Nothing in the world opens a subject up quite like an excellent teacher. And in The Infinite Variety of Music, readers gain access to one of the greatest musical educators of all time: Leonard Bernstein. A towering figure in American music, Bernstein was not only a prolific composer and conductor but also a passionate teacher who dedicated himself to making classical music accessible to all. This book is a treasure trove of his wisdom, featuring a variety of materials—from lecture scripts and guided analyses to essays and a classical-style dialogue.

What makes it even more remarkable is the multimedia experience it offers: for every script in the book, there is a corresponding, freely available video where Bernstein brings the music to life with his voice, his piano, and his orchestra. Together, these resources make The Infinite Variety of Music an indispensable guide for anyone eager to deepen their understanding of classical music.

I have many times been frustrated with the difficulty of studying music. One can read music with the best of them and still be stymied by the fact that notes on a stave are fundamentally different from those same notes played by an orchestra. This gets to the very foundations of a musical education. How can one learn the advantages of a particular note or rhythm if they are not being played for them?

That is precisely the advantage of this book: here you have the words themselves alongside the black and white staves which make up the visual component of music, but read in conjunction with the original telecasts (all of which are available for free on YouTube), the words and notes come to life.

When Mr. Bernstein, in the third chapter, teaches you about the differences between rhythm and meter and has recourse to certain iambs of Shakespeare, one need not be able to read the specialized punctuation used to show stresses in the book—you can hear the natural progression from word, to beat, to orchestration as the composer himself performs each of these evolutions.

Reading through The Infinite Variety of Music, I was struck by what a deep gift it is to give someone a musical education they previously lacked the words to describe. This gift is certainly true of the early chapters where Mr. Bernstein discusses the impact of jazz and the inheritance of Mozart, but it is more keenly felt in the analyses that populate the end of the book.

With these texts (along with their accompanying audio), we are truly given a gem from posterity. Having read along with Mr. Bernstein as he examines Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, I now feel that I understand that symphony infinitely better and at a level of depth fundamentally inaccessible to me beforehand.

And to understand something—even to have the keys to understanding something—is to forever possess it. So what a gift then! These are not trifling things; Beethoven’s 3rd, Tchaikovsky’s 6th, Brahms’ 4th—these are enduring triumphs of the age of classical music, and it is only now, after being introduced to them through the eyes and ears of Mr. Bernstein, that I finally feel that I, in some part, possess them in that intimate way that comes with glimpsing the noumenal core of a thing.

The essays and dialogue that accompany these scores are not without value, of course. Mr. Bernstein addresses the philosophy and practice of American music with a degree of insight and erudition that few but the highest-level practitioners could hope to achieve. However, reading through these more academic works made me all the more keenly feel the advantage of having his voice and, more importantly, his piano to demonstrate the concepts he referenced.

Mr. Bernstein was a true American treasure, to be sure, but it is only when armed with his words and his voice and his orchestra that the full value of The Infinite Variety of Music is brought to bear.

– Matt Young