How to listen to great music: a guide to its history, culture, and heart

Understanding and listening to music

A mad dash through the roots of Western music

The music of the medieval church

A necessary and invigorating excursion into the worlds of music theory and terminology

Emotional exuberance and intellectual control : the paradox of Baroque art

Play it, don't say it : the rise of instrumental music

National styles : Italy and Germany (or, Why German music will never hit your eye like a big pizza pie and Italian music will never go from best to wurst)

Fugue it!

Opera : the Baroque expressive revolution in action

Opera goes to church

A new liturgy comes of age : Lutheran Baroque sacred music

Instrumental form in Baroque era music

Baroque era musical genres

Enlightened is as enlightened does : an introduction to the Classical era

Putting it all together : Classical era musical form, part one

Classical era musical form, part two

Classical era orchestral genres, part one

Classical era orchestral genres, part two

Send in the buffone : opera in the Classical era

A revolutionary artist for a revolutionary time : Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven's compositional innovations : when the going gets tough, the tough innovate

Isn't it Romantic? : the music of the nineteenth century

Structural problems : formal challenges in early Romantic music

Going beyond Beethoven : Hector Berlioz's Symphony fantastique and the program symphony

Nineteenth-century Italian opera : Rossini and bel canto

Giuseppe Verdi : it's all about the people

dramatic truth in Italian opera

Nineteenth-century German opera : von Weber and Wagner, nationalism and experimentation

Of thee I sing : musical nationalism in the nineteenth century

Romantic nationalism, Russian style

A modern music for a modern world

Revolutions, evolutions, and "-isms" galore : the making of a new music in the early twentieth century

From Russia with rhythm : Igor Stravinsky

No waltz in the park : Arnold Schoenberg's Vienna and Expressionism

Postlude.