How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition

By: Robert Greenberg, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Robert Greenberg

Length: 36 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Great music is a language unto its own, a means of communication of unmatched beauty and genius. And it has an undeniable power to move us in ways that enrich our lives - provided it is understood.

If you have ever longed to appreciate great concert music, to learn its glorious language and share in its sublime pleasures, the way is now open to you, through this series of 48 wonderful lectures designed to make music accessible to everyone who yearns to know it, regardless of prior training or knowledge. It's a lecture series that will enable you to first grasp music's forms, techniques, and terms - the grammatical elements that make you fluent in its language - and then use that newfound fluency to finally hear and understand what the greatest composers in history are actually saying to us.

And as you learn the gifts given us by nearly every major composer, you'll come to know there is one we share with each of them - a common humanity that lets us finally understand that these were simply people speaking to us, sharing their passion and wanting desperately to be heard. Using digitally recorded musical passages to illustrate his points, Professor Greenberg will take you inside magnificent compositions by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and more. Even if you have listened to many of these illustrative pieces throughout your life - as so many of us have - you will never hear them the same way again after experiencing these lectures.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2006 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2006 The Great Courses

Crack the concert music code with this book!

I was brought up to appreciate music. My fondest childhood memories are of listening to music with my father as he explained what the music meant, who the people were who wrote it, why they wrote what they did, and what the cultural context surrounding the music was. I learned to analyze and appreciate music, but the music I was raised to appreciate was rock music. My father is a child of the 70s; I am child of the 80s. The music I was brought up with was Pink Floyd, Rush, Genesis, et al.

Growing up, I wasn't exposed to concert music and knew nothing about it. I'm a bit of a history buff, so I recognized and appreciated the cultural and historical importance of concert music. That said, I couldn't understand concert music when I heard it. I had no grounding in the forms, knew nothing about the cultural context, and generally had no idea what I was hearing. Concert music sounded like impenetrable alien noise, devoid of form and completely mysterious. It was a language I could not speak.

This course (and other courses from the fantastic Robert Greenberg) changed that all for me. I now have a small but useful command of the vocabulary and grammar of concert music. I understand the forms and can listen actively to what the composer is doing. I can anticipate what the composer "should" be doing based on the form employed and thus recognize and appreciate when these forms are deviated from. I know my minuet-in-trio from my rondo and my ritornello from my sonata. I can hear a piece of classical music and place it roughly in its proper cultural time and place. I can often guess the national origin of a piece of work, and can make pretty good (and sometimes accurate) guesses as to who composed pieces I hear. I can understand, and thus enjoy concert music.

This course will improve your appreciation for music both historical and contemporary. Learning about concert music will deepen your understanding of all music, and will help you grow and evolve. I cannot recommend this course enough. It didn't just entertain me, it improved my life.

A masterwork about masterworks

Would you listen to How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition again? Why?

This course ties together history, people, music, and art. The world of concert music is open to me now; I have a framework and background that makes concert music sound like more than pretty sounds. In the meantime, I learned a lot about European history; fitting the history with the music helps both stick in my head. And I learned a lot about teaching - the structuring of this course is masterful. It returns to the same pieces to show new angles, it weaves individual composers into tapestries of influences and revolutions and evolution of sound.

What does Professor Robert Greenberg bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

This is, indeed, a performance.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I listened to no more than one lecture per day. You need a quiet place or noise-cancelling headphones to hear the music samples properly.

Love this course!

If you could sum up How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition in three words, what would they be?

This course is thorough without being overwhelming. It contains interesting antidotes which give the information personality. The benefit of the audiobook format is being able to listen to the selections of the music being discussed.

What other book might you compare How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition to and why?

This is the first "Great Courses" selection that I've made, but this one has piqued my interest in purchasing other Great Courses.

Which scene was your favorite?

I cannot choose a "favorite" section. There are so many sections that gave me the sense of traveling through time to "witness" the culture and social structure of the period influencing each category of music.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The narrator, Professor Robert Greenberg, is very entertaining. This was important because the course is 33 hours long.

Any additional comments?

The only improvement I would suggest is a companion quiz or exam to test how well I've retained all of the information.

Greenberg is brilliant in this course

Notwithstanding the content, which I thoroughly enjoyed, Greenberg's performance may be the best I've heard in any course. The task of summarizing centuries of musical evolution within 36+ hours is daunting, to say the least, and Greenberg does so admirably, accenting the timeline with highlights of key contributors, liberal use of examples, humor, and a consistent emphasis on how each facet reflects on the evolution of each particular period and musical evolution as a whole. His exposition of how music is reflective of the societal and cultural factors of the time, in conjunction with the personal framework of many of the composers, gives an added depth and perspective on the music which enriches listening to other works away from the course. While I normally gravitate toward courses on quite different subjects, I have been duly converted and already downloaded Greenberg's course on Opera to continue the journey. Only caveat: my Spotify is overloaded with new playlists reflecting the last month of learning.

worth every minute. beautiful.

history, anecdotes stories and music all part or a great discovery of the links in all western music a great time!

Great enlightening listen for every music lover

Great lectures and brilliant narrative performance by the author. Good musical examples. Highly recommended listen!

Robert Vermont passion is infectious

Greenberg is informative and excited about music. The content is accessible to beginners (like me) and fun to learn.

Another Excellent Book

I decided to pick up one “The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works” on a whim. I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” was just as awesome as my first Robert Greenberg book. He is wildly interesting to listen to, engaging and informative. I have learned so much about music and interesting music history facts. The author makes the topic compelling. His enthusiasm for the top is abundantly apparent; a truly special teacher.

Greenberg is a legend

Robert Greenberg keeps your attention, often hilariously, while entertaining with history and context of many notable works

Very entertaining and informative

Great material presented in the book.
Very passionate and vivid reading performance! It is a great way to learn about European concert music.