our connection to become fundamental vibrations found in the tactile world being explored . Whether the bones of a flute singing in the wind or the howl of bamboo reeds hollowed by birds , sounds of the natural world defined musical concepts Mr. Bernstein discusses before a vocabulary was invented to describe it.
re: J. S. Bach - before him, there were weird things going on, like 2 B flats... 1 for going up and 1 for going down. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier standardized our tonal system into just 12 notes and not 13 or more.
3D6 Space It was required for the very existence of advanced harmony and the continual inclusion of more and more notes outside the key which led inevitably to the 20th century crisis in tonality which is in truth kind of the subject of these 6, 2.5 hr. lectures
My favorite part is his praise of Bach for his understanding of the main structures and music and how brilliantly he shared this through immortal pieces.
Truly his greatest contribution was as a teacher! His and Fred Friendly's Omnibus...then Young People's Concerts educated an entire generation towards classical music...something we so seriously need today!
As a non-musical person, I have almost no idea what he said during this video, yet I found it fascinating. It's like when I listen to Feynman lectures.
@@ChiefHerzensCoach , or you could actually explain the concepts in the first place in such a way that people can understand it.
Wadel Radel it’s hard to be concise about these ideas while also being understood by the layman. It takes a great deal of effort to study music.
@@thehappypine , is it that complicated to explain that the wavelength goes down by half when you go up an octave or that the tones in between are overtone frequencies. I would find that a lot more illuminating than whatever he said here.
Wadel Radel, it’s not complicated to say that. But that’s not the idea he is expressing. Among other things, he’s saying that as human culture has discovered, and become accepting of new intervals our music has changed and enriched. An interval is the distance between notes. An octave is an interval. Two of the same note twelve semi-tones apart. And their frequency wavelength is halfed if we tune using equal temperament but not always in other cultural or historical tuning systems.
Bernstein's manner and way of speaking does remind me of Feynman a bit.
You know you're too deep into jazz when the part that Leonard Bernstein calls "chromatic porridge" actually sounds pretty good and makes musical sense.
Man that's what I thought at 13 in 73 when it aired. I would hear certain things and want to know why it sounded better or different like Iris by Wayne Shorter or even 7 yrs before when watching Charlie Brown. The power of harmony.
That was simply beautiful
@oso polar It became more so with the advent of Mahler and developed further with 20th C composers.
Carter Bartram there is no such thing as too deep into jazz
@Melanie Boots ......You! Shall not! Modulaaate!!!!
Improvise, you fools!
RIP Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 - October 14, 1990), aged 72
You will be remembered as a legend.
Was he saved? According to his own words, he loved occultism, which is not a good sign at all.
Anyway, without having believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, there is no eternal peace.
@rxw5520 You confirm what is obvious anyway: the word "Jewish " is simply used without even being defined. And that is fatally careless.
What made Bernstein (and many others who are simply called that) a "Jew"? - Or, asked the other way around: What exactly is a "Jew" in the common, certainly usually unreflective use of the word? In other words, the definition that Bernstein, for example, corresponded to?
If you are not just an "AI" TH-cam bot, I'd like to hear an answer.
@@germanchris4440Okay, I’ll bite. Bernstein was born to Ukrainian Jewish parents, grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, and strongly support Israel. He was both culturally and genetically Jewish. He attended synagogue as a youth and learned Hebrew. He was also a closeted gay man, and-to this day-that often alienates people from institutional religion as they reach adulthood, especially in that era. It looks like you follow a middle eastern messianic religion comprising one third of the world’s population and expect everyone to share your beliefs. Leonard Bernstein conducted Christian, Jewish and other musical works without discrimination.
@@YudronWangmo I will reply to you in detail. Would you perhaps take a careful look at this and then answer me again if applicable?
Did he believe in the God of the Old Testament and try to keep the law, the Torah? This characterizes a true Jew above everything else. Or wasn't he a lover of occultism, i.e. the paganism that characterizes so-called "Judaism" today through the Babylonian Talmud, the Kabbalah, etc.?
Did he believe in the God of the Old Testament and try to keep the law, the Torah? This characterizes a true Jew above everything else. Or wasn't he a lover of occultism, i.e. the paganism that characterizes so-called "Judaism" today through the Babylonian Talmud, the Kabbalah, etc.?
I remind you that the synagogue of Satan are explicitly not Jews, but liars (Revelation 2:9 and 3:9). Pharisaism is a Babylonian cult - and today's rabbinism with its Talmudism is (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia) the modern continuation of Pharisaism. - And this is the occultism that so-called Jews sometimes even profess, such as Leonard Bernstein did.
In that case, even if he were descended from the true Jews or the tribes of Israel, he would have been an apostate Jew who did what is an abomination before God.
ANd to define the Jews simply as a race is a teaching of the Talmud, not a Jewish teaching.
So, was Leonard Bernstein descended from Judah or one of the tribes of Israel? And: Was he of Jewish faith in God or did he follow the satanic-pharisaic Talmud? - Your explanations neither give a definition of the term "Jew", nor do they state that Bernstein was a Jew, namely in the biblical and therefore true sense of the word. So you have not answered my question and have not provided me with any clarity.
However, it is precisely because this confusion surrounding the term Jew has been created that God will, in the end times, also and first of all exercise purifying judgments on the population of the present-day state of Israel, until it becomes clear in the end who the Jews or Israelites really are before God.
Leonard Bernstein is no longer there, but the general question and uncertainty remains until God will provide the answer as far as the true remnant is concerned. This is not yet evident, neither in the current general population of the state called Israel nor in the other facts you share from Mr. Bernstein. However, as I said, there is much to suggest that he was at best an apostate Jew. - Or did he believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and tried to keep the law of God for the Jews?
A legend for the ages
When Bernstein gave his televised Lincoln Center Concerts for Young People, I was very young, too young to understand the theory presented here. But, Bernstein had a way of enchanting us with his love of music, and his unbiased fondness for ALL music, influenced my tastes. I grew up loving Claaical, Romance, Folk, Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Roma, Indian, and so many kinds and styles - due much to Leonard Bernstein’s wonderful programs. He was a kind of a Mr. Rogers of music - before Mr. Rogers. I wish there were something like that now - where musical styles can be mingled, and we can understand each other better.
The only thing I noticed from this video is how much he rubs his nose
I loved these as a kid!
I LITERALLY understood nothing of what he said. Yet I've played this clip 3x, just wishing I can grasp a moment of brilliance...
Long ago my elementary school music teacher strongly encouraged me to watch Bernstein’s Concerts For Young People. Bernstein’s narration was way over my head. I tried to watch those same programs as an adult. I could not connect with Elmer Bernstein despite having an “above average “ music education. Finally- This video connected with me. It took a while. I’m 70.
And yet, with your "above average" music education, you do not know that Leonard Bernstein and Elmer Bernstein are two different people.
@@joebarr725 Oh....Bahaha. Be kind: bcgrittner mixed up two composers, so not unrelated.
@@joebarr725you don’t gotta do a 70 y/o like that💀
I know what you mean. I wished I'd heard/seen Bernstein before I went to Indiana University and barely passed music theory! I had played piano for 11 years, and been taking vocal music lessons for about 5 years.
There is an Elmer Bernstein but this is Leonard - who was not related to Elmer.
I knew he was eventually going to mention Bach. The dude that's genius really showcased the possibilities of music. I cant believe someone like Bach actually lived on this planet.
so *justly*, says Lennie, so rightly.
Well said
@@billlan0
I will always argue that that there are two periods in music history: BB (Before Bach), and AB (After Bach). Granted you also had Händel, but just in his massive Cantata Cycles alone (which very often take a decade, or more, to completely record), he managed to utterly change the musical landscape.
I promise myself that in the year of my 55th birthday, I would love nothing more to spend a month or so, travelling around where Bach lived and worked, given his huge influence his music has had on my life ...
We have over 1,100 surviving compositions from J.S. Some musicologists believe there were several times more that have not survived. All of this written out by hand.
And revelling in the beauty of Mathematics while composing.
I have an undergraduate degree in music and I gotta day he summed up an entire semester in 5 mins.
Yes but it's easier to digest when delivered slowly over time for most beginners.
I'll only remember it if I get to do it myself. If I hadn't done it myself already, I'd never remember this.
He basically summed up an undergrad music degree
there's always some sap saying this stuff... what you're forgetting is he himself learned all this over a time that didn't take 5 minutes
Period
I have been teaching all of this to my students for 50 years. What a pleasure to hear it from someone else for a change.
Good going sir
Me too: you're not alone! It's EASY!!!!
I am in awe of the level of knowledge so effortlessly communicated.
He is actually just showing off. You can tell by the fact that his lesson can only be understood by someone who already understands what he is saying.
Maybe he should touch his nose some more
I was a kid when LB was in his heyday; I had no grasp how brilliant & talented he was. Thanks for making this available!
I was a music major in college and I always loved music theory. I still read theory 40 years later. He's such a brilliant teacher.
I remember foolin' 'round on the piano, exploring the intervals upon which my cello was tuned (C G D A), and thinking, "violins have an E string...". I knew the key signatures and could hear fifths, so I just kept adding *one more sharp* and eventually I got to "B#"--C.
I was fascinated by this and immediately took the "newly discovered concept" to my orchestra teacher. She was an old-fashioned teacher who taught with tough love and made sure we knew all our scales and could describe them accurately as well as play them. When I told her she got a shiny look in her eye and said, "That's the Circle of Fifths!"
I was so proud and thrilled to make her proud. 💛
I would have loved to have a teacher like that. He makes, understanding music, fun and not so officious. He has a contagious enthusiasm.
In those days it helped to be to the manor born. Now, these TH-cam crumbs of wisdom have mitigated that somewhat.
@@commentatron Ha!
This man was creating so much energy and excitement around music and the joy of creating and understanding it.
A most brilliant instructor and certainly one of the most knowledgeable musicians that ever lived.
Love hose concise this was. He’s right, music is truly a mathematical language all its own.
Thanks. I grew up watching his series of lectures for young people.
The city, Lawrence, Massachusetts, was also where Leonard Bernstein was born and, I think, raised.
Also, my parents rented out the second floor of their double-decker, and we once had a tenant who said that he went to grade school with the Maestro. our City has great pride in his being a native son. R.I.P., Lenny.
"West Side Story" for me, remains the best and most complete musical of all time. The "Quintet" at the end of the first act is absolutely my favorite piece of theatrical music. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Sondheim.
The irony is that he thought WSS was a nothing burger for him to compose. Not much more than an afterthought.
Bach was a teacher, a highly motivated musical educator whose studies and curiosity coupled with his deep levels of perception led him to discover all of these brilliant and magically mystical elements of music allowing composers to expand their usage of the 12 notes into chords and harmonies never seen nor heard of before. Bach's genius was far beyond the norm as he spent endless days and years of his life in musical discovery and evolution so as to provide new and more progressive lessons for his students. All of his inventions were simply studies he created to keep his students fully engaged & enlightened as to what the full range, possibilities and scope of music actually is. His findings remain the most profound discoveries in the history of music. He created music that would have taken light years to uncover and shape into useful concepts and exercises. One must wonder what , if at all, his predecessors were even thinking.
Yes Bach was a genius but if you go into that room and apply yourself and are able to accurately focus your inquiry than even you or I will start to make forward motion it's not magic as much as determined persistant inquiry. What's very fascinating to me is how he was able to combine the very complex art of Counterpoint with all its structural permutations with the then NEW harmonic possibilities of unlimited modulation and even some chromatically altered harmony being clearly indicated no stated via his amazing counterpoint.
You seem to be answering your own question.
Bach was in a league of his own but Scarlatti was no slouch.
Light years are a unit of lenght, though.
Even Sting was quoted as saying that Bach was his teacher..Great Sting interview by Rick Beato on Utube.
My beloved piano teacher, James Hopkirk, told me about the circle of fifths when I was about 11 years old. The most brilliant and enlightened of music educators, he explained this concept to me clearly and concisely, ending with, “So you see, Lois, all music exists in nature. We merely have to find it.” Fifty years after his death, I still mourn his passing.
The best of Bernstein - he eagerly shared his knowledge with everyone. He wanted other people to really learn about music. Remember the Young People's concerts on CBS? And he had a great sense of humor.
What a wonderful instrument the piano is.
As a physicists student, I will totally vote him for this years best physics teacher. He elucidated a lot. Greatest 5 min indeed.
Porschen Hund *6 minutes
r/iamverysmart
I learned more about the Circle Of Fifths here than in hours and hours of explanations I had before. The Great Bernstein!
How did he just summarize 10 years of my musical learning into 6 minutes!
The succinctness and effectiveness of his explanation are amazing.
Thank you professor Bernstein!!
Thank you Leonard Bernstein for your New York Phil and Young People’s Concerts that I watched growing up in Kentucky in the 1960s. My mother would tune it in, but I watched it. WLAC in Nashville would broadcast those kinds of things back then as well as the Grand Ole Opry. Mr. Bernstein, whose music was also on our phonograph at home (Time-Life records), is the reason I have been a professional violinist for the last 40 years. Happy 100th! (Same age as my mother) Wish you were still with us, but of course, you are, in the legacy you left behind.
I watched this series as a junior high school student and it had a great impact on me, thank you Mr. Bernstein.
The great composers and musicians have an insight that goes beyond description. They can explain seemingly complex subjects more succinctly than the average piano teacher can do in 6 months of tedious lessons.
This video is bookmarked for my students to watch.
This is an excerpt from the 1973 Norton lecture series at Harvard. Watch the whole 6 or so hours, I have - it is all equally brilliant.
After 52 years of playing by ear on my piano, this man is in lighting what’s coming naturally to my humble plays
What a waste of time
@@antoni7999 what a waste of time learning music 😂 it can be played by ear.
TH-camrs need to to their game for 6 minute videos.
1. Straight to content.
2. Development of content.
3. Beautiful content.
4. Interesting content.
5. Thought provoking content.
6. I am content.
Underrated Comment.
Alas, TH-cam awards 10 minute clips, thus forcing creators to add fluff. Just think, a decision of a single manager somewhere in Alphabet (google), can save humanity millions of man-hours watching fluff and filler.
Exactly, it's getting difficult to watch TH-cam videos anymore, they've caused TH-cam to have gone the route of network TV.
However, this video was incredible.
@@jfo3000
Agree, I spend half my video time sorting fluff from fibre. Looking forward to the manager who can sort it out.
One of the most brilliant musical minds of all time. I love this!
The part where he mentioned the fifths and how that works with the twelve tone harmony blew my mind. The circle of fifths.
Explain a little more? I don't quite get it. I get the circle of fifths
Leonard Bernstein would be turning 100 in August/2018 and his centennial is being observed throughout the world. THank you for such an amazing music!
Huh... ok cool
This is a perfect score for a very sweet film. The score captured the action, the moods and the activities of the main character, Paulette. I have a friend who is blind. Her husband played the video while she listened to the music. There after, her husband told her Paulette’s story. He told her what she did, how she was feeling, and her various activities in the film. Then her husband played the video a second time. She told me that she could visualize Paulette. That she could visualize the actions as the score became brighter and faster. She could visualize Paulette’s moods, particularly when she was sad, as the music was slower and more somber. This friend has no musical background at all. Yet in this short film, the score so perfectly replicated the action of the film, that even a blind person could “see“ it.
I don’t think there can be a better complement for the score than that.
What a blessing, to be here for us, at his age. The many who resented his genius will always reveal his strength.
What an outstanding self assured leisurely lesson. Bernstein command and confidence is impressive to watch.
How I miss Mr. Bernstein...he gave me so much.. What a sense of humor....what a genius..
This man is a unique conductor teacher and comedian wish he was still alive Thank you sir or madam for this video
It helped to have a ton of charisma.
Harvard lectures by Bernstein are a must for those who wish to have a unique understanding of the fundamentals of music. A lot to absorb but worth every penny and time spent on each lecture.
This was at Harvard, but he also gave us kids in Philly the same lecture (and many more) in a program called Music for Children back in the 50's. It was one of the truly formative experiences of my life - a life firmly rooted in a love for making, and hearing, understanding, and standing on its head, all aspects of music.
very cool
I love this guy. I learned the number system from one of his 5 minute "lessons" like this from one of his children's concerts. It matters who the teacher is. They tried to teach me in college but just didn't click. Bernstein nailed it in 5 minutes for me. The best music lesson I ever received. By the way, if you are into music and don't know the number system, learn it. It will change how you approach music and give everything a "name". Much easier to conceive and or remember music when you have someway to enumerate and name everything you are hearing.
It’s called the ‘Nashville System’my Friend! 😃👊🏾🎹
@@belindadrake5487 You are somewhat correct in that many call it that now. Neal Matthews Jr. of the Jordainaires in the 50's took the old way of doing it with Roman numerals, which had been around since the late 1700's and basically just changed the Roman numerals to Arabic numerals and he and Charlie McCoy with very few modifications popularized it's use in Nashville. Neal probably went to "music school" somewhere lol! Once you know the system, learning a "pop" or "country" song is simply a short sequence of numbers which the musician can then easily remember and embellish from his own expertise or experience. They called it a head arrangement. This allowed the musicians to work together to create a unique arrangement from several brains instead of one. Works rather nicely. If you've ever played in a band you know what I mean. So yes, a lot of people today call it the Nashville system. However, it's roots go back almost 200 years. But it's the most important thing we can learn when we first start to learn music because it's a way to "visualize" what we hear. It becomes a way to "name" what we are hearing so to speak. I know it totally changed how I comprehend and remember music once I understood it. It's a bit like being "born again" in music! So whether you get if from "music school" with Roman numerals, or "Nashville" with Arabic numerals, the concept is the same and I highly recommend it.
@@birdsoldtimegospelmusic YES, my friend, l am well aware of all that you’ve said! I do know that. I wanted to keep it fairly basic, because some people just don’t like theory . 😳 Have you met people like that? OF COURSE YOU HAVE!! And yes, l have played in many bands. There’s so many ways to tackle learning music. You never stop learning. Personally , l love being a professional muso, who loves theory. I’m grateful that you put it all up. You put a smile on my ‘dial’ 😁!l! Maybe too, you know of John Cages 4”33!. Take care! You should check it out! I’d love to know wot you think of that one 😁Bravo my Friend !, 😃👍🏾🎹🎸
@@belindadrake5487 To say that Cage's music is "experimental" would be an understatement lol! I knew of him and his, shall we say unorthodoxed approach to music, but Had not "heard" this particular piece, nor much of anything from him really. I'm doing a "theory in small Bytes" series that will go up on one of my TH-cam channels before too long and I point out that music is any progression of sounds or silences that we can come up with. I also point out that if you want to make a living in music tho, you might want to stick with something other than someone chopping up a piano and releasing it on a CD lol! Good to meet another "music nerd" lol! I've been one all my life. At 78 I'm just glad I lived long enough to see all the advances in the tech used to play and create music. I was blessed with the knack for playing most anything of a musical instrument nature and I just got a Linnstrument which I'm told has been around since 2015 or so but I just heard about them and Immediately ordered one to control synths with. What a neat piece of equipment. I LOVE this thing. But it is a great example of many technologies put into one package and it could not have existed just a few year ago. I go back to working in a studio in the 60's and we had two 2 track Ampex machines running at 15 ips and a punch in was where you took two or three takes, selected the best parts and then spliced them together with a razor blade and tape. I now have a computer system with 48 light wire channels to a Yamaha DM2000, works like a charm, sounds great and you can automate punchin's. Disneyworld!! And the plugins!! And don't get me started on the internet and the wealth of knowledge available instantly. You don't even have to type if you don't want to, just talk to it, and here's the scary part, it talks back lol! Good to meet you my friend. I know we'd enjoy talking over "a cup of coffee". You sound like "good people".
I barely understood what he was trying to get across but I will certainly be watching several times over to better understand his method of teaching.
good going !
i wouldn't have got this two years ago, now, it blew my mind. keep that sh' up :)
You need to understand the 'interval' and the 'diatonic' system to really undersand this. It's not so complicated.
what is basically talking about is the ever-diminishing distance between intervals that the human brain keeps evolving to find Pleasant. Even a hundred and fifty years ago, a minor second was considered a very ugly sound. now of course, with jazz, and modern music, it's not uncommon at all. it can sound quite beautiful in the right context. And now we begin to delve into things like quarter tones, and microtones.
My education is probably very similar to Bernstein's, except obviously, being born in the 80s, everything he knew I was able to learn younger, and I'll pass down what I learn to composers and musicologists of the future.
perhaps in a hundred years, the quarter tone will be very common, who knows?
He's kind of talking about two or three things. They're all fairly simple, but they are very important. First, is the progression of western music theory. Early music was focused on droning or octaves, then incorporated fifths (V's, dominants), then fourths (IV's, mediants), and then thirds. Thirds were either major or minor, and those gave you a major or minor chord. The key concept is that composers didn't think of music as being based around keys or chords until remarkably late; the most important unit before was intervals.
When thirds began to be introduced, the concept of "tonality" was as well. This simply means that your music is in a "key", which means it has a limited number of notes in it. Then came sevenths, seconds and sixths. What happened was you had notes that fit into the key, this was tonal music. Those notes and chords had set roles, set meanings in that key. E.g., the fifth dominates it (specifically because all of the individual notes that are present in the V chord are shared or want to resolve to the I chord). These 'roles' are known as "diatonic function".
The next interesting part was that this still didn't really work for instruments unless you retuned them for each key. This is because of what he was (I think) alluding to (confusingly) with the circle of fifths. To find the actual pitch frequency of the second or sixth, you had to find them by taking a fraction of the harmonic interval of two other notes. Basically, what this means is, there came to be a difference in frequency between, for example, an A# and a Bb depending on what key, and what direction you're moving in. What this means is, one instrument could not modulate keys. Because the notes would be out of tune. This led to the introduction of "equal temperament" (except for Germany - forget about germany) in the majority of music. This allows you to walk up to a piano and play in any key. But fundamentally, some of your notes are chosen at makeshift frequencies in between their natural #/b frequencies by (iirc) 100 "cents" (a unit of measurement of physical frequency).
The final part is: once you had equal temperament, you now had 12 universal notes that you could combine in certain ways (tonally), or do any of the awful things that composers started doing in the 20th century, that made academic music super hard to listen to. Such as: button mash in a horrible mishmash of any combination of the 12 notes you wanted (playing chromatically). Chromatic means playing a sequence of the 12 notes in a row. I joke, but it has it's place. You can also use all 12 notes, and never create a tonic center, or have an ambiguous, shifting tonality (12 tone music).
Finally, coming virtually full circle to the greeks, having equal temperament allows us to write in modes - which awesomely, and confusingly enough, have a tonality but do not have diatonic function. So you play all the notes found in a plain major or minor (or other) scale, but emphasize a different note as the tonal center of the song, and all of a sudden you have all kinds of neat weird stuff like minor iv chords. They sound very exotic.
This all happened in about the last 1000 years of western music (not counting greek modes).
I wish professors taught like this today. As a person who has never taken a music class, he made this so easy to understand. Excellent teacher.
Saw him conducting when I was a child. Still sharp in my recollection. A musical genius!
The two greatest things mankind has achieved - the equation for relativity and being able to grab notes out of the air and put them on paper.
Leonard Bernstein was not a musical snob. he gave a stunning review to the 1969 lp 'TOMMY' by the WHO. written by Pete Townshend(w/ a couple of important songs by John Entwistle). it wasn't because of any musical virtuosity ,but rather it's energy and historic significance .they were the first Rock band to play the MET w/ their Rock "Opera".Bernstein attended,apparently, and personally praised Townshend. there is your 2 cents from a rock( WHO) fan .I play a little guitar. I'll be watching this again .I saw WEST SIDE STORY when it was re-released in the mid 60's( if I'm not mistaken). I wanted to be in a gang and sing at the same time .I've seen subsequent screenings and to say it holds up well would be an understatement. if it comes your way, find out first if it's the re-mastered version. THAT'S an experience! if you love music, you'll never tire of the seemingly endless credits accompanied by Bernstein's brilliant score.
Last year, I took my mom to see a production of West Side Story that was produced at the Banff School of Fine Arts. We loved it. The way that it opens with a vibrant number stands out. I came home and watched the movie version the next day. A singing dancing gang. :)
glad you guys had a good time .I might call that soundtrack the best I ever heard .the film also has a great intro. camera pans NewYork from the air
I had no idea he did a review of that album, thanks. I do know he praised the Beatles as well a few times. I think the reason why there was such negativity/snobbery towards rock music in the classical world is due to it's vast commercial and popular success in the 20th century while classical composers struggled to be successful (it's the same way many (but not all) rock fans feel towards rap and hip hop these days - which do have merits of their own as well.)
Tony M ...in the young peoples' concert he used 'You really got me going' by the Kinks to demonstrate the mixolydian mode!
thanx, norm .now I just need to find out exactly what a mixolydian mode is.
Listening to his voice by itsself is music to my ears already!
that was like 3 years of music theory packed into one shotgun blast. i need a nap.
Same here.It SHOULD be shown at every school.
@@joannamikka3983,
Why? Why do you want to torture the kids?
Three years..? Really?
Absolutely agreed! 😅😅
The best comment of the page, right there.
He defines the word magnetism. Even if you think he is a narcissist he is a good narcissist. (Never heard that before ). The man is so compelling and probably the best musical instrument to have ever existed . A force like no other.
Sadly it seems that the Larger than Life musical giant archetype like Berstein is out of fashion.These days it seems the priority is equality over excellence.
@@sprezzatura8755 highly disagree. And it is a sad take on such genius
@@julieberkowitz2750 it is possible you have misunderstood me. I have edited my comment for clarification. I'm a big Bernstein fan.
I think maybe I am wrong but it goes something like:
1. Leonard Bernstein
2. Elvis Presley
3. Bob Dylan
4. Frank Sinatra
5. Joni Mitchell
Bernstein is also a major Orator. Like the guys from Ancient Greece or Rome or you know
I won't lie, this went over my head the first watch, but I'm sure it'll blow me away after a few more. I can't wait!
This stuff occupies my head every day. I’m sure it does for so many of you too. A lifetime of wonderful tonal relationships to learn!
Just listened to Symphony #2 the Age of Anxiety, by Bernstein and pop efforts notwithstanding this guy could write it was eye opening don't know why I never got around to it.
I remember when i was a kid in the '70s Italian tv broadcasted some of his lessons, i was already totally fascinated! A great musical myth as a director, composer, pianist and teacher... ❤️
Professor: 2.5 minutes
Title: 5 minutes
Video: 6 minutes
Hotel : Trivago
Me: half hour later... Huh?
It’s time inflation, duh
His Speech: Amazing
His Singing: Better luck next time?
@Truthfears Guilty - Thanks for your erudite opinion.
God, please give us more educators like Lenny ❤️!
This is the sort of video that even if you're not into music theory, is really interesting. The best 5 minutes in TH-cam land ! 👍
Never among my favorite conductors. Reasons for that, not to explain here. However.... a BRILLIANT musician and educator. Also FAR UNDERRATED as a composer. This is a must see for all music students studying music fundamentals and those studying form and analysis. Thank You for sharing this!
way underrated asa composer Chichester Psalms is my JAM!
His interpretations are definitely open to criticism for sure, as well as his technique. But in terms of understanding music fully and having a master's control over the craft? No. It can't be debated. Lenny understood scores backwards and forwards. And while as I mentioned some of his interpretations are somewhat interesting (especially Beethoven's) and especially in his later years, his overall understanding and command of the podium can never be debated. He may not be the best baton technician, but he's one of the greatest musicians of the modern era hands down. And yes, highly underrated as a composer; I've played through so much of his stuff lately and it's just amazing the musicality and technique in his pieces.
For me it's the other way around. While some of his interpretations might be controversial, they are enlightening in some way. (Gould is also like this, but much more so.) He fully understood the larger picture of what he was conducting and made a coherent interpretation as he understood it. I haven't liked any of his music. West Side is catchy enough, but I'm not really into musicals at all.
This is the material I got in music appreciation at UNC Chapel Hill many years ago, but delivered with wonderful concision and panache.
I grew up in NYC when Bernstein led the NY Phil. Young Peoples Concerts were aired on TV. Bernstein was brilliant on these. He was able to communicate to young people very intelligently and clearly. It was truly a blessing growing up there in such an artistically rich environment. Bernstein was truly a gift to the world.
When you are 5 times more educated on music than everyone I know combined and 10 times more charismatic than the avarage teacher
Thank you! As a teen in a rural town in the 1950s, I learnt an enormous amount about classical music from Leonard Bernstein’s lessons on LP records. He analysed symphonies and concerti so that anyone could understand them. I loved him from a distance, and have always been grateful to him. He was a born teacher, and now his daughter Jamie does the same as he did, in a different format. What a talented, generous and unusual family they are!
The warmest, most compassionate, most talented man of the 20th century.
In that series of lectures, Leonard Bernstein taught me how to do algebra word problems, which has served me very well.
At one point in his musings about musical linguistics, he placed music high on a spectrum from metaphorical to concrete. Music, like poetry, was placed very high on the metaphorical end of that scale, so mathematics must be placed on the lower more concrete end. With analytical geometry, you can express every single infinite point in a line or a curve or a circle, etc, with a single expression. A very nearly infinite set of points expressed with a single simple expression. How much more power could you ever hope to get?
Now, once I realized that algebra was primarily a language, well I knew how to translate from one language to another. And the rest was simplicity itself.
Leonards genius is rooted in a perfect understanding of the science of music
I don't exactly know about that last (J. S.) Bach comment. Bach's era started the use of more refined temperaments, but they were still unequal, but were playable to transposed to 12 keys ("Well" Temperaments and the like). The theory of Equal temperament existed since the Renaissance, but was not put into practice until the mid to late 19th Century.
Craig Browning Yes yes in the end you stated the point here . There is no possibility for the modern musical world as we know it if you can't use the note F# in the key of C or any note in any key . Thats the point. Bach more than anyone else established this post tempered stage for the rest of the History of Western Art Music to play out on . He did that by composing truly great eye opening music in all keys; all the while conducting his own very musical yet surprisingly advanced inquiries into chromatic density.The history of European Classical Music (is) in fact, a history of the continual inclusion of more and more notes outside the key . Not just through increased modulation and increased melodic chromaticism but also through the inclusion of chromatically altered harmonies . This composer driven process (includes your favorites) creating higher and higher levels of chromatic density stalled in the early 20th century because at that point any further increase of said overall chromatic density would and did create polytonality and/or atonality . Bernstein refers to this crucial point as the 20th Century Crisis .Any survey of the history of Western Art Music that fails to mention this little understood but deeply central fact is most surely extremely lawed . That is, in the end ,the subject of this lecture series .
Bernstein was a great communicator and it helped that he was also a tremendous composer and conductor.
When I was a kid in the 1960's, Leonard Bernstein had orchestral teaching shows for young people on TV. I don't remember what it was called, but he helped us understand all of the musical instruments and their roles in the orchestra. He was fascinating.
Yeah the Young People's Concerts
He also had a few shows on Omnibus, which was kinda of a earlier version of PBS educational television, except it showed on a major network on Sunday afternoons or evenings. The quality of the programming was outstanding. Especially when you consider the absolute GARBAGE we have on TV these days. Imagine sitting in your living room watching say Simon Rattle or James Levine talking about a musical topic for an hour on a major network these days. But yes, his Young People's Concerts were WONDERFUL exposures for children to be introduced to music in all shapes and forms.
That was when TV was intended to both entertain and inform. Not much of the latter these days.
He was brilliant I have been enjoying his concerts for kids sooooo interesting No one else did this He was soooo talented
Fantastic! Breathtakingly informative and entertaining, seemingly without drawing breath. Such skill, flair and genius. This video and it's effect remind me of the famous lectures of physicist Richard Feynman, though finding the best 5 minutes from them would be a challenge :)
Well glad to see folks are still checking this out. I hope the content will spur some of you to watch this 6 part series in it's entirety. It's posted numerous places "cagin" or "Shawn Bay" for example. I can attest the entire series is liberally seeded with what is best and too often forgotten or overlooked about Western culture and Art Music. Not to mention amazing insights into the architecture and mindset of great composers and the underlying strings that connect all the arts.
Where can we find this?
my thanks to you for doing this. I am sending the video to two friends, one a physicist the other an MD with strong musical bent. And to my daughter, maybe she'll watch with HER two young ones. And I will watch the rest of the series. Again, thank you!
great guy
Right?
The greatest
Lenny the goat
"equally powerful and contradictory in nature" such a dialectical way to see things
Great man. Many here might like to view the wonderful documentary on Mr Bernstein's life. He wasn't just a great conductor and composer, but someone who felt deeply about his fellow man.
Hello, I have new channel, I post about music, all about music. can you please take a glance?
That this man is so smart, engaging, and interesting on a subject I know nothing about is mind blowing.
This could perfectly be a today's TED talk.
RasierapparaT si thats why TH-cam recommend me Ted videos after this? ...
Don't cheapen this man's legacy.
TED talk is not worthy of this
I hear you
Bernstein - The Carl Sagan of music
I wouldn't mind hearing a conversation between the both of those two. Carl would bring some good reefer,I'm sure.
Carl would ride his bike over and you'd tell he was coming by the blue shift in front of him
alex carter That's hilarious, yes, that would have been an interesting conversation!
Carl is coming by on Billions and Billions of blue shift waves?
Sagan - the Leonard Bernstein of cosmology. Maybe.
A nicely presented overview of music, its evolution and its relation to the physics of the overtone series but this is meaningful only to people already familiar with the material...its a particularly elegant and concise summary of that which they already know. It presupposes an understanding of what is meant by say an octave, a fifth, chromaticism, overtone, harmonic series etc. etc.
Hey genius this is all correct except for one huge glaring error: and that is, this is a 5 min snippet of a 2hr long lecture, the 1st of 6... I'd say here we are 50min in and, you as a lay person aren't dealing with any undefined terms. Not to mention that by now you understand scientifically why major sounds happy and, minor not so much, as well as why children the whole world round sing the same taunting song. Plus you know what a monogenetic phoneme is!; as well as why the pentatonic scale is one.
I love videos like this where while he can't share any more information these exist for future generations
Nobody could talk about music like Bernstein. Absolutely nobody.
There should be a prog band called "chromatic porridge"
Lead Guitar Workshop - Hey, steal our name and we’ll turn you to mush (step by step)
Hey, I did a google on "chromatic porridge" (yeah, they opened for Gryphon a few times, as I remember...) but seriously, the phrase must have been one that rocked the house. Even the august bernstein.classical.org/collections/more-bernstein/
And the 2020 version - "Chromatic Porridge and the Murder Hornets."
it was called the rockin teen combo
I think Ross Geller was in the original undergrad lineup
I love that after a few years of Rick Beato this all makes perfect sense to me now. I wish it had always been this simple.
Rick Beato is actually a good name to mention for having an ability to explain things.
I just wish we had more musicians like Bernstein in today's society. At the moment there is absolutely nobody. No wonder classical music is dying a slow death. I weep.
Theres plenty of great teachers these days...!!!!
@@FeonaLeeJones So why is the standard of music being produced so diabolical and those standing in the Prom during Promenade concerts all look like members of the Darby & Joan Club?
@@DavidA-ps1qr I do think all composers having come after JS Bach, are all trying to reinvent music and and not try and copy their predecessors...its like its been done, what else can a composer create that is different and unique? I feel like many composers have been able to incorporate many influences in their music, but I do agree that the original great composers are all Source for the newer composers...and its about how we can take what they did and make it our own. I don't know if this really answers your question, but I think we do have to continue the discovery and reinvention in music so it does not stay static.
@@FeonaLeeJones Thank you for your reply. I have checked your You Tube account and see you are obviously a very talented lady. To get into your position you would have had some excellent teachers as you mention. My original comment was aimed more at the average person's appreciation and understanding of "good" music. As I can see you are way above that average, it certainly doesn't apply to you :-)
how many of you all are old enough to remember Bernstein's series on music that PBS tv presented back in the 1950s or 1960s. Absolutely wonderful and i wish it could be presented today.
Really fascinating but rather over my head as My middle school music teacher Mr Smith taught me to hate music theory and middle school music teachers but I still loved all kinds of music.
Took until I was 30 and learned to play folk-rock-Blues on guitar left-handed till I could really pursue it.
A good teacher can make a wonderful impression, a bad one can take years to recover from.
@Dan Shevock I think internet spelled backwards is elobrepyh....
I know zip about music theory, but found this stimulating to listen to, even though I came out the far side as ignorant as I came in. What fun.
Brian Skinner
......
Theory is not that important, don't worry. Not knowing theory doesn't make you an ignorant.
Sebastián Arashiro what you are saying is the same as saying you can talk so to be able to read and to write is not important. Of course it's important.
It's not that important, that's what I said, meaning one can not know theory but still be a great musician, not that it would be a bad idea for someone to learn theory. But it doesn't make someone an ignorant or incompetent. It's also possible that someone can know a lot of music theory but still be musically incompetent.
planty of people don know how to read or right, but can still communicate. Have you read the comments lately?
The Richard Feynman of music theory lectures.
I was about to post the exact thing! You beat me to it! :D
It's really not that complex. It's interesting to think the circle of 5ths lead to the notes it the scale but I'm not convinced that's how it happened. They're relatively evenly spaced across the frequency spectrum (on a logarithmic scale, which again sounds complex but isn't if it's drawn for you): www.scielo.br/img/revistas/rbef/v34n2/a04fig03.jpg
What I don't get it how Just Intonation came into being - moving the notes a little bit, something to do with overtones or something to make it sound "better" to our ears.
jwgmail Do you really think this guy is just gonna say anything in this lecture? Bernstein was the one of the foremost conductors in the world. Besides what you are going on about is so off topic of this lecture series. A little knowledge is dangerous. Can't you hear that this little 7 min let's you into the control room the power of vertical organization.
Bernstein is right: this is how the twelve tones of our music came to be. It may not only have been our voices, though. We can find these notes in nature as well, so one would find them naturally when plucking a string.
A perfect fifth has a frequency that is 3/2 times the base frequency. And, like you pointed out by mentioning the logarithmic scale, the high note of an octave is 2 times the base frequency. So if A4 is 440Hz (which it is in most countries, except France, tsk), then A5 is 880Hz and A6 is 1760Hz.
The other intervals are constructed with these ratios in mind. Going up a perfect fifth from A4 will give you E4 at (440 * 3 / 2=) 660Hz. Going down an octave from there will give you E3 at 330Hz. Going up a perfect fifth from E3 leads to B4 at (330 * 3 / 2=) 495Hz. Keep going until you have found all twelve notes in the octave.
When you play these notes (try do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do), you will notice they sound a bit off to our modern ears, but otherwise come pretty close to the melody we were expecting. However, when you play chords with it, it doesn't always sound good. An A-major chord may still sound OK, but try a B♭-major and it will sound way off. This is because the ratios only work well for the note you used as a base. When using another note as the base, the relative frequencies are different. See "Church Modes" to learn more about this.
When math became available to "fix" this problem (where music sounded different depending on the key you played it in), here's what they did: an octave has twelve notes (A, B♭, B, C, D♭, D, E♭, E, F, G♭, G, A♭). And we want to double the frequency in those twelve steps. So we multiply the base frequency by 2 to the power of 1/12. This is roughly 1,059463094359295. Let's call this value 'M' for magic number. Our fifth is now 7 steps from the base frequency of 440, so that's 440 * m * m * m * m * m * m * m = 659,3Hz. Pretty close to 660Hz, not quite the same, which is why we no longer call it "perfect". But thanks to this tuning, we can now play our music in whatever key we like and it will sound the same. Because regardless of our base note, the relative frequency of each note is the same.
@@krytharn
Reflected in twelve tribes across the planet.
“Now that’s starting to sound like polyphony!”
(J.S.Bach1685 has entered the chat.)
Five minutes of music education I need to completely understand thank you Mr. Leonard Bernstein
I've learned more in five minutes than I did in seven years of primary education. I'm saving this video to watch again. I fear I may need to watch it more than a few times.
The terminology LB uses "3rd harmonic, 4th harmonic" are actually 3rd interval and 4th interval. Harmonics come from physics and are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency (vibrational mode) of a plucked string. The relationship of the basic intervals to harmonics is:
2nd harmonic = octave interval (2:1)
3rd harmonic = octave + fifth interval (3:1);
4th harmonic = two octave interval (4:1)
5th harmonic = two octave + third interval (5:1)
6th harmonic = two octave + fifth interval (6:1)
7th harmonic = two octave + flatted seventh interval (7:1)
The intervals LB demonstrates sound good because they come close to exact integer ratios of frequencies:
third interval = 5:4
fourth interval = 4:3
fifth interval = 3:2
sixth interval = 8:5
flatted seventh interval = 7:4
whenever Mr Bernstein explains anything everyone can understand.
I learn a little more with every view of this video. After I watch this 1000000 times I can move to the piano and play Liszt.
Bernie summed it ALL up when he told the 'young people' that music helps us to feel all those emotions for which there are NO WORDS. The TRUTH, distilled by this great man.
Without academic music education, i always knew that bach is our father and that the first movement of the well tempered clavier was the ultimate template of western music ❤
This is sensational - exactly what teaching music should be.
Damian Broderick . yes but its all bullshit. Ask The Beatles who wrote more famous tunes than Bach or Mozart or Bernsteinn.
+Philip Hunter, the Beatles were interested in using interesting harmonies in their songs. For example: www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/you-gave-me-the-answer-paulmccartneycom-asks
It is not bullshit. We can safely assume the Beatles didn't know as much theory as Leonard, but they were still bound by western music's rules, whether directly known to them or not. The proof of this is shown in an analysis of the Beatles music itself. They would not have been popular had they completely ignored all the rules they had absorbed in their formative years, learning and playing (cover) songs that did generally follow the rules. While one doesn't have to know any music theory to write a good song, doing so makes it much easier and success more likely, ie. less trial and error, less dependence on luck.
Jd Ingres,
"less trial and error,"
That makes a lot of sense.
This is not bullshit. I adore the Beatles, but I am a musician, and I actually attended these lectures live back in the 70s , and can tell you first hand they were terrific. Bernstein was an inspired teacher with vast knowledge and a passion for sharing it. He was also an inspired student. He did not think he knew it all. He was always hungry to hear more, and learn more. Paul McCartney would LOVE this stuff, because McCartney is smart enough to know HE doesn't know everything. All the best artists never stop learning. And as far as "famous tunes" are concerned. I beg to differ. Bach and Mozart have been pleasing audiences for hundreds of years. HUNDREDS OF YEARS. I fell in love with the Beatles in 1964, and I know every melody and lyric they ever recorded. Hundreds of years from now, they might still be appreciated, but Mozart has been dead for over 200 years, and his music continues to be played and appreciated in virtually every country on the planet since he wrote the stuff.
When one considers the instruments of Sumer, or the Hindu temples prior to the great dynasties of China, even stringed instruments of Greece and folk instruments of Laos, chords were relatively rare and limited to a fixed tonal range. The first chromatic scale didn't necessarily have witnesses to an exact date and time. Surely just as the tones of a major scale conformed to bamboo lengths and diameters , musical ideas were inspired by the sounds in nature, giving a texture to the color of sounds. Combine these 2 qualities and bounce them in a cave introduced some physics to the articulation of a note. The evolution of music took a vast landscape filled with the raw materials of our connection to become fundamental vibrations found in the tactile world being explored . Whether the bones of a flute singing in the wind or the howl of bamboo reeds hollowed by birds , sounds of the natural world defined musical concepts Mr. Bernstein discusses before a vocabulary was invented to describe it.
re: J. S. Bach - before him, there were weird things going on, like 2 B flats... 1 for going up and 1 for going down. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier standardized our tonal system into just 12 notes and not 13 or more.
3D6 Space It was required for the very existence of advanced harmony and the continual inclusion of more and more notes outside the key which led inevitably to the 20th century crisis in tonality which is in truth kind of the subject of these 6, 2.5 hr. lectures
My favorite part is his praise of Bach for his understanding of the main structures and music and how brilliantly he shared this through immortal pieces.
Truly his greatest contribution was as a teacher! His and Fred Friendly's Omnibus...then Young People's Concerts educated an entire generation towards classical music...something we so seriously need today!