Leonard Bernstein - "The Unanswered Question" 5. The XXth Century Crisis [1973] Norton Lecture No. 5 [Re-Up]

Mr. Bernstein kicks off with Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole, 4th Movement, to illustrate a total unawareness of a tonal crisis. The bigger and greater the ambiguities, the more immortal is tonality. There is still Rosenkavalier to be written, some operas by Puccini and Firebird. But 1908 breathes an air of disturbance indicating that tonality cannot last, nor figurative painting, nor syntactical poetry, nor the seemingly endless growth of colonial wealth or imperial power. A hint of social collapse. Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism" is to appear. Mahler, writing his 9th Symphony, agonizes over his reluctant and protracted farewell to tonality. Scriabin does so in his Prometheus. Sibelius in his 4th Symphony

Vienna is the center of this "air of disturbance". Karl Kraus writes his critical essays in "Die Fackel" [The Torch], which he founded and directed until his death. But there is one composer who realizes the need for a radical solution to the stretches of Wagnerian ambiguities to their snapping points. Schoenberg contains them. He writes his second string quartet in which he uses a human voice, a soprano, who sings "I feel air from another planet".



Bernstein will in the first part of the lecture give us examples of Berg's violin concerto and will illustrate Charles Ives' "The Unanswered Question": a composer on the other side of the world who also felt this need to tear away from the tonal restrictions. Thus there will be a dichotomy that will govern music from then unto this day.: i) Tonality and syntactic clarity vs. ii) atonality and syntactic confusion. However, ALL write towards a new semantic richness, to expand music's metaphorical speech and increased espressivity. The second part of the lecture centers on
a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Mr. Bernstein in Mahler's 9th Symphony.





ENJOY!!



Previous Lectures
Lecture No. 4
Lecture No. 3
Lecture No. 2
Lecture No. 1