Leonard Bernstein - The Harvard Lectures

This is Not Just a Sentimental Anecdote

From this Time

But How do we Investigate

Now You Can See

Universality is a Big Word

Other Linguists

I Began by Imagining Myself

Well, Then I Thought

Let's Make a Simple Analogy

Maybe Even a Divine One

But Where do these Notes Come from?

This Acoustical Phenomenon

All These Upper Notes

The First Overtone

But More of that Later

But Let's Not Make the Mistake

And that's how the Tempered Clavichord

Now this is a Substantive Universal

But Let's be Careful

And there is Always that Blue Note

But Even these Twelve Tones

I Trust You Realize

And Again Comes a Great Leap

Now this Means

This Is Not to Say that There Were No Drastic Changes

But Meanwhile we are Still in the Golden Age

So, we're in the Midst of a Chromatic Adventure

And All by Those Progressions

Now, I Must Point Out

Do you Realize

I Suppose What Chomsky is Really After

So, Let's Pull Up Our Socks

All Right, Let's Try Another One

Why Am I Taking Your Time

Well Then

I Think it Follows

But First, What are These Principles

Tranformational Grammar

But Now Just Think of that Sentence

Since this is not a Linguistics Class

Take the Passive Transformation

Well, it hasn't Brought us There

Good - Now Just as Three Notes are Linked Together

Now let's Go Back

Now We Are Ready

Now I Wanna Take You

Well, Transformation, Deletion, Embedding, Pronominalization

I Am Sure I Don't Have to Trouble

Here I Go

I Have Asked Myself

I Became so Fascinated

Let's Take one Such Utterance

Now Imagine

Now Let's See

Mozart's G Minor Symphony

Now Our Job is

That Introductory Accompaniment

What Does this Three-Note Design Mean

The Reason I Pick Symmetry

Now From Here On

And Once Again, We Are Back

By Far the Chief Transformational Principle

You See, One of the Great Failings

Most People Hearing Mozart's Opening

So What Your Ask

And if You are Still not Convinced

These Ambiguities

For Instance, in this Same First Movement

So All these Syntactic Transformations of the Same Material

He Talks About this Sonnet

Because Now it's Time

But Now Let's Listen to

Listen to the Whole Exposition

Development Coming Up

The Circle of Fifths Again

And That Was all One Single Sentence

A Linguist Would Say

Well, I Replied, Chomsky Would Say

Of Course, That Last Metaphorical Leap

Terrific, Said My Blonde Inquisitor

In Fact, When You Think of the Number

All Right, First Let's Look Briefly

Playing, That's the Word

But Does This Stravinskian Game Concept

There Are Three Specific Ways

Now, Having Defined My Usages of Metaphor

And Here We Are in Trouble

Are We Feeling What Beethoven Supposedly Felt

We Will Never Know

Now, If We Accept This General Idea

In Our Last Lecture

We All Recognize Antithesis

It Can And It Does

And Again, as in the Poem

In Fact, it Has Been Authoritatively Suggested

We Can Expand the Idea

What Do You Suppose

What' Seriously Striking

So Why the Pastorale on this Lecture

Let's Begin at the Beginning

But What of the More Obvious Melodic Material

But to Develop How

Now We Have an Insight

But Wait

But Why Were Just Those Two Notes Added

The Metaphor Arises

But in the Ensuing Four Bars

But That's Not the Main Event

Well, That's the Beginning

That's One of the Questions

This Interference of the Two Frequencies

But What Are We to Say

It Is To Be Found

Now That's One Way of Looking

At This Point

Even if You Can Succeed

Similarly, in Our Second Lecture

Then What's the Magic Secret

Enough of Ambiguity

The Irony of All This

But, Mind You

Where Music Was Concerned

Only Think Of

And Chopin Well We Can't Ignore Chopin

And Then, in The Same Little Mazurka

Foolish Questions

Let Me Try to Read You

Listen To This

They Began to Intermingle

The Pivotal Point

So There Is a Dramatic Change

So it is After All Not So Surprising

Now If You Noticed

You See, the Music Is Trying Hard

So That Instant in Musical Time

Now Romeo Is All Stirred Up

Is It, Says Wagner

Every Diminished Seventh Chord

Now the Remarkable Thing Is

And This Is What Gives Tristan

Prelude and Love-Death (From "Tristan and Isolde")

That May be the Slowest Performance

But Ultimately

Poetry Has Begun to Show

And When Debussy

It's Lovely, This Dreaming

For Example, Do You Remember

In Fact, the Ending of this Piece

Let Me Show You Briefly

This New Episode that Proceeds

For Instance, Hardly Have We Had Time

Because the Scale

It's Almost Exactly What Happens

Literally Translated

But Notice, Too, that the Example

Both Works Have Definitive Beginnings

Listen As I Play