Listening to Great Music

“Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man” - E. M. Forster

My latest commuting CD lecture series has been, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, by Robert Greenberg and the Teaching Company. In the span of 48 CDs the instructor explains Western Music from Ancient Greece to the 1920’s. It was fun listening to Gregorian Chants and Madrigals – these forms are rarely performed today. Then Baroque (Bach), Classical (Mozart), Romantics (Beethoven), and Modern (Debussy, Mahler). While enjoyable, I wish there was more music and less of the instructor’s opinions – his comments, while amusing, were all too frequent. I also suspect that the Teaching Company had to pay a licensing fee for each musical piece used. So the same song snippets (like the opening of Beethoven’s 5th) were used over and over again to reduce the total number of licenses paid.

One of the instructor’s best lessons was comparing symphony music to baseball. There’s a lot we take for granted when we watch baseball. There will be 9 innings (usually), each inning has both teams at bat, they stay at bat until three outs, and an out can be 3 strikes, tagged at base or a caught ball.

Likewise true Classical music (from the Classic era, 1750 to 1825) has a structure, as do the pieces from the older Baroque period. The Romantic composers like Beethoven expressed their individuality by modifying and playing games with the “official” structure. Modern composers go even further and compose anything they want with little regard to "rules".

For example, the Symphony began as the Overture to Italian Operas. The Germans/Austrians standardized it in the 18th and 19th centuries as a performance in four parts:

1. An opening fast piece (Allegro), usually in sonata form.
2. A slow movement (Andante or Largo)
3. A dance movement like a slow 3-beat Minuet and trio; later changed to a fast 3-beat (Scherzo) by Beethoven
4. A faster finale in sonata–rondo form

A sonata form is like a mini-opera: there is an optional introduction (Overture), then two themes are introduced in the Exposition (Act 1), the themes battle and change in the Development section (Act 2), and there is a final resolution of the themes in the Recapitulation (Act 3). There is also typically a finale called the Coda.

Likewise there are rules for Minuet and trio, Rondo and everything else.

Bottom Line

If you find Classical Music confusing, then I highly recommend this lecture series. It will teach you what to listen for and what to expect in symphony music. The cost is $95 to download the audio or $180 for DVDs you can watch on TV. My cost was zero as I borrowed these from our local library system.