In 1973 Bernstein did a pretty amazing series of lectures for Harvard University. They're beautiful elementary lectures on music theory. Some of the things he says are a little off-kilter and don't quite work (like his definition of poetry in a later lecture), but as someone who knows FUCK ALL about musical theory, some shit here was mindblowing.

I've only watched the first three, but they're all really neat and informative. I'm gonna be watching the rest of them in the coming weeks-- and another friend of mine pointed me in the direction of EVEN MORE Bernstein lectures, these ones about opera, and aonther called "Why Beethoven?"!

On some level I never really got the imperative for a lot of musicians and composers to make sure music is as abstract and "intrinsically musical" as possible, as if outside reference was some form of sin. I KIND OF get it more now, but another question arose which is wondering if people who are really all about that aspect of music, pure-music, I wonder if they are also fans of abstract art-- pure colours, pure lines, pure composition. Bernstein seems like the type who would like Pollock or Newman and stuff. Gould probably more of a Lee Krasner type.

If you're not familiar with Bernstein outside of west side story, he was also a really accomplished conductor of classical music (His recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony is my favourite one (suck it, Furtwangler)). Here's THE BEST recording of the piece that he named those lectures after, Charles Ives's "The Unanswered Question"

And also he wrote actual OPERAS not just musical theatre. One that's growing to be one of my favourites for how simple, human, and deceptively tragic it is, is a short he wrote in the 1950s called Trouble in Tahiti. It's about suburbia and marriage and "the real america" past the glitz and peroxide smiles of the time. It's all up on youtube in parts, but the production goes a little stock-footage happy. Performed well, sometimes questionable direction.

He later expanded it into a full length 3 act opera in the 1980s called A Quiet Place, where act 1 and 2 take place int he 1980s, and act 2 is an extended flashback into the 1950s. I NEED TO FIND A RECORDING OF IT.