The Unanswered Question I : Musical Phonology (1976) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Release, runtime and language

1976 · 105 mins · English

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Directed by

Humphrey Burton

Starring

Leonard Bernstein

A six‑lecture series recorded at Harvard, inspired by Charles Ives’s work The Unanswered Question, explores music through interdisciplinary analogies. Bernstein connects musical ideas to poetry, aesthetics and especially linguistics, aiming to reach listeners with little or no musical background while retaining scholarly depth. He defines phonology—the study of speech sounds—and adapts the concept to music, coining the term “musical phonology.”