How to Listen to and Understand Great Music (lectures 1 -48) 3rd

by Prof Robert Greenberg

Genres: Nonfiction

800 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[January · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition by Professor Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
The Great Courses
36h 35m narrated by Robert Greenberg, 800 pages

Genre: Fine Arts & Music, Music Appreciation

Featuring: Lectures, Western (European) Music, Music As A Mirror, Accompanying PDF Course Guide Book - 298 Pages, What is An Composer, Vocabulary, Concert Vs Pop Music, It's Not Classic, Ancient Music, Lost Music and Technology, Church Music, The Middle Ages, Mass, How Italy Became The Center of European Music, The Mechanics of Instruments, Pitch, Timbre, Notes, Melodies, Motives - Repetition, Sequences & Transformations; Tune, Lyricism, Theme, Homophony, Operas, Song vs Aria, Applause, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Biographies, History, Monarchs, Modern References

Rating as a movie: PG

Songs for the soundtrack: Lots of instrumental pieces, chants, and some mentions of modern artists, like Bruce Springsteen. Tons of Beethoven, and Mozart, I think the composers and songs are listed in the Guide Book.

Books and Authors mentioned: Many mostly about operas

My rating:🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🇮🇹<->🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🎵🎼🎶🎹🎻

My thoughts: 📱2% 47:18 Lecture 2: Souces - The Ancient World and the Early Church - There is a plethora of information it would take me weeks to take notes and dictate, and maybe I'm too lazy.
📱6% 2:17:20 Lecture 4: Introduction to the Renaissance - This is very good, it's a very nice history lesson.
📱10% 3:48:35 Lecture 6: The Madrigal - The musical pieces are a lot longer, some were soothing they were so long. The history outshined the notes for me this session.
📱15% 5:18:35 Lecture 8: Style Features of Baroque-era Music - Oh this history is getting pretty good. The music is great and the history around it is thrilling and dramatic.
📱 25% 9:11:12 Lecture 13: The Oratorio - Lectures 8 through 12 have been the most exciting so far, full of popular instrumentals and opera, which is soothing and why I'm off to bed.
📱27% 9:55:45 Lecture 14: The Lutheran Church Cantata - The last lecture was very informative, I couldn't believe how old and popular Messiah, HWV 56: Part II, no. 44. Chorus: “Hallelujah” by George Frideric Handel was. Now I have a strong urge to listen to "O Come All Ye Faithful/Hallelujah Chorus" by Mariah Carey and Patricia Carey, but I'm going to start my new ebook instead.
📱44% 16:03:19 Lecture 22: Classical-era Form-- Rondo Form - This makes so much sense. I enjoyed listening to the examples of why we have music rules.
📱52% 19:07:53 Lecture 26: The Symphony-- Music for Every Person - This was the entertainment portion of the class. Mozart!
📱75% 27:24:48 Lecture 37: 19th-Century Italian Opera-- Bel Canto Opera - That was very interesting, Mozart was great but I love Beethoven, and his life is so interesting.
📱83% 30:31:07 Lecture 41: The Concert Overture, Part I - Just beautiful. Makes me want to go to the opera.

I think this may have been better if I had the freedom to do a lecture a day or a few a day instead of trying to get this done before Christmas, I did it in 15 days. This was a great account. I found 27 more lectures by this professor but they all seem to expire this year and I don't need the stress, I want my Christmas books, so I'm going to maybe squeeze in one of the 5 Beethovens before the new year. This was fantastic.

Recommend to others: Yes! The Great Courses have all been insightful but this was the best one yet.

[Hans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Score: 3/5 (worth listening once).
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Themes: contextual art, music
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Your milage will vary depending on what you hope to get out of this audiobook. If you hope to better understand the historical context of Western musical periods and the specific tools used by composers over time, this is for you. This is *not* going to make you like musical styles that you didn't like before.

I now have the language to say what I like. I'm a simple man, so I like homophonic textures in small ensembles (concerti and some small orchestral works). I did not like operas, romantic era symphonies, or "modern" concert pieces, and I don't like them any better now that I better understand terms like "polyphony", "musical expressionism", and "dissonance".

So the audiobook succeeded in what it set out to do. That said, it is simply too long to merit a higher score, because that implies I would revisit the book and it really is too dense and too long for that (4/5 would mean parts worth listening again).

[Alvin Dulcan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. I think that when I get my second hip replaced, that I will listen to this. And I will also listen to another Great Courses audio, Language Families of the World. I listened to the Music audio when I had my first hip replaced on May 25, 2017. Thank you Mark Kalow for the suggestion. Both of these were great lecturers, creative, funny, and informative.
I will also check out other great courses. These courses were originally over $100 and now on Audible are $15.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I still don't understand all this "great music" (Schonberg's Pierrot Lunaire is just batshit crazy) but I do now better understand the differences between, say, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.