The Modern Scholar: Understanding the Fundamentals of Classical Music

The Modern Scholar: Ideas that Shaped Mankind

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 12 mins)
• By Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Ideas That Shaped Mankind flows from internationally respected historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto's views on the notion that man's capacity to produce ideas in itself brings about sweeping changes in the world. This ability, seen most profoundly in individual, startling moments of genius - or equally startling moments of chance - is what separates humans from the animals and allows humans to re-imagine the world in ever more complex designs.

The Modern Scholar: Shakespeare: The Seven Major Tragedies

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 11 mins)
• By Harold Bloom

Shakespeare's seven great tragedies contain unmistakable elements that set them apart from any other plays ever written. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare embodied in the character of Juliet the world's most impressive representation ever of a woman in love. With Julius Caesar, the great playwright produced a drama of astonishing and perpetual relevance.

The Modern Scholar: Masterpieces of Western Music

• UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 43 mins)
• By Jeffrey Lependorf
• Narrated By Jeffrey Lependorf

This lecture series focuses on the very best of Western music, and as we progress through these lectures, the following are two important questions that we will seek to answer as we examine the various musical selections: What makes these works masterpieces? Why highlight these works?

The History of Classical Music

• UNABRIDGED (5 hrs and 12 mins)
• By Richard Fawkes
• Narrated By Robert Powell

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions.

Also available: The History of Opera.

The Modern Scholar: Tolkien and the West: Recovering the Lost Tradition of Europe

• ORIGINAL (5 hrs and 15 mins)
• By Michael Drout

The works of J.R.R. Tolkien are quite possibly the most widely read pieces of literature written in the 20th century. But as Professor Michael Drout illuminates in this engaging course of lectures, Tolkien's writings are built upon a centuries-old literary tradition that developed in Europe and is quite uniquely Western in its outlook and style. Drout explores how that tradition still resonates with us to this day, even if many Modernist critics would argue otherwise. He begins the course with the allegory of a tower....