The audiobook contains the course lectures; the PDF is the course guide / summary.

Great music is a language unto its own, a means of communication of unmatched beauty and genius. And it has an undeniable power to move us in ways that enrich our lives - provided it is understood.

If you have ever longed to appreciate great concert music, to learn its glorious language and share in its sublime pleasures, the way is now open to you, through this series of 48 wonderful lectures designed to make music accessible to everyone who yearns to know it, regardless of prior training or knowledge. It's a lecture series that will enable you to first grasp music's forms, techniques, and terms - the grammatical elements that make you fluent in its language - and then use that newfound fluency to finally hear and understand what the greatest composers in history are actually saying to us.
And as you learn the gifts given us by nearly every major composer, you'll come to know there is one we share with each of them - a common humanity that lets us finally understand that these were simply people speaking to us, sharing their passion and wanting desperately to be heard.

Using digitally recorded musical passages to illustrate his points, Professor Greenberg will take you inside magnificent compositions by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and more. Even if you have listened to many of these illustrative pieces throughout your life - as so many of us have - you will never hear them the same way again after experiencing these lectures.

Contents:

1. Music as a Mirror
2. Sources—The Ancient World and the Early Church
3. The Middle Ages
4. Introduction to the Renaissance
5. The Renaissance Mass
6. The Madrigal
7. An Introduction to the Baroque Era
8. Style Features of Baroque-era Music
9. National Styles—Italy and Germany
10. Fugue
11. Baroque Opera, part 1
12. Baroque Opera, part 2
13. The Oratorio
14. The Lutheran Church Cantata
15. Passacaglia
16. Ritornello Form and the Baroque Concerto
17. The Enlightenment and an Introduction to the Classical Era
18. The Viennese Classical Style, Homophony, and Cadence
19. Classical-era Form—Theme and Variations
20. Classical-era Form—Minuet and Trio: Baroque Antecedents
21. Classical-era Form—Minuet and Trio Form
22. Classical-era Form—Rondo Form
23. Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, part 1
24. Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, part 2
25. Classical-era Form—Sonata Form, part 3
26. The Symphony—Music for Every Person
27. The Solo Concerto
28. Classical-era Opera—The Rise of Opera Buffa
29. Classical-era Opera—Mozart and the Operatic Ensemble
30. The French Revolution and an Introduction to Beethoven
31. Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67, part 1
32. Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 in C Minor, op. 67, part 2
33. Introduction to Romanticism
34. Formal Challenges and Solutions in Early Romantic Music
35. The Program Symphony—Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, part 1
36. The Program Symphony—Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, part 2
37. 19th-century Italian Opera—Bel Canto Opera
38. 19th-century Italian Opera—Giuseppe Verdi
39. 19th-century German Opera—Nationalism and Experimentation
40. 19th-century German Opera—Richard Wagner
41. The Concert Overture, part 1
42. The Concert Overture, part 2
43. Romantic-era Musical Nationalism
44. Russian Nationalism
45. An Introduction to Early 20th-century Modernism
46. Early 20th-century Modernism—Claude Debussy
47. Early 20th-century Modernism—Igor Stravinsky
48. Early 20th-century Modernism—Arnold Schönberg