Leonard Bernstein explained the questions of what is music and what is the meaning given in the piece by giving examples in Young People's Concerts in 1958.He suppors that ıt’s about notes.Stories aren’t what music means at all.Music is never about anything;music just is.Music is notes,beautiful notes and sounds put together in such a way that we get pleasure out of listening to them.Notes don’t tell you any ideas , they are about music.Notes aren’t like words at all.All music is is a combination of all put together according to a plan is to put the sounds together with rhythms and different instruments and voices or whatever in such a way that what finally comes out is exciting or fun or touching or interesting or all of those together. It has a musical meaning which has nothing to do with any stories or pictures or anything like that.
"Music means,it’s not the story." is a great quote from Leonard Bernstein.
He thinks that There are million reasons, they’re all musical reasons. That’s the main point of what does music mean.The meaning is only the excitement of that rhythm.Another reason it’s exciting is that it has a mighty fine tune.
It’s like a question and answer. It has all the excitement and triumph of winning an argument, it makes you feel good .Music is exciting because it was written to be exciting.The name doesn’t matter about meanings. The music would still have been just as good or just as bad as it is without any story at all.No matter what it’s about it’s still exciting because the music is exciting and for no other reason.
So, what is the meaning of music according to Bernstein?By listening to some music that doesn’t try to tell a story, but only tries to paint a picture in a general sort of way,or to describe an atmosphere;the look of something;the feel of something.The picture that goes with music goes with it only because the composer says so. But it’s not really a part of the music. It’s extra.
Another reason is emotions and feelings.He guess most music is like that, and the better it is the more it will make you feel those emotions that the composer felt when he was writing it.It’s the way it makes you feel when you hear it.
Finally,If it tells us something not a story or a picture but a feeling,if it makes us change inside and have all those different good feelings that music can make you have, then you’re understanding it.Because those feelings aren’t like the stories of the pictures. They’re not extra, they’re not outside the music, belong to the music. They’re what music is about. And the most wonderful thing of all is that there’s no limit to the different kinds of feelings music can make you have. And some of those feelings are so special and so deep that they can’t even be described in words.We have feelings that are so deep and so special that we have no words for them, and that’s where music is so marvelous.Because music names them for us,only in notes instead of in words.It’s all in the way music moves.The meaning of music is in the music.It’s in the melodies and the rhythms and the harmonies and the way it’s orchestrated and most important of all in the what it develops itself.Music has its own meanings right there for you to find inside the music itself and you don’t need any stories or any pictures to tell you what it is. If you like music at all,you’ll find out the meanings for yourselves just by listening to it.
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