The Unanswered Question Quotes

“I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“Why are we still here, struggling to go on? We are now face to face with the truly Ultimate Ambiguity which is the human spirit. This is the most fascinating ambiguity of all: that as each of us grows up, the mark of our maturity is that we accept our mortality; and yet we persist in our search for immortality. We may believe it's all transient, even that it's all over; yet we believe a future. We believe. We emerge from a cinema after three hours of the most abject degeneracy in a film such as “La Dolce Vita”, and we emerge on wings, from the sheer creativity of it; we can fly on, to a future. And the same is true after witnessing the hopelessness of “Godot” in the theater, or after the aggressive violence of “The Rite of Spring” in the concert hall. Or even after listening to the bittersweet young cynicism of an album called “Revolver”, we have wings to fly on. We have to believe in that kind of creativity. I know I do. If I didn't, why would I be bothering to give these lectures? Certainly not to make a gratuitous announcement of the Apocalypse. There must be something in us, and in me, that makes me want to continue; and to teach is to believe in continuing. To share with you critical feelings about the past, to try to describe and assess the present—these actions by their very nature imply a firm belief in a future.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“It's evident that with Beethoven the Romantic Revolution had already begun, bringing with it the new Artist, the artist as Priest and Prophet. This new creator had a new self-image: he felt himself possessed of divine rights, of almost Napoleonic powers and liberties — especially the liberty to break rules and make new ones, to invent new forms and concepts, all in the name of greater expressivity. His mission was to lead the way to a new aesthetic world, confident that history would follow his inspirational leadership. And so there exploded onto the scene Byron, Jean Paul, Delacroix, Victor Hugo, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz — all proclaiming new freedoms.

Where music was concerned, the new freedoms affected formal structures, harmonic procedures, instrumental color, melody, rhythm — all of these were part of a new expanding universe, at the center of which lay the artist's personal passions. From the purely phonological point of view, the most striking of these freedoms was the new chromaticism, now employing a vastly enriched palette, and bringing with it the concomitant enrichment of ambiguity. The air was now filled with volcanic, chromatic sparks. More and more the upper partials of the harmonic series were taking on an independence of their own, playing hide-and-seek with their sober diatonic elders, like defiant youngsters in the heyday of revolt.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“But now, as we move forward through the nineteenth century, we're going to find all three strains of ambiguity increasing sharply in both quantity and intensity. By the time the century is finished this epidemic increase will have brought us to Webster's other definition of ambiguity — sheer vagueness. And that's where the aesthetic delights of ambiguity start turning into dangers.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“Only then comes the fourth and last movement, the Adagio, the final farewell. It takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith. This is tonality unashamed, presented in all aspects ranging from the diatonic simplicity of the hymn tune that opens it through every possible chromatic ambiguity. It's also a passionate prayer, moving from one climax to another, each more searing than the last. But there are no solutions. And between these surges of prayer there is intermittently a sudden coolness, a wide-spaced transparency, like an icy burning — a Zen-like immobility of pure meditation. This is a whole other world of prayer, of egoless acceptance. But again, there are no solutions. "Heftig ausbrechend!" he writes, as again the despairing chorale breaks out with greatly magnified intensity. This is the dual Mahler, flinging himself back into his burning Christian prayer, then again freezing into his Eastern one. This vacillation is his final duality. In the very last return of the hymn he is close to prostration; it is all he can give in prayer, a sobbing, sacrificial last try. But suddenly this climax fails, unachieved — the one that might have worked, that might have brought solutions. This last desperate reach falls short of its goal, subsides into a hint of resignation, then another hint, then into resignation itself.

And so we come to the final incredible page. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying: Adagissimo, he writes, the slowest possible musical direction; and then langsam (slow), ersterbend (dying away), zögernd (hesitat-ing); and as if all those were not enough to indicate the near stoppage of time, he adds äusserst langsam (extremely slow) in the very last bars. It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission. And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two-then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one ... none. We are half in love with easeful death ... now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain ... And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“...music has intrinsic meanings of its own, which are not to be confused with specific feelings or moods, and certainly not with pictorial impressions or stories. These intrinsic musical meanings are generated by a constant stream of metaphors, all of which are forms of poetic transformations.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“Every once in a while during the preparation of these lectures, I find myself asking — and others asking me — what's the relevance of all this musico-linguistics? Can it lead us to an answer of Charles Ives' Unanswered Question — whither music? — and even if it eventually can, does it matter? The world totters, governments crumble, and we are poring over musical phonology, and now syntax. Isn't it a flagrant case of elitism?

Well, in a way it is; certainly not elitism of class — economic, social, or ethnic — but of curiosity, that special, inquiring quality of the intelligence. And it was ever thus. But these days, the search for meaning-through-beauty and vice versa becomes even more important as each day mediocrity and art-mongering increasingly uglify our lives; and the day when this search for John Keats' truth-beauty ideal becomes irrelevant, then we can all shut up and go back to our caves. Meanwhile, to use that unfortunate word again, it is thoroughly relevant; and I as a musician feel that there has to be a way of speaking about music with intelligent but nonprofessional music lovers who don't know a stretto from a diminished fifth; and the best way I have found so far is by setting up a working analogy with language, since language is something everyone shares and uses and knows about.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“We are now face to face with the truly Ultimate Ambiguity which is the human spirit. This is the most fascinating ambiguity of all: that as each of us grows up, the mark of our maturity is that we accept our mortality; and yet we persist in our search for immortality. We may believe it's all transient, even that it's all over; yet we believe a future. We believe. We emerge from a cinema after three hours of the most abject degeneracy in a film such as ''La Dolce Vita,'' and we emerge on wings, from the sheer creativity of it; we can fly on, to a future. And the same is true after witnessing the hopelessness of ''Godot'' in the theater, or after the aggressive violence of ''The Rite of Spring'' in the concert hall. Or even after listening to the bittersweet young cynicism of an album called ''Revolver,'' we have wings to fly on.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“A huszadik század kezdetétől fogva rosszul megírt dráma volt. I. felvonás: kapzsiság és képmutatás népirtó háborúhoz vezet; háború utáni igazságtalanság és hisztéria; fellendülés; összeomlás, totalitarianizmus. II. felvonás: kapzsiság és képmutatás népirtó háborúhoz vezet; háború utáni igazságtalanság és hisztéria; fellendülés; összeomlás, totalitarianizmus. III. felvonás: kapzsiság és képmutatás – nem merem folytatni. És mik voltak az ellenmérgek? Logikai pozitivizmus, egzisztencializmus, száguldó technológia, űrhajózás, kételkedés a valóságban, és általános jólnevelt paranoia, az utóbbi időben kiállítási tárgyként Washington legmagasabb posztjain. És személyes ellenmérgeink: együttcsaholás, kábítószer, szubkultúrák és ellenkultúrák, bekapcsolódás, kikapcsolódás. Helybenjárás és pénzhajhászás. Új vallásos mozgalmak rohama guruizmustól Billy Grahamizmusig. És új művészeti mozgalmak rohama, konkrét költészettől John Cage csendjeiig. Katarzis itt, purgatórium ott. És mindez egy jegyben, a planetáris halál angyalának jegyében.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“Miért vagyunk még itt, küzdve a továbbhaladásért? Most kerültünk szemtől szembe az igazi végső kétértelműséggel, ez pedig maga az emberi szellem. Mind közül a legizgalmasabb kétértelműség: hogy amint felnövünk, érettségünk jele halandó voltunk elfogadása; és mégis makacsul továbbkeressük a halhatatlanságot. Hihetjük, hogy minden mulandó, még az is, hogy mindennek vége; mégis hiszünk a jövőben. Hiszünk. Kijövünk a moziból a legnyomorultabb romlottság három órája után egy olyan filmben, amilyen a Dolce Vita, és szárnyalva jövünk ki, puszta alkotókészségén lelkesülve; tovább tudunk röpülni a jövő felé. És ugyanezt érezzük, miután tanúi voltunk Godot reménytelenségének a színházban, vagy a Sacre [du Printemps] agresszív vadságának a hangversenyteremben. Sőt a „Revolver” című album keserédes ifjonti cinizmusának hallatán is – tovább szárnyalhatunk. Hinnünk kell az ilyen alkotóerőben. Én mindenesetre hiszek. Ha nem tenném, miért bajlódnék ezekkel az előadásokkal? Semmiképp sem azért, hogy ingyen reklámot csináljak az Apokalipszisnek. Valaminek lennie kell bennünk, bennem, ami arra késztet, hogy akarjam a folytatást; a tanítás hit a folytatásban. Hogy megosztom Önökkel kritikai érzéseimet a múltról, hogy megpróbálom leírni és megítélni a jelent – alaptermészeténél fogva mindebben a jövőbe vetett szilárd hit rejlik.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“lőadásaim előkészítése során minduntalan kérdezgettem magam – és kérdeztek mások is –, mi a jelentősége ennek az egész muziko-lingvisztikának? Hozzásegíthet-e Charles Ives megválaszolatlan kérdésének megválaszolásához – hová tart a zene? És ha igen, számít az? A világ inog, kormányok roppannak össze, mi meg itt zenei fonológiával, most pedig mondattannal pepecselünk. Nem az elitizmus botrányos esete ez?
Nos, a maga módján az; de bizonyosan nem valamely osztály gazdasági, társadalmi vagy néprajzi elitizmusa, hanem a kíváncsiságé, az értelem e sajátos fürkésző szelleméé. Az pedig öröktől való. Csakhogy napjainkban a szépség-adta-értelem és értelem-adta-szépség kutatása még fontosabbá válik, hiszen nap mint nap középszerűség és művészet-kufárkodás csúfítja el életünket; és azon a napon, amelyen John Keats igazság-szépség ideáljának ez a keresése érdektelenné válik, valamennyien visszahúzódhatunk és bezárkózhatunk barlangunkba.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“A huszadik század kezdetétől fogva rosszul megírt dráma volt.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“És hiszem Keatsszel, hogy a föld költészete véget mindaddig nem lel, amíg a telet tavasz követi, és van ember, aki észleli.
Hiszem, hogy ebből a földből olyan zene sarjad, amely forrásai természeténél fogva tonális.”
― Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard