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

By: Robert Greenberg, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Robert Greenberg
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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.

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

What listeners say about How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition

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Truly superb

Robert Greenberg never fails to educate, entertain, or impress. A masterwork for anyone interested in music.

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1 person found this helpful

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Wow!

I'm not a music student, I just wanted to better understand the music that I listen to.

I wasn't prepared for Greenberg's unpretentious and amazingly enthusiastic presentation! Sometimes it was over my head, but Greenberg always came back later and then it made sense!

Covers a huge range, baroque, "classical", opera... Loved it all!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

great book

A long time ago, at school, I was going to do the history of music. I was the only one in that year that wanted to do music. The class was withdrawn. This course is exactly what what I was hoping to do. Well presented and informative, this course is excellent. If you have ever wanted to analyse music this is the book to listen to.

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Outstanding in every way

This course is a truly unique insight into the structure and meaning of a variety of works over hundreds of years. Prof Greenburg, I feel I should call him Bob, is the knowledgeable, enthusiastic, unpretentiousness guide who explains the composer and works in the context of their time and personal life in language that is easy to understand. There are detailed notes that can be referred to as well. Cannot recommend this highly enough. I'm am about to start my Greenburg course, 30 orchestral works. Thank you Bob!

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Brilliant!

This course opened up the world of Western concert music to me. Brilliantly narrated! Recommended!

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Outstanding

This course has provided a long yearned-for foundation of understanding of Classical music for me. Deeply engaging and eye-opening. Couldn’t recommend more highly.

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long but entertaining

A good introduction to a variety of genres to music. I never thought I'd be interested in Opera, but it turns out there is more to it than it seemed. The book goes in chronological order from the beginning until the early 1920's.

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Awesome

Really engaging and worth listening to if you want to understand music in its proper context.

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For all music lovers

Even keen amateurs will learn a lot in this course, interspersed with great musical works spanning millennia.

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very informative

an excellent job, thoroughly enjoyed the book and will definitely keep it in the phone and listen to it again.

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