Broaden Your Horizons

A manageable self-study program

Sometime decades ago, I had the pleasure of encountering Leonard Bernstein’s series of lectures at Harvard, “The Unanswered Question.” It may have been on video, it may have been in book form, it may have been on long-playing 33 rpm record albums; whatever the format, Bernstein’s masterful teaching style combined his ideas on musical tonality (or lack of same) plus linguistic theory as expounded by Noam Chomsky into a mixture both erudite and understandable.

Bernstein was fulfilling his role as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry for 1973-1974, tasked with the responsibility of delivering six lectures at Harvard. The Norton Lectures have graced the Boston cultural scene for almost 100 years now, with attendance open to all.

It comes as no surprise that, at least right now, YouTube has videos of all six of Bernstein’s lectures. I’m including links to all of them here so that you can use this post as your anchor should you wish to visit (or revisit) the entire series. While some knowledge of and love for classical music on your part will enhance your appreciation, let me note that the Norton lectures, by design, appeal to the intellectually curious, who may have heard of Leonard Bernstein, but know little if anything about composers like Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, key figures in Bernstein’s presentation.

Only once have I availed myself of the opportunity to attend a full series of Norton lectures in person, that being in 2006-2007, when Daniel Barenboim, pianist, conductor, and staunch supporter of joint musical endeavors between Israelis and Palestinians, delivered a series called “Sound and Thought.” Like most of the Norton lecturers, Barenboim included (and in his case expanded upon) ideas from the lectures in his book Music Quickens Time. In his prelude, Barenboim notes:

This is not a book for musicians, nor is it one for non-musicians, but rather for the curious mind that wishes to discover the parallels between music and life and the wisdom that becomes audible to the thinking ear.

As I noted earlier when discussing Bernstein’s lectures, Barenboim is making the same point: what he has to say should be of interest to anyone with a curious mind. So, here’s a suggestion: Given that the vast majority of the Norton lecture series are available in book form, and given that poets, painters, novelists, filmmakers, critics, composers, and playwrights have been among the honorees, why not seek these books out, no matter the topic?

It will take you many (hopefully pleasurable) hours to watch all six Bernstein lectures, but should you seek out other Norton lecture books, they tend to be relatively modest in size, albeit rich in ideas. Wikipedia’s entry for the Norton lectures includes a handy list of all the honorees, including which series exist in book form. I’ve taken my own advice just this week, withdrawing Polish poet and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milocz’s book The Witness of Poetry (116 pages) from my library, which contains his 1981-1982 Norton lectures. Should you take me up on my suggestion, I invite you to use the comment section below to share what you read and what you thought.