Music can be appreciated at the level of our senses, of our memory or of our intellect. Our intellect looks for patterns, and longs for universal patterns. Those shared by all mankind.

This 18-minute excerpt from Leonard Bernstein’s “Unanswered Question” lectures at Harvard gives the foundation for an intellectual appreciation of music.

Knowing this foundation is important at a time when appreciation of music, it seems, is becoming proportional to how loud it is played by “the one who appreciates”…