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Music Courses

Fine tune your ear for appreciating string quartets, operatic masterpieces, piano sonatas, jazz improvisations, stirring symphonies, and other works of great music.

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	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.
	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.
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.
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.
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.
	The Symphony Professor Robert Greenberg This course brings longtime Teaching Company favorite Professor Robert Greenberg to a 300-year survey of the symphony with the enthusiasm, energy, and breadth of knowledge that are his trademarks. As you explore the evolution and development of this remarkable musical genre, you enjoy musical excerpts from well- known compositions in addition to some that may be new to you, along with enlightening musical and biographical analysis.
Save Up To $215	Great American Music: Broadway Musicals Professor Bill Messenger In Broadway Musicals you get the stories and the music—in expertly played examples, rare recordings of groundbreaking artists, and recorded interviews that take you behind the scenes of some of Broadway's biggest hits and most memorable moments.
	Symphonies of Beethoven Professor Robert Greenberg Almost since their creation, Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies—each one pathbreaking and stunning—have formed the cornerstone of orchestral literature. Viewed from the unique vantage point that Professor Robert Greenberg offers, "The Nine" bear witness to Beethoven’s artistic brilliance as well as the profound and continuing influence of his achievements.
	Music of Richard Wagner Professor Robert Greenberg Join composer and award-winning Professor Robert Greenberg for The Music of Richard Wagner, a highly incisive and in-depth investigation of the life and art of one of the greatest—and most controversial—characters in the pantheon of Western music. These 24 musically rich lectures are an accessible introduction to Wagner's celebrated works, from The Flying Dutchman to Tristan and Isolde to The Ring of the Nibelung. Filled with insights about the man, his music, and his legacy, this course is an extraordinary encounter with art, history, and the dimensions of the human spirit.
	Beethoven's Piano Sonatas Professor Robert Greenberg Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas provide a window into his personal musical development and highlight the piano as an evolving instrument. Professor Robert Greenberg combines analysis of extensive musical excerpts with historical anecdotes, metaphors, and humor to show what goes on inside a musical composition and how Beethoven often broke all former rules to achieve a new, powerful effect.
	String Quartets of Beethoven Professor Robert Greenberg In The String Quartets of Beethoven, award-winning composer and celebrated Great Courses Professor Robert Greenberg guides you through the power and beauty of the maestro's 16 quartets for two violins, viola, and cello. This captivating new course is a rare opportunity for you to grasp the musical riches and spiritual greatness of the quartets in a clear and accessible way. In twenty-four 45-minute lectures, Professor Greenberg reveals the secrets of these multifaceted works, aided at every turn by the masterful interpretations of the Alexander String Quartet.
	Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion Professor Bill Messenger Learn the basics of jazz and its history in Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion, a course as free-flowing and original as jazz itself. Taught by Professor Bill Messenger of the Peabody Institute, these lectures are a must for music lovers. Follow the story of jazz in its many shapes, including ragtime, the blues, swing music, boogie-woogie, and the rise of modern forms such as bebop and fusion. Thorough and enjoyable, this course is a rich mixture of jazz, its elements, its era, and its most famous practitioners.
Save Up To $450	Concert Masterworks Professor Robert Greenberg This course examines eight great concert masterworks by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorák, Strauss, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Liszt. You explore the life, times, personality, and stylistic assumptions of the composers and analyze each composition's form, themes, thematic relationships, and expressive content. You will also discuss the impact on musical development of the Enlightenment aesthetic ideal, nationalism, Beethoven’s heroic style, the Romantic Era, and more. Many musical excerpts are included.
Save Up To $215	Chamber Music of Mozart Professor Robert Greenberg Professor Robert Greenberg of San Francisco Performances presents an outstanding opportunity to study and enjoy a variety of chamber works drawn primarily from Mozart’s golden years in Vienna, 1781–1791. The centerpiece of this 16-lecture course is the set of six Haydn string quartets that Mozart dedicated to his friend, the great Joseph Haydn.
	Life and Operas of Verdi Professor Robert Greenberg Giuseppe Verdi is still the most popular composer in the 400-year history of opera. What were the sources of his unbridled creativity? And why have his operas left such a lasting impression on the history of classical music? Discover the answers in The Life and Operas of Verdi, a fascinating 36-lecture course taught by award-winning composer and Professor Robert Greenberg. Tour Verdi's life and music, and trace his artistic development from a more conventional composer to a master of dramatic innovation. As you explore Verdi's most cherished operas—including Rigoletto, Macbeth, Aida, and Falstaff—you'll quickly realize just how adept this great composer was at using opera to intensify and explore the range of human emotion. And each lecture features captivating musical excerpts that illustrate in vivid detail Verdi's artistry.