The Unanswered Question (lecture series)

The Unanswered Question is a lecture series given by Leonard Bernstein in the fall of 1973. This series of six lectures was a component of Bernstein's duties as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry for the 1972/73 academic year at Harvard University, and is therefore often referred to as the Norton Lectures. The lectures were both recorded on video and printed as a book, titled The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. During his year as visiting professor at Harvard University, Leonard Bernstein had various duties, such as being in residence and advising students, but historically the most significant of these was to deliver a series of lectures. This series comprised six lectures on music, which cumulatively took the title of a work by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. Bernstein drew analogies to other disciplines, such as poetry, aesthetics, and especially linguistics, hoping to make these lectures accessible to an audience with limited or no musical experience, while maintaining an intelligent level of discourse. As the lectures were postponed from the spring semester of 1973 to the fall semester of the same year, Bernstein's visiting professorship lasted three semesters instead of the intended year. Several factors contributed to the postponement. First, having attended Harvard as an undergraduate himself – a point he stresses heavily in his first lecture – and following such renowned lecturers as Stravinsky, Copland, and Hindemith, the task at hand seemed monumental. His daughter, Jamie Bernstein, later recounted: "Ambitious? Oh, yes! Was he in over his head? Completely!" Second, Bernstein had accepted commissions in addition to the Norton Lectures, including those of Dybbuk and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which distracted him greatly from his work at Harvard. And third, Humphrey Burton, Bernstein's leading biographer, adds Bernstein had too much fun pretending to be a student again. With the help of Mary Ahern, Thomas Cothran, and members of the Harvard Staff, Bernstein finally completed the script by October 1973.