How to Listen to and Understand Great Music

I have been a lover of music since my early childhood - runs in the family - and have imitated and performed songs (mostly inside my own head) on numerous occasions. Despite this lifelong love affair with music of all kinds, there was one particular genre of music that always baffled me. Mostly because of my own ignorance, but partially also because nobody else was talking about it. Nobody else in my own vicinity that is. It didn't play on the radio, you won't hear it playing on any of the countless music channels and certainly, nobody was going on tours giving live performances.

This was the wonderful genre of concert music.

We have all probably heard the following names: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. But, and this is especially true in India, very few listeners would be able to identify a piece of concert music by its composer, the way they would a Linkin Park song for example. Now I realize the comparison is a bit unfair, and I'm not trying to pit one musician against another - it's just to illustrate a point - the point being that we are grossly unfamiliar with these great composers apart from reading a passage about them in history books about what geniuses they were.

This series of lectures is dedicated towards amending this misstep. Narrated by the ever passionate and wonderful Dr. Robert Greenberg, this is a collection of 48 lectures of 45 minutes each (36 hours in total), which takes you on a musical journey starting from the ancient Greek music up until the first half of the twentieth century. For the lack of a better word, these lectures are absolutely amazing - especially because of the narrator. His enthusiasm is simply so infectious!

Do give this one a listen. I promise it'll be worth it.