#77 overall
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music
The Great Courses
6 recommenders · 6 threads · recommended in 4 years, 2017–2021 · score 6.0
A Great Courses lecture series by Robert Greenberg, a composer and professor, teaching listeners how to understand and appreciate Western classical music across its major periods and forms.
Commenters call it an excellent, accessible introduction to classical music that is rich in detail yet fun to follow.
Humanities & Social Sciencebeginnerpaidvideo lectures#classical music#music appreciation#greenberg#western art music#listening
Recommendations by year
20062026
"How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" by Great Courses is really good. The lectures are by a professor/composer.
Forget about consistency or naming conventions. But you'll get a lot more out of the listening experience once you know a bit about different composers from different periods: baroque, classical (talk about confusing!), romantic, contemporary. Now when I dial the classic radio station I can often tell the period and even the composer even if I've never heard the piece before. Fun :)
An excellent introduction to this topic is a lecture series called “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music” by Robert Greenberg.
It’s very rich in detail but Greenberg also makes it accessible and fun.
It’s available for cheap on audible and from “the great courses”.
I’ll second his courses. Went through his Listen to and Understand Great Music course on The Great Courses through Audible.
To learn to appreciate concert music I can warmly recommend the Great Courses’ How to Listen to and Understand Great Music: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-to-listen-to-and...
I exclusively listen to The Great Courses courses on Audible. They're usually 20+ hours long, expensive but can be redeemed with a credit, and high quality.
They have everything - music (Greenberg's How to Listen to and Understand Music is a classic), history, literature, and even self help or improvement.
The Great Courses has its own subscription service which includes their video courses (many good ones on art history!), but it's a very amateur execution. The website and app are very poorly written, presented, and optimized.
Good question. I've listened to "How to Listen to and Understand Great Music" from The Great Courses [1], and that did help me appreciate and enjoy classical music. Doesn't cover jazz, though. An equivalent for jazz would be great.
They do in fact have a course "Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion", and it's only 8 x 37 minutes. I haven't listened to it, but from my experience with their courses, I'd recommend it (though don't buy it at the full price on their website, wait for a sale or check amazon/audible/...)
[1] http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-to-listen-to-and-...
[2] http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/elements-of-jazz-from...