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Designed to meet the powerful demand for lifelong learning, The Great Courses is an intellectual engaging series of video and audio courses led by the world's best professors and experts in diverse fields such as philosophy, history, literature, science, and the arts. The Great Courses currently maintains a catalog of more than 350 courses delivered by great teachers from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, and more.

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Fine Arts & Music

Every time you look at a work of art or listen to a piece of music, you're indulging in a rich cultural experience that taps directly into what it means to be human. Vividly illustrated and filled with musical excerpts, these courses take you to the heights of fine art and music.

Art History 13, Music 26, Special Sets 0

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Include Sale items only (18)
  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
    Quick Look
    How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition Professor Robert Greenberg
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
    Quick Look
    The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works Professor Robert Greenberg
  • World’s Greatest Paintings
    Quick Look
    World’s Greatest Paintings Professor William Kloss
  • Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance
    Quick Look
    Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance Professor George R. Bent Save up to $310
  • How to Look at and Understand Great Art
    Quick Look
    How to Look at and Understand Great Art Professor Sharon Latchaw Hirsh
  • Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity
    Quick Look
    Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity Professor Stephen Ressler
  • A History of European Art
    Quick Look
    A History of European Art Professor William Kloss
  • Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London
    Quick Look
    Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London Professor Catherine B. Scallen Save up to $215
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
    Quick Look
    Understanding the Fundamentals of Music Professor Robert Greenberg
  • The Cathedral
    Quick Look
    The Cathedral Professor William R. Cook Save up to $215
  • Genius of Michelangelo
    Quick Look
    Genius of Michelangelo Professor William E. Wallace Save up to $310
  • The Concerto
    Quick Look
    The Concerto Professor Robert Greenberg Save up to $310
  • Bach and the High Baroque
    Quick Look
    Bach and the High Baroque Professor Robert Greenberg Save up to $450
  • How to Listen to and Understand Opera
    Quick Look
    How to Listen to and Understand Opera Professor Robert Greenberg Save up to $450
  • Fundamentals of Photography
    Quick Look
    Fundamentals of Photography Joel Sartore
  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
Professor Robert Greenberg
This course can permanently enrich your life. With Professor Robert Greenberg as your teacher, you will hear and understand an entire language of unmatched beauty, genius, and power. Using digitally recorded passages to illustrate his points, Professor Greenberg takes you inside magnificent compositions by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and more. After this course, you will never listen to music the same way again.
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
Professor Robert Greenberg

In The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works, join Great Courses favorite Professor Robert Greenberg as he guides you through 30 works that, in his expert opinion, can be considered among the greatest orchestral works in the history of Western concert music. Rich with detailed musical excerpts, these 32 lectures will open your ears to the profound joy and meaning of landmark creations by Haydn, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and many others.

  • World’s Greatest Paintings
World’s Greatest Paintings
Professor William Kloss
Embark on a compelling tour of some of the most significant paintings in Western art with the 24 richly illustrated lectures of The World's Greatest Paintings. Distinguished art historian and Professor William Kloss reveals a group of works that span the 14th century to the 20th and that—in his expert judgment—rank among the greatest paintings ever made. As you explore one of the supreme legacies of human life, you'll enjoy an unforgettable encounter with daring and sublime works of art.
  • Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance Save Up To $310
Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance
Professor George R. Bent

Explore the life and times of the man whose name is synonymous with inventiveness, curiosity, and creative genius. In Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance, taught by art historian and Professor George R. Bent, you’ll take a powerful and engrossing look at this grand master, the intriguing world he inhabited and shaped, and the legacies he left behind for us. These visually rich 36 lectures will give you fresh insights into Leonardo’s iconic paintings, his important anatomical studies, and his astonishingly prescient visions for machines we now take for granted. But more than that, you’ll experience what it was like to live in Leonardo’s world during the High Renaissance in Italy.

  • How to Look at and Understand Great Art
How to Look at and Understand Great Art
Professor Sharon Latchaw Hirsh
The 36 richly illustrated lectures of How to Look at and Understand Great Art take you on an in-depth exploration of the practical skill of viewing art through the lenses of line, light, perspective, composition, and other crucial elements. Using timeless masterpieces of Western art as well as hands-on studio demonstrations, Professor Sharon Latchaw Hirsh gives you the specific visual and interpretive knowledge you need to enhance your appreciation of great art.
  • Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity
Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity
Professor Stephen Ressler
Experience the engineering genius that makes works such as the Giza pyramids, Brunelleschi's dome, and the Brooklyn Bridge possible with Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity. Delivered by award-winning Professor Stephen Ressler, these 24 lectures take you on a richly illustrated tour that deftly blends history and science to create an unforgettable survey of our world's most remarkable structural masterpieces. This course is a marvelous learning experience that takes you around the world and reveals the stories behind the most famous bridges, churches, skyscrapers, towers, and other structures from thousands of years of history.
  • A History of European Art
A History of European Art
Professor William Kloss
The development of the arts in Europe from the Middle Ages to the modern era is an astonishing record of cultural achievement, from the breathtaking architecture of Gothic cathedrals to the daring visual experiments of the Cubist painters. A History of European Art is your gateway to this visually stunning story. In 48 beautifully illustrated lectures you will encounter all the landmarks you would expect to find in a comprehensive survey of Western art since the Middle Ages.
  • Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London Save Up To $215
Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London
Professor Catherine B. Scallen
Of all the world's great art museums, the National Gallery, London, is the only place where you can truly grasp the breathtaking scope of European painting from the late medieval period through the 19th century. Take a virtual tour of this world-class collection in Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London. In 24 fascinating lectures, noted art scholar Professor Catherine B. Scallen provides a memorable introduction to this remarkable artistic institution and its magnificent masterworks. More than just a gallery tour, this course is also a comprehensive overview of the history of European painting.
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
Professor Robert Greenberg
Professor Robert Greenberg offers a spirited introduction to the mysterious realm of music theory—the complex syntax of structural and instrumental resources that composers draw on. Sidestepping the necessity to read music, these lectures represent a rare opportunity for learning music theory—for understanding the processes of composition. The course will reward you many times over as you find yourself enjoying much deeper connections with the language of music.
  • The Cathedral Save Up To $215
The Cathedral
Professor William R. Cook
Tour the world's most captivating cathedrals from the comfort of your own home with these 24 lavishly illustrated lectures by Professor William R. Cook. An exciting, immersive, and multidimensional learning experience, The Cathedral brings you closer to cathedrals like Notre Dame in Paris and those in Amiens, Chartres, and Canterbury than any on-site tour could hope to do. With high-definition 3-D modeling and imagery, you'll travel around and inside the world's great Gothic cathedrals from fascinating new perspectives.
  • Genius of Michelangelo Save Up To $310
Genius of Michelangelo
Professor William E. Wallace
In The Genius of Michelangelo, internationally recognized Michelangelo expert and award-winning Professor of Art History William E. Wallace gives you a comprehensive perspective on one of history's greatest artists. Drawing on a vast command of artistic knowledge and period detail, these 36 intellectually rewarding and visually dazzling lectures explore the relationship between truth and legend to reveal a groundbreaking new picture of Michelangelo as an artist, a businessman, an aristocrat, and a genius.
  • The Concerto Save Up To $310
The Concerto
Professor Robert Greenberg
A concerto is exciting in ways that no other instrumental music can match. Where a symphony enthralls us with themes that are contrasted, varied, transformed, and developed, a concerto adds the extra dimension of human drama—the exhilaration of a soloist or group of soloists ringing forth against the mass of the orchestra. In this course, Professor Robert Greenberg gives you a guided tour of the concerto from its conception through its radical transformation in the 20th century, including 100 musical samples by more than 60 composers.
  • Bach and the High Baroque Save Up To $450
Bach and the High Baroque
Professor Robert Greenberg
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach fuses emotional power, religious devotion, technical virtuosity, diverse national styles, and sheer genius in ways that are unforgettable, delightful, and moving. Professor Robert Greenberg explains all this and more with compelling insight, deep human sympathy, and puckish wit. Join him, and learn to hear Bach with more pleasure and understanding than ever before.
  • How to Listen to and Understand Opera Save Up To $450
How to Listen to and Understand Opera
Professor Robert Greenberg
For more than 400 years, opera has been one of the most popular performing arts. Professor Robert Greenberg can show you how you can learn to understand, appreciate—even to love—opera in just 32 lectures. With the knowledge of opera from this course, you will understand how opera is a unique marriage of words and music in which the whole is far greater than its parts. You will learn the reasons for opera's enduring popularity. And you will be able to explore in great depth the extraordinary and compelling world of opera.
  • Fundamentals of Photography
Fundamentals of Photography
Joel Sartore

Taking great photographs requires you to "see" as a professional photographer does; to train your eyes using the same fundamental techniques and principles the experts use to create unforgettable images from the grandest (and simplest) of subjects. With Fundamentals of Photography, you'll learn everything you need to know about the art and craft of great photography straight from a professional photographer with more than 30 years of experience. Designed for people at all levels, these 24 lectures are an engaging guide to how photographs work and how to make them work better for you.

  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
  • World’s Greatest Paintings
  • Leonardo da Vinci and the Italian High Renaissance SALE
  • How to Look at and Understand Great Art
  • Understanding the World's Greatest Structures: Science and Innovation from Antiquity to Modernity
  • A History of European Art
  • Museum Masterpieces: The National Gallery, London SALE
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
  • The Cathedral SALE
  • Genius of Michelangelo SALE
  • The Concerto SALE
  • Bach and the High Baroque SALE
  • How to Listen to and Understand Opera SALE
  • Fundamentals of Photography
  • The Symphony
  • From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism SALE
  • Great American Music: Broadway Musicals SALE
  • Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art SALE
  • Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance
  • Dutch Masters: The Age of Rembrandt
  • Symphonies of Beethoven
  • Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre
  • Music of Richard Wagner
  • Beethoven's Piano Sonatas
  • String Quartets of Beethoven
  • Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion
  • Concert Masterworks SALE
  • Chamber Music of Mozart SALE
  • Art of the Northern Renaissance
  • Life and Operas of Verdi
  • Great Masters: Beethoven—His Life and Music
  • Masterworks of American Art SALE
  • Great Masters: Mozart—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Brahms—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Tchaikovsky—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Haydn—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Mahler—His Life and Music
  • Art across the Ages
  • Great Masters: Liszt—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Shostakovich—His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Robert and Clara Schumann—Their Lives and Music
  • Great Masters: Stravinsky—His Life and Music
  • Operas of Mozart
  • A History of European Art & From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism (Set) SALE
  • Leonardo da Vinci & World’s Greatest Paintings
  • Leonardo da Vinci & Genius of Michelangelo
  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music & Understanding the Fundamentals of Music (Set) SALE
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works & Symphonies of Beethoven (Set) SALE
  • Museum Masterpieces: The Metropolitan Museum of Art & The Louvre (Set) SALE
  • How to Look at and Understand Great Art & World’s Greatest Paintings (Set)
  • How to Look Great Art & Understanding Great Structures (Set) SALE
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