How to Listen to Great Music

February 1, 2011

This latest offering from the Teaching Company, an instructional audio and DVD manufacturer, is an informative and entertaining survey of Western classical music from around 1600 to 1900. Greenberg, who has taught in many Teaching Company music DVDs, approaches his topic with both expertise and humor, including chatty biographies, basic music theory, and listening recommendations to put readers at ease and motivate them to explore. His scholarship relies on standard sources and is for the most part above reproach, although he tends to overstate the importance of some of his favorite composers and their works. Greenberg does include three seminal 20th-century composers--Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Arnold Schoenberg--but he would have been wise to extend the discussion further into the modern age or into locations such as the United States, Scandinavia, or the Czech/Bohemian area. The glossary, list of music discussed, and brief bibliography primarily of textbooks are useful. VERDICT Accomplishing its purpose to serve a nonacademic audience, Greenberg's book should have wide appeal. Specialists and music libraries ought to supplement it with more rigorous titles.--Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH

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