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

A delightful survey taught with gusto

I had first listened to an earlier version of this course on CDs nearly 20 years ago. Professor Greenberg has great enthusiasm and shares his deep love for music in a way that gently trains our ears to hear things we had missed before, it’s like having a great French chef share his secrets and favorite dishes. Brava and grazie!

Great cource, indeed...

This course helps to listen to and understand music.
I learned a lot about music and about the people who wrote and influenced it. So I highly recommend this to anyone who loves or wants to love great music.
And let me also share my thoughts about Roberto Monteverdi (Robert Greenberg :D). HE IS AMAZING. His way of teaching is fantastic. I wish all my lecturers had such a passion and respect for their subjects.

Fantastic!

everything about this is great! The lecturer is easily the best I've ever heard on any of the Great Courses.

Fabulous!! The narrator was excellent!

the narrator made the content easy to learn, understand and listen to. I hope he makes more titles. He opened up a whole new world of masters and masterpiece music to me!

An Amazing Journey Thru Music History

Thank you Dr Greenburg for sharing your love for and knowledge of music, music history and explaining the forms, ideas, and theories. You make it so much fun! You are a wordsmith and this lecture is so wonderfully prepared and presented. I look forward to listening to some of your music and many more of your delightful lectures, including this one- again!
JSelway

Dr. Greenberg is knowledgeable and hilarious!

I was a music major in college and absolutely love listening to Dr. Bob's music courses to keep my music brain sharp!
I love his perspective, his breadth of knowledge about world history, art, literature, and current events. My kids love to listen with me and also find his composer stories riveting and hilarious. He is oft quoted in our house.
This particular course is a wonderful overview of history from early Greek music to atonal 20th century and everything I'm between.

It Doesn't Get Any Better!

I've spent the last four weeks immersed in this Great Course. I feel like I am coming away a changed, better person--enlightened, with my interest in classical music rekindled. I took an elective course in college many years ago, music listening, but I haven't experienced this type of music since then, with very few exceptions. This course changed all that.

Professor Greenberg is simply amazing. I feel really privileged to have the chance to listen to his 48 lectures. He is sharp as a tack--brilliant, actually. And he brings to it such enthusiasm and such a love of music! Add to this a sharp sense of humor that is ever-present and which gave me so many little bursts of laughter through out this marathon listen.

To add to the enjoyment of listening to great music excerpts, Professor Greenberg tells anecdotes of the individual composers' lives. This made them come alive for me--they were not just names to associate with music but actual people struggling with life like all of us. Very colorful people, indeed. How can I ever forget the story of Hector Berlioz' lusting romance with his "Henriette?" How can I not want to listen to the music of Liszt after learning his story?

Greenberg has succeeded here. I strongly recommended this audiobook if you want to reignite your interest in great music. It is educational but also pure fun!

One of the best Great Courses out there!

I have over 50 Teaching Company courses and this course is one the best. I'd rank it in the top 5 of all the TeachCo courses I have taken. Both educational and entertaining (frequently, downright funny), the course offers a broad survey of Western music starting in the Middle Ages up through the early 20th century.

I had listened to several of Professor Greenberg's other courses prior this one, and all of them are good. As a speaker, he has an engaging and accessible style, yet he is still able to deliver the pedagogic goods via inventive analogies and repetition, as needed, without making it feel dull or like you're in a classroom. (Or, if you are in classroom, it's like your favorite teacher of all-time.)

If you are interested in music and haven't experienced one of Professor Greenberg's courses, this is be a good one to start with because it will give you an idea of where you might like to dive deeper. I did it backwards, listening to some specific courses first (as an aside, the course on Bach is fantastic!) and then trying this survey course, but wish I had started with this one. Even as a survey, it is expansive - (48) 45-minute lectures - and greatly furthered my understanding of music.

This is just fantastic

Audio is the perfect format for this learning experience, and Greenberg is the perfect instructor. If you have any interest in Classical music, or desire to learn more about it, this is a very entertaining and enlightening listen.
I’ve listened to more than 600 Audible titles over the years, and I’m usually too lazy to bother to rate them, let alone write a review, but this one deserves special praise.

Outstanding. 3rd times' a charm!

Greenberg is brilliant, and I'm looking forward to his other programs in the series (of which there are many). Five stars - a full house - across the board.