Famous Lectures about Music

When I was in my undergrad program, I discovered a book entitled The Unanswered Question by Leonard Berstein.  I found it at a book store, bought it, then discovered that it was actually the text from a lecture Bernstein gave at Harvard University.  I found videos of the actual lecture at my university library and thoroughly enjoyed watching, listening and reading this intellectual discussion of “whither music?”.  As a matter of fact, I made my Theory I class watch the segment that talked about the harmonic series…Berstein was so passionate about what he was presenting and I wanted my class to see a first rate composer talk about the amazing harmonic series!

I think any good composer has to wrestle with the difficult questions of music’s origins, its affects, its meaning, etc.  I find that while my right brain is free to intuitively make choices as I compose, it becomes more informed and educated by my left brain’s discoveries about these difficult questions.  If you have never read or seen Berstein’s presentation, I would highly recommend doing so.

After discovering this treasure in school, I found that Aaron Copland had also been a lecturer at the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture series at Harvard and had delivered his famous “Music and Imagination” lecture in 1952.  This year, I  received this lecture in book form and am loving the intellectual stimulation that many of his points bring.   

So, I decided that I would look to see which other composers have presented lectures on music as part of this series and was so excited to find lectures by Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, Roger Sessions, John Cage, etc.  Here is a list of the musicians that have presented:

1942–Igor Stravinsky  Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons  (I found a site with a free PDF and Kindle download available!)
1952–Paul Hindemith: A Composers World: Horizons and Limitations (another free PDF and Kindle dowload)
1952–Aaron Copland: Music and Imagination (another free PDF and Kindle download)
1961–Carlos Chavez: Musical Thought   
1964–Leo Schrade: Tragedy in the Art of Music 
1970–Roger Sessions: Questions about Music  
1976–Leonard Berstein: The Unanswered Question 
1990–John Cage: I-VI   
1999–Joseph Kerman: Concerto Conversations
2008–Daniel Barenboim: Music Quickens Time

If anyone wants to know what to get me for my birthday, any of these books would be great (I already have Copland, Stravinsky, and Bernstein)! 😉    In the meantime, I’ll be blogging more and more about the thought provoking things in these books and would love to hear any thoughts you have in response. 

Off to read more thought provoking essays on music and composing….